Chapter 31
The Garefowl Feud
The Flyer by John White
, ca. 1585. An Indian medicine man in a dancing posture, wearing a headdress adorned with a bird. While White’s famous watercolour depicts a shaman of the Algonquian tribes on the Atlantic Seaboard, it might as well have shown a Beothuk brave or priest. The natives of Vinland played an important, albeit often overlooked, part in the consolidation of Oldenburg hegemony over their ancestral island.
To contemporary readers of history, the colonial past of the North is one populated by familiar stereotypes. The mercantile Dane, the taciturn Finn and the seafaring Icelander of the Atlantic Provinces all enjoy distinct and well-defined roles in the story of the Nordics in America. However, no such fixed place has ever been bestowed on the Beothuk of Vinland.
Indeed, when academic journals or historical monographs deign to mention the aboriginal inhabitants of this first stepping stone of Northern foray into the Americas, they are more often than not delegated a supporting role. Yet the Beothuk place on the historical stage has been far more central than what the historiography of the past century would have us believe. One could very well wonder whether or not the Vinland Charter would even have succeeded, had it not been for the presence and
agency of the Beothuk people.
When Søren Norby dropped anchor off Christiansborg in 1521, the Beothuk had inhabited the island for a thousand years. The direct cultural and genetic descendants of the Little Passage Indians, they lived as hunters, gatherers and fishermen, moving between the coasts and forested interior according to the season. In summer, they hunted marine mammals and seabirds; in fall and winter the reindeer. They named themselves Beothuk (meaning ‘the people’ or ‘the true people’) while the neighbouring tribes often referred to them as ‘Red Indians’ on account of their practice of dyeing themselves with ochre. Despite a tentative parlay between Norby and a group of Beothuk elders, twenty years’ worth of interaction with Basque, English and French mariners had inoculated the natives with a healthy dose of distrust towards the visiting Europeans. John Cabot had captured some of the Beothuk in 1498 and brought them back to England during his second voyage. In 1501, Bristol merchants repeated the endeavour presenting “
a score of sundry people” to King Henry VII. In that same year, the Portuguese explorer, Caspar de Corte Real, made landfall on either the Vinland or New March side of the Strait of St. John, finding the area well populated. Although disappointed that the native population possessed neither gold nor precious stones, de Real found them strong and healthy as well as “…
fit for every kind of labour.” Fifty Beothuk men and women were abducted and transported to Portugal against their will. Similarly, in 1509, a French fishing crew captured seven native people in a birchbark canoe off Vinland and took them to Rouen in Normandy. With experiences such as these, it is no wonder that Søren Norby initially thought to have landed on virgin soil.
[1]
While the horrendous practice of aboriginal abduction leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the modern mind, it does provide an insight into how race was conceptualised in the first half of the 16th century. One English account, for example, states that the natives’ complexion was generally darker than that of a European, but otherwise captor and captured resembled one another remarkably. When the three natives brought to Bristol in 1501 were stripped of their furs and their tattoos covered by the woollen doublets of Englishmen, they were no longer recognisable as “savages”.
[2]
The construction of the blockhouses Christiansborg and Elisabethsborg (named in honour of King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden and his wife, Elisabeth) marked the first permanent settlement of Europeans on Vinland, the latter stockade was quickly abandoned and by 1523 the predominantly Icelandic garrison of the former had deserted. The blockhouses, however, did not remain unoccupied. Over the next four years, Christiansborg was intermittently reappropriated as a seasonal haven for Basque whalers, who had already established a more or less permanent base of operations at Barachoa and at the aptly named Basque Haven.
In other words, the lack of permanent settlements did not deter European visits to Vinland. This steady rise in the number of fishermen trawling the Great Cod Banks further affected Beothuk perceptions of the new-comers negatively. This was most markedly felt on the southern parts of the island
[3], where French and Basque sailors competed with the aboriginal population in the hunt for garefowl (
gejrfugl) and other animals inhabiting the coastal waters. One French chronicler even described the Beothuk as “…
a cruel and austere people, with whom it is impossible to deal or to converse.”
[4]
Vinland was therefore something of a coveted prize when the second Danish expedition reached the island in 1527. Christian II’s premier conquistador, Norby, was busy overseeing the Oldenburg naval intervention in the War of the League of Windsor and command had as such passed to his lieutenant Otte Sivertsen.
[5] Furthermore, the general European conflagration had spilled over into the New World. In 1526, French and Spaniard ships had already fought a small battle in Trinity Bay with the latter side emerging victorious.
For their part, the Beothuk cared little for the squabbles of the
bukashaman (white man), but coveted the iron and battlefield debris that washed ashore. A few months before Sivertsen dropped anchor off an abandoned Christiansborg, the English ship
Mary Guildford was met with hostility by the natives and their pilot killed when a small party went ashore to look for a suitable landing place.
[6]
Yet despite their well-founded weariness of the European newcomers, the Beothuk did not as a rule respond to contact with violence. When Otte Sivertsen led an expedition inland, he was stunned to be greeted by a native scout waving a white wolfskin on a pole
[7] whilst speaking a language jotted with Faroese and Icelandic phrases. Once the initial surprise had abated, the Beothuk led Ottesen and a hand-full of mariners across the Nova Fionia-peninsula on foot. After several days of cross-country trekking, the Nordics arrived at a native campsite situated at the very end of Trinity Bay (present day Popadish Cove).
[8]
The Island of Vinland in the Years 1500-1550. Some of the place names are only approximate guesses based on archaeological and ethnographic evidence. The Beothuk themselves did not give their seasonal camp sites any toponyms as was the custom in Europe. Rather, sites such as Shebin-mammateek
(River House), Momau
(Seal) Point
and Popadish
(Sea-bird) Cove
simply refer to topographical characteristics or primary hunting targets.
Amongst the Indians, Ottesen was astounded to find an Icelandic veteran of the first expedition to Vinland by the name of Ólafur Jónsson.
[9] The “…
natural people of the island” had, according to Ottesen, “…
long black hair and well-proportioned limbs and bodies and punctured faces. They were of a gentle disposition and given to laughter.”
[10] Jónsson, who had lived amongst the Beothuk for more than three years after being left for dead by his compatriots after an ill-fated ranging into the hinterlands of Nova Fionia, subsequently served as an invaluable mediator between the natives and the Nordics. He had taken a wife, Wapun, and fathered a son whom he had named Jón after his own father. When asked whether or not he had remained a Christian, Jónsson answered in the affirmative, but apologetically mentioned that he “…
for many reasons had not attended mass in almost four years.” Of the Beothuk’s own religious practices, the Icelander explained that they worshipped the sun and the
Great Spirit and that birds were considered particularly sacred as spiritual messengers who guided the souls of the dead to the afterlife.
[11]
With Jónsson serving as an intermediary, Otte Sivertsen learned that the Beothuk lived in scattered bands structured around clan-tribes, each led by its own chief. The chief, with whom Sivertsen treated, was called Moomeshduck and ruled a band of some 75 people making him one of the more powerful tribal leaders on Vinland. Upon entering the chief’s
mamateek (the cone-shaped houses of the Beothuk), Sivertsen was presented with a string of seashells, an unstringed bow and a quiver of arrows without points. After a prolonged speech, the Beothuk chieftain invited the Danish admiral to share a meal of dried meat, roots and a pudding made from garefowl eggs.
[12] As Sivertsen would later note, the natives were in this regard no different than the Christians when it came to establishing guest rights.
The pivotal point in the negotiations arrived when Moomeshduck described how a hostile band of
Shanung Indians
[13] (presumable Mi’kmaq natives from Cape Breton) had recently attacked and killed two of his kinsmen as they were hunting garefowl in the shallows. As Jónsson explained, the natives of Cape Breton “…
make war against those from Vinland when they go fishing and never grant life to anyone whom they capture unless it be an infant or a young girl."
[14] At this, Sivertsen suggested that the Danes and Beothuk join forces in driving the Mi’kmaq from the island.
Two days later, on either the 17th or 19th of August 1527, Moomeshduck led a combined warband of 10 Beothuk braves and 30 Nordic marines along the forested trails of Nova Fionia. On the 23rd, the allies spotted a Mi’kmaq encampment at the eponymously named Cape Battle. As the Beothuk let their arrows fly, two Norwegian sailors armed with handguns shot at the Mi’kmaq warriors preparing to meet the attackers. The sound of gunfire had an instantaneous effect. Beothuk as well as Shanung fell flat on their faces, covering their ears.
[15] In the confusion, Sivertsen’s men charged into the Mi’kmaq “…
slaying many and capturing more.” Only a handful managed to escape in their birchbark canoes. As the Beothuk braves busied themselves with cutting off the heads of the fallen invaders, Moomeshduck plucked a feather from his headband, presented it to Otte Sivertsen and gave him the name Megedagik,
he who kills many foes.
[16] The victory at Cape Battle thereby not only signalled the beginning of the long and deadly
Gejrfuglefejde (Garefowl Feud) between Sivertsen and the Beothuk on one side and the Mi’kmaq and their eventual French backers on the other, but also marked the foundation of one of the most devoted European-Indian alliances of the early modern period.
However, colonization was rarely a pleasant process for the natives of America. Although by no means nearly as oppressive as e.g. the Spaniard iron grip on Mexico and Central America, Nordic historians have all too often painted far too rosy a picture of how the Oldenburg monarchy entered the New World. Diseases followed in the wake of Sivertsen’s expedition, decimating the already miniscule population of the Beothuk tribes. Furthermore, Christian II’s
Ordinance of the New World might have bestowed the Vinland natives with the status of
foederati, but the Dutch, Icelandic and Norwegian whalers and settlers still approached the island and its ‘natural inhabitants’ with the base mentality of a master race. Conflict routinely erupted between the two allies as the southern parts of Vinland increasingly came under the sole purview of the Europeans. Still, the Beothuk did not simply assimilate into the colonial population. Nor did the Beothuk ally with Sivertsen and his successors for the sake of the Nordics’ blue eyes. A strong alliance with Christiansborg shielded them from fighting a two-front war against hostile tribes such as the Mi’kmaq and Inuit of Labrador. They worked
with the Nordics as guides, pilots and scouts and maintained their quasi-independent nomadic lifestyle for centuries after the events of Cape Battle. Their help was invaluable in the early days of the Vinland Charter and the ivory hunt off the Severin Isles which framed the contours of an economically viable colony. Had they chosen not to do so, the history of Vinland could very well have followed a completely different trajectory.
Notes: A somewhat shorter chapter than usual this time around. I felt inspired to try out a different cartographic technique as well as a more ‘academic article’ style of prose. Also, it was nice to explore the fascinating and under-exposed history of the Beothuk people. I’ve based most of this chapter on:
Kristensen, Todd J. & Holly, Donald H.: “Birds, Burials and Sacred Cosmology of the Indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland, Canada” in Cambridge Archaeological Journal Volume 23 (February 2013): pp 41-53
Marshall, Ingeborg: A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk (McGill-Queen's University Press: Montreal & Kingston, 1996)
Polack, Fiona et al: Tracing Ochre: Changing Perspectives on the Beothuk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)
Rowley-Conwy, Peter: “Settlement Patterns of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland: A View from Away” in Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d'Archéologie Vol. 14 (1990): pp. 13-32
Footnotes:
[1] These instances are all OTL.
[2] Also an OTL event.
[3] In OTL, 16th and 17th century explorers noted a marked difference in how they were received by the Beothuk depending on whether or not they made landfall on the northern or southern side of Newfoundland.
[4] From a 16th century Venetian narrative titled
Account of a Voyage Conducted in 1529 to the New World, Africa, Madagascar, and Sumatra published in 1556. The account’s description of Newfoundland is most likely based on the experiences of French explorer Jean Parmentier.
[5] Sivertsen was an OTL naval commander of Christian II’s, who ITTL accompanied Norby’s expedition to the New World in 1521-22 and subsequently played an important part in the victory at Nyborg against the Hanseatic navy (see Chapters 12 & 17).
[6] Also happened in OTL, although there are different accounts of precisely where and want happened.
[7] When the English explorer, John Guy, hoisted a white flag on his excursion to Trinity Bay in 1612, the Beothuk seem to have understood the sign and waved a white wolfskin in response. They later exchanged the skin for Guy's flag.
[8] OTL’s Russell’s Point, a historical Beothuk seasonal settlement. The native-named places on the map are all based on such sites. Indian Creek has become Shebin-mammateek and the Beaches Momau Point.
[9] We know that at least one Englishman supposedly lived with the Beothuk for several years during the early 17th century.
[10] From a Portuguese chronicle describing de Real’s voyage, published in 1566. “Punctured faces” most probably refers to the native practice of tattooing.
[11] We know preciously little of Beothuk culture. The claim that birds were particularly venerated is based on archaeological and anthropological evidence. See e.g. “
Birds, Burials and Sacred Cosmology of the Indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland” by Donald Holly and Todd Kristensen.
[12] These were all examples of traditional Beothuk peace tokens.
[13] The Beothuk name for the Mi’kmaq
[14] An OTL quote from Alphonse de Saintonge's description of Newfoundland, dated 1544. I’ve replaced the island’s OTL name with Vinland.
[15] The Beothuk were unique amongst the Atlantic natives in that they
never adopted the use of firearms. Indeed, it has repeatedly been recorded that the mere report of a gun frightened them into flight. The Beothuk response to the discharge of gunpowder weapons in this chapter is based on documented instances across the Atlantic coast. E.g. Indians in Maine fell to the ground at the sound of gunshots while the Meherin of New England fled into the woods when visiting Europeans discharged a gun. As late as the 1820s, one of the last remaining Beothuk, a captured woman named Demasduit, repeatedly responded to plans of searching for more of her tribe with “Guns no good”.
[16] The Beothuk practice of taking head trophies was also prevalent amongst other Atlantic Indian tribes at the time of first contact. While the act of gifting feathers was a historical Beothuk custom of extending friendship, the name Megedagik is a generic Algonquian name without direct connection to Newfoundland.
