Can you cite one of these sources? The archeological record doesn't seem to show a large aboriginal population in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E.
I don't think the Beothuk, for example, were ever very numerous, certainly not as numerous as other aboriginal people in Labrador and Greenland at the time.
It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.
A good start is the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. That book fundamentally changed my understanding of the pre-Colombian Americas.
> It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.
I don’t think it was as crowded as, say, New England (early explorers of the coast of New England, IIRC, wrote that there wasn’t enough open shoreline to even make landfall on). However much or however little of Newfoundland was habitable, though, was already inhabited by the time the Norse got there.
I don't think the Beothuk, for example, were ever very numerous, certainly not as numerous as other aboriginal people in Labrador and Greenland at the time.
It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.