Author:  Joseph Noad

Release Date:  February 21, 2005 [EBook #15126]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK ABORIGENES of Newfoundland ***

Produced by Wallace McLean, Jeannie Howse and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading (http://www.pgdp.net), from images kindly provided by www.canadiana.org

     Lecture

&n
bsp;    On

     The aborigines

     Of

     Newfoundland,

     Delivered before the Mechanics Institute, at St.
     John’s, on Monday, 17th January,

     By

     The Hon.  Joseph Noad,

     Surveyor-General.

     St. John’s, Newfoundland: 

     R.J.  Parsons, Printer.

     1859.

Lecture

DELIVERED BEFORE THE MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE AT ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND.

BY

The Hon.  Joseph Noad,

Surveyor-General,

Of the various theories advanced on the origin of the North American 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 Americans, 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,