Beothuks (a name probably meaning red men), who are supposed to have
formed a branch of the great Algonquin tribe of North American
Indians, a warlike race that occupied the north-eastern portion of the
American continent. Cabot saw them dressed in skins like the ancient
Britons, but painted with red ochre instead of blue woad. Cartier, the
pioneer of Canadian adventure, who visited the island in 1534, speaks
of their stature and their feather ornaments. Hayes says in one place:
"In the south parts we found no inhabitants, which by all likelihood
have abandoned these coasts, the same being so much frequented by
Christians. But in the north are savages altogether harmless."
Whitbourne, forty years later, gives the natives an equally good
character: "These savage people being politikely and gently handled,
much good might be wrought upon them: for I have had apparant proofes
of their ingenuous and subtle dispositions, and that they are a people
full of quicke and lively apprehensions.

"By a plantation" [in Newfoundland] "and by that means only, the poore
mis-beleeving inhabitants of that country may be reduced from
barbarism to the knowledge of God, and the light of his truth, and to
a civill and regular kinde of life and government."

The plantation came, but it must be admitted that the policy of the
planters was not, at first sight, of a kind to secure the admirable
objects indicated above by King James's correspondent. In fact, for
hundreds of years, and with the occasional interruptions of humanity
or curiosity, the Boeothics were hunted to extinction and perversely
disappeared, without, it must be supposed, having attained to the
"civill and regular kinde of life" which was to date from the
plantation.