From the paper - "Notes On A Journey Through The Northern Peninsula Of Newfoundland" by H.C. Thomson, appearing in The Geographical Journal, August, 1905; No.2 Vol.XXIV, pp 187 - 198. This part deals with Thomson's comments after his arrival in St. John's. The journey was concluded and he had finished his business with J.H. Howley concerning the Map.
I wonder if his comments re the Mic-macs' arrival reflect Howley's thinking or Mattie's.
I doubt if his feeling that the Mic-mac were more responsible than the settlers for the extermination of the Beothuk came from Mattie. He probably got it from the "townies", but who knows, maybe some of the tales he heard Mattie spin coloured his view. His comment about the lost oppportunity of the Beothuk becoming the Laplanders of Newfoundland is one I have not seen expounded elsewhere.
By H. C. THOMPS0N
FINAL REFLECTIONS
The Mic-macs came over from Cape Breton in 1782, after the war with America, when they
were given a grant of land in Bay St. George. They are nearly all gone now, Michel being one of
the few remaining. A fierce feud existed between them and the Beothuks, the aborigines, for
whose extermination they were even more responsible than the settlers - an extermination that is
to be in every way regretted. They would have been invaluable in the development of the island,
for the early colonists speak of them as friendly and tractable, quick in apprehension, and of an ingenious and subtle disposition; and the interior, instead of being the desolate wilderness it now is, might have been filled with flocks and herds. With their knowledge of woodcraft, they might, and probably would, have taken in Newfoundland the place of the Forest Laps in Lapland.
Journey Through The Northern Peninsula Of Newfoundland