A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This is an exhaustive study of the Beothuk people, who inhabited
Newfoundland when sustained European contact with the island began
around 1500 and whose culture eventually became extinct by 1829, largely
as a result of conditions and circumstances brought about by that
contact. The author, a well-known authority on the Beothuk, has pulled
together a wealth of historical and archeological evidence, but her book
is unlikely to alter our perception of the Beothuk significantly, either
as a culture or as a vanished people. Most scholars today already accept
the view that the Beothuk extinction was caused by the combined effects
of loss of habitat, economic irrelevance to the commercial needs of the
Europeans, and disease. (Not so readily accepted is Marshall’s
contention that Newfoundland was an integral part of the hunting and
fishing territory of the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq, and that competition and
conflict with the Mi’kmaq therefore played a part in the Beothuk
extinction.)

The book is not without some flaws and curious lapses. For example,
Marshall gives no attention to the fact that permanent European
settlement experienced a pronounced expansion after 1730, though she is
aware of “a turning point in relations [after 1725] due to significant
interference with Beothuk hunting and trapping.” She treats English
furriers as a phenomenon that is almost separate from the English
fishery, though much work on 18th-century year-round subsistence
inhabitancy by Philip E.L. Smith and others shows how interrelated they
actually were. Indeed, Marshall tends to treat fur-related activities as
a commercial pursuit rather than as a means of subsistence, despite the
fact that Newfoundland's fauna was too limited to be commercially
appealing. She also seems to accept at face value, without careful
qualifications, the population data taken from official British records.


In short, while her truly impressive knowledge of their history and
ethnography establishes Marshall as one of our foremost authorities on
the Beothuk people, her knowledge about the culture that displaced them
is not nearly so firm. The conclusions presented in this book might
therefore best be looked at with a critical eye.