Experts Thought The Beothuk Died Out In 1829 – But Recent DNA Analysis Tells A Different Story

For hundreds of years, the Beothuk lived and died in remote Newfoundland, a vast island off the North American coast. But the arrival of European settlers decimated their population and when a woman named Shanawdithit died in 1829, she was thought to have taken the bloodline with her. Yet now, scientists have found evidence to prove what oral histories have claimed all along: that descendants of these aboriginal people survive today.

Before the arrival of settlers on Newfoundland’s shores, the Beothuk were as many as 2,000 in number. Sticking mostly to the coastal regions, they survived comfortably on the seals and salmon that inhabited the waters of the northern stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. And according to legend, they were there to greet the Norse explorers who made landfall long before the Europeans.

By the 19th century, however, the Beothuk had been forced inland by the settlers and cut off from their vital resources. And in 1819 two of the last surviving members met with a terrible fate. Believing that his property had been stolen by indigenous people, a fur trapper kidnapped a woman named Demasduit as revenge. And although her husband Nonosabasut tried to save her, he was killed in the struggle.

Just one year later, Demasduit herself died, a victim of the tuberculosis that the Europeans had brought with them to Newfoundland. And less than a decade later, her niece Shanawdithit succumbed to the same fate. With her, according to the history books, went the last traces of the Beothuk bloodline – although not everyone agrees.

Since at least the 15th century, the Beothuk had shared Newfoundland with the Mi’kmaq, another indigenous group. And today, the oral histories of these people claim that the bloodline still survives. Up until recently, nobody has been able to test these claims – but now science might finally have an answer.