265 
THE INDIANS OF CANADA 
PART II 
CHAPTER III 
MIGRATORY TRIBES OF THE EASTERN WOODLANDS 
In the first part of this work we outlined in l)old relief the main 
features in tlie lives of our Indians and Eskimo, considered en tnasse, 
and discussed what little we know concern inji; their origins and earlier 
histories. In this second ]7art we will Ijriefly pass in review each 
physiographic region, sketch the chief chai’acteristics of its principal 
tribes and summarize their histories since their contact with Euro- 
peans. We may logically open our account with the eastern wood- 
lands, with the migratory tribes of Algonkian speech that did not 
till the soil ; and commence with a people a little outside the Domin- 
ion (though they surely had emigrated from its shores), the extinct 
Beothuk Indiaiis of Newfoundland. 
BEOTHUK 
“ man ” or “ Iiuman being 
The woi'd Beothuk meant probably 
but early European visitors to Newfoundland considered it the tribal 
name of tlie aborigines who were inhabiting the island. They gave 
them also another name, “ Red Indians,” because they smeared their 
bodies and clothing with red ochre, partly for religious reasons, appar- 
ently, partly as a protection against insects.^ They may have been 
lighter in colour than the Indians of the Maritime Provinces,- from 
whom they differed in several ways. Thus, they had no dogs, and 
did not make pottery, but cooked their food in vessels of birch bark.^ 
For sleeping places witliin their bark wigwams they dug trenches 
which they lined with branches of fir or pine. Tlieir canoes, though 
made of birch bark like those of other eastern tribes, were very 
peculiar in shape, each gunwale presenting the outline of a pair of 
1 Just as 1he Montamiais of the Caljrador peninsula smeared tliemselves wiCi seal-oil. Hind, H. Y.; 
“ Exjilorations in tlie Interior of the Labrador Peninsula”; vol. i. p. 177 (London, 1863). 
2 This assertion of some eighteenth eentury writer.s, however, .seems rather improbable. 
3 There seems to be no evidenee that they u.sed so!i|*.s(oue cooking ves.sels like the Eskimo. Prob- 
ably- it was the latmi-, not the beothuk, wim worked the soapstone quari-y at FU-ur-de- Lys, on the 
northeast coast of Newfoundland (.See ilhistnition, p. 231). 
S61)5'i IS.t 
