A comparative study of the bark, bone, wood and hide items made by the historic Micmac, Montagnais-Nascapi and Beothuk Indians

Chute, Janet Elizabeth (1976) A comparative study of the bark, bone, wood and hide items made by the historic Micmac, Montagnais-Nascapi and Beothuk Indians. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the description and comparison of bark, bone, wood and hide objects manufactured by the historic Montagnais/Nascapi, Micmac and Beothuk Indians. Both artifactual and ethnographic evidence was examined during the course of the study. Artifactual collections were viewed first-hand at eight museums throughout northeastern Canada and the United States. The Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, Holland, and the British Museum were contacted overseas. Literary sources included primary historical accounts and secondary compilations, as well as recent anthropological studies. -- The Beothuk material was re-analyzed in view of the information derived from comparison of this evidence with non-lithic items made by the Micmac and Montagnais/Nascapi. This comprised the bulk of the work, as it involved the detailed description of artifact types categorized according to function. An investigation of the stylistic design elements and the mortuary practices of the three tribes provided additional information for comparison. -- During the final stages of this study the functional categories of historic artifacts were projected back in time to correlate with parallel classes of non-lithic objects recovered from Maritime Archaic, sites in the Northeast. Whereas the Beothuk evidence exhibited traits similar to certain aspects of the Maritime Archaic, the historic Micmac and Montagnais/Nascapi items showed closer affinities to the material cultures of other historic northeastern Algonkian peoples. This data tended to isolate the Beothuk Indians as an older resident group in the Northeast composed of an assimilated body of Maritime Archaic descendent peoples with an Algonkian speaking, or proto-Algonkian speaking, migrant population, which expanded eastward to the Labrador coast in prehistoric times and eventually crossed into Newfoundland.

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