Tweet
************************************************** ************
This Message Is Reprinted Under The Fair Use
Doctrine Of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html)
************************************************** ************
FROM: THE TORONTO STAR NEWSPAPER
_http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl
e_Type1&c=Article&cid=1123278612004&call_pageid=10 12319932217&col=101231992892
8_
(http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...&col=101231992
8928)
Aug. 6, 2005. 01:00 AM
LUCAS OLENIUK/TOR0NTO STAR Filmmaker Christopher Gagosz
poses with the reconstructed head of Beothuk Indian chief Nonosabasut. The
reconstruction was made from a casting of the chief’s skull, preserved at a museum
in Scotland. Beothuk Mystery
The Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland have been extinct for nearly 200 years
Now, researchers are learning what happened to them, Peter Calamai reports
_PETER CALAMAI_
(http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1039086182843)
SCIENCE WRITER
On a frigid March day almost two hundred years ago, two groups of
individuals warily eyed each other on a frozen lake in the remote interior of
Newfoundland.
On one side were 10 heavily armed men, English settlers from a fishing and
fur-trading community five days' walk away on the coast. On the other were
roughly 16 Beothuk Indians, mostly women and children.
Encouraged by the island's governor, the settlers were ostensibly on a peace
mission to end decades of conflict between the European occupiers and
Newfoundland's dwindling original population. But there was also the lure of a
reward of 100 British pounds for anyone bringing a "Red Indian" back alive to St.
John's.
Initially, the Beothuk ran away to avoid a confrontation. Yet within
minutes, a physical struggle erupted, angry shouts rang out and musket shots echoed
across the ice. When the commotion and smoke cleared, the chief of the
Beothuk band and his brother lay sprawled dead on the ice.
The settlers dragged off the chief's young wife, condemning the
still-nursing baby left behind to a quick death. Less than a year later, the woman
herself died from tuberculosis before she could be returned home.
The deaths of this family group — including the band's two principal adult
hunters — apparently sealed the fate of an entire tribe and a unique way of
life. Within a decade, the Beothuk had become extinct, the most celebrated
First Nations group to suffer that fate in Canada.
The extinction added to the legends swirling around the Beothuk, people who
featured little in written records because they shunned contact with the
white colonists. Since some were well over six feet tall, they were rumoured to
have Viking blood. Yet, the only authentic Beothuk depiction is a portrait of
the doomed chief's petite wife painted during her captivity in St. John's.
This supposed mystery of the Beothuk could well turn out to be more
imaginary than real, as their life story is now finally being reconstructed with the
same passion and scientific rigour applied to other native groups.
As a start, Toronto independent filmmaker Christopher Gagosz has used
forensic techniques popularized by TV shows like CSI to examine how this one
encounter on the ice pushed the Beothuk over the extinction precipice.
As well, the making of the documentary is helping to jump-start a
longer-term scientific investigation into the origins of the Beothuk, their links to
present-day native groups and their place in the initial peopling of the New
World.
"For us, it's the first step in what we hope will be a very big regional
study," says Newfoundland archaeologist and ethnohistorian Ingeborg Marshall,
author of a definitive book about the Beothuk.
That first step involved scientific techniques familiar to viewers of
forensic TV dramas, including:
Performing genetic analysis on ancient DNA extracted from teeth in the
museum-preserved skulls of two Beothuk present at Red Indian Lake on March 5,
1819.
Creating a life-like head of the slain Beothuk chief to probe the cause of
death.
Determining the dominant diet and primary dwelling area of the Beothuk
through the composition of their teeth.
"I wanted to do a CSI. I wanted to apply science to see what really
happened," Gagosz says.
His findings provide forensic backing for the reasons historians and
anthropologists generally offer about why the Beothuk were already in a perilous
state by the early 19th century.
The native population had not been large even two centuries earlier when
fishing boats from Europe first visited Newfoundland, probably numbering no more
than 500. Since then, their numbers had been thinned through deliberate
killing by the colonists, through introduced diseases and, most of all, through
starvation since European settlement denied the Beothuk access to their
traditional protein-rich marine diet.
But Gagosz's hour-long documentary, to be aired on Canada's History
Television channel in January, also provides a new explanation for why the supposed
peace mission flared into the deadly shootings that sealed the fate of an
entire people.
A crucial piece of forensic evidence points to the possibility that there
was already bad blood between the most influential settler and the chief of
this last sizable surviving band of Beothuk camped for the winter on the shore
of the lake. In the end, lingering distrust from a previous violent encounter
between the two may have tipped the scales, Gagosz says.
"We've put a spotlight on a moment in time when a peace mission, which set
out to make contact with the Beothuk, actually tilted them into extinction,"
he says.
Key to this new insight is a life-like head of the Beothuk chief,
Nonosabasut, sculpted by Scottish forensic reconstruction specialist Richard Neave
based on a resin replica of the chief's skull. In turn, that replica was
generated from a 3-D scan of the chief's real skull, preserved for years in the
mammals and birds section of the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and shown for visitors
on request.
____________________________________
`No one will ever really know what happened on the ice that day'
Christopher Gagosz, filmmaker
____________________________________
The museum also has a second skull, that of Nonosabasut's wife Demasduit,
who was abducted by the settlers. The two skulls were donated in 1827 by
William Cormack, Newfoundland-born and Scottish-educated adventurer, who had looted
them from the Beothuk graves.
One scientist interviewed for the documentary, forensic anthropologist Tracy
Rogers, examined the chief's reconstructed head, replica skull and 3-D scan.
She concluded that there was no evidence of trauma that could have been the
cause of death.
This Message Is Reprinted Under The Fair Use
Doctrine Of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html)
************************************************** ************
FROM: THE TORONTO STAR NEWSPAPER
_http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Articl
e_Type1&c=Article&cid=1123278612004&call_pageid=10 12319932217&col=101231992892
8_
(http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...&col=101231992
8928)
Aug. 6, 2005. 01:00 AM
LUCAS OLENIUK/TOR0NTO STAR Filmmaker Christopher Gagosz
poses with the reconstructed head of Beothuk Indian chief Nonosabasut. The
reconstruction was made from a casting of the chief’s skull, preserved at a museum
in Scotland. Beothuk Mystery
The Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland have been extinct for nearly 200 years
Now, researchers are learning what happened to them, Peter Calamai reports
_PETER CALAMAI_
(http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1039086182843)
SCIENCE WRITER
On a frigid March day almost two hundred years ago, two groups of
individuals warily eyed each other on a frozen lake in the remote interior of
Newfoundland.
On one side were 10 heavily armed men, English settlers from a fishing and
fur-trading community five days' walk away on the coast. On the other were
roughly 16 Beothuk Indians, mostly women and children.
Encouraged by the island's governor, the settlers were ostensibly on a peace
mission to end decades of conflict between the European occupiers and
Newfoundland's dwindling original population. But there was also the lure of a
reward of 100 British pounds for anyone bringing a "Red Indian" back alive to St.
John's.
Initially, the Beothuk ran away to avoid a confrontation. Yet within
minutes, a physical struggle erupted, angry shouts rang out and musket shots echoed
across the ice. When the commotion and smoke cleared, the chief of the
Beothuk band and his brother lay sprawled dead on the ice.
The settlers dragged off the chief's young wife, condemning the
still-nursing baby left behind to a quick death. Less than a year later, the woman
herself died from tuberculosis before she could be returned home.
The deaths of this family group — including the band's two principal adult
hunters — apparently sealed the fate of an entire tribe and a unique way of
life. Within a decade, the Beothuk had become extinct, the most celebrated
First Nations group to suffer that fate in Canada.
The extinction added to the legends swirling around the Beothuk, people who
featured little in written records because they shunned contact with the
white colonists. Since some were well over six feet tall, they were rumoured to
have Viking blood. Yet, the only authentic Beothuk depiction is a portrait of
the doomed chief's petite wife painted during her captivity in St. John's.
This supposed mystery of the Beothuk could well turn out to be more
imaginary than real, as their life story is now finally being reconstructed with the
same passion and scientific rigour applied to other native groups.
As a start, Toronto independent filmmaker Christopher Gagosz has used
forensic techniques popularized by TV shows like CSI to examine how this one
encounter on the ice pushed the Beothuk over the extinction precipice.
As well, the making of the documentary is helping to jump-start a
longer-term scientific investigation into the origins of the Beothuk, their links to
present-day native groups and their place in the initial peopling of the New
World.
"For us, it's the first step in what we hope will be a very big regional
study," says Newfoundland archaeologist and ethnohistorian Ingeborg Marshall,
author of a definitive book about the Beothuk.
That first step involved scientific techniques familiar to viewers of
forensic TV dramas, including:
Performing genetic analysis on ancient DNA extracted from teeth in the
museum-preserved skulls of two Beothuk present at Red Indian Lake on March 5,
1819.
Creating a life-like head of the slain Beothuk chief to probe the cause of
death.
Determining the dominant diet and primary dwelling area of the Beothuk
through the composition of their teeth.
"I wanted to do a CSI. I wanted to apply science to see what really
happened," Gagosz says.
His findings provide forensic backing for the reasons historians and
anthropologists generally offer about why the Beothuk were already in a perilous
state by the early 19th century.
The native population had not been large even two centuries earlier when
fishing boats from Europe first visited Newfoundland, probably numbering no more
than 500. Since then, their numbers had been thinned through deliberate
killing by the colonists, through introduced diseases and, most of all, through
starvation since European settlement denied the Beothuk access to their
traditional protein-rich marine diet.
But Gagosz's hour-long documentary, to be aired on Canada's History
Television channel in January, also provides a new explanation for why the supposed
peace mission flared into the deadly shootings that sealed the fate of an
entire people.
A crucial piece of forensic evidence points to the possibility that there
was already bad blood between the most influential settler and the chief of
this last sizable surviving band of Beothuk camped for the winter on the shore
of the lake. In the end, lingering distrust from a previous violent encounter
between the two may have tipped the scales, Gagosz says.
"We've put a spotlight on a moment in time when a peace mission, which set
out to make contact with the Beothuk, actually tilted them into extinction,"
he says.
Key to this new insight is a life-like head of the Beothuk chief,
Nonosabasut, sculpted by Scottish forensic reconstruction specialist Richard Neave
based on a resin replica of the chief's skull. In turn, that replica was
generated from a 3-D scan of the chief's real skull, preserved for years in the
mammals and birds section of the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and shown for visitors
on request.
____________________________________
`No one will ever really know what happened on the ice that day'
Christopher Gagosz, filmmaker
____________________________________
The museum also has a second skull, that of Nonosabasut's wife Demasduit,
who was abducted by the settlers. The two skulls were donated in 1827 by
William Cormack, Newfoundland-born and Scottish-educated adventurer, who had looted
them from the Beothuk graves.
One scientist interviewed for the documentary, forensic anthropologist Tracy
Rogers, examined the chief's reconstructed head, replica skull and 3-D scan.
She concluded that there was no evidence of trauma that could have been the
cause of death.
Comment