Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks lived an ideal life for savages.  They were well clothed with beasts’ skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.  Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring.  Vast flocks of willow grouse (like ptarmigan) were everywhere to be met with; the many lakes were covered with geese, swans, and ducks.  The woods were full of pigeons; the salmon swarmed up the rivers to breed; the sea round the coasts was—­except in the wintertime—­the richest fishery in the world.  They caught lobsters in the rock pools, and speared or clubbed seals and great walruses for their flesh and oil.  An occasional whale provided them with oil, blubber, and meat.  The Great Auk—­which could not fly—­swarmed in millions on the cliffs and islets.  So abundant was this bird, and so fat, that its body was sometimes used as fuel, or as a lamp.  In the summertime their fish and flesh diet could be varied by the innumerable berries growing wild—­strawberries, raspberries, currants, cranberries, and whortleberries.  The capillaire plant yielded a lusciously sweet, sugary substance.[15]

[Footnote 15:  This was the Moxie plum or creeping snowberry (Chiogenes hispidula).]

[Illustration:  GREAT AUKS, GANNETS, PUFFINS, AND GUILLEMOTS]

The Beothiks were a tall, good-looking people, with large black eyes and a light-coloured skin.  The early French and Biscayan seamen, who resorted to the coasts of Newfoundland for the whale fisheries, reported these “Red Indians” to be “an ingenious and tractable people, if well used, who were ready to help the white men with great labour and patience in the killing, cutting-up, and boiling of whales, and the making of train oil, without other expectation of reward than a little bread or some such small hire”.

Yet from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Beothiks—­then about four thousand in number—­were ill-treated by the European fishermen who frequented the Newfoundland coasts.  They soon greatly decreased in numbers, and became very shy of white men.  The French, when they occupied the south coast of Newfoundland, brought over Mikmak Indians to chase and kill the Beothiks or “Red” Indians.  The Eskimo attacked them from Labrador.  Finally, when Newfoundland became British in the eighteenth century, the English fishermen settlers and fur hunters attacked and slew the harmless Beothiks with a wanton ferocity (described by horror-struck officers of the British navy) which is as bad as anything attributed to the Spaniards in Cuba and Hispaniola.  By about 1830 they were all extinct.  As late as 1823 the following anecdote is recorded of two English settlers whose names are hidden behind the initials C and A.  “When near Badger Bay they fell in with an Indian man and woman, who approached, apparently soliciting food.  The man was first killed, and the woman, who was afterwards found to be his daughter, in despair remained calmly to be fired at, when she was also shot through the chest and immediately expired.  This was told Mr. Cormack by the man who did the deed.”  Even English women in the late eighteenth century were celebrated for their skill “in shooting Red Indians and seals”.