North Americans use written documents and accounts as proof of events. We call the stories people tell each other myths, folk tales or gossip. There must be written proof to back up these stories. So Mi'kmaq history has been written from the point of view of the people who could read and write. It has been written by the Europeans who claimed Newfoundland for themselves.

Mi'kmaq oral history says a small group of their ancestors always traveled and lived in southern and western Newfoundland—from Bay St. George to Bay D'Espoir. Mi'kmaq people got along with the other native groups who came to the island from Labrador. They got along with the Beothuk people who lived on the island with them. But a fight, possibly over hunting areas, caused a split between the Mi'kmaqs and the Beothuks. The two groups lived apart from then on. The Beothuks kept to the north of Red Indian Lake. The Mi'kmaqs kept to the south.

As more and more Europeans settled in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, many mainland Mi'kmaqs began moving to Newfoundland. Cape Breton was becoming too crowded. They had to compete with the settlers for wild animals and fish. There was still plenty of both in Newfoundland. Mi'kmaq people spread across the south and west coasts of the island. They hunted and fished inland.

The Mi'kmaq people of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland had good relations with the French settlers and explorers. They became Catholics like their French friends. They even helped the French fight the British during the struggle over Newfoundland in the 1600s and 1700s.

But the Mi'kmaq people's stories of their lives in Newfoundland before Europeans came here-like their descriptions of travelling back and forth from Cape Breton—are not believed. Instead, Mi'kmaq people say they are stuck with someone else's version of their past.

That version claims the Mi'kmaq did not come to Newfoundland until the 1600s. They came then to trap and trade furs with the French. It also claimed until recently, that the Mi'kmaq were hired by the French to kill the Beothuk. This theory has been rejected by most modern historians.7 But many Newfoundlanders still believe this.

7 This story may have been started by a landowner and furrier named John Peyton. He told a government geologist that the Mi'kmaq were paid by the French to kill the Beothuk. According to this story, the French wanted to get rid of the Beothuk because they raided their fishing supplies. John Peyton claimed a Mi'kmaq person had told him the story But members of the Peyton family were suspected of murdering Beothuk Indians themselves. In fact, in the late 1 700s there were several written accounts of a small group of settlers murdering Beothuk Indians for stealing their supplies.

There may still be people with Beothuk ancestors living in Newfoundland today. Beothuks may have married Mi'kmaq people. They may have had children with non-native settlers. But as a people the Beothuks are extinct. Modem historians believe they were destroyed by hunger and diseases spread to them by Europeans. If they were murdered, it was probably by European settlers. But there was no official policy to hunt Beothuk people.