130 EEV. GEO. PATTBESON ON THE BEOTIIIKS 



dom met without bloodshed. It is also said that their relations with the Eskimos ou the 

 north were characterized by similar hostility. Till English settlement checked the 

 advance of this people, they used to frequent the east coast. It is understood that when 

 they met the Eed Indians it was always as enemies. But Cartwright says that " they 

 kept to their favourite element, the water, where their superior canoes and missile weapons 

 for killing whales rendered them terrible enemies to encounter." The Hod Indians hated 

 them, speaking of them as dirty. With the Indians on the Labrador coast, whom they 

 called Shawnomuucs, they are said to have been on friendly terms, sometimes visiting 

 and carrying- on some trade with them. 



Originally the Beotliiks had established themselves on the coast. This is evident 

 from the fact that the first voyagers met them there, but more especially from their 

 kitchen middings which have been found at various places, and also from the graves 

 sometimes found on islands off the coast. But now they were driven into the interior, 

 and only A'isited the coast by stealth and at the risk of their lives. So much was this the 

 case that Charlevoix, writing about the middle of the 18th century, says that there were 

 no inhabitants in Newfoundland except the Eskimo, who, he says, came down along the 

 coast in summer. The Beothiks had by that time been so driven into the interior or to 

 the northern parts of the island, that the learned author was not aware of their existence. 



So the Baron de La Hontan, who in his younger years had been governor of the 

 French colony of Placeutia Bay, does not mention the Beothiks in his " Voyages." About 

 1690 he wrote : " The Eskimo cross over to the island of Newfoundland every day at the 

 streights of Belleisle, but they never come so far as Placeutia for fear of meeting with 

 other savages there. (J. 210, Eng. translation of Vlo^.) There are no settled savages on 

 the island." From this it is evident that the Beothiks even at that time confined them- 

 selves to places at a distance from those resorted to by the whites. 



But they were still in considerable numbers, as their works to be noticed presently 

 show. Their principal resort was the region of the Exploits Eiver, the largest on the 

 island, having a course of 200 miles and emptying into the Bay of Exploits, a branch of 

 Notre Dame Bay. An expansion of it known as Ked Indian Lake, about 36 miles long, 

 by from half a mile to three miles wide, situated from YO to over 100 miles from the 

 mouth, was their headquarters. 



But the work of destruction continued. Northern furriers and fishermen continued 

 to shoot down the Beothiks, sometimes in wantonness, sometimes in professed fear of 

 them, sometimes in the sijirit in which they would shoot a wolf, and sometimes in the 

 spirit of the sportsman hunting beaver. 



Mr. John Cartwright' says : "On the part of the English fishers their conduct is an 

 inhumanity that sinks them far below the level of savages. The wantonness of their 

 cruelties toward these poor wretches has frequently been almost incredible." And then 

 he gives the following examples : — 



' .lohn Cartwright was at this time a lieutenant in tlio Britisli navy, commanding H. M. Guernsey on this 

 station. He visited tliat part of the country in 17GS, and, as we sliall see, made a tri;) to Red Indian Lake. He 

 has left a small work still in MS. in the Legislative library at St. John's, entitled " Remarks on the situation of the 

 Red Indians, natives of Newfoundland, with some account of their manner of living, together with such descrip- 

 tions as are necessary to the explanation of the sketch of the country they inhabit taken on the spot in the year 

 1768." He was accompanied by his brother George, who has given similar information in Ids work, " Explorations 

 in Labrador." 



