Cape Breton's Magazine

H.L.LivingstonTalks about Peggy Doggy & the "John Lauchlin" in the August Gale I have a keen interest in the early histo? ry of this place, and I have my mind filled with bits and pieces that will be lost when my generation is gone. For in? stance, you've never heard the story of Peggy Doggy, have you? Well, Peggy was a young woman in her teens, who came into Big Bras d'Or on an ice floe with a large Newfoundland dog, in the late l820s or early 1830s. She couldn't speak English and she couldn't speak Gaelic • and she never told who she was, although she must have learned one language or both. So the kindly neighbours built a cellar for her, to keep things in--built a log cabin over it • gave her a cow and a couple of chick? ens and some seed potatoes. And she lived there many years. But if she eyer learned either language, she never told where she came from. Now my theory is that Peggy, and not the girl in St. John's, was the last of the Beothuks. Everything points to it. But a- gain, no proof. I was showing my nieces yesterday, the old cellar, the depression in the ground, which was Peggy's house. My father, who was born in 1834, he used to run errands for her as a small boy. So ap? parently she lived there a long time. Peg? gy, the last of the Beothuks, forced to take to the ice, hunted down by the New? foundlanders. And did the dog used to track her down become her friend and pro? tector on the ice floe? She was very dark complexioned I understand, like an Eskimo or an Indian • but she couldn't possibly have been an Eskimo because she couldn't have survived all that distance on an ice floe. Not very likely. But a Beothuk could, from Cape St. George or Cape Ray • it's only a short distance in a northeast