Thursday, January 22, 2009

In Captain George Cartwright's time many or most of the southern Inuit died, at least in the Sandwich Bay area. When English settlers started coming over no European women came with them so the men married Inuit women. This is where the Labrador Metis came from. This trend continued well into the 1800's and probably early 1900's. Today we (Labrador Metis) can trace our Inuit ancestry back hundreds of years to the earliest setlers and our Inuit ancestors inhabited the south coast as late as the early to mid 1900's at least up around Spotted Island and Batteau area where my family is originally from. If you look at some of the people around here (Cartwright) you can easily see their Inuit features. It is intersting to note here that in the 1950's when there was an American radar base at Spotted Island the Americans called the villagers "Eskimo's" even though they weren't Inuit or settlers of purely european descent.

No comments:

Post a Comment