Shanawdithit
Shanawdithit was the last survivor of the Beothuk people, the indigenous culture of the island of Newfoundland. She died of TB in 1829, before the age of 30.
I'm not qualified to speak with any authority on Native American history, so I'd recommend searching out proper articles if you want some background. What I'm going to talk about is just my own speculation, not fact.
I first heard of Shanawdithit during a trip to NF when I was nine years old. I read some pieces on her recently and the more I think of her situation, the harder it is for me to get my head around.
First of all, she must have seen enormous suffering in her short lifetime, the Beothuk having been under constant assault from European diseases, starvation and settlers' bullets since many years before her birth. I wonder at what point she first considered the possibility that her people would no longer exist. What kind of conversations must she have had with her family before they passed away? From what I have read, there was never much communication between the Beothuk and Europeans.
If being the last surviving family was isolating, what must life have been like for her when her relatives were gone? She knew no english, and no one else in existence knew her language. She had a fatal disease. She ended up living in a foreign environment as a servant to a family in St. John's (how voluntary this was, I don't know. She may not have had many options for survival).
But what really blows my mind about Shanawdithit's situation is that at some point she must have realized that anything the world was to know about her people rested on her shoulders alone. I can't imagine that level of responsibility. The people she lived with at the end apparently encouraged her to draw as a means of describing the Beothuk way of life.
She managed to make ten illustrations before she died. I'll link them, but I have to warn you that the accompanying text has a tone that I found condescending and racist. That said, it was written in 1915.
I've been thinking about this a lot. Trying to imagine what was going through her mind in the final years of her life. What she thought her place in the Universe was, and the place of her people. The complete isolation. Being burdened with the curse and responsibility of being the last of one's kind. It's mindboggling.
All of this philosophical thinking made me decide to use her image as the background on my desktop.
This picture has a strangely calming effect on me. She's a very gentle-looking person. When I think about her situation, it somehow puts my own life issues in a new perspective.
It's certainly better than my last background.
I'm not qualified to speak with any authority on Native American history, so I'd recommend searching out proper articles if you want some background. What I'm going to talk about is just my own speculation, not fact.
I first heard of Shanawdithit during a trip to NF when I was nine years old. I read some pieces on her recently and the more I think of her situation, the harder it is for me to get my head around.
First of all, she must have seen enormous suffering in her short lifetime, the Beothuk having been under constant assault from European diseases, starvation and settlers' bullets since many years before her birth. I wonder at what point she first considered the possibility that her people would no longer exist. What kind of conversations must she have had with her family before they passed away? From what I have read, there was never much communication between the Beothuk and Europeans.
If being the last surviving family was isolating, what must life have been like for her when her relatives were gone? She knew no english, and no one else in existence knew her language. She had a fatal disease. She ended up living in a foreign environment as a servant to a family in St. John's (how voluntary this was, I don't know. She may not have had many options for survival).
But what really blows my mind about Shanawdithit's situation is that at some point she must have realized that anything the world was to know about her people rested on her shoulders alone. I can't imagine that level of responsibility. The people she lived with at the end apparently encouraged her to draw as a means of describing the Beothuk way of life.
She managed to make ten illustrations before she died. I'll link them, but I have to warn you that the accompanying text has a tone that I found condescending and racist. That said, it was written in 1915.
I've been thinking about this a lot. Trying to imagine what was going through her mind in the final years of her life. What she thought her place in the Universe was, and the place of her people. The complete isolation. Being burdened with the curse and responsibility of being the last of one's kind. It's mindboggling.
All of this philosophical thinking made me decide to use her image as the background on my desktop.
This picture has a strangely calming effect on me. She's a very gentle-looking person. When I think about her situation, it somehow puts my own life issues in a new perspective.
It's certainly better than my last background.
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 5:08 PM
2 Comments:
I was pleasantly surprised to read this post. I have been fascinated with the whole Beothuck story for years (since I first discovered them through some friends from Newfoundland years ago). I've since written two papers about them for various university History courses. If anyone is interested, I would recommend going to your local library and looking up articles about the Beothuck in the journal Acadiensis. I've found very interesting (and sad) stories about them in this journal. There was also a book written in the 70s that went into very deep detail about Beothuck culture (the title and the author escapes me). Not only did Shanawdithit make various drawings, but a small lexicon of Beothuck vocabulary was also recorded through discussions with her. I also recall reading that she did learn a fair amount of english before her death.
My history prof even mentioned that one time on the CBC, they played an old recording of a Beothuck woman singing a lullaby in her native tongue. Now, this kind of perplexes me, since the extinction of the Beothuck occured quite some time before the earliest recording technology (at least, that would appear to be the case to the best of my knowledge). Anyway, if such a recording does exist, I'd love to hear it!!!
One of the most touching and ethereal stories I ever read was about how Shanawdithit would occasionally feel very "blue" and lonely, and the family she lived with was documented as saying that during these occasions, she would go into the woods by herself, and come back hours later, smiling and completely in a much happier mood. When asked what she was doing all that time in the woods, she communicated to the family that she had been "speaking with the spirits of her deceased family". Wow.
I can't imagine any recording equipment that could have existed in 1829! Must be a cross up in details.
The story is fascinating, I think we've read some of the same source material. I'll keep an eye out for this journal.
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