For many years the people of Maine, parts of New England, and the Maritime Provinces have been told that an ancient group of Indians lived in the northeastern part of the United States and later moved into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These ancient people have been called the Pre-Algonquian Group, The Red Paint People of Maine, and the Beothuk of Newfoundland, by various archaeologists who have excavated their graves.

These archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the graves represent a very old group of Indians, but they have not agreed on who they were, where they came from, or where they went. Mr. Charles C. Willoughby shows the distribution of the pre-Algonquian culture as covering all that portion of North America east of the Great Lakes, along the Saint Lawrence River and as far south as the tip of New Jersey.