APPENDIX. 139 



The following remarks upon the Red Indians of Newfoundland, 

 by Mr. Elias Marett, are contained in a letter to the Presi- 

 dent : 



" 213 GowER-ST., St. John's, N. F., 

 October 15, 1865. 

 *' My Dear Sir, — 



" Sometime back on my meeting with you at Halifax, I had occasion to 

 mention the discovery of a grave of one of the aborigines of Newfoundland, 

 and also that I had visited the place and had withdrawn several of the relics, 

 which I then described to you from memory, but which I had long before parted 

 with. Since that time I recently met with an old friend, the Rev. M. Black- 

 more, Rural Dean of Conception Bay, who was the first visitor to the place, 

 and who retains in his possession a number of curiosities collected by himself 

 at the last resting place of the solitary Boeothick, or Red Man of Newfound- 

 land. 



" I will now give you his own statement, and in his own words : — ' They 

 were found in the year 1847, on one of the Islands forming the Lower Burgeo 

 group, called " Rencontre." This Island is uninhabited, and considerably 

 elevated — difficult also of access in rough weather. It is in a great measure 

 covered with broken fragments of rocks which have fallen from the heights. 

 About halfway up the mountain (if I may so term it), and in a hollow formed 

 by a large piece of fallen rock, with every opening carefully closed by small 

 pieces of the broken rock, we, that is I, and the men who had the evening pre- 

 vious discovered the cavity but who would not search into its contents until I 

 came with them, found the bones of a human being wrapped closely round 

 with birch rinds; on removing these rinds a quantity of gravel mixed with red 

 •ochre became visible, and on removing this we found the oblong pieces of car- 

 ved bone, together with the flat circular stones, some glass beads, two iron 

 hatchet heads, so rusty that we could pick them to pieces, a bone spear head, 

 the handle of a knife with part of the blade still in it, also some flints designed 

 for arrow heads — all these articles were together and had been placed appar- 

 ently under or just before the head of the individual buried — all carefully 

 enclosed in the rinds. The skull was that of a full grown male adult with a 

 very flat crown and large projection behind ; the place of interment was 

 singularly wild, high up in a clifi" overlooking a little cove facing the open 

 sea, and only acessible on this side in very smooth water. It was discovered 

 by a boy while gathering brushwood. This boy seeing a piece of wood pro- 

 jecting from the rock pulled at it to add it to his store, and so loosened the 

 smaller rocks and found the cavity with its contents. He left the stick being 

 too much frightened to take it home. The head of this stick which was about 

 four inches in diameter was ornamented. There were four fragments of 

 sticks, and they must I imagine, have formed a kind of canopy over the body. 

 These relics certainly do not belong to the tribes of Indians at present sojourn- 

 ing in Newfoundland, for on shewing them to some Mic-Macs they at once 

 gave me to understand that they belonged to one of the aborigines of the 



