Remembered for her contributions to the historical understanding of Beothuk culture, including drawings depicting interactions with European settlers, Shanawdithit died of tuberculosis in St. John's, Newfoundland on June 6, 1829.

[2]: 233  At the time the Beothuk population was dwindling, their traditional way of life becoming increasingly unsustainable in the face of encroachment from both European colonial settlements and other Indigenous peoples, as well as infectious diseases from Europe such as smallpox against which they had little or no immunity.

In April 1823, Shanawdithit, along with her mother, Doodebewshet, and her sister, whose Beothuk name is unknown, encountered trappers while searching for food in the Badger Bay area.

The settlers in the Newfoundland Colony renamed Shanawdithit "Nancy April" after the month in which she was captured, taking her to Exploits Island where she worked as a servant in the Peyton household and learned some English.

Cormack returned to Great Britain where he stayed for some time in Liverpool with John McGregor, a Scotsman whom he had known in Canada, sharing many of his materials on the Beothuks.

In addition to an obituary announcement in a local St. John's newspaper on June 12, 1829, the death of Shanawdithit was reported in the London Times on September 14, 1829.

The announcement noted that Shanawdithit "exhibited extraordinary strong natural talents" and identified the Beothuk as "an anomaly in the history of man" for not establishing or maintaining relationships with European settlers or other Indigenous peoples.

[7]: 231 [8] After Shanawdithit's death Carson performed a postmortem and noted peculiarities with the parietal bone of the skull, eventually sending it to the Royal College of Physicians in London for study.

Researcher Ingeborg Marshall has argued that a valid understanding of Beothuk history and culture is affected directly by how and by whom historical records were created, pointing to the ethnocentric nature of European accounts which positioned native populations as inherently inferior.