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crescent moons; and they speared seals with harpoons modelled on 
an archaic Eskimo type. Many of their g;raves contain bone orna- 
ments of curious shapes and etched with strange designs. We know 
nothing concerning their political organization except that they were 
divided into small bands of closely related families, each with its nom- 
inal leader. Some meagre vocabularies of their language suggest 
that they spoke two or three dialects of a common tongue, althougli 
the entire tribe could hardly have numbered much more than five 
hundred individuals when Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 141)7. 
Appi'oxiniate diwiiibution of Use o.ustoni Algonkiaii in ln2n A.D. 
The European fishermen who settled arouml the shores of the island 
m the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries resented 
their petty pilfering, and shot them down at every opportunity, the 
French even placing a Ijounty on their heads; and the Micmac who 
crossed over from Nova Scotia in the eighteentli century hunted 
them relentlessly far into the interior. The Beothuk attempted to 
retaliate, but, armed only with bows and arrows, they could not witli- 
stand the combined attacks of white and Micmac, aiul the last known 
