Archeologist reclaims slice of Canadian history through engraving
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 9:23 AM NT
CBC News
A detail from a 17th century engraving shows English businessmen John Guy meeting Beothuk in Trinity Bay, an archeologist says. (CBC) A 17th-century engraving showing what was long thought by Americans to be early contact between Europeans and original inhabitants of New England actually depicts a scene in Newfoundland, an archeologist says.
The engraving shows a European on a beach engaged in a friendly exchange of a hat and other goods with aboriginal people.
Bill Gilbert's research has been accepted by international scholars, including those working at the historic Jamestown settlement in Virginia. (CBC) For decades, American scholars have reported that the copper-plate engraving, first published in 1628, depicts Bartholomew Gosnold meeting Native Americans on a New England beach in 1602. Gosnold is best known as the founder of Jamestown.
But archeologist Bill Gilbert said the engraving is actually an important part of Canadian — not American — history.
"I knew it could not be correct," said Gilbert, who has published a scholarly article making a case that the scene is not New England, but Newfoundland, and that the European in the centre of the engraving is not Gosnold, but the British businessman John Guy.
Newfoundland schoolchildren have long been taught that the subject of the engraving is Guy, who founded a colony of Cupids in eastern Newfoundland in 1610.
Two years later, at Bull Arm, Trinity Bay, Guy — a merchant from Bristol — met with Beothuk.
"It has been published as being John Guy and his party meeting the Beothuk in Trinity Bay, on the sixth of November, 1612 — an event that's really well documented," Gilbert said.
Guy wrote in his journal about that 1612 encounter with the now-extinct Beothuk, and Gilbert said Guy's descriptions match what's seen in the engraving, including the waving of a wolfskin and four Beothuk in each canoe.
Gilbert's research was accepted by the British journal Post-Medieval Archaeology.
'Hooray for scholarship'
Perhaps as importantly, it's also been accepted by American archeologists, including one who has done extensive work with the Jamestown settlement in Virginia.
"It is a bit disappointing, but hooray for scholarship," said Bly Straube, who works with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.
"I congratulate Bill Gilbert on doing some good work, and setting things straight. … We're just really sorry that we can't claim that image."
Gilbert said the finding is an important boost for the study of early Canadian history.
"At this point now, with my paper being published, I don't think there can be any confusion," he said.
"We have so few images from that period that represent our early history visually," Gilbert said. "It's really important that we claim that image."
To date, no one has challenged Gilbert's findings.
