About Early Native Americans of Canada

About Early Native Americans of Canada

ABOUT THE ABORIGINES OF CANADA

This is especially true of those families of the great red race which inhabited what is now Canada. They spent a primitive existence, living thinly scattered along the sea-coast, and in the forests and open glades of the district of the Great Lakes, or wandering over the prairies of the west. In hardly any case had they any settled abode or fixed dwelling-places. The Iroquois and some Algonquins built Long Houses of wood and made stockade forts of heavy timber. But not even these tribes, who represented the furthest advance towards civilization among the savages of North America, made settlements in the real sense. They knew nothing of the use of the metals. Such poor weapons and tools as they had were made of stone, of wood, and of bone. It is true that ages ago prehistoric men had dug out copper from the mines that lie beside Lake Superior, for the traces of their operations there are still found. But the art of working metals probably progressed but a little way and then was lost,—overwhelmed perhaps in some ancient savage conquest. The Indians found by Cartier and Champlain knew nothing of the melting of metals for the manufacture of tools. Nor had they anything but the most elementary form of agriculture. They planted corn in the openings of the forest, but they did not fell trees to make a clearing or plough the ground. The harvest provided by nature and the products of the chase were their sole sources of supply, and in their search for this food so casually offered they moved to and fro in the depths of the forest or roved endlessly upon the plains. One great advance, and only one, they had been led to make. The waterways of North America are nature's highway through the forest. The bark canoe in which the Indians floated over the surface of the Canadian lakes and rivers is a marvel of construction and wonderfully adapted to its purpose: This was their great invention. In nearly all other respects the Indians of Canada had not emerged even from savagery to that stage half way to civilization which is called barbarism.

These Canadian aborigines seem to have been few in number. It is probable that, when the continent was discovered, Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, contained about 220,000 natives—about half as many people as are now found in Toronto. They were divided into tribes or clans, among which we may distinguish certain family groups spread out over great areas.

Most northerly of all was the great tribe of the Eskimos, who were found all the way from Greenland to Northern Siberia. The name Eskimo was not given by these people to themselves. It was used by the Abnaki Indians in describing to the whites the dwellers of the far north, and it means 'the people who eat raw meat.' The Eskimo called and still call themselves the Innuit, which means 'the people.'

The exact relation of the Eskimo to the other races of the continent is hard to define. From the fact that the race was found on both sides of the Bering Sea, and that its members have dark hair and dark eyes, it was often argued that they were akin to the Mongolians of China. This theory, however, is now abandoned. The resemblance in height and colour is only superficial, and a more careful view of the physical make-up of the Eskimo shows him to resemble the other races of America far more closely than he resembles those of Asia. A distinguished American historian, John Fiske, believed that the Eskimos are the last remnants of the ancient cave-men who in the Stone Age inhabited all the northern parts of Europe. Fiske's theory is that at this remote period continuous land stretched by way of Iceland and Greenland from Europe to America, and that by this means the race of cave-men was able to extend itself all the way from Norway and Sweden to the northern coasts of America. In support of this view he points to the strangely ingenious and artistic drawings of the Eskimos. These drawings are made on ivory and bone, and are so like the ancient bone-pictures found among the relics of the cave-men of Europe that they can scarcely be distinguished.

The theory is only a conjecture. It is certain that at one time the Eskimo race extended much farther south than it did when the white men came to America; in earlier days there were Eskimos far south of Hudson Bay, and perhaps even south of the Great Lakes.

As a result of their situation the Eskimos led a very different life from that of the Indians to the south. They must rely on fishing and hunting for food. In that almost treeless north they had no wood to build boats or houses, and no vegetables or plants to supply them either with food or with the materials of industry. But the very rigour of their surroundings called forth in them a marvellous ingenuity. They made boats of seal skins stretched tight over walrus bones, and clothes of furs and of the skins and feathers of birds. They built winter houses with great blocks of snow put together in the form of a bowl turned upside down. They heated their houses by burning blubber or fat in dish-like lamps chipped out of stones. They had, of course, no written literature. They were, however, not devoid of art. They had legends and folk-songs, handed down from generation to generation with the utmost accuracy. In the long night of the Arctic winter they gathered in their huts to hear strange monotonous singing by their bards: a kind of low chanting, very strange to European ears, and intended to imitate the sounds of nature, the murmur of running waters and the sobbing of the sea. The Eskimos believed in spirits and monsters whom they must appease with gifts and incantations. They thought that after death the soul either goes below the earth to a place always warm and comfortable, or that it is taken up into the cold forbidding brightness of the polar sky. When the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, streamed across the heavens, the Eskimos thought it the gleam of the souls of the dead visible in their new home.

Farthest east of all the British North American Indians were the Beothuks. Their abode was chiefly Newfoundland, though they wandered also in the neighbourhood of the Strait of Belle Isle and along the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. They were in the lowest stage of human existence and lived entirely by hunting and fishing. Unlike the Eskimos they had no dogs, and so stern were the conditions of their life that they maintained with difficulty the fight against the rigour of nature. The early explorers found them on the rocky coasts of Belle Isle, wild and half clad. They smeared their bodies with red ochre, bright in colour, and this earned for them the name of Red Indians. From the first, they had no friendly relations with the Europeans who came to their shores, but lived in a state of perpetual war with them. The Newfoundland fishermen and settlers hunted down the Red Indians as if they were wild beasts, and killed them at sight. Now and again, a few members of this unhappy race were carried home to England to be exhibited at country fairs before a crowd of grinning yokels who paid a penny apiece to look at the 'wild men.'

Living on the mainland, next to the red men of Newfoundland lay the great race of the Algonquins, spread over a huge tract of country, from the Atlantic coast to the head of the Great Lakes, and even farther west. The Algonquins were divided into a great many tribes, some of whose names are still familiar among the Indians of to-day. The Micmacs of Nova Scotia, the Malecite of New Brunswick, the Naskapi of Quebec, the Chippewa of Ontario, and the Crees of the prairie, are of this stock. It is even held that the Algonquins are to be considered typical specimens of the American race. They were of fine stature, and in strength and muscular development were quite on a par with the races of the Old World. Their skin was copper-coloured, their lips and noses were thin, and their hair in nearly all cases was straight and black. When the Europeans first saw the Algonquins they had already made some advance towards industrial civilization. They built huts of woven boughs, and for defence sometimes surrounded a group of huts with a palisade of stakes set up on end. They had no agriculture in the true sense, but they cultivated Indian corn and pumpkins in the openings of the forests, and also the tobacco plant, with the virtues of which they were well acquainted. They made for themselves heavy and clumsy pottery and utensils of wood, they wove mats out of rushes for their houses, and they made clothes from the skin of the deer, and head-dresses from the bright feathers of birds. Of the metals they knew, at the time of the discovery of America, hardly anything. They made some use of copper, which they chipped and hammered into rude tools and weapons. But they knew nothing of melting the metals, and their arrow-heads and spear-points were made, for the most part, not of metals, but of stone. Like other Indians, they showed great ingenuity in fashioning bark canoes of wonderful lightness.

The religion of the Algonquin Indians seems to have been a rude nature worship. The Sun, as the great giver of warmth and light, was the object of their adoration; to a lesser degree, they looked upon fire as a superhuman thing, worthy of worship. The four winds of heaven, bringing storm and rain from the unknown boundaries of the world, were regarded as spirits. Each Indian clan or section of a tribe chose for its special devotion an animal, the name of which became the distinctive symbol of the clan. This is what is meant by the 'totems' of the different branches of a tribe.

The Algonquins knew nothing of the art of writing, beyond rude pictures scratched or painted on wood. The Algonquin tribes, as we have seen, roamed far to the west. One branch frequented the upper Saskatchewan river. Here the ashes of the prairie fires discoloured their moccasins and turned them black, and, in consequence, they were called the Blackfeet Indians. Even when they moved to other parts of the country, the name was still applied to them.

Occupying the stretch of country to the south of the Algonquins was the famous race known as the Iroquoian Family. We generally read of the Hurons and the Iroquois as separate tribes. They really belonged, however, to one family, though during the period of Canadian history in which they were prominent they had become deadly enemies. When Cartier discovered the St Lawrence and made his way to the island of Montreal, Huron Indians inhabited all that part of the country. When Champlain came, two generations later, they had vanished from that region, but they still occupied a part of Ontario around Lake Simcoe and south and east of Georgian Bay. We always connect the name Iroquois with that part of the stock which included the allied Five Nations—the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas, and Cayugas,—and which occupied the country between the Hudson river and Lake Ontario. This proved to be the strongest strategical position in North America. It lies in the gap or break of the Alleghany ridge, the one place south of the St Lawrence where an easy and ready access is afforded from the sea-coast to the interior of the continent. Any one who casts a glance at the map of the present Eastern states will realize this, and will see why it is that New York, at the mouth of the Hudson, has become the greatest city of North America. Now, the same reason which has created New York gave to the position of the Five Nations its great importance in Canadian history. But in reality the racial stock of the Iroquois extended much farther than this, both west and south. It took in the well-known tribe of the Eries, and also the Indians of Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac. It included even the Tuscaroras of the Roanoke in North Carolina, who afterwards moved north and changed the five nations into six.

The Iroquois were originally natives of the plain, connected very probably with the Dakotas of the west. But they moved eastwards from the Mississippi valley towards Niagara, conquering as they went. No other tribe could compare with them in either bravery or ferocity. They possessed in a high degree both the virtues and the vices of Indian character—the unflinching courage and the diabolical cruelty which have made the Indian an object of mingled admiration and contempt. In bodily strength and physical endurance they were unsurpassed. Even in modern days the enervating influence of civilization has not entirely removed the original vigour of the strain. During the American Civil War of fifty years ago the five companies of Iroquois Indians recruited in Canada and in the state of New York were superior in height and measurement to any other body of five hundred men in the northern armies.

When the Iroquoian Family migrated, the Hurons settled in the western peninsula of Ontario. The name of Lake Huron still recalls their abode. But a part of the race kept moving eastward. Before the coming of the whites, they had fought their way almost to the sea. But they were able to hold their new settlements only by hard fighting. The great stockade which Cartier saw at Hochelaga, with its palisades and fighting platforms, bore witness to the ferocity of the struggle. At that place Cartier and his companions were entertained with gruesome tales of Indian fighting and of wholesale massacres. Seventy years later, in Champlain's time, the Hochelaga stockade had vanished, and the Hurons had been driven back into the interior. But for nearly two centuries after Champlain the Iroquois retained their hold on the territory from Lake Ontario to the Hudson. The conquests and wars of extermination of these savages, and the terror which they inspired, have been summed up by General Francis Walker in the saying: 'They were the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent.'

The Iroquois were in some respects superior to most of the Indians of the continent. Though they had a limited agriculture, and though they made hardly any use of metals, they had advanced further in other directions than most savages. They built of logs, houses long enough to be divided into several compartments, with a family in each compartment. By setting a group of houses together, and surrounding them with a palisade of stakes and trees set on end, the settlement was turned into a kind of fort, and could bid defiance to the limited means of attack possessed by their enemies. Inside their houses they kept a good store of corn, pumpkins and dried meat, which belonged not to each man singly but to the whole group in common. This was the type of settlement seen at Quebec and at Hochelaga, and, later on, among the Five Nations. Indeed, the Five Nations gave to themselves the picturesque name of the Long House, for their confederation resembled, as it were, the long wooden houses that held the families together.

All this shows that the superiority of the Iroquois over their enemies lay in organization. In this they were superior even to their kinsmen the Hurons. All Indian tribes kept women in a condition which we should think degrading. The Indian women were drudges; they carried the burdens, and did the rude manual toil of the tribe. Among the Iroquois, however, women were not wholly despised; sometimes, if of forceful character, they had great influence in the councils of the tribe. Among the Hurons, on the other hand, women were treated with contempt or brutal indifference. The Huron woman, worn out with arduous toil, rapidly lost the brightness of her youth. At an age when the women of a higher culture are still at the height of their charm and attractiveness the woman of the Hurons had degenerated into a shrivelled hag, horrible to the eye and often despicable in character. The inborn gentleness of womanhood had been driven from her breast by ill-treatment. Not even the cruelest of the warriors surpassed the unhallowed fiendishness of the withered squaw in preparing the torments of the stake and in shrieking her toothless exultation beside the torture fire.

Where women are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them to admire.

North and west from the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois were the family of tribes belonging to the Athapascan stock. The general names of Chipewyan and Tinne are also applied to the same great branch of the Indian race. In a variety of groups and tribes, the Athapascans spread out from the Arctic to Mexico. Their name has since become connected with the geography of Canada alone, but in reality a number of the tribes of the plains, like the well-known Apaches, as well as the Hupas of California and the Navahos, belong to the Athapascans. In Canada, the Athapascans roamed over the country that lay between Hudson Bay and the Rocky Mountains. They were found in the basin of the Mackenzie river towards the Arctic sea, and along the valley of the Fraser to the valley of the Chilcotin. Their language was broken into a great number of dialects which differed so widely that only the kindred groups could understand one another's speech. But the same general resemblance ran through the various branches of the Athapascans. They were a tall, strong race, great in endurance, during their prime, though they had little of the peculiar stamina that makes for long life and vigorous old age. Their descendants of to-day still show the same facial characteristics—the low forehead with prominent ridge bones, and the eyes set somewhat obliquely so as to suggest, though probably without reason, a kinship with Oriental peoples.

The Athapascans stood low in the scale of civilization. Most of them lived in a prairie country where a luxuriant soil, not encumbered with trees, would have responded to the slightest labour. But the Athapascans, in Canada at least, knew nothing of agriculture. With alternations of starvation and rude plenty, they lived upon the unaided bounty of tribes of the far north, degraded by want and indolence, were often addicted to cannibalism.

The Indians beyond the mountains, between the Rockies and the sea, were for the most part quite distinct from those of the plains. Some tribes of the Athapascans, as we have seen, penetrated into British Columbia, but the greater part of the natives in that region were of wholly different races. Of course, we know hardly anything of these Indians during the first two centuries of European settlement in America. Not until the eighteenth century, when Russian traders began to frequent the Pacific coast and the Spanish and English pushed their voyages into the North Pacific,—the Tlingit of the far north, the Salish, Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakiutl-Nootka and Kutenai. It is thought, however, that nearly all the Pacific Indians belong to one kindred stock. There are, it is true, many distinct languages between California and Alaska, but the physical appearance and characteristics of the natives show a similarity throughout.

The total number of the original Indian population of the continent can be a matter of conjecture only. There is every reason, however, to think that it was far less than the absurdly exaggerated figures given by early European writers. Whenever the first explorers found a considerable body of savages they concluded that the people they saw were only a fraction of some large nation. The result was that the Spaniards estimated the inhabitants of Peru at thirty millions. Las Casas, the Spanish historian, said that Hispaniola, the present Hayti, had a population of three millions; a more exact estimate, made about twenty years after the discovery of the island, brought the population down to fourteen thousand! In the same way Montezuma was said to have commanded three million Mexican warriors—an obvious absurdity. The early Jesuits reckoned the numbers of the Iroquois at about a hundred thousand; in reality there seem to have been, in the days of Wolfe and Montcalm, about twelve thousand. At the opening of the twentieth century there were in America north of Mexico about 403,000 Indians, of whom 108,000 were in Canada. Some writers go so far as to say that the numbers of the natives were probably never much greater than they are to-day. But even if we accept the more general opinion that the Indian population has declined, there is no evidence to show that the population was ever more than a thin scattering of wanderers over the face of a vast country. Mooney estimates that at the coming of the white man there were only about 846,000 aborigines in the United States, 220,000 in British America, 72,000 in Alaska, and 10,000 in Greenland, a total native population of 1,148,000 from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.

The limited means of support possessed by the natives, their primitive agriculture, their habitual disinclination to settled life and industry, their constant wars and the epidemic diseases which, even as early as the time of Jacques Cartier, worked havoc among them, must always have prevented the growth of a numerous population. The explorer might wander for days in the depths of the American forest without encountering any trace of human life. The continent was, in truth, one vast silence, broken only by the roar of the waterfall or the cry of the beasts and birds of the forest.

Beothuk Indian Tribes and Language

BEOTHUK INDIAN FAMILY.

= Bethuck, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 58, 1856 (stated to be “Algonkin rather than aught else”). Latham, Opuscula, 327, 1860. Latham, El. Comp. Phil., 453, 1862.

= Beothuk, Gatschet in Proc. Am. Philosoph. Soc., 408, Oct., 1885. Gatschet, ibid., 411, July, 1886 (language affirmed to represent a distinct linguistic family). Gatschet, ibid., 1, Jan-June, 1890.

Derivation: Beothuk signifies “Indian” or “red Indian.”

The position of the language spoken by the aborigines of Newfoundland must be considered to be doubtful.

In 1846 Latham examined the material then accessible, and was led to the somewhat ambiguous statement that the language “was akin to those of the ordinary American Indians rather than to the Eskimo; further investigation showing that, of the ordinary American languages, it was Algonkin rather than aught else.”

Since then Mr. Gatschet has been able to examine a much larger and more satisfactory body of material, and although neither in amount nor quality is the material sufficient to permit final and 58satisfactory deductions, yet so far as it goes it shows that the language is quite distinct from any of the Algonquian dialects, and in fact from any other American tongue.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION.

It seems highly probable that the whole of Newfoundland at the time of its discovery by Cabot in 1497 was inhabited by Beothuk Indians.

In 1534 Cartier met with Indians inhabiting the southeastern part of the island, who, very likely, were of this people, though the description is too vague to permit certain identification. A century later the southern portion of the island appears to have been abandoned by these Indians, whoever they were, on account of European settlements, and only the northern and eastern parts of the island were occupied by them. About the beginning of the eighteenth century western Newfoundland was colonized by the Micmac from Nova Scotia. As a consequence of the persistent warfare which followed the advent of the latter and which was also waged against the Beothuk by the Europeans, especially the French, the Beothuk rapidly wasted in numbers. Their main territory was soon confined to the neighborhood of the Exploits River. The tribe was finally lost sight of about 1827, having become extinct, or possibly the few survivors having crossed to the Labrador coast and joined the Nascapi with whom the tribe had always been on friendly terms.

Upon the map only the small portion of the island is given to the Beothuk which is known definitely to have been occupied by them, viz., the neighborhood of the Exploits River, though, as stated above, it seems probable that the entire island was once in their possession.

Early Canadian Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland

THE BEOTHUK INDIANS

OF

Newfoundland,

St. John's, Newfoundland:
R.J. Parsons, Printer.
1859.

Of the various theories advanced on the origin of the Canadian Indians, none has been so entirely satisfactory as to command a general assent; and on this point many and different opinions are yet held. The late De Witt Clinton, Governor of the State of New York, a man who had given no slight consideration to subjects of this nature, maintained that they were of Tatar origin; others have thought them the descendants of the Ten Tribes, or the offspring of the Canaanites expelled by Joshua. The opinion, however, most commonly entertained is, that the vast continent of North America was peopled from the Northeast of Asia; in proof of which it is urged that every peculiarity, whether in person or disposition, which characterises the Canadian Indians, bears some resemblance to the rude tribes scattered over the northeast of Asia, but almost none to the nations settled on the northern extremity of Europe. Robertson, however, gives a new phase to this question; from his authority we learn that, as early as the ninth century, the Norwegians discovered Greenland and planted colonies there. The communication with that country, after a long interruption, was renewed in the last century, and through Moravian missionaries, it is now ascertained that the Esquimaux speak the same language as the Greenlanders, and that they are in every respect the same people. By this decisive fact, not only is the consanguinity of the Greenlanders with the Esquimaux established, but also the possibility of peopling America from the north of Europe demonstrated, and if of America, then of course of Newfoundland also, and thus it appears within the verge of possibility, that the original inhabitants of this Island may be descendants of Europeans, in fact merely a distinct tribe of the Esquimaux. At a meeting of the Philosophical Society held in England some few years ago, the subject of the Red Indians of Newfoundland was brought under discussion by Mr. Jukes, the gentleman who conducted the geological survey of this Island; and Dr. King, a name well-known among scientific men, gave it as his opinion, founded on historical evidence, going so far back as the period of Sebastian Cabot, that they were really an Esquimaux tribe. Others are of opinion, founded on some real or presumed affinity between the vocabulary of the one people with that of the other, that theCanadian Indian tribes of North America and the original inhabitants of Newfoundland, called by themselves "Boeothicks," and by Europeans "Red Indians," are of the same descent.

The enquiry, however, into the mere origin of a people is one more curious in its nature than it is calculated to be useful, and failure in attempting to discover it need excite but little regret; but it is much to be lamented that the early history of the Boeothick is shrouded in such obscurity, that any attempt to penetrate it must be vain. All that we know of the tribe as it existed in past ages, is derived from tradition handed down to us chiefly thro' the Micmacs; and even from this source, doubtful and uncertain as such authority confessedly is, the amount of information conveyed to us is both scanty and imperfect. From such traditionary facts we gather, that the Boeothicks were once a powerful and numerous tribe, like their neighbouring tribe the Micmacs, and that for a long period these tribes were on friendly terms and inhabited the western shores of Newfoundland in common, together with other parts of the Island as well as the Labrador, and this good understanding continued until some time after the discovery of Canadian Indians of Newfoundland by Cabot; but it was at length violently interrupted by the Micmacs, who, to ingratiate themselves with the French, who at that time held the sway in these parts, and who had taken offence at some proceedings of the Boeothicks, slew two Red Indians with the intention of taking their heads, which they had severed from the bodies, to the French. This wanton and unprovoked outrage was discovered by the Boeothicks, who gave no intimation of such discovery, but who, after consulting together, determined on revenge. They invited the Micmacs to a feast, and arranged their guests in such order that every Boeothick had a Micmac by his side; at a preconcerted signal every Boeothick slew his guest. War of course ensued. Firearms were but little known to the Indians at that time, but they soon came into more general use among such tribes as continued to hold intercourse with Europeans. This circumstance gave the Micmacs an undisputed ascendancy over the Boeothicks, who were forced to betake themselves to the recesses of the interior and other parts of the Island, alarmed, as well they might be, at every report of the firelock. What may be the present feelings of the Red Indians, supposing any of the tribe to be yet living, towards the Micmacs we know not; but we do know that the latter cherish feelings of unmitigated hatred against the very name of "Red Indian."

When Cabot discovered Newfoundland in 1497 he saw Savages, whom he describes as "painted with red ochre, and covered with skins." Cartier in 1534 saw the Red Indians, whom he describes "as of good stature,—wearing their hair in a bunch on the top of the head, and adorned with feathers." In 1574 Frobisher having been driven by the ice on the coast of Newfoundland, induced some of the natives to come on board, and with one of them he sent five sailors on shore, whom he never saw again; on this account he seized one of the Indians, who died shortly after arriving in England.

As soon after the discovery of Newfoundland as its valuable fisheries became known, vessels from various countries found their way hither, for the purpose of catching whales, and of following other pursuits connected with the fishery. Among those early visiters was a Captain Richard Whitburne, who commanded a ship of 300 tons, belonging to "one Master Cotton of South-hampton" and who fished at Trinity. This Captain Whitburne, in a work published by him in 1622, describing the coast, fishery, soil, and produce of Newfoundland, says, "the natives are ingenious and apt by discreet and moderate government, to be brought to obedience. Many of them join the French and Biscayans on the Northern coast, and work hard for them about fish, whales, and other things; receiving for their labor some bread or trifling trinkets." They believed, according to Whitburne, that they were created from arrows stuck in the ground by the Good Spirit, and that the dead went into a far country to make merry with their friends. Other early voyagers also make favourable mention of the natives, but notwithstanding this testimony, it is evident, even from information given by their apologist Whitburne himself, that the Red Indians were not exempt from those pilfering habits which, in many instances, have marked the conduct of the inhabitants of newly discovered Islands on their first meeting with Europeans. Whitburne, when expressing his readiness to adopt measures for opening a trade with the Indians, incidentally mentions an instance where their thievish propensities were displayed.—He says, "I am ready with my life and means whereby to find out some new trade with the Indians of the country, for they have great store of red ochre, which they use to colour their bodies, bows, arrows, and canoes. The canoes are built in shape like wherries on the river Thames, but that they are much longer, made with the rinds of birch trees, which they sew very artificially and close together, and overlay every seam with turpentine. In like manner they sew the rinds of birch trees round and deep in proportion like a brass kettle, to boil their meat in; which hath been proved to me by three mariners of a ship riding at anchor by me—who being robbed in the night by the savages of their apparel and provisions, did next day seek after and came suddenly to where they had set up three tents and were feasting; they had three pots made of the rinds of trees standing each of them on stones, boiling with fowls in each; they had also many such pots so sewed, and which were full of yolk of eggs that they had boiled hard and so dried, and which the savages do use in their broth. They had great store of skins of deer, beaver, bears, otter, seal, and divers other fine skins, which were well dressed; they had also great store of several sorts of fish dried. By shooting off a musquet towards them, they all ran away without any apparel but only their hats on, which were made of seal skins, in fashion like our hats, sewed handsomely with narrow bands and set round with fine white shels. All the canoes, flesh, skins, yolks of eggs, bows, arrows, and much fine ochre and divers other things did the ship's company take and share among them." And from Whitburne's time up to 1818 have complaints been made of thefts committed by the Indians. To the Northward the settlers, as they allege, had many effects stolen from them—one individual alone made a deposition to the effect that he had lost through the depredations of the Indians, property to the amount of £200.

Now whether in such thefts (although they were only of a petty character) we are to trace the origin of that murderous warfare so relentlessly carried on by the Whites against the Red Indians, or whether the atrocities of the former, were the result of brutal ignorance and a wanton disregard of human life, cannot how be determined,—we have only the lamentable fact before us, that to a set of men not only destitute of all religious principle, but also of the common feelings of humanity, the pursuit and slaughter of the Red Indian became a pastime—an amusement—eagerly sought after—wantonly and barbarously pursued, and in the issue fatally, nd it may be added, awfully successful.

For the greater part of the seventeenth century the history of the Canadian Indians present a dreary waste—no sympathy appears to have been felt for them, and no efforts were made to stay the hands of their merciless destroyers. In their attempts to avoid the Micmac, their dire enemy, they fell in the path of the no less dreaded White, and thus year after year passed away, and the comparatively defenceless Boeothick found, only in the grave, a refuge and rest from his barbarous and powerful foes. During the long period just adverted to, the Canadian Indian was regarded by furriers, whose path he sometimes crossed; and with whose gains his necessities compelled him sometimes to interfere, with as little compassion as they entertained for any wild or dangerous beast of the forest, and were shot or butchered with as little hesitation. And barbarities of this nature became at length so common, that the attention of the Government was directed to it; and in 1786 a proclamation was issued by Governor Elliot, in which it is stated "that it having been represented to the King that his subjects residing in this Island do often treat the Indians with the greatest inhumanity, and frequently destroy them without the least provocation or remorse; it was therefore hisMajesty's pleasure that all means should be used to discover and apprehend all who may be guilty of murdering any of the said Indians, in order that such offenders may be sent over to England to be tried for such capital crimes." In 1797 Governor Waldegrave issued a proclamation of a similar character, which document also adverts to the cruelties to which the Indians were subject at the hands of hunters, fishermen and others.—And again in 1802 a proclamation of a like description was also issued.

In 1803 a native Canadian Indian was for the first time taken alive—this was a female,—she was captured at the northern part of the Island, being surprised by a fisherman while paddling her canoe towards a small island in quest of birds' eggs. She was carried to St. John's and taken to Government-house, where she was kindly treated. She admired the epaulets of the officers more than any thing she saw, but appeared to value her own dress more highly, for although presents were given her, and indeed whatever she asked for, she would never let her own fur garments go out of her hands. In the hope that if this woman were returned to her tribe, her own description of the treatment she had received, and the presents she would convey to her people, may lead to a friendly communication being opened with the Red Indians, a gentleman residing in Fogo, (Mr. Andrew Pearce) in the vicinity of which place the woman was taken, was authorised to hire men for the purpose of returning her in safety to her tribe. She was accordingly put under the care of four men, and the manner in which they dealt with her is recounted in the following copy of a letter, written by one of them, and addressed to Mr. Trounsell, who was the Admiral's Secretary:—He says,

"This is to inform you that I could get no men until the 20th August, when we proceeded with the Indian to the Bay of Exploits, and there went with her up the river as far as we possibly could for want of more strength, and there let her remain ten days, and when I returned the rest of the Indians had carried her off into the country. I would not wish to have any more hand with the Indians, in case you will send round and insure payment for a number of men to go in the country in the winter. The people do not hold with civilizing the Indians, as they think that they will kill more than they did before.

(Signed,) William Cull."   

This letter, or at least the latter part of it, is not easily understood; but there is nothing either in its diction or its tone to remove the doubt which, at the time the letter was written, was entertained as to the safety of the poor Indian, and which still rests upon her fate—a strong suspicion was felt, and which has never been removed, that Cull had not dealt fairly with her. Cull heard that such an opinion was entertained, and expressed a strong desire to "get hold of the fellow who said he had murdered the Indian woman." A gentleman who knew Cull well, said, "if ever the person who charged him with the crime, comes within the reach of Cull's gun, and a long gun it is, that cost £7 at Fogo, he is as dead as any of the Red Indians which Cull has often shot." Cull received £50 for capturing the Canadian Indian woman, and a further sum of £15 for her maintenance.

In 1807 a proclamation was issued by Governor Holloway, offering a reward of £50 "to such person or persons as shall be able to induce or persuade any of the male tribe of native Indians to attend them to the town of St. John's; also all expenses attending their journey or passage," and the same reward was offered to any person who would give information of any murder committed upon the bodies of the Indians.

In 1809, the Government, not satisfied with merely issuing proclamations, sent a vessel to Exploit's Bay, in order if possible to meet with the Indians. Lieutenant Spratt, who commanded the vessel, had with him a picture representing the officers of the Royal Navy, shaking hands with an Indian chief—a party of sailors laying goods at his feet—a European and Indian mother looking at their respective children of the same age—Indian men and women presenting furs to the officers, and a young sailor looking admiration at an Indian girl. The expedition, however, did not meet with any of the tribe.

In the following year, 1810, several efforts were made to open a communication with the natives, and to arrest the destruction to which they were exposed—first, a proclamation was issued by Sir John Duckworth, stating that the native Indians, by the ill treatment of wicked persons, had been driven from all communication with His Majesty's subjects, and forced to take refuge in the woods, and offering a reward of £100 to any person who should, to use the words of the proclamation, "generously and meritoriously exert himself to bring about and establish on a firm and settled footing an intercourse with the natives; and moreover, that such persons should be honorably mentioned to His Majesty."

In the same year a proclamation was also issued, addressed exclusively to the Micmacs, the Esquimaux, and American Indians frequenting the Island, recommending them to live in harmony with the Red Indians, and threatening punishment to any who should injure them; and early in the same year, William Cull, the same person who has been spoken of, with six others, and two Micmacs, set out upon the river Exploits, then frozen over, in quest of their residence in the interior of the country. On the fourth day, having travelled 60 miles, they discovered a building on the bank of the river, about 40 or 50 feet long, and nearly as wide. It was constructed of wood, and covered with the rinds of trees, and skins of deer. It contained large quantities of venison, estimated to have been the choicest parts of at least 100 deer—the flesh was in junks, entirely divested of bone, and stored in boxes made of birch and spruce rinds—each box containing about two cwt. The tongues and hearts were placed in the middle of the packages. In this structure, says the celebrated William Cull, we saw three lids of tin tea kettles, which he believed to be the very same given by Governor Gambier to the Indian woman he was entrusted to restore to her tribe. Whether Cull, by this very opportune discovery, removed the suspicion that attached itself to the manner in which he discharged the trust committed to him, does not appear. On the opposite bank of the river stood another store-house considerably larger than the former, but the ice being bad across the river, it was not examined. Two Indians were seen, but avoided all communication with the Whites. The two store-houses stood opposite each other, and from the margin of the river on each side there extended for some miles into the country, high fences erected for the purpose of conducting the deer to the river, and along the margin of the lake in the neighbourhood of those store-houses, were also erected extensive fences, on each side, in order to prevent the deer when they had taken the water from landing. It would appear that as soon as a herd of deer, few or many, enter the water, the Indians who are upon the watch, launch their canoes, and the parallel fences preventing the re-landing of the deer, they become an easy prey to their pursuers, and the buildings before described are depots, for their reception.

Captain Buchan's expedition, too, which is generally, but erroneously spoken of as having been made in the winter of 1815 and 1816, in the course of which two of his men were killed, was also commenced in the autumn of this same year, 1810. Subsequently, indeed, he made one or two journeys into the interior, but only on the one occasion did he meet with any of the natives. The official account of his chief excursion is dated the 23rd October, 1811, and is as follows:—

"Mr. Buchan went in the autumn, to the entrance of the River Exploits, and there anchored his vessel, which soon became fixed in the ice. He then began his march into the interior, accompanied by 24 of his crew and three guides, and having penetrated about 130 miles, discovered some wigwams of the Indians. He surrounded them, and their inhabitants, in number about seventy-five persons, became in his power. He succeeded in overcoming their extreme terror, and soon established a good understanding with them. Four men, among whom was their chief, accepted his invitation to accompany him back to the place, where, as he explained to them by signs, he had left some presents, which he designed for them. The confidence by this time existing was mutual, and so great, that two of Mr. Buchan's people, marines, requested to remain with the Indians; they were allowed to do so, and Mr. Buchan set out on his return to his depot with the remainder of his party and the four Indians. They continued together for about six miles, to the fire-place of the night before, when the chief declined going any further, and with one of his men took leave, directing the other two to go on with Mr. Buchan. They did so, until they came near the place to which they were to be conducted, when one of them became apparently panic-struck and fled, beckoning to his companion to follow him. But the tempers of the two men were different, the latter remained unshaken in his determination, and with a cheerful countenance, and air of perfect confidence in the good faith of his new allies, he motioned to them with his hands to proceed, disregarding his companion and seeming to treat with scorn Mr. Buchan's invitation to depart freely if he chose to do so. Soon afterwards the party reached their rendezvouz—slept there one night, loaded themselves with the presents and returned again towards their Wigwams. The behaviour of the Indian remained the same—he continued to show a generous confidence, and the whole tenor of his conduct was such as Mr. Buchan could not witness without a feeling of esteem for him. On arriving at the wigwams they were found deserted, which threw the Indian into great alarm. Many circumstances determined Mr. Buchan to let him be at perfect liberty, and this treatment revived his spirits. The party spent the night at the Wigwams, and continued their route in the morning. They had proceeded about a mile, when, being a little in advance of the rest, the Indian was seen to start suddenly backwards; he screamed loudly and then fled swiftly, which rendered pursuit in vain. The cause of flight was understood when Mr. Buchan the next moment, beheld upon the ice, headless and pierced by the arrows of the Indians, the naked bodies of his two marines. An alarm had, it is evident, been given by the savage who deserted the party at the rendezvouz, and it is supposed that to justify his conduct in so deserting, he had abused his countrymen with a tale which had excited them to what they perhaps considered a just retaliation. Thus ended an enterprise which was conducted with an ability, zeal, perseverance and manly endurance of extreme hardship, which merited a better success.—When the spring became sufficiently advanced Mr. Buchan returned with his vessel to St. John's, and at once sought and obtained permission from the Governor to return in the summer, in the hope that as the natives came in that season down the rivers to fish and hunt, he might the more easily fall in with them. In this expectation, however, he was disappointed, as he only succeeded in merely discovering some recent traces of them. Captain Buchan, still sanguine of success, requested permission to winter in St. John's, that he may be in readiness to take the earliest of the ensuing spring to go in quest of them again. This was acceded to; but of the movements of Captain Buchan, in consequence of this arrangement, there is no record, it is only known that no additional discoveries were made—but from the facts ascertained by Captain Buchan in his first excursion, the authorities felt satisfied the number of the Indians had been greatly underrated. Captain Buchan was of opinion they could not be less (in the whole) than three hundred persons. Now this is an important fact, as it goes far to disprove the generally received opinion that the tribe is extinct, inasmuch as that opinion was formed from the representations of the decreased numbers of her tribe, made by the Indian woman taken in 1823, but the accuracy of the whole statement there is much reason to doubt. In the course of this narrative we shall be brought to the details of her statement, when a closer comparison of the conflicting accounts can be made.

The several proclamations issued, in favor of the Canadian Indian, seem to have been entirely disregarded—the work of extermination proceeded, and the Government again thought it necessary to express its abhorrence of the murders that were continually being perpetrated, and to threaten punishment to the guilty. Accordingly a proclamation, in the name of the Prince Regent, was issued by Sir R. Keats in 1813, to the same effect, and offering the same reward as the previous ones. For the next four years, or from 1814 to 1818, no additional efforts were made for the benefit of the Indians; but complaints were made by various persons during that period,—residents to the northward,—of thefts, which it was alleged were committed by the Canadian Indians. In consequence of these repeated losses, the person who had sustained the greatest injury, amounting to about £150, made application to the Government for permission to follow the property and regain it, if possible. This permission being given, a party of ten men left the Exploits on the 1st of March, 1819, with a most anxious desire, as they state, of being able to take some of the Indians, and thus, through them, to open a friendly communication with the rest. The leader of the party giving strict orders not on any account to commence hostilities without positive directions. On the 2nd March a few wigwams were seen and examined, they appeared to be frequented by the Indians during spring and autumn for the purpose of killing deer. On the 3rd a fire placed on the side of a brook was seen, where some Indians had recently slept. On the 4th the party reached a store-house belonging to the Indians, and on entering it they found five traps belonging to and recognized as the property of persons in Twillingate, as also part of a boat's jib—footsteps also were seen about the store-house, and these tracks were followed with speed and caution. On the 5th the party reached a very large pond, and foot-marks of two or more Indians were distinctly discovered, and soon after an Indian was seen walking in the direction of the spot where the party were concealed, while three other Indians were perceived further off and going in a contrary direction. The curiosity of the whole party being strongly excited, the leader of them showed himself openly on the point. When the Indian discovered him she was for a moment motionless, then screamed violently and ran off—at this time the persons in pursuit were in ignorance as to whether the Indian was male or female. One of the party immediately started in pursuit, but did not gain on her until he had taken off his jacket and rackets, when he came up with her fast; as she kept looking back at her pursuer over her shoulder; he dropped his gun on the snow and held up his hands to shew her he was unarmed, and on pointing to his gun, which was some distance behind, she stopped—he did the same, then he advanced and gave her his hand, she gave her's to him, and to all the party as they came up. Seven or eight Indians were then seen repeatedly running off and on the pond, and shortly three of them came towards the party—the woman spoke to them, and two of the Indians joined the English, while the third remained some one hundred yards off. Something being observed under the cassock of one of the Indians, he was searched and a hatchet taken from him. The two Indians then took hold of the man who had seized the Indian woman, and endeavoured to force her away from him, but not succeeding in this, he tried to get possession of three different guns, and at last succeeded in geting hold of one, which he tried to wrest from the man who held it; not being able to accomplish this, the Indian seized the Englishman by the throat, and the danger being imminent, three shots were fired, all so simultaneously that it appeared as if only one gun had been discharged. The Indian dropped, and his companions immediately fled. In extenuation of this, to say the least of it, most deplorable event, it is said, "could we have intimidated him, or persuaded him to leave us, or even have seen the others go off, we should have been most happy to have been spared using violence—but when it is remembered that our small party were in the heart of the Indian country, a hundred miles from any European settlement, and that there were in our sight at times, as many Indians as our party amounted to, and we could not ascertain how many were in the woods that we did not see, it could not be avoided with safety to ourselves. Had destruction been our object, we might have carried it much farther."

The death of this Canadian Indian was subsequently brought before the Grand Jury, and that body having enquired into the circumstances connected with it, in its report to the Court makes the following statement:—"It appears that the deceased came to his death in consequence of an attack on the party in search of them, and his subsequent obstinacy, and not desisting when repeatedly menaced by some of the party for that purpose, and the peculiar situation of the searching party and their men, was such as to warrant their acting on the defensive."

Now, taking the foregoing report as given by the leader of the expedition, and in which there can be no question but that the conduct of the English party is as favourably represented as it possibly could be, yet does the statement detailed afford no excuse for the Indian, and is the word "obstinacy" as applied by the Grand Jury, applicable to him?

It may not be forgotten that the Indian was surprised in the "heart of his own country"—treading his own soil—within sight of his home—that home was invaded by armed men of the same race with those who had inflicted on his tribe irreparable injuries—his wife was seized by them—his attempts to release her, which ought to have been respected, were violently resisted,—and then, maddened by the bonds and captivity of his wife, he continues, with a courage and devotion to her which merited a far different fate, singly his conflict with ten armed men—he is shot, and his death is coldly ascribed to his "obstinacy." Had the Indian tamely permitted his wife to have been carried away from him—had he without feeling or emotion witnessed the separation of the mother from her infant child, then indeed little sympathy would have been felt for him—and yet it is precisely because he did show that he possessed feelings common to us all, and without the possession of which man becomes more degraded than the brute, that he was shot. Thus perished the ill-fated husband of poor Mary March, and she herself, from the moment when her hand was touched by the white man, became the child of sorrow, a character which never left her, until she became shrouded in an early tomb. Among her tribe she was known as "De mas do weet,"—her husband's name was "No nos baw sut."

In an official report Mary March is described as a young woman of about twenty-three years of age—of a gentle and interesting disposition, acquiring and retaining without any difficulty any words she was taught. She had one child, who, as was subsequently ascertained, died a couple of days after its mother's capture. Mary March was first taken to Twillingate, where, she was placed under the care of the Revd. Mr. Leigh, Episcopal Missionary, who, upon the opening of the season, came with her to St. John's. She never recovered from the effects of her grief at the death of her husband—her health rapidly declined, and the Government, with the view of restoring her to her tribe, sent a small sloop-of-war with her to the northward, with orders to her Commander to proceed to the summer haunts of the Indians; from this attempt, however, he returned unsuccessful. Captain Buchan, in the Grashopper, was subsequently sent to accomplish the same object. He left St. John's in September, 1819, for the Exploits, but poor Mary March died on board the vessel at the mouth of the river. Captain Buchan had her body carried up the lake, where he left it in a coffin, in a place where it was probable her tribe would find her,—traces of Indians were seen while the party was on its way up,—and in fact, although unaware of it, Captain Buchan and his men were watched by a party of Indians, who that winter were encamped on the river Exploits, and when they observed Captain Buchan and his men pass up the river on the ice, they went down to the sea coast, near the mouth of the river, and remained there a month; after that they returned, and saw the footsteps of Captain Buchan's party made on their way down the river. The Indians, then, by a circuitous route, went to the lake, and to the spot where the body of Mary March was left—they opened the coffin and took out the clothes that were left with her. The coffin was allowed to remain suspended as they found it for a month, it was then placed on the ground, where, it remained two months; in the spring they removed the body to the burial place which they had built for her husband, placing her by his side.

Their marriage ceremony consisted merely in a prolonged feast, and which rarely terminated before the end of twenty-four hours. Polygamy would seem not to have been countenanced by the tribe.

Of their remedies for disease, the following were those the most frequently resorted to:—

For pains in the stomach, a decoction of the rind of the dogberry was drank.

For sickness among old people—sickness in the stomach, pains in the back, and for rheumatism, the vapor-bath was used.

For sore head, neck, &c., pounded sulphuret of iron mixed up with oil was rubbed over the part affected, and was said generally to effect a cure in two or three days.

Brief as the foregoing statement is, yet, so scanty are the materials which relate to the subject, that it contains substantially all the facts which can now be gathered together of that interesting people, the original inhabitants of Newfoundland—a people whose origin and fate are alike shrouded in mystery, and of whom, in their passage across the stage of life, but little is certainly known, beyond the cruel outrages, the bitter wrongs they endured at the hands of the white man—before whose power, so mercilessly used, the tribe sank, and was either utterly annihilated, or, as is more probable, a remnant—worn out, harrassed beyond human endurance—left the homes of their fathers, and in another land sought that security for their lives which was denied them in this.

FINIS.