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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63128 Medium Shanawdithit and the record of the Beothuk

Read the following passage.

A. Shanawdithit, whose name is also written Shawnadithit, was a Beothuk woman born in about 1801. The Beothuk were the First Nations people of the island of Newfoundland. As the settler population along the coast grew, they lost easy access to the sea, and European diseases added to their losses; by 1819 there were perhaps fewer than 20 left alive. She has long been called the last of the Beothuk, but Mi'kmaq oral histories have challenged that description and point to links between the two peoples.

B. As a child and young woman she witnessed several of the last recorded meetings between her people and the settlers. In March 1819 she watched as a party led by John Peyton Jr. seized her aunt Demasduit and killed Demasduit's husband, Nonosbawsut. In the spring of 1823 Shanawdithit, her mother and her sister, weak from hunger, were taken by a furrier named William Cull. Officials decided to return the three women to their people with supplies, but they could not find any surviving members of their group. Her mother and sister soon died, and Shanawdithit was taken into Peyton's household in the Bay of Exploits, where she stayed for five years.

C. In September 1828 she was brought to St. John's by the Beothuk Institution, a group formed to find Beothuk people and document their way of life. She lived in the home of its president, William Cormack, who wrote down much of what she told him. Through him she passed on words from the Beothuk language and described her people's customs and their final years. She also made a series of sketches of Beothuk homes, tools and food, and of places where events took place, including the lake where her aunt was captured. Her drawings have been reproduced many times and are considered especially valuable.

D. When Cormack left Newfoundland early in 1829, she was placed in the care of the attorney general, James Simms. Her health had been poor for years, and she died of tuberculosis in St. John's on June 6, 1829. She was named a National Historic Person in 2000, and a bronze statue of her stands at the Beothuk Interpretation Centre in Boyd's Cove. Her own remains have fared less well. She was buried in a cemetery on the south side of St. John's, but the exact site was later lost. In 1830 her skull was shipped to the Royal College of Physicians in London, and it is believed to have been lost during the Second World War.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

- 1.
In 1819 she saw settlers take away one of her relatives and cause the death of another.

- 2.
Nobody can now point to the precise spot where she was laid to rest.

- 3.
An official plan to reunite the three women with their community did not succeed.

- 4.
A man whose home she shared in St. John's recorded what she taught him about her language.

- 5.
She began to make pictures because Cormack asked her to show Beothuk life on paper.

- 6.
Part of her remains was sent to London after her death and was probably lost in a war.

- 7.
Her father lost his life trying to stop the women from being taken.

- 8.
The claim that no other Beothuk outlived her has been disputed.

- 9.
She was born at around the start of the nineteenth century.

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