The Problem of the Red-paint People 



By Warren K. Moorehead 



j|S I prepare these pages there lies before me a volume 

 written by James P. Howley, Esq., under the title "The 

 Beothucks, or Red Indians, the Aboriginal Inhabitants 

 of Newfoundland"; it was published by the University 

 Press, Cambridge, England, in 1915, and evinces much 

 research on the part of the author. The publication is interesting 

 in the present instance in view of the contention that the so-called 

 Red-paint People are the Beothucks of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, 

 and adjacent regions. A careful comparison of the objects therein 

 illustrated with those from the graves of the Red-paint People indicates 

 the marked difference between the remains of the real Beothucks and 

 those of the supposed members of that stock. 



Shortly after 1880, Dr Augustus C. Hamlin, interested in the 

 geology and natural history of Maine, found in that state numbers of 

 stone tools in deposits of red ochre, and at a meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr Hamlin mentioned 

 his discovery to the late Prof. F. W. Putnam, who, it appears, was 

 impressed by the peculiar character of the burials or deposits; 

 accordingly he dispatched Mr C. C. Willoughby to Bucksport and 

 Ellsworth, Maine, where important explorations were conducted. Mr 

 Willoughby examined three cemeteries or deposits of the so-called 

 Red-paint People, and gathered for the Peabody Museum a com- 

 prehensive collection of stone objects, comprising adz-blades, gouges, 

 "plummets", long slate spears, pyrites, rubbing stones, and ornaments. 

 Some of the long, slender, slate spears, or problematical forms, 

 which constitute one of the eight characteristic or persistent types 

 occurring in these graves, were shown to Professor Putnam by a Mr 

 Woodcock, who had found a number of them in a Red-paint cemetery 

 near the head of Georges river, and by Mr Alfred Johnson, who had 

 obtained others at Ellsworth. At that time such objects were so 

 unusual that their genuineness was questioned, particularly since 

 they were made of soft material. However, Mr Willoughby 's in- 

 vestigations, as well as later studies, have proved beyond question 

 the antiquity of the objects. 1 



1 C. C. Willoughby in ArchtEohgical and Ethnological Papers, Peabody Museum, vol. I, no 6, 

 1898. 



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