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Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 30, 1850 - A Note on an "Esquimaux Vocabulary"

KENN HARPER

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
A section from "Eskimaux Vocabulary for the use of the Arctic Expedition," a handy guide for Arctic explorers. (PHOTO COURTESY OF KENN HARPER)

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On May 30, 1850 the aging Arctic explorer, Sir John Ross, wrote a note to Captain Charles Codrington Forsyth of the Royal Navy, who was about to depart for the Arctic on the Prince Albert on an expedition sponsored by Lady Franklin, in search of her missing husband, Sir John Franklin.

In his note, Ross said, "...you are of course familiar with the Esquimaux vocabulary lately published which you will find of good assistance in your communications with any natives you may fall in with."

This is a reference to a peculiar little book published by the British Admiralty in 1850. Its cover gives the title "Eskimaux Vocabulary for the use of the Arctic Expedition" and the inside title page expands that title to "Eskimaux and English Vocabulary, for the use of the Arctic Expedition."

In 1847 the British Admiralty began a search for the missing Franklin Expedition. Many ships were involved and the searches continued for many years. This little volume, 6 1/2" by 4 1/4", was bound in black leather, contained 160 pages, and was designed to fit in a hip pocket.

It was compiled by John Washington, a captain in the Royal Navy, who was later Hydrographer to the Navy and at one time Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society. The vocabulary, as the preface explained, was "drawn up in three parallel columns, consisting of the dialects as spoken by the Natives in Kotzebue Sound [Alaska], in Melville Peninsula, and on the coast of Labrador." Washington intended that every officer carry the volume and use it in their enquiries of the natives as to the fate of Franklin.

The actual vocabulary is followed by five "Specimens of Dialogues." When one considers that the Inuit encountered by these expeditions had had little or no previous contact with white men, the dialogues come across as inept, humorous, and at times hilarious. The specimen dialogue called "On first meeting Natives" begins, in English and "Labrador Eskimaux" with: "Good day to you, friends. [tikki-pogut, kanno-e-kisse] We are friends come from England. [ila-karner-mut tikki-pogut taunang-et Eng-e-land-emit]."

"Enquiries as to Strange Ships" begins with "Have you seen any large ships lately?" [umiak-soarnik taekkolaung-ilasse im-mane?] How many? [kapsio-laukaet? or kapsinik?] How long, or how many moons, since? [kang-a? tak-kit kapsio-lerkaet? taimang-et?], and continues with such sentences as, "Are you quite sure you are telling the truth? [nella-gotro-mik okar-allo-arkisse?]

The officers were expected to explain to the Inuit they encountered that there was a reward for news of the missing ships. That section ended with the information: "Should you meet any white men, treat them kindly, and you shall be rewarded." [naipi-tau-gupse kabluna-nut, idlu-inia-rasse taipko-nung-a, tagwa akkiller-tauyomar-posse ang-i-yomik, idlu-ing-ikupse]"

Perhaps the most outlandish section was "Dialogue with a Sick Man." It contained questions about headaches, bowel movements, vomiting and coughing. The most frightening statement may well be, "I must bleed you." [takkai-yoma-wagit].

Sir John Ross took a copy of this volume to Greenland in 1850 and gave it to two Danes, an administrator and a missionary, who translated it into "the Eskimo dialect in use in Greenland, and in use also, it is believed, by the natives as far as the head of Baffin's Bay." The result of their work was then published by the Admiralty in 1852, entitled "Greenland-Eskimo Vocabulary, For the Use of the Arctic Expeditions."

The two volumes were intended to be used together, as the preface says: "The present Vocabulary is supplemental to, and corresponds page for page with, the Labrador-Eskimo Vocabulary printed by the Admiralty, in January, 1850... The reader is requested to refer to the introduction to the former Vocabulary, where also will be found a brief sketch of the Eskimo grammar."

The Admiralty apparently intended the work to be further revised, for they "earnestly requested that every one who has the opportunity will do his best to correct the Vocabulary, and that in doing so he will adopt the same system of orthography, and carefully adhere to it."

In 1853, the Greenlandic volume was published again, having been further revised the previous summer. John Washington worked with Qalaherhuaq, a Polar Eskimo from Northwestern Greenland known popularly as Kalli, and the revision was completed by Kalli, working with a minister and a professor of Sanskrit! The preface noted that "every word has now been revised from the lips of a native."

One can only wonder what use was actually made of this slim volume on any of the expeditions. References to it are sparse. Captain Bernier found a copy in a cache left by Captain Henry Kellett of the Resolute, on Dealy Island, where he wintered in 1852-3. Sir John Richardson refers to it under "Vocabularies" in his 1851 "Arctic Searching Expeditions" but doesn't say anything about using it. No information has survived as to how many copies of each edition were printed. Any edition is rare and valued in a polar library today.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 26, 1968 - The Albert lost off Greenland

KENN HARPER

If one were to ask Inuit elders what were the most famous ships of old in the eastern Arctic, the answers would probably be the Nascopie and the C. D. Howe. But a few generations ago, the answer would have been quite different, and it probably would have been a small vessel from Scotland, the Albert.

Built in 1889 in England as a hospital ship for the Royal National Mission to deep-sea fishermen, and paid for by an anonymous donor - thought to have been Queen Victoria - the Albert was a sailing vessel built of oak. On her bows she carried the words "Heal the Sick" and "Preach the Word," and around her wheel was lettered the Biblical injunction, "And he saith, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Over the years, she was associated with many of the important names and events in the history of the eastern Arctic.

In 1892 she crossed the Atlantic for the first time, carrying a medical officer, Wilfred Grenfell, who was to become famous for his work as a missionary doctor in Labrador. But after a few years she was replaced and returned to the North Sea.

In 1902 the Dundee Pond's Bay Company purchased her from the mission, intending to whale and trade in northern Baffin Island. The following year, under the command of the veteran arctic whaler, James Mutch - Jiimi Maatsi, to the Inuit - the Albert put in at Cumberland Sound and picked up William Duval (Sivutiksaq) and a number of Inuit families, and set sail for the High Arctic. They spent their first winter at Erik Harbour, then moved the vessel to a sheltered location just east of present-day Pond Inlet, which they named Albert Harbour. The vessel remained there until 1907, its crew hunting and trading with the Inuit, and sending their products home with other whaling ships.

In 1908, Mutch bought Albert from Mitchell and promptly exchanged her for shares in a new venture, the Albert Whaling Company Limited, based in Peterhead. But in 1911 Mutch left to work for a rival company and a new captain was hired, John Murray. The Inuit knew him too, and remember him as Nakungajuq - the cross-eyed one. In 1912 he took the little vessel to Spitzbergen for whaling early in the season, then to Hudson Bay where she wintered at Repulse Bay.

In 1914 Captain Henry Toke Munn purchased the ship for his firm, the Arctic Gold Exploration Syndicate, despite its name, a fur-trading company. It seems that all the principal people associated with the Albert had Inuktitut names, and Munn was no exception. He was Kapitaikuluk - the dear, little captain. Munn had engines installed in the vessel. The Albert was busy under Munn, braving the ice to first establish and then resupply his posts at Button Point and later Southampton Island. The latter post, under Duval, proved unsuccessful and in 1918, Munn moved Duval and his family back to Cumberland Sound, establishing his last post at Usualuk.

In 1919, Munn bought out his rival, Bernier, hoping to establish a trading monopoly in the Arctic. That same year he abandoned another rival, Robert Janes, in the Arctic, after first informing him that his backer in the south had failed. The late Jimmy Etuk once described for me the fight on the deck of the Albert that he had witnessed, after negotiations for Janes's passage south had failed. That summer, Munn had hired an Inuit crew member in Cumberland Sound for the voyage farther north. This was the well-known Kanajuq, known to whalers and traders as Mike. He took his young son, Akpalialuk, with him. When the Albert left Pond Inlet, Mike and Akpalialuk ended up in Scotland, and spent the winter in Peterhead.

In 1922 in Cumberland Sound, the Albert rescued the crew of another vessel, the Easonian, after that vessel burned to the waterline at the Kekerten trading station. But that year marked the end of an era for the stalwart little ship. Munn's hoped-for trading monopoly had not worked out as planned. Instead he sold his interests to the Hudson's Bay Company for $28,000.

The next year, the Albert sailed from Peterhead under the flag of the HBC. Captain John Taylor, who had captained the Easonian the previous year, was in command. He, too, had an Inuktitut name - Irngutaq (the grandson.) But the ship never made it to the Arctic. In fact, she never left sight of Scotland. Passing through the Moray Firth, the Easonian struck a reef and began to sink. Captain Taylor later admitted that he had had his attention on a golf game being played on shore!

The Albert was repaired and sold to the Thomsens, a shipping family in the Faroe Islands, where she was engaged in carrying cargo and fishing. Over four decades later, late on the night of May 26, 1968, she was caught in a storm in Davis Strait about 120 miles southwest of Cape Desolation, Greenland. She lost her propeller and sprang a leak.

Her call for help was answered by a Norwegian fishing vessel. With difficulty a line was passed to her and all 17 of the crew were removed safely. The next day, the Albert drifted into the ice pack and was lost.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 16, 1910 - Captain Bernier and the alienation of Inuit land

KENN HARPER

Captain Joseph-Elzear Bernier had a long and illustrious association with the Canadian Arctic. Inuit remember him as Kapitaikallak - the stocky captain. He was a physically impressive man. A contemporary described him as being "below medium height but massive, with a bull neck and muscular arms and shoulders. Though overweight, he was nimble and sturdy... His head was bald on top, fringed by white hair, and he had a matching walrus moustache. His mouth was large and contained an array of gold bridgework. His nose was bulbous, his chin was heavy and his face was broad and florid. His eyes were keen."

In 1904, in Germany, on behalf of the Canadian government, Bernier purchased the Gauss, a ship built for Antarctic service. With the ship back in Canada and renamed the Arctic, Bernier was placed in charge of her and sent north to deliver supplies to the new Royal North-West Mounted Police detachment at Fullerton in the northern Keewatin. He wintered the vessel there - the first of many winters in the Arctic. It was his first encounter with Inuit.

But Bernier's dreams lay farther north. He longed for an expedition, not to Hudson Bay, but to the as-yet unclaimed North Pole. This dream was never to be realized. In 1906 the Department of Marine and Fisheries gave him a new assignment - to travel to the Arctic Archipelago and formally annex all new lands at which he called, to leave proclamations in cairns at all points, and to collect customs duties from foreign whalers.

Bernier wintered that year at Albert Harbour, just east of present-day Pond Inlet. There was a Scottish whaling station nearby, at Igarjuaq, and it was here that Bernier first became aware of the possibility of lucrative trade among the Inuit in the area. The following summer, when the Arctic finally broke free from her winter quarters, Bernier explored the entrance to Jones Sound, taking more land for Canada, before returning to Quebec City in mid-October.

The Inuit whom he had met were largely oblivious to the passions that drove a man like Bernier. They did not realize that it was their land that he coveted on behalf of a largely disinterested nation - and already perhaps on his own behalf.

In 1908 Ottawa sent Joseph Bernier to the High Arctic again. That expedition wintered on Melville Island at Winter Harbour, far north of where any Inuit lived. There, on July 1, 1909, Bernier proclaimed sovereignty over the entire Arctic archipelago as far north as the pole, the first time Canada had claimed ownership based on the sector principle, which divided the far north into pie-shaped slices with the pole at the centre.

Bernier was ordered north on yet another High Arctic Expedition in 1910, this time to patrol the waters surrounding the Arctic Islands, attempt the Northwest Passage, issue whaling licences to foreign whalers, and act as Justice of the Peace and protector of wildlife. But this would be a voyage very different from Bernier's two previous excursions into the High Arctic. This voyage would lead to controversy and ultimately to Bernier's resignation from government service.

As early as 1909, he had written privately to the Department of the Interior, filing several applications for land in the area of Pond's Inlet (as the body of water separating Baffin and Bylot islands was called) and stating, "I beg to be allowed the honour to be one of the first Canadian settlers on the Arctic Archipelago..."

On April 5, 1910, he purchased the whaling shore station at Pond's Bay and the store house and equipment at Button Point on Bylot Island from Robert Kinnes of Dundee, Scotland. Six weeks later, on May 16, the Department of the Interior granted him a tract of land nine hundred and sixty acres in area on the south side of Pond's Inlet, The government knew very well that Bernier was a civil servant who had been paid well for his services to the government on his previous expeditions, and that he was "proceeding again to the Arctic regions during the present year." Nonetheless, they granted him this huge tract of land "in recognition of the grantee's services in connection with the said Arctic expeditions." Immodestly, Bernier name his land "Berniera."

When he departed later that summer on his official voyage to the High Arctic, Bernier was, unknown to his crew members, the only private landowner in Baffin Island. The voyage of 1910-11 would be a controversial one. Bernier, it was later alleged, was trading government-owned supplies to the Inuit for his own personal benefit and profit. On his return south, he resigned from government service, purchased his own small schooner, and became a private trader.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 7, 1901 - First Inuk Baptism at Blacklead Island

KENN HARPER

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
The remains of an open-air grave on Blacklead Island. (PHOTO BY KENN HARPER)

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Reverend Edmund James Peck established the first permanent Christian mission to the Inuit of present-day Nunavut at Blacklead Island in 1894. He arrived fluent in Inuktitut, having previously spent many years on the Quebec coast of Hudson Bay.

The Inuit population at Blacklead was 171, a huge number of Inuit to find congregated at any one spot, but they were there because of the presence of a Scottish whaling station and the seasonal employment that it brought. With that also came crowded conditions in tents and wooden shacks, exploitation at the hands of some unscrupulous whalers, and disease, including tuberculosis - or "consumption" as it was known at the time.

Peck set to work to bring Christianity to the Inuit of Cumberland Sound. He translated portions of the scriptures, established a school and even a small "hospital." And he looked forward to the day when he would baptize his first convert. But he took his time. He would not baptize for the sake of numbers. Those who would be baptized had to be sincere believers in the teachings Peck brought to them. The first baptism did not take place for seven years.

In April of 1901, a young woman named Atungauyaq makes her first appearance in Peck's diary. She had taken the name Annie. On April 8, Atungaujaq was sick, and Peck visited her in her home. He thought that she seemed to be wasting away from consumption. He was impressed with the young lady. She had learned a great deal about the gospel, and she listened with rapt attention as the missionary exhorted her to "trust wholly in the Saviour."

Almost a month later, her condition having deteriorated, she told Peck that she wished to be baptized. Peck wrote, "I see no reason why the rite should be withheld from her. We claim this poor creature for Christ. I have been and am much helped in prayer concerning her." That same day she had a violent attack of bleeding from the lungs. Peck succeeded in checking it, and later he baptized her privately. He noted that "she was pleased; but said that if spared she would like to be received publicly." There were other female candidates for baptism and he spoke with them about her, and was satisfied to learn that one of the women visited her regularly and prayed with her.

He decided to publicly baptize her. Atungaujaq was too weak to be taken to the tiny church that Peck had constructed on the island, so the service was conducted outside, behind a windbreak of snow, at the entrance to her dwelling. On May 7th Peck's congregation gathered there with Annie Atungaujaq and "dedicated her again to God." He described her as "the first fruits of what we trust will be a mighty harvest of souls."

Spring came slowly to the wind-swept island. On June 12th Peck wrote in his journal, "Four beautiful little flowers seen today." The following day, Annie Atungaujaq finally succumbed to her illness. Peck noted, "Annie A. fell asleep today." The missionary had visited her regularly until the end. "I was with her when she passed away," he wrote. "She was quite conscious, but a calm and peaceful look spread over her face as the Spirit returned to Him who gave it."

Peck wanted to provide a proper burial. The books he had provided the Inuit contained the Burial Service in Inuktitut, and his congregation followed as he read from it in the church. Then they went to the gravesite that her relatives had selected. "I do not mean that a grave was dug," he wrote. "This we cannot do. There is no soil here deep enough... Our burial places must therefore be on the rocks."

Peck's fellow missionary, Julian Bilby, had constructed a coffin, stones were placed on top of it, and Peck concluded the service with "a few solemn words to those assembled." He noted the difference between this Christian burial and "the awful way in which some of the dead have been buried - no covering but the snow and the carcass torn to pieces by the dogs as soon as they could reach it."

Peck and Bilby had not yet succeeded in bringing the whole population of Blacklead to Christianity, however. Three days later he noted in his journal, "An old woman died today, the heathen carrying on their incantations till the last. So the battle rages between the powers of light and darkness."

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.

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