Why did the beothuk and the European enemies?

Answer 1

The answer depends on your political view but it is more complex than the suggestions that Europeans were evil and the Beothuk innocent and noble savages.

The Vikings were the first Europeans to encounter the Beothuks and it did not go smoothly. Their encounter ended after a decade or so with the Beothuks exterminating the Vikings that tried to stay in Beothuk territory.

Some suggest the Vikings were mean, aggressive, and violent and the Beothuk only responded in kind. If that was the only encounter between Vikings and North American Aboriginals then such an explanation would be as good as any other.

But the Vikings established a long term trading post farther north on Baffin Island. A trading location they occupied and traded from for hundreds of years. That would not be possible if they were just a mean and violent culture. The Aboriginals they were trading with were from the same group that would purge Greenland of the last remaining Vikings. There would have been many opportunities to do the same on Baffin Island if they wanted to as the Vikings technology was not so advanced as to protect them from all Aboriginal violence.

We also have to keep in mind that other European cultures, hundreds of years later, had similar interactions with the Beothuks. Initially peaceful but eventually extremely violent to the point of extermination. Those European cultures did not exterminate all, or in Canada, any other aboriginal cultures by violence alone. In fact they tried, belatedly, to save the Beothuk culture and have been instrumental in saving many other Aboriginal cultures.

That should have us looking closer at the Beothuks themselves. They lived on an Island with few if any major settlements on the mainland. They were never large in number, never more than a few thousand.

To understand why we would need to look at North America before the Europeans. North America had millions of people and like everywhere they were broken up into groups, or tribes, that were often at war with each other. There was a constant pressure for territory and since all territory was occupied it meant taking it from others. That also meant always having to defend territory. Tribes were large, tens even hundreds of thousands of members.

The low number of Beothuks and their location on a Island suggest they were using a different tactic. They did not have the numbers to defend their Island from larger more powerful groups like the Micmacs (Mi'Kmaq) from the mainland in a traditional strength in numbers . They were able to hide, attack and retreat, to create an area too risky for individuals or small groups from other tribes to travel in and yet not worth the effort and resources demanded by the large groups over long periods of time that would be needed to defeat them.

That would be another thing unique to the Beothuks but it fits the early descriptions. It also results in a culture that would be the most wary. They would have to be always suspicious and quick to resort to violence to survive. That explains why all European contact resulted in violence.

The Beothuks and the Europeans were enemies because the Beothuks could not afford the luxury of allies. All past Allies had abandoned them and driven them to very small numbers on an isolated island using violence and stealth to survive.

The Europeans could not be held off by Beothuk tactics that had carved for them a land to live in. The Europeans had better tactics, superior weapons and an increasing number of people, settlers. Settlers with guns and a willingness to shoot people for fun.

The arrival of Europeans with their advanced technology, would change things on the scale of an Ice Age. Each tribe, each group, would use the changes to advance old causes. When the Beothuks created enemies out of the Europeans, you can be sure that the enemies of the Beothuks would take advantage and the records show they did.

Adding the Europeans to the list of ancient enemies doomed the Beothuk. A way of living that had worked so well for so long resulting in adding one enemy too many.

In the end the last few Beothuks were living in relative peace with the Europeans but it was too little too late. Today the only remaining Beothuk DNA is among the first Europeans they encountered, the Icelanders.