Red Indian Lake, Newfoundland - Michael Crummey

My name is Michael Crummey and I’m from a little mining town in central Newfoundland called Buchans. The closest water body to Buchans is pretty much the dead center of the island of Newfoundland. The closest water body is this big freshwater lake called Red Indian Lake. The lake was kind of where people in Buchans went to get away from it all, if you can talk about a little mining town as “it all”.

We had a cabin there when I was a kid. I spent part of every summer out on that lake, in fact part of every winter too. One of my favorite memories growing up is actually skating on the lake. There is an island called Buchans island which was about three miles across the ice from where our cabin was. We skated out to the island and back every winter.

One of the really interesting things for me as a kid growing up is that Red Indian Lake was named after the Beothuk Indians. They were known as the red Indians because they covered themselves with red ochre. So when Indigneous people in the Americas are referred to as red Indians that was a name that was applied to the Beothuk because of the way they decorated themselves. Red Indian Lake was where they spent their summers on the coastline and their winters inland. Red Indian Lake was one of the last safe places for them before they became extinct around the 1830s. So that had a huge influence in how I saw the world that I came from.
 

Collector
Miriam Ahmed
Contributor
Michael Crummey

Related Watermarks

Lake Huron, ON
Paul Vermeersch
Lake Ontario, ON
Michael Corrigan
Lake Superior, ON
Liz Howard
St. Lawrence River, ON
Christine Mattson
St. Lawrence River, ON
Kristine Schumacher
St. Lawrence River, ON
Luke Schumacher
St. Lawrence River, ON
Mathilda Mattson
Thames River, ON
Penny Stewart