FIRST CONTACT

 Historians accept today that some of the earliest face to face contact in Canada may be unrecorded  For example, evidence of trading exchanges with European settlers and encounters with fishermen

FIRST CONTACT  Historians today acknowledge that contact was a series of events, not just one initial meeting between Europeans and Aboriginals leading to settlement.  Numerous stories of Irish Monk St. Brendan reaching the Americas  No confirming evidence has been found  Contacts dated back to the 15 th or 16 th centuries for First Nations in Atlantic Canada, to the 18 th century for Aboriginals in the West Coast, to the 20 th century for many northern Native peoples

FIRST CONTACT  KNOWN CONTACTS The Vikings  First recorded face to face contact took place in Newfoundland with Viking settlements  Lief Eriksson called this place Vinland  These European settlers called Aboriginals “skraelings”

FIRST CONTACT  KNOWN CONTACTS  There is evidence of numerous contacts between European voyages to North America in the 15 th and 16 th Centuries. Major impacts on Aboriginal life  Cabot and the Beothuk 1497  Cabot went searching for a passage to China. He landed in Newfoundland