First Nations and Inuit

Origins

Ancestors of Canada's First Nations and Inuit began migrating to North America around 20 000 and 15 000 years ago. They are thought to have travelled by way of the Bering Strait and perhaps also by way of Greenland. By the time Europeans arrived, there were over 55 Nations spread across Canada.

In the beginning, Europeans needed the Native people and treated them fairly when trading. Later, as more and more Europeans came to North America to live, things changed and First Nations and the Inuit were not treated so well. Much of their land was taken from them.

Worse, European diseases killed up to 75% of First Nations people. Many European settlers expected the Native peoples to become like them or to become extinct. Some Nations, such as the Beothuk, died out.

Demasduit (Mary March) Copyright/Source

A Beothuk woman, captured in March 1819, was taken to St. John's, Newfoundland. Given the name Mary March, she learned some English and talked about her infant child. When people found out, they pressured Governor Hamilton to return her to her people. Already sick, she died on her journey home in 1820. Captain Buchan, who accompanied her, left her body where she had been captured.

Five years later, William Cormack, searching for the last Beothuk people, found a burial hut with the corpse of Mary, still wearing the muslin dress she had been given. The hut had two other occupants: her husband who was killed trying to rescue her, and her infant, who had died two days after her capture.

Beothuk drawings by Shawnadithit representing a variety of subjects -- cups, spears, etc. Copyright/Source

The Last Beothuk
Captured in 1824, Shawnadithit worked for five years as a maid in an English settlement. People studied her to find out more about the Beothuk people. William Cormack, an explorer who was concerned that the Beothuk were becoming extinct, learned all he could about her people's history, mostly from the detailed drawings she made, as she didn't speak much English. In 1829, she died of tuberculosis at age 26. She was the last living Beothuk in the world. They are now extinct.

	When Shawnadithit died in 1829, her skull and scalp were placed in a tin box and sent to the Royal College of Physicians in London, England.

Plant Medicine
William Cormack listed Native natural remedies in his book about a trip he took across Newfoundland. For example, he mentions that the juice taken from the roots of the white water lily, when drunk, relieves coughs.

Cormack, W.E. A Journey Across the Island of Newfoundland in 1822. London; Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928, p. 73.