[ footprints ] Shanawdithit - Shanawdithit lived a life of sorrow and misfortune

A portrait of Shanawdithit, painted by William Gosse in 1828, shows a stolid, mature person with a penetrating and reproachful look. And why wouldn't she look disapproving? Her people had been wiped out and she'd been made a servant in the household of the man responsible for her uncle's murder.
Before 1500, Shawandithit's Algonkian-speaking Beothuks lived a bountiful life in Newfoundland, hunting caribou inland and venturing to the coast to harpoon whales and seals, spear fish, and collect mussels and other shellfish. They developed Ingenious methods of food preservation to live well in all seasons: drying lobster tails, boiling and drying bird's eggs, packing boneless frozen or dried caribou meat in bark boxes, and storing sausage pudding in animal intestines. Large, permanent villages were established on main caribou migration routes for a steady food supply.
Shanawdithit's people honoured caribou in the mokoshan, a great feast of caribou bone marrow cakes, and buried their dead in elaborate funeral rites similar to those of ancient Egypt in the second and third millennia B.C. The people smeared their clothes and skin with red ochre and polished tools and personal effects with a mixture of red mineral and oil.
Peace-loving and gentle, the Beothuks were unprepared for the assault laid upon them by the first Europeans arriving upon their shores. There were probably less than a thousand of them at this time, but skirmishes and wars between the two races resulted in Beothuk extinction within three years.
Born on the rugged shore of a large lake in the interior of Newfoundland in 1801, Shanawdithit's birth was cause for celebration as her people had dwindled to only 200. As a child, she helped her mother and sister to gather berries and birds' eggs, but her father did most of the food gathering. This was no small feat as all the Beothuk hunting and fishing techniques required large numbers of men; they had once built huge wedge-shaped deer fences many kilometers in length and, after beaters waving skins and tree branches drove them into the small enclosure at the apex, they were easily killed.
But now their numbers had dwindled and Shanawdithit's father was forced to find new food gathering techniques which were not always successful. Starvation became a constant threat. Shanawdithit would have traveled with her parents on the last seasonal migrations for food, venturing to the coast down the River Exploits in a birch bark canoe.
Shanawdithit soon learned her life was in constant danger and one terrifying incident scarred her for life. One morning she went down to the edge of the river to wash two pieces of venison. Suddenly, a shot sounded from across the river. She felt a burning sensation in her leg and fell to the ground. On the opposite bank she could see a European trapper reloading his long-barreled musket. Frantically, she scrambled up the bank, only to hear another shot and to see blood gushing from her hand. She found the strength to run to the trees and make her way back to the village.
This unprovoked attack was one of many. Trappers and fishermen boasted openly of their brutal exploits and many kept running tallies of their kills. Noel Boss, for example, was deeply disappointed because he had only killed ninety-nine Indians and not an even hundred.
The winter of 1823, when Shanawdithit was 22 years old, could not have been bleaker. She had been shot and wounded, had seen her uncle, Chief Nonosbawat, murdered; had seen her aunt returned in a coffin; and had stood by helplessly while their baby died. Old men and women perished because they refused food so that the younger ones might live. There were no men left for her to marry and no new babies would be born. Her father had left to hunt deer on his own, had not returned, and was feared dead.
Accompanied by her mother and sister, Shanawdithit ventured to the coastline; where she subsisted on blue mussels pulled from the rocks on the beach. Finally, thin and weak, the women decided to give themselves up ­ even if they were shot it would be better than starving to death in the brutal cold.
Coming upon a trapper skinning a beaver, the women were horrified to realize they'd stumbled upon William Cull, whom they recognized as the murderer of Shanawdithit's mother's cousin 20 years earlier. They knelt to receive bullets from the musket aimed at them, but instead, a miracle of sorts occurred. They were saved, for the government was offering an award for the delivery of live Beothuks in an attempt to save the dying race.
The women were marched overland, finally boarding boats bearing them to Twillingate and then to St. John's. There, to their astonishment, they were given gifts and supplies for their 13 remaining tribal members, and returned to the forest. When they couldn't find their families, they returned to John Peyton's fishing station, where Shanawdithit's mother and sister soon died of tuberculosis. The young woman, having buried her remaining family, found a small flat boat and paddled many miles across a bay to Burnt Island and became a servant in John Payton's ­ who had murdered her uncle ­ household.
Rather than yielding to bitterness and sorrow, Shanawdithit shared in daily chores and began to learn English. When she was occasionally overwhelmed by painful memories of her past, she became gloomy and stopped working. Another servant reported she then went off into the woods to have a "talk" with her mother and sister, and generally came back singing and laughing. She drew and carved in her spare time.
For five years Shanawdithit lived in obscurity on Burnt Island until explorer William Epps Cormack discovered her as the sole survivor of an ancient culture. In 1827 he took her into his St. John's home where she made a series of sketches depicting early encounters between her people and the white man. She also drew pictures of clothing, canoes, food, utensils and chief's emblems, leaving an invaluable record of a vanished people.
Sadly, Shanawdithit contacted tuberculosis in 1829 and died in St. John's. She was 29 years old.