Sewer excavation reveals what may be the resting place of final member of extinct Newfoundland First Nation
The legend of Shawnadithit, the last member of the Beothuk Indians, is well known to Newfoundlanders. All of it, that is, except the location of the young woman’s remains. She died of tuberculosis in a naval hospital on June 6, 1829, and was thought to be buried in a cemetery also run by the Royal Navy (an early landmark erected at an Anglican church in St. John’s is thought to be wrong). Now, following an excavation to lay connectors to a new sewage plant in St. John’s, archaeologists think they’ve at long last located that old naval cemetery, and thus Shawnadithit’s grave. The bad news? She’s probably interred beneath Southside Road, a paved thoroughfare sandwiched between Highway 2 and the Waterford River. Even if found, her remains would not be complete: Shawnadithit’s head was sent to a physicians’ college in London, and was thought to have been lost during the Blitz of the Second World War.