1885.] "i^^ [Gatschet. 



An anonymous Frenchman ■who wrote in 1539 observes, that the south- 

 ern coast was then inhabited by tribes which strenuously avoided the 

 meeting with any strangers ; their faces were painted or tattooed in lines. 



In 1574, Frobisher took with him to England one individual from the 

 island. The explorer Hayes stated (about 1583), that in the south parts 

 his party "found no inhabitants, which, by all likelihood, have aban- 

 doned these coastes, the same being so much frequented by Christians. 

 But on the north are sauages altogether harmlesse."* 



Whitbourne, who saw the island in 1622, places the abodes of these 

 Indians in the north and west part of the country ; they helped the 

 French and Biscayans in the capture of whales and codfish, and in 

 Trinity Bay stole at night sails, hatchets, etc. Bonnycastle (i, 258), 

 thinks that from the first settlement of Newfoundland the Red Indians 

 chiefly inhabited the north, north-east and north-west near the Fogo and 

 Twillingatef Islands, and about White Bay and the interior, surprising at 

 night the fishing stations located there. 



After the landing of Micmac Indians from the mainland opposite, the 

 destinies of the Beothuk aborigines began to take another turn. About 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century a body of Micmacs, who speak an 

 Alg6nkin language, then partly Roman Catholics, came from ISTova Scotia, 

 and settled in western Newfoundland as hunters and fishermen. For 

 many years they were at good terms with the Beothuk ; but subsequently 

 quarrels arose, and about 1770 a battle was fought between the two tribes 

 at the north end of Grand Pond. J. B. Jukes, from whose Excur- 

 sions in Newfoundland (1842) the above is an extract, gives the proxi- 

 mate number of Micmacs settled on the island in his time at one hundred 

 families, chiefly established on the west side, wandering from Fortune 

 Bay to St. George Bay, White Bay, Bay of Exploits. In 1840 they were 

 all Roman Catholics, and many of them of a low moral order. The 

 Beothuks called the Micmacs Shouak, Shawnuk, Shannok, "bad 

 Indians" (Shanung, Latham), and stated that they first arrived by a 

 rivulet called Shouak brook, a tributary of the Exploits River ; there they 

 met them in battle also. 



The Red Indians always were at good terms with the Labradorian 

 Algonkins of the coast and interior: the Naskapi, Montagnais, or as they 

 called them, Slidudamunk. They mutually visited each others' countries, 

 traded with them, and it is not unfair to conjecture that some Red Indians 

 may be there now after their expulsion from the island, the distance from 

 the continent being only 10-12 miles at the nearest point, the Strait of 

 Belle-Isle. 



Since every nation considers the territory which it occupies as belong- 

 ing to it by natural right, foreigners encroaching upon the hunting and 

 fishing-grounds were of course punished by the Beothuks with all the 

 means which their weakness in numbers could afford ; and the constant 



* Bonnycastle, Newfoundland in 1842, Vol. i, p. 253. 

 tThe anglicized form of the French name Toulinguet. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXri. 130. 2z. PRINTED AUGUST 14, 1885. 



