CHAPTER VII

THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR

Since the publication of the book "Labrador, the Country and the
People," the means of transportation to the coast have been so
improved that each year brings us an increasing number of visitors to
enjoy the attractions of this sub-arctic land. So many misconceptions
have arisen, however, as to the country and its inhabitants, and one
is so often misrepresented as distorting conditions, that it seems
wise at this point to try and answer a few questions which are so
familiar to us who live on the coast as to appear almost negligible.

The east coast of Labrador belongs to Newfoundland, and is not part of
the territory of Canada, although the ill-defined boundary between the
two possessions has given rise to many misunderstandings. Newfoundland
is an autonomous government, having its own Governor sent out from
England, Prime Minister, and Houses of Parliament in the city of St.
John's. Instead of being a province of Canada, as is often supposed,
and an arrangement which some of us firmly believe would result in the
ultimate good of the Newfoundlanders, it stands in the same
relationship to England as does the great Dominion herself. Labrador
is owned by Newfoundland, so that legally the Labradormen are
Newfoundlanders, though they have no representation in the
Newfoundland Government. At Blanc Sablon, on the north coast in the
Straits of Belle Isle, the Canadian Labrador begins, so far as the
coast-line is concerned. The hinterland of the Province of Ungava is
also a Canadian possession.

The original natives of the Labrador were Eskimos and bands of roving
Indians. The ethnologist would find fruitful opportunities in the
country. The Eskimos, one of the most interesting of primitive races,
have still a firm foothold in the North--chiefly around the five
stations of the Moravian Brethren, upon whose heroic work I need not
now dilate. The Montagnais Indians roam the interior. They are a
branch of the ancient Algonquin race who held North America as far
west as the Rockies. They are the hereditary foes of the Eskimos,
whole settlements of whom they have more than once exterminated.
Gradually, with the influx of white settlers from Devon and Dorset,
from Scotland and France, the "Innuits" were driven farther and
farther north, until there are only some fifteen hundred of them
remaining to-day. Among them the Moravians have been working for the
past hundred and thirty-five year