After the European settlement of Newfoundland, the Beothuk Indians adopted European materials and products for numerous traditional functions. While some native-made stone tools were replaced by iron counterparts such as the iron caribou spear of European manufacture shown here on the right, others were fashioned by the Beothuks. Metal fragments and nails, for example, were sometimes modified to make spear and arrowheads. Traditional tools survived alongside the new ones. When available, sailcloth replaced bark as a building material; and the effectiveness of the fall caribou hunt was increased by the use of the deer fence made possible by felling trees with an iron axe."
Ultimately denied access to their hunting and fishing lands by the settlers, the Beothuks ceased to exist with the death of Shanawdithit in 1829. Though the extinction of this unique group of people is unquestioningly dramatic, certain sensationalist writers have exaggerated the hostilities which contributed to their demise. For example, one account based on a single sentence in J.P Howley's monumental work The Beofhucks or Red Indians gives a lurid description of the murder of about 400 Beothuks at Hant's Harbour, Trinity Bay, in the late eighteenth century. It is doubtful whether there were 400 Beothuks in all of Newfoundland at that time; to find them all congregated on a single point of land is simply beyond belief. Howley had simply related the tale as "another tradition."
