of bark among the island channels of the coast. 'They
are men,' wrote Cartier, 'of an indifferent good stature
and bigness, but wild and unruly. They wear their hair
tied on the top like a wreath of hay and put a wooden
pin within it, or any other such thing instead of a nail,
and with them they bind certain birds' feathers. They
are clothed with beasts' skins as well the men as women,
but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in
their garments than the men do, with their waists girded.
They paint themselves with certain roan colours. Their
boats are made with the bark of birch trees, with the
which they fish and take great store of seals, and, as
far as we could understand since our coming thither, that
is not their habitation, but they come from the mainland
out of hotter countries to catch the said seals and other
necessaries for their living.'

There has been much discussion as to these savages. It
has been thought by some that they were a southern branch
of the Eskimos, by others that they were Algonquin Indians
who had wandered eastward from the St Lawrence region.
But the evidence goes to show that they belonged to the
lost tribe of the 'Red Indians' of Newfoundland, the race
which met its melancholy fate by deliberate and ruthless
destruction at the hands of the whites. Cabot had already
seen these people on his voyage to the coast, and described
them as painted with 'red ochre.' Three of them he had
captured and taken to England as an exhibit. For two
hundred years after the English settlement of Newfoundland,
these 'Red Indians' were hunted down till they were