Mr Moccashoe – The Last Beothuk
PLENTY OF CROUP NOW
OK, on another place on my website I list my 4x Great grandmother as possibly the last Beothuk. And she might have been. But Mr. Moccashoe might have been the last also. Mr. Moccashoe is almost certainly the last Beothuk to live in the Wilderness. My 4x Great grandmother and Mr. Moccashoe is certainly the last two known that will ever be written about and remembered. Without my family stories they would probably be forgotten in history.
Anyway, among the older people living in Ship Cove (when my mother was a small child in the 1950s) it was well known that there was once a tribe of Indians living across the Bay in a place called MOCCASHOE MARSH. It was a good place to cut Timber and there was a place nearby called THE DOCKS – so named because people used to go there to build boats. A river flowed there. There are not a lot of surviving stories but there would have been at least some interaction between the residents of Ship Cove (And possibly in the Querpon area) and the natives. Mr. Moccashoe was apparantly the last of them. The rest had left or died out. Given an acute shortage of wemon I suspect that some of the wemon may have inter married – but thats just a guess on my part. But either way he was the last one. My Granddad (Born in 1907) told my mother pretty much everything that we know about him (Which is not a lot). But his family lived nearby at The Docks. We are not sure if his memories are first hand memories as a small child or something his parents would have told him but several other old people also mentioned in passing that an Indian named Mr. Moccashoe lived there. He goes down in history as having MOCCASHOE MARSH named after him. So we dont know the actual date that he left.
Mr. Moccashoe lived up the hill from Moccashoe Marsh in a dwelling called a TILT that he built. A Tilt is a makeshift shelter possibly little more than tree trunks and Branches. My father describes a Tilt as a building of makeshift materials covered in canvas. Mr. Moccashoe would have used whatever materials that he could find and possibly Improved on it every year.
Mr. Moccashoe lived of the land and was always hungry and apparently made as little interaction as possible with the white people. He was just sort of there – a friendly enough of a feller but not really a part of the community.
The only thing we really remember about him was that my grandad said that he liked to go sealing in the spring (Roughly April if my own Sealing time memories are right) and as he was getting excited about the imminent sealing season would say “Plenty of Croup now” (Croup being his word for food). My granddad said that “ He finally left because he couldn’t get enough food”.
I guess that it is possible that he left (And we understand that some Beothuks might have immigrated to Labrador) but its not like an old man with no family or friends who lived all is life in the wilderness in Pistolet Bay around the early 1900s had a lot of options as to places to move to. So I suspect that he just may have died. But we don’t know what actually happened to him but that’s all that history will remember of the last Beothuk who lived in the wilderness.
PLENTY OF CROUP NOW