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The Beothuk ( or ; also spelled Beothuck) were a group of Indigenous people of Canada who lived on the island of Newfoundland.
The Beothuk culture formed around 1500 CE. This may have been the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to present-day Newfoundland around 1 CE. The ancestors of this group had three earlier cultural phases, each lasting approximately 500 years.
Like many other , they appear to have had band leaders but probably not more formal chiefs, in the anthropological definition of the word. They lived in conical dwellings known as mamateeks, which were fortified for the winter season. These were constructed by arranging poles in a circle, tying them at the top, and covering them with birch bark. The floors were dug with hollows used for sleeping. A fireplace was made at the centre.
During spring, the Beothuk used red ochre to paint not only their bodies but also their houses, , weapons, household appliances, and musical instruments. This practice led Europeans to refer to them as "Red Indians". The use of ochre had great cultural significance. The decorating was done during an annual multi-day spring celebration. It designated tribal identity; for example, decorating newborn children was a way to welcome them into the tribe. Forbidding a person to wear ochre was a form of punishment.
Their main food were caribou, salmon, and Pinniped, augmented by harvesting other animal and plant species. The Beothuk followed the seasonal migratory habits of their principal quarry. In the fall, they set up deer fences, sometimes long, used to drive migrating caribou toward waiting hunters armed with bows and arrows. (Reprint, Toronto: Canadiana House, 1969)
The Beothuk are also known to have made a pudding out of tree sap and the dried yolk of the eggs of the great auk. They preserved surplus food for use during winter, trapped various fur-bearing animals, and worked their skins for warm clothing. The fur side was worn next to the skin, to trap air against a person's body.
Beothuk canoes were made of caribou or seal skin, and the bows of canoes were stiffened with spruce bark. Canoes resembled and were said to be in length and in width with enough room to carry children, dogs, and property.
The Beothuk followed elaborate burial practices. After wrapping the bodies in birch bark, they buried the dead in isolated locations. In one form, a shallow grave was covered with a rock pile. At other times they laid the body on a burial tree, or placed it in a burial box, with the knees folded. The survivors placed offerings at burial sites to accompany the dead, such as figurines, pendants, and replicas of tools.
Unlike some other Indigenous groups, the Beothuk tried to avoid contact with Europeans; they moved inland as European settlements grew. The Beothuk visited their former camps only to pick up metal objects. They would also collect any tools, shelters, and building materials left by the European fishermen who had dried and cured their catch before taking it to Europe at the end of the season. Contact between Europeans and the Beothuk was usually negative for one side, with a few exceptions like John Guy's party in 1612. Settlers and the Beothuk competed for natural resources, such as salmon, seals, and birds. In the interior, fur trappers established traplines, disrupted the caribou hunts, and ransacked Beothuk stores, camps, and supplies. The Beothuk would steal traps to reuse the metals, and steal from the homes and shelters of European settlers and sometimes ambush them. These encounters led to enmity and mutual violence. With superior arms technology, the settlers generally had the upper hand in hunting and warfare. (Unlike other Native American peoples, the Beothuk appeared to have had no interest in adopting firearms.)
Intermittently, Europeans attempted to improve relations with the Beothuk. Examples included expeditions by naval lieutenants George Cartwright in 1768 and David Buchan in 1811. Cartwright's expedition was commissioned by Governor Hugh Palliser; he found no Beothuk, but brought back important cultural information.
Governor John Duckworth commissioned Buchan's expedition. Although undertaken for information gathering, this expedition ended in violence. Buchan's party encountered several Beothuk near Beothuk Lake. After an initially friendly reception, Buchan left two of his men behind with the Beothuk. The next day, he found them murdered and mutilated. According to the Beothuk Shanawdithit's later account, the marines were killed when one refused to give up his jacket and both ran away.
During the colonial period, the Beothuk people allegedly endured territorial pressure from other Indigenous groups: Mi'kmaq migrants from Cape Breton Island, and Inuit from Labrador. "The Beothuk were unable to procure sufficient subsistence within the areas left to them." It has been alleged that French bounties induced the Mi'kmaq to kill Beothuk. This is, however, disputed by most historians and has since come to be known as the "Mercenary Myth".
Beothuk numbers dwindled rapidly due to a combination of factors, including:
By 1829, with the death of Shanawdithit, the people were declared extinct.
In 1910, a 75-year-old Indigenous woman named Santu Toney claimed she was the daughter of a Mi'kmaq mother and a Beothuk father. She recorded a song in the Beothuk language for the American anthropologist Frank Speck. He was conducting field studies in the area. She said her father taught her the song.
Since Santu Toney was born about 1835, this may be evidence some Beothuk people survived beyond the death of Shanawdithit in 1829. Contemporary researchers tried to transcribe the song, as well as improve the recording by current methods. Native groups learned the song to use in celebrations of tradition.
Writing in 1766, Governor Hugh Palliser reported to the British secretary of state that " the barbarous system of killing prevails amongst our people towards the Native Indians — whom our People always kill, when they can meet them".
If such a campaign did occur, it was explicitly without official sanction after 1769, any such action thereafter being in violation of Governor John Byron's proclamation that " I do strictly enjoin and require all His Majesty's subjects to live in amity and brotherly kindness with the native savages Beothuk of the said island of Newfoundland", as well as the subsequent Proclamation issued by Governor John Holloway on July 30, 1807, which prohibited mistreatment of the Beothuk and offered a reward for any information on such mistreatment.
Adhikari comments how the intentional nature of the destructive violence from colonizers is part of the evidence that makes this a case of genocide. Harring draws parallels between the genocidal violence inflicted upon the Beothuk and the Black War inflicted upon the Aboriginal Tasmanians, and that the government's knowledge of such violence while not actively preventing and stopping it implies a tacit approval of the violence.
Adhikari collects various accounts of mass violence conducted by Europeans against the Beothuk, the most infamous of which is a raid that occurred in winter 1789. This was led by John Peyton Sr., who was involved in many acts of violence against the Beothuk. Peyton along with two others fired upon a band of 50 Beothuk with buckshot, killing many while injuring all others, beyond some injured individuals who were physically beaten to death after being shot, any others were left to die from their injuries or freeze to death.
The governor of the Newfoundland Colony was seeking to encourage trade and end hostilities with the Beothuk. He approved an expedition, to be led by the Scottish explorer David Buchan, to recover a boat and other fishing gear foraged by the Beothuk. Buchan was accompanied by two soldiers; the Beothuk mistakenly thought Buchan had hostile intentions and killed and decapitated the soldiers accompanying him.
In 1819, an armed party led by Peyton Sr, totaling about nine men (including Peyton Jr.), came upon a Beothuk camp looking for stolen fishing gear. The Beothuk scattered, although Demasduit was unable to escape and begged for mercy, exposing her breasts to show she was a nursing mother with child. Her husband, Nonosabasut, confronted Peyton Sr. and his party, attempting to negotiate for the release of his wife. Peyton Sr. refused and a scuffle broke out between him and Nonosabasut, resulting in the death of the latter. Peyton Sr. and his party took Demasduit to Twillingate, with her baby dying before they reached the settlement.
The settlers at the Newfound Colony named Demasduit Mary March after the month she was taken. Government agents took her to St. John's, Newfoundland. The colonial government hoped to make Demasduit comfortable while she was living in the colony so she might be a bridge between them and the Beothuk. Demasduit learned some English language, and taught the settlers about 200 words of the Beothuk language. In January 1820, Demasduit was released to rejoin her people, but she died of tuberculosis on the voyage to Notre Dame Bay.
The explorer William Cormack founded the Beothuk Institute in 1827 to foster friendly dealings with the Beothuk and support their culture. His expeditions found Beothuk artifacts but he also learned the society was dying out. Learning of Shanawdithit, in the winter 1828–1829, Cormack brought her to his centre so he could learn from her. James P. Howley, F.G.S., "Drawings by Shanawdithit", The Beothucks or Red Indians: The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915, Memorial University of Newfoundland & Labrador Website He drew funds from his institute to pay for her support.
Shanawdithit made ten drawings for Cormack, some of which showed parts of the island, and others illustrated Beothuk implements and dwellings, along with Beothuk notions and myths. As she explained her drawings, she taught Cormack Beothuk vocabulary. She told him there were far fewer Beothuk than twenty years previously. To her knowledge, at the time she was taken, only a dozen Beothuk survived. Despite medical care from the doctor William Carson, Shanawdithit died of tuberculosis in St. John's on June 6, 1829. At the time, there was no European cure for the disease.
Records and information were limited, therefore some questions about the people could not be answered because few record-keeping Europeans contacted the Beothuk. By contrast, peoples such as the Wyandot people or the Mi'kmaq interacted with the French missionaries, who studied and taught them and had extensive trade with French, Dutch, and English merchants - all of whom made records of their encounters.
There are references that document Beothuk presence in the region of Notre Dame Bay in the last half of the 18th and early part of the 19th century. Previous archaeological surveys and amateur finds indicate it was likely the Beothuk lived in the area prior to European encounter. Eastern Notre Dame Bay is rich in animal and fish life: seals, fish, and seabirds, and its hinterland supported large caribou herds.
Archaeologists found sixteen Indigenous sites, ranging in age from the Maritime Archaic era (7000 BC – modern) through the Palaeo-Eskimo period, down to the Recent Indigenous (including the Beothuk) occupation. Two of the sites are associated with the historical Beothuk. Boyd's Cove, the larger of the two, is and is on top of a glacial moraine. The coarse sand, gravel, and boulders were left behind by .
The artifacts provide answers to an economic question: why did the Beothuk avoid Europeans? The interiors of four houses and their environs produced some 1,157 nails, the majority of which were forged by the Beothuk. The site's occupants manufactured some sixty-seven projectile points (most made from nails and bones). They modified nails to use as what are believed to be scrapers to remove fat from animal hides, they straightened fish hooks and adapted them as awls, they fashioned lead into ornaments, and so on. In summary, the Boyd's Cove Beothuk took debris from an early modern European fishery and fashioned materials.
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