Τρίτη 5 Μαρτίου 2019

Beothuk : The Minoan Greek tribe of Indians in Newfoundland, Canada (Part B) : The modern history and geography

Newfoundland is a large Canadian island off the east coast of the North American mainland, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It has 29 percent of the province's land area. The island is separated from the Labrador Peninsula by the Strait of Belle Isle and from Cape Breton Island by the Cabot Strait. It blocks the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, creating the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the world's largest estuary. Newfoundland's nearest neighbour is the French overseas community of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. With an area of 108,860 square kilometres, Newfoundland is the world's 16th-largest island, Canada's fourth-largest island, and the largest Canadian island outside the North. The provincial capital, St. John's, is located on the southeastern coast of the island; Cape Spear, just south of the capital, is the easternmost point of North America, excluding Greenland. By that classification, Newfoundland and its associated small islands have a total area of 111,390 square kilometres. The island's total population as of the 2006 census was 479,105. Newfoundland is roughly triangular, with each side being approximately 500 kilometres, and having an area of 108,860 square kilometres, Newfoundland and its associated small islands have a total area of 111,390 square kilometres. Newfoundland extends between latitudes 46°36'N and 51°38'N. Newfoundland is primarily characterized by having a subarctic (Köppen Dfc) or a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb). Locations on the extreme southeast of the island receive sufficient maritime influence to qualify as having a subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc). Newfoundland has the most Dorset culture archeological sites. The Beothuk and Mi'kmaq did not leave as much evidence of their cultures. Human habitation in Newfoundland and Labrador can be traced back about 9000 years to the people of the Maritime Archaic Tradition. They were gradually displaced by people of the Dorset Culture the L'nu, or Mi'kmaq and finally by the Innu and Inuit in Labrador and the Beothukson the island.
The first European contact with North America was that of the medieval Norsemen settlers arriving via Greenland. For several years after 1000 CE they lived in a village on the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula, known today as L'Anse aux Meadows. Remnants and artifacts of the occupation can still be seen at L'Anse aux Meadows, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The island was inhabited by the Beothuks and later by Mi'kmaq. Vinland, Vineland or Winland is the area of coastal North America explored by Norse Vikings, where Leif Erikson first landed in ca. 1000, approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. Vinland was the name given to North America as far as it was explored by the Norse, including both Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence as far as northeastern New Brunswick. In 1960, archaeological evidence of the only known Norse site in North America was found at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland. Before the discovery of archaeological evidence, Vinland was known only from Old Norse sagas and medieval historiography. The 1960 discovery proved the pre-Columbian Norse exploration of mainland North America.
Vinland or "Winland" was the name given to part of North America by the Icelandic Norseman Leif Eiríksson, about year 1000. The earliest record of the name Winland is found in Adam of Bremen's Descriptio insularum Aquilonis ("Description of the Northern Islands", ch. 39) written c. 1075. To write it he visited king Svend Estridson, who had knowledge of the northern lands. Adam implies that the name contains Old Norse vín (Latin vinum) "wine" (rendered as Old High German win): "Moreover, he has also reported one island discovered by many in that ocean, which is calledWinland, for the reason that grapevines grow there by themselves, producing the best wine."  This etymology is retained in the 13th-century Grœnlendinga saga, which provides a circumstantial account of the discovery of Vinland and its being named from the vínber, i.e. "wineberry", a term for grapes or currants (black or red), found there. There is a long-standing Scandinavian tradition of fermenting berries into wine. The question whether the name refers to actual grapevines (as implied by Adam of Bremen) or just to berries was addressed in a 2010 excavation report on L’Anse aux Meadows. The discovery of butternuts at the site implies that the Norse explored Vinland further to the south, at least as far as St. Lawrence River and parts of New Brunswick, the northern limit for both butternut and wild grapes (Vitis riparia).
The oldest commonly acknowledged surviving written record of Vinland appears in Descriptio insularum Aquilonis, by Adam of Bremen, a German (Saxon) geographer and historian, written in about 1075. To write it he visited the Danish king Svend Estridsen, who had knowledge of the northern lands and told him of the "islands" discovered by Norse sailors far out in the Atlantic, of which Vinland was the most remote. The exact phrasing of this, the first mention of Vinland in known written sources, is as follows: " He also told me that many in this part of the Ocean have discovered an island called Vinland because there are grapevines growing wild which produces the best of wines. From trustworthy Danes rather than from fantastic tales, I also have heard that there is an abundance of cereal which is self-sown. Beyond this island, he (King Sven of Denmark) says, are no more inhabitable islands in the Ocean. Everything farther out is covered by immense masses of ice and perennial fog. Martianus tells of this:’ One day of sailing beyond Thule the sea is solid.’ This the widely travelled King Harold of Norway found to be true. With his ships he recently investigated the extent of the northern Ocean but finally had to turn back when the extreme limit of the world disappeared in fog before his eyes. He barely escaped the gaping ravine of the abyss." The main resources that the people of Vinland relied on were wheat, berries, wine and fish. However, the wheat in the Vinlandic context is sand-wort and not traditional wheat, and the grapes mentioned are Native American grapes, because the European grape (vitis vinifera) and wheat (triticum) existing in the New World before the Viking arrival in the tenth century is highly unlikely. Both the sagas reference a river and a lake that had an abundance of fish. The sagas specifically mention salmon, and note how the salmon that was encountered was larger than any salmon they had seen before. Before arriving to Vinland, the Norsemen imported their lumber from Norway while in Greenland and had occasional birch trees for firewood. Therefore, the timber they acquired in North America increased their supply of wood.
Thorfinn Karlsefni was the first Norse explorer to attempt to truly colonize the newly discovered land of Vinland on the same site as his predecessors Thorvald and Leif Eriksson. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, he set sail with three ships and 140 men. Upon reaching Vinland, their intended destination, they found the now famous grapes and self-sown wheat which the land was named for. They spent a very hard winter at this site, where they barely survived by fishing, hunting game inland, and gathering eggs on the island. The following summer they sailed to the island of Hop where they had the first peaceful interactions with the native people, whom they traded with. Karlsefni forbade his men to trade their swords and spears, so they mainly exchanged their red cloth for pelts. Afterwards they were able to properly describe the aboriginal inhabitants, saying: "They were short in height with threatening features and tangled hair on their heads. Their eyes were large and their cheeks broad." Shortly thereafter the Norsemen were attacked by natives who had been frightened by a bull that broke loose from their encampment. They were forced to retreat to an easily defensible location and engage their attackers; at the end of the battle two of his men had been slain, while "many of the natives" were killed. As with anywhere in this foreign land, Karlsefni and his men realized that " despite everything the land had to offer there, they would be under constant threat of attack from its prior inhabitants." After this adventure they returned to Greenland their three-year excursion would be the longest-lasting known European colony in the New World until Columbus' voyages nearly 500 years later initiated full-scale colonization.
The Beothuk were an indigenous people based on the island of Newfoundland. Beginning around AD 1500, the Beothuk culture formed. This appeared to be the most recent cultural manifestation of peoples who first migrated from Labrador to present-day Newfoundland around AD 1. The ancestors of this group had three earlier cultural phases, each lasting approximately 500 years. In 2007 DNA testing was conducted on material from the teeth of Demasduit and her husband Nonosabasut, two Beothuk individuals who had died in the 1820s. The results assigned them to Haplogroup X (mtDNA) andHaplogroup C (mtDNA), respectively, which are also found in current Mi'kmaq populations in Newfoundland. It also demonstrated they were solely of First Nation indigenous maternal ancestry, unlike some earlier studies that suggested European admixture. However, a 2011 analysis showed that although the two Beothuk and living Mi'kmaq occur in the same haplogroups, SNP differences between Beothuk and Mi'kmaq individuals indicated that they were dissimilar within those groups, and that a "close relationship" was not supported.
The Beothuk lived throughout the island of Newfoundland, particularly in the Notre Dame and Bonavista Bay areas. Estimates vary as to the number of Beothuk at the time of contact with Europeans. Beothuk researcher Ingeborg Marshall has argued that a valid understanding of Beothuk history and culture is directly impacted by how and by whom historical records were created, pointing to the ethnocentric nature of European accounts which positioned native populations as inherently inferior. Scholars of the 19th and early 20th century estimated about 2,000 individuals at the time of European contact in the 15th century. There is purportedly good evidence that there may have been no more than 500 to 700 people. They lived in independent, self-sufficient, extended family groups of 30 to 55 people. Like many other hunter-gathering peoples, they appear to have had band leaders but probably not more formal "chiefs". They lived in conical dwellings known as mamateeks, which were fortified for the winter season. These were constructed by arranging poles in a circle, tying them at the top, and covering them with birch bark. The floors were dug with hollows used for sleeping. A fireplace was made at the center. During spring, the Beothuk used red ochre to paint not only their bodies, but also their houses, canoes, weapons, household appliances and musical instruments. This practice led Europeans to refer to them as "Red Indians". The use of ochre had great cultural significance. The decorating was done during an annual multi-day spring celebration. It designated tribal identity; for example, decorating newborn children was a way to welcome them into the tribe. Forbidding a person to wear ochre was a form of punishment. Their main sources of food were caribou, salmon, and seals, augmented by harvesting other animal and plant species. The Beothuk followed the seasonal migratory habits of their principal quarry. In the fall, they set up deer fences, sometimes 30–40 miles (48–64 km) long, used to drive migrating caribou toward waiting hunters armed with bows and arrows. The Beothuk are also known to have made a pudding out of tree sap and the dried yolk of the eggs of the great auk. They preserved surplus food for use during winter, trapped various fur-bearing animals, and worked their skins for warm clothing. The fur side was worn next to the skin, to trap air against a person's body. Beothuk canoes were made of caribou or seal skin, and the bow of the canoe was stiffened with spruce bark. Canoes resembled kayaks and were said to be fifteen feet (4.57 m) in length and two and a half feet (0.76 m) in width with enough room to carry children, dogs and property. The Beothuk followed elaborate burial practices. After wrapping the bodies in birch bark, they buried the dead in isolated locations. In one form, a shallow grave was covered with a rock pile. At other times they laid the body on a scaffold, or placed it in a burial box, with the knees folded. The survivors placed offerings at burial sites to accompany the dead, such as figurines, pendants, and replicas of tools.
The area around eastern Notre Dame Bay, on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, has been found to contain numerous archeological sites containing material from indigenous cultures. One of them is the Boyd's Cove site. Situated at the foot of a bay, it is protected by a maze of islands that shelter it from waves and winds. The site was found in 1981 during an archeological survey to locate Beothuk sites, in order to study their artifacts and gain more insight into Beothuk culture. Existing historical records were too limited to answer a number of important questions about the people. Few record-keeping Europeans had been in contact with the Beothuk, and information about their lives has been more limited. By contrast, peoples such as the Huron or the Mi'kmaq interacted with the French missionaries, who studied and taught them, and had extensive trade with French, Dutch and English, all of whom made records of their encounters. Numerous historical references document Beothuk presence in the region of Notre Dame Bay, especially in the last half of the 18th and the early part of the 19th century. Previous archaeological surveys and amateur finds indicated that it was likely that the Beothuk had lived in the area prior to European encounter. Eastern Notre Dame Bay has been known for its rich animal and fish life: seals, fish, and seabirds, and its hinterland supported large caribou herds. Archaeologists found 16 Aboriginal sites, ranging in age from the Maritime Archaic Indian era (7000 BC – modern) through the Palaeo-Eskimo period, down to the Recent Indian (which includes the Beothuk) occupation. Two of the sites have been found to be associated with the historial Beothuk. Boyd's Cove, the larger of the two, is 3000 sq. m. and is located on top of a 6-m glacial moraine. The coarse sand, gravel and boulders were left behind by glaciers. The artifacts have provided answers to an economic question: why the Beothuk refrained from the fur trade with Europeans. The interiors of four houses and their environs produced some 1,157 nails, the majority of which had been worked by the Beothuk. The site's occupants had manufactured some 67 projectile points (most made from nails and bones). They had also modified nails to use as what are believed to be scrapers to remove fat from animal hides, they straightened fish hooks and adapted them as awls, they fashioned lead into ornaments, and so on. In summary, the Boyd's Cove Beothuk took debris from an early modern European fishery and refashioned materials for their own purposes.
From the late 15th Century, European explorers like John Cabot, João Fernandes Lavrador,Gaspar Corte-Real, Jacques Cartier and others began exploration. Unlike some other native groups, the Beothuk tried to avoid contact with Europeans; they moved inland as European settlements grew. Contact between Europeans and the Beothuk was usually negative for one side, with a few exceptions like John Guy's party in 1612. Settlers and the Beothuk competed for natural resources such as salmon, seals and birds. These encounters led to enmity and mutual violence. With superior arms technology, the settlers generally had the upper hand in hunting and warfare. The Beothuks attempted to avoid Europeans in Newfoundland by moving inland from their traditional settlements. First they attempted to move to different coastal areas of Newfoundland where the Europeans did not have fishing camps set up, but soon they were so overrun that they had to move into inland Newfoundland. Population estimates of Beothuks remaining at the end of the first decade of the 19th century vary widely, from about 150 up to 3,000. During the colonial period, the Beothuk people also endured territorial pressure from Native groups: Mi'kmaq migrants from Cape Breton Island, and Inuit from Labrador. "The Beothuk were unable to procure sufficient subsistence within the areas left to them." They entered into a cycle of violence with some of the newcomers. Beothuk numbers dwindled rapidly. A theory is that Europeans conducted a sustained campaign of genocide against them. There is evidence that the Beothuk were hunted by Europeans and Settlers. The largest massacre of Beothuks took place near Hant's Harbour, Trinity Bay, where a group armed for hunting, managed to trap a large group of Beothuks, driving them out on a peninsula, where they murdered every man, woman and child. While there is no exact count of the number killed, it is estimated to be around 400.
Πηγή : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beothuk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_(island)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skræling
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Newfoundland_and_Labrador





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