Adjacent to the Labrador Eskimos and the northern Algonkins, upon the
Island of Newfoundland, dwelt the Beothuks, or “Red Indians,” now
extinct, who in custom and language differed much from their neighbors
of the mainland. Although called “red,” they are also said to have been
unusually light in complexion, and the term was applied to them from
their habit of smearing their bodies with a mixture of grease and red
ochre. They are further described as of medium stature, with regular
features and aquiline noses, the hair black and the beard scanty or
absent.
In several elements of culture they had marked differences from the
tribes of the adjacent mainland. Their canoes were of bark or of skins
stretched on frames, and were in the shape of a crescent, so that they
required ballast to prevent them from upsetting. The winter houses they
constructed were large conical lodges thirty or forty feet in diameter,
having a frame of light poles upon which was laid bark or skins,
generally the latter. Hunting and fishing provided them with food, and
they have left the reputation of irreclaimable savages. They had no
dogs, and the art of pottery was unknown; yet they were not unskilled
as artisans, carving images of wood, dressing stone for implements,
and tanning deerskins for clothing. An examination of their language
discloses some words borrowed from the Algonkin, and slight coincidences
with the Eskimo dialects, but the main body of the idiom stands alone,
without affinities. Derivation was principally if not exclusively by
suffixes, and the general morphology seems somewhat more akin to Eskimo
than Algonkin examples.[80]