Priceless artifacts found near untouched Beothuk site in central Newfoundland

Story by Ryan Cooke • CBC

When Don Pelley discovered the raised sides of a former Beothuk dwelling in 2016, everyone involved in the expedition knew he'd stumbled upon something special.

The circular pit was perfectly intact, where the Beothuk had erected walls about 200 years earlier. There was no sign of interference from the amateur archaeologists who swept the Beothuk Lake region years ago with metal detectors, digging up all manner of artifacts and leaving little in the ground.

It was the rarest find in that region for decades.

"At the time that it was discovered it was the only known Beothuk house pit in that region … that had not been impacted by erosion or unauthorized digging," said provincial archaeologist Jamie Brake.


Jamie Brake, Newfoundland and Labrador's provincial archaeologist, says more excavations are planned for the area so as much can be learned as possible before the site is lost to erosion. (Ted Dillon/CBC)© Provided by cbc.ca

Beothuk Lake was the last refuge for Newfoundland's Indigenous group. They struggled with European diseases, violent encounters, and losing crucial migration routes to colonization. Shanawdithit, widely recognized as the last Beothuk, died in 1829.

Residents around Beothuk Lake have raised concerns that the last remaining archaeological sites could be lost due to water levels on the lake, which doubles as a hydroelectric reservoir.

After the site was discovered, Brake said, archaelogists were concerned about erosion and teams have taken action to learn all they can from the house pit before it gets swallowed by the lake.

What's been done to protect the site

The area was mapped by drones, and the land was surveyed in and around the house pit. Crews removed trees that were deemed to be at risk of falling over and damaging the site.

Archaeologists have spent parts of three summers excavating the most vulnerable parts — removing important artifacts before they're lost to erosion.



A pair of Beothuk deer spears were uncovered near the site. Brake says they're perhaps the best preserved example of the tool used to hunt caribou. (Submitted by Jamie Brake)© Provided by cbc.ca

Among the items found were a pair of deer spears — metal rods taken from European settlements and sharpened at the tip to kill caribou. Brake said they're perhaps the best preserved spears uncovered by archaeologists.


This harpoon tip was found near the remnants of a Beothuk mamateek on Beothuk Lake. Its presence at an inland site shows the continued importance of coastal seal hunting right to the end of the Beothuk period, says Brake. 

Submitted by Jamie Brake)© Provided by cbc.ca

Another item found was a pointed piece of iron, which is an exact match to a drawing done by Shawnadithit depicting the end blade for a harpoon that would have been used for sealing.

Shawnadithit was one of the last Beothuk people, captured by English furriers in 1823. She died of tuberculosis in 1829.

Brake said more excavations are planned for the area, to learn as much as they can before the site is lost to erosion.

Artifacts tell a story

The items found help archaeologists date the site to the late 1700s or early 1800s, Brake said, which falls toward the end of the Beothuk period.

Its location is also important. While water is now sloshing against the walls of the house pit, it would have been located deep inland before Beothuk Lake was dammed and flooded in the early 1900s.

It dates to a period where the Beothuk were trying to hide from Europeans who were taking over important hunting and fishing grounds, Brake said.

In that context, the presence of a sealing tool is a curious find — since there are no seals in the middle of Newfoundland. Brake said it shows the Beothuk still must have trekked to the coast at some point, despite moving further inland to avoid detection.

"It's probably a good indication of the continued importance of the coast for these people right to the end," Brake said.

More discoveries possible — but leave it to professionals

The discovery of an inland site sparks some hope that more could be discovered in places that haven't been searched before — not just at Beothuk Lake, but in other areas around the province.

Brake said it's important that work be done by archaeologists. An artifact taken without proper study is an artifact lost, he said.

"If it's pulled out of its context, you lose its meaning," Brake said. "[It's] sort of like taking a word out of a page of a book. Once it's taken out of its context, you can no longer understand what it is, what its meaning is."

The stakes are huge, Brake said. Every item can go a long way to discover more about a people who are no longer here to share their own history.

"There's such a small amount of of surviving Beothuk material in existence today," Brake said. "We lose a tremendous sort of opportunity to learn more about these people. We lose a portion of the very limited physical legacy of the Beothuk. So every feature matters enormously. Every artifact and every site."

NEWFOUNDLAND

Reinventing the Beothuk narrative: how genetics has raised thorny issues of history, culture and Indigenous identity

Re-examining relationship with Mi’kmaq peoples

Peter Jackson · Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | Posted: a day ago | Updated: a day ago | 8 Min Read

Gerald Squires’ statue "The Spirit of the Beothuk" stands among the trees overlooking the place where the Beothuks lived hundreds of years ago in Boyd’s Cove, - Contributed

One hundred years ago, American anthropologist Frank Speck wrote about his encounter with a Mi’kmaq family who had set up camp near Gloucester, Mass.

Joe Toney, there with his wife, child and mother, told Speck they were originally from Newfoundland. Then he said his late father, Kop, had been a member of the Osa'yan'a tribe at Red Pond. Speck realized it was the Mi’kmaq term for Beothuk, and that Red Pond was Red Indian Lake (since renamed Beothuk Lake).

The American spoke to Joe’s mother, Santu, at length while Joe translated. She said her husband remembered being stained with red ochre as a child, but that the Mi’kmaw had taken him while he was young and converted him to Christianity. She even sang a song, though it's authenticity is uncertain.

When Speck brought the story to geologist James P. Howley — who, at the time, was the foremost authority on the Beothuk — the latter expressed doubts.

“Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Howley's opinions, based on his extensive knowledge of Newfoundland history and physiography, deserve serious consideration,” Soeck wrote in his 1922 book “Beothuk and Micmac,” “I hardly think, under the circumstances, that the conclusions of one trained in sciences other than ethnology are sufficient to warrant absolutely casting aside information which may be of value, and which on the face of it does bear some semblance of truthfulness.”

Speck was likely the first scholar to document the possibility of Beothuk blood still coursing through the veins of living descendants.

Almost 100 years later, Ryerson film professor Chris Aylward raised the bar again with his hour-long documentary “The Beothuk Story,” which included interviews with Ivy Toney and Ardy Landry, Santu’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter living in Nova Scotia.

Landry has since died.

War of words

When Aylward’s documentary first aired on NTV in 2021, it created a stir and evoked some criticism.

Ingeborg Marshall, whose 1996 tome “A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk” has been generally accepted as the most authoritative exploration of the tribe, publicly took issue with its premise that Beothuk people still live among us.

“Despite the extensive claims of possible survival of Beothuk genetic material into modern times, the lesson which the documentary failed to present is the fact that the Beothuk culture is extinct and therefore the Beothuk, as an independent ‘ethnic group,’ are considered to have died out,” she wrote in a letter to The Telegram.

Christopher Aylward is a film professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism. 

- Keith Gosse

Aylward replied to Marshall’s letter in kind.

“I was both saddened and perplexed by Marshall’s letter: saddened for the misunderstanding and hurt its opinion has caused among the island’s Beothuk and Mi’kmaq peoples,” he wrote, “and perplexed that such an outdated and misinformed opinion continues to find a voice.”

Reached by phone recently on the north coast of Newfoundland, Aylward was less dismissive of Marshall’s take.

“If you’re trying to get at the truth of history, if such a thing even exists, it makes more sense … to take into account all of the pieces and try to find as many as you can and pay attention to them,” he said.

“I believe you fall into a trap when you believe any one source.”

But he persists in referring to the people he talked to as “Beothuk,” and says the written record of Europeans such as William Cormack and the Peyton family are given too much weight.

“Some academics are very threatened by another voice and are very much in opposition to it. And I would definitely put Ingeborg among those people,” he said.


“If you’re trying to get at the truth of history, if such a thing even exists, it makes more sense … to take into account all of the pieces and try to find as many as you can and pay attention to them."
— Christopher Aylward
Lost culture

At 93, Ingeborg Marshall now lives in a seniors apartment in St. John’s, but the veteran anthropologist is still very much active with Beothuk research.

During an interview, she frequently gets up to consult letters and excerpts from books, some of which challenge her arguments and others that back them.

She says there’s nothing in her research that has been disproven as such, and stands by the central narrative that the last known Beothuk, Shanawdithit, died in St. John’s in 1829 and that her tribe, as a distinct cultural entity, has vanished.

Ingeborg Marshall is the author of "A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk." 

- Peter Jackson

The disagreement appears to be one of semantics. Scientists have discovered traces of many lost cultures and races in living people, Marshall says, including strands of Neanderthal DNA.

There is some discussion of genetics in Aylward's film, including an interview with Memorial University biologist Steve Carr, who has been hired by Miawpukek First Nations in Conne River to compare known DNA from Beothuk remains with its Mi’kmaw members.

Miawpukek’s Chief Mi’sel Joe says Carr has already found Beothuk markers in two living residents, but adds the study is in only a preliminary stage.

None of that matters anyway, says Marshall. She agrees it’s plausible the Beothuk may have intermarried with other tribes and with Europeans, but the lineage decreases over time.

“Every time they remarry, it’s only half,” she says. “After five or six or seven generations, you (approach) one per cent.”

For Joe, the question is not so much whether Beothuk people are still alive today, it’s more about re-examining the relationship between the Mi’kmaq and the Beothuk through the lens of oral history as well as documented encounters.

Mi'sel Joe is chief of the Miawpukek First Nation at Conne River.

 - Peter Jackson

One of the primary sources suggesting a hostile relationship between the two tribes comes from Shanawdithit herself, as recorded by her captors.

Joe says there would have been periods of both hostility and peace between the two groups.

“If you look at the world today, the fighting that goes on in what you call the holy wars, and back then you got to keep in mind, over 200 years ago, if you found someone on your hunting ground, of course there was going to be a fight,” he said. “It went both ways.”

But he insists the Mi’kmaq’s role in the Beothuk demise has been overstated.

“Our people knew and lived with Beothuk people, and there was intermarriage between the two,” he says.

Read Part 2 of this two-part series in Tuesday's edition of The Telegram.

Related Stories

LETTER: Saddened and perplexed by outdated and misinformed opinions on Beothuk and Mi’kmaq peoples
UPDATED FEB. 17, 2022 

LETTER: Documentary suggests Beothuk may not be extinct — but they are
UPDATED DEC. 11, 2021 

Medium matters: Ryerson professor assembling pieces of the Beothuk story in documentary
UPDATED MAY. 18, 2021 

Newfoundland and Labrador to drop the word 'savages' from provincial coat of arms

© Provided by The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The Newfoundland and Labrador government is moving ahead with plans to drop the word "savages" from the official description of the Indigenous people depicted on the province's nearly 400-year-old coat of arms.

Premier Andrew Furey made the announcement Wednesday as amendments to the Coat of Arms Act were introduced for second reading in the legislature.

The amendments include replacing he word "‘savages" with "Beothuk," the name of Indigenous people who inhabited the island portion of the province when European settlers arrived.

As well, the government plans to add the name Labrador to the coat of arms.

“Actions that respect the culture and heritage of Indigenous peoples are an important step on the path to reconciliation," Krista Lynn Howell, minister of municipal and provincial affairs, said in a statement.

"These proposed changes are part of the process of building an inclusive environment in the province and a step forward in ensuring the coat of arms more accurately reflects the peoples and cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador.”

The heraldic emblem features two Beothuk warriors in traditional garb, standing on either side of a red shield.

In June 2018, the governing Liberals said they would drop the archaic description and redesign the coat of arms after Indigenous leaders and the party's Indigenous Peoples Commission called for changes.

At the time, Labrador politician Randy Edmunds said the Beothuk must be represented to honour an Indigenous group that was wiped out after settlers encroached on their land, resulting in deadly conflicts and the introduction of new diseases. Shawnadithit, the last known surviving Beothuk, died of tuberculosis in St. John's in June 1829.

Edmunds, an Inuk who was defeated in the 2019 provincial election, said other Indigenous groups should also be recognized. And he said the use of the term savages was offensive.

Last June, the premier confirmed proposed changes would be drafted into legislation following discussions with Indigenous leaders. A meeting earlier that month included representatives from the province's Mi'kmaq communities, the Innu Nation and Labrador's Inuit.

Qalipu First Nation Chief Brendan Mitchell later confirmed that everyone at the virtual meeting agreed that the insulting term had to go.

On Wednesday, Furey cited an online questionnaire that found 85 per cent of the 200 respondents said the legal description of the coat of arms should drop the word "savages."

The original coat of arms was granted by royal warrant from King Charles I of England in 1637. At the time, the island of Newfoundland was known as Terra Nova, and it wasn't yet joined with Labrador.

The symbol was actually granted to a business syndicate known as the Company of Adventurers to Newfoundland, which seemed to have little knowledge of the area.

Aside from the coarse description of the Beothuk, the coat of arms includes a depiction of a prancing elk, hovering between the two warriors. The animals are not native to Newfoundland and Labrador.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 20 2021.

The Canadian Press

N.L. premier vows change: coat of arms description calls Indigenous people 'savages'

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The Newfoundland and Labrador government has decided to change the official description of the province's 400-year-old coat of arms, which includes a reference to Indigenous people as "savages."

Premier Andrew Furey said a formal notice was submitted to the legislature on Thursday following a discussion earlier in the week with Indigenous leaders.

The Liberal premier said his weekly discussion with Indigenous leaders initially focused on the terrible news from Kamloops, B.C., where last week an Indigenous band reported finding what are believed to be the remains of 215 children at a former residential school.

"The Indigenous leaders are going to reflect on what it means in their communities, and where we want to go in terms of investigating residential schools," Furey said Thursday, referring to the fact that the province once supported five church-run residential schools — four in Labrador and one at the northern tip of the island.

Furey said the discussion then turned to the province's coat of arms.

"The description of the coat of arms in our legislation still refers to savages," Furey said. "We don't think that is at all appropriate. We gave notice today in the house to change that."

The premier said the next step is public consultations. "We'll see where the conversations go," he said.

In June 2018, the governing Liberals said they would drop the archaic description and redesign the coat of arms after Indigenous leaders and the party's own Indigenous Peoples Commission called for changes.

The coat of arms features two Indigenous figures in traditional garb, standing on either side of a red shield. In the official description, the Beothuk warriors are described as "savages."

Qalipu First Nation Chief Brendan Mitchell said everyone who attended the virtual meeting on Wednesday agreed that the insulting term had to be dropped.

"They're all in favour of changing the description," the Mi'kmaq leader said in an interview Friday from Corner Brook. "For me, taking the name 'savage' out of there has to done. That's an unfair statement to make .... We didn't get into a lengthy discussion on the actual text."

The meeting included representatives from other Mi'kmaq communities, the Innu Nation and Labrador's Inuit.

When the issue first surfaced in 2018, Labrador politician Randy Edmunds said the Beothuk must be represented on the coat of arms to honour an Indigenous group that was wiped out after European settlers encroached on their land, resulting in deadly conflicts and the introduction of new diseases.

Shawnadithit, the last known surviving Beothuk, died of tuberculosis in St. John's in June 1829.

Edmunds, an Inuk who was defeated in the 2019 provincial election, said other Indigenous groups should also be recognized.

The original coat of arms was granted by royal warrant from King Charles I of England in 1637. At the time, the island of Newfoundland was known as Terra Nova, and it wasn't yet joined with Labrador. The heraldic symbol was actually given to a business syndicate known as the Company of Adventurers to Newfoundland, which seemed to have little knowledge of the area.

Aside from the coarse description of the Beothuk, the coat of arms includes a depiction of a prancing elk, hovering between the two warriors. The animals are not native to Newfoundland and Labrador.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2021.

— By Michael MacDonald in Halifax.

The Canadian Press

Beothuk remains returned to Newfoundland after 191 years in Scotland

CBCMarch 12, 2020

The remains of a Beothuk couple that were taken from a grave in central Newfoundland and sent to Scotland almost two centuries ago have been returned to their home province.

The skulls of Nonosabasut and Demasduit were repatriated at a sombre ceremony Wednesday evening at The Rooms, the province's archive and museum in St. John's.

"This is for me a sacred moment in our history," said Chief Mi'sel Joe of the Miawpukek First Nation in Conne River, who began the campaign to return the remains about five years ago.

Premier Dwight Ball and leaders from the province's five Indigenous groups were at the ceremony.

"Just a few hours ago the remains arrived here at The Rooms," said Ball. "After almost 200 years they are finally home."

Remains taken by Scottish explorer

Demasduit was kidnapped by a European fur trapper in March 1819, in retaliation for an alleged theft by her tribe.

Nonosabasut was killed as he tried to rescue his wife, who was given the name Mary March by her English captors.

The killing and capture came at a time when the number of Beothuk people was dwindling, and the group was on the verge of extinction.

Demasduit was taken to Twillingate, and later to St. John's, where she lived with her captor, John Peyton Jr.

She died of tuberculosis in January 1820, and was returned to Beothuk land to be buried at Red Indian Lake, where Nonosabasut was also buried.

Years later, William Cormack, a Scottish-educated Newfoundland explorer, retrieved the two skulls and some grave items, which eventually made their way to Edinburgh.

They're almost home. They're not quite home yet. They are in this museum. - Mi'sel Joe

Demasduit and Nonosabasut were aunt and uncle to Shanawdithit, traditionally described as the last known Beothuk. Shanawdithit died in June 1829 in St. John's, also of tuberculosis.

'Reminder of what colonialism can do'

Wednesday night, Nunatukavut president Todd Russell asked people to remember how the Beothuk nation disappeared.

"Reflect upon this sad and tragic and horrific period in our history and how that came to be in any day, in any age, is unacceptable. It is a stark reminder of what colonialism can do and has done," he said.

Mark Quinn/ CBC

Joe began the push to have the Beothuk remains returned in 2015.

In February 2016, Ball wrote National Museums Scotland to request the return of the remains, but that request was denied. The museum said it didn't meet criteria set out in Scottish legislation for the repatriation of remains. It said it would only return remains to direct descendents.

Mélanie Joly, who was the federal heritage minister at the time, notified the director of National Museums Scotland that Canada would make a formal demand for the remains in August 2016.

Leaders representing all Indigenous groups in Newfoundland and Labrador signed a letter requesting the return of the remains in May 2017.

Wednesday evening, Joe thanked Ball for helping to bring the Beothuk remains back to Newfoundland, but he gently corrected Ball's assertion that they are now home. Joe would like the remains to be re-buried, but in such a way that they can't be disturbed again.

"They're almost home. They're not quite home yet," he said. "They are in this museum. I know that we have a long way to go and we have a long discussion to take place and I'm sure it's not going to be easy discussions, but we will get there."

@owl_eastern/Twitter

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador