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September 30, 2005 Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
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Mikak was the most well-travelled Inuit woman of her time. Born in Labrador in about 1740, she was the daughter of an influential man, the kind of man that British explorers liked to refer to as an “Eskimo chief.” We know virtually nothing of her life until she was 25. From that point on her story is intertwined with the lives of the Moravian missionaries who were to have such an influence on the Inuit of Labrador.
In 1765, she met the missionaries Jens Haven and Christian Drachart, who were on a mission to explore the Labrador coast and make contact with the Inuit. She memorized a prayer that Drachart taught her.
Two years later, after a group of Inuit had attacked a fishing station in the Strait of Belle Isle, a detachment from Fort York at Chateau Bay retaliated. They killed the men and carried away the women and children, among them Mikak, to be imprisoned at Chateau Bay.
The second in command of the garrison there was Lieutenant Francis Lucas. Attracted by Mikak’s intelligence, he taught her English and she reciprocated by teaching him some Inuktut words. Through Lucas, she met the Governor of Newfoundland, Hugh Palliser, who sent her, her son Tootac and an older boy, Karpik, to England. Palliser’s hope was that they would learn English ways there and, on their return, influence the Inuit to trade peacefully with the English.
Mikak was a sensation in England, the talk of London society. John Russell, a well-known painter, did her portrait. Augusta, Princess of Wales, presented her a gift, a dress trimmed with gold lace, a possession that would be handed down in Mikak’s family for well over 100 years.
In England, Mikak once again met Jens Haven. She advocated strongly on his behalf, arguing that the Moravian mission should be given a grant of land in Labrador. In part because of her advocacy, the Moravian request was granted in May of 1869.
That summer Lieutenant Lucas returned Mikak and her son to Labrador. The next year, when the Moravians sent a ship to look for a suitable mission site, she once again met her friends, Haven and Drachart. She dressed up in her British finery for the meeting, wearing her golden gown and a medal presented to her by King George III. She and her new husband, Tuglavina, an influential angakkuq, guided the Moravians north to the site where they established their first Labrador mission, at Nain.
Having helped the Moravians to establish in Nain, a move that would change forever the lives of the Inuit who adhered to the mission, Mikak and her husband chose to live elsewhere. Indeed, both husband and wife were attracted to the rougher life of southern Labrador. They visited the European traders whose posts were around Chateau Bay.
Tuglavina was a middleman in the trade that developed between the more northerly Inuit and the traders who bartered guns, ammunition and liquor for whalebone and furs. Indeed, their marriage was turbulent — Tuglavina chose to demonstrate his affluence as a successful businessman by taking additional wives, one of whom was Mikak’s sister — and they eventually separated.
Mikak married again in 1783. Although instrumental in the establishment of the Moravian Church in Labrador, this intelligent, kind and generous woman remained independent and strong-willed until the end. She returned to the mission at Nain quite ill, only 10 days before her death, telling the missionaries that she had never forgotten their earlier teachings. She died there on October 1, 1795, only 55 years of age.
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.
September 23, 2005
Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Sept. 29, 1897 – The Sad Death of Prince Pomiuk
KENN HARPER
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In 1892, a group of about 60 Inuit were taken from Labrador to Chicago for exhibition there the following year at the World’s Columbian Exposition. From then until 1909, Inuit were exhibited at every major World’s Fair in the USA. Some Inuit taken in 1892 subsequently returned to Labrador; others remained in America. One of the Labrador Inuit was a boy named Pomiuk, about eight years of age.
This Inuit boy has been immortalized as Prince Pomiuk, but of course he was no prince. He was the son of Kajuatsiak, a powerful leader in the Nachvak area of northern Labrador, and his wife Aniortama. But when Kajuatsiak was killed by Kolliligak, his mother remarried and gave her three children away to be raised by others. Pomiuk and his sister Sikepa went to live with the family of Kupa, while his brother Kippinguk went to the family of Kupa’s older brother, Tuglavina.
In 1892, Kupa and his wife, Kuttukittok, their daughter Tiguja and the two adopted children, Pomiuk and Sikepa, succumbed to the entreaties of a promoter whose ship went up and down the Labrador coast that summer, and agreed to go to Chicago to be exhibited as part of the “Esquimaux Village” there.
Life in the “White City,” as the fairgrounds were known, was fun at first. Pomiuk was immensely popular and acquired his nickname, Prince Pomiuk. He was expert with the dog whip, which he used to flip coins tossed by tourists. For 50 cents, tourists could also ride a “komatik” — an Inuit sled — but there was no snow and so the sled was drawn on a narrow railway, an idea which must have amused the Inuit hunters.
Then Pomiuk endured a tragic accident. In a game of “kick” — an improvised soccer game — his leg was broken and improperly set. No longer the darling of the fairgoers, he had to crawl or be carried about and could only sit and watch as his friends continued to entertain the tourists with their whips.
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In the summer of 1895, Wilfred Grenfell, missionary doctor, found Pomiuk living as an invalid with Kupa’s family near Nachvak, “a naked boy of about eleven years, an old reindeer skin thrown over him... and his face drawn with pain and neglect.” His thigh was broken and diseased. He would surely die if untreated.
Grenfell took Pomiuk to his seasonal hospital at Indian Harbour at the mouth of Hamilton Inlet, then transferred him to Burnt Wood Cottage Hospital, farther up the inlet near Rigolet. The following May, a Moravian missionary baptized him with the Christian name, Gabriel. That fall he was transferred to Grenfell’s hospital at Battle Harbour.
Charles Martin, children’s editor of a religious newspaper, The Congregationalist, had met Pomiuk at the world’s fair, and heard about his plight. He and his readers contributed financially to the boy’s upkeep.
Pomiuk was finally fitted with crutches in the summer of 1897 while in the care of Dr. Wilway at Battle Harbour. But on Sept. 29 of that year, Pomiuk succumbed to the disease that had debilitated his young body since the infection that accompanied his broken hip. He died in the hospital that had become his home. Dr. Aspland buried him in the churchyard a few days later.
Charles Martin and his readers wished to provide a lasting memorial to the Eskimo boy who had become their friend through the pages of The Congregationalist. They continued to provide funds to Grenfell’s hospital, and arranged to have Pomiuk’s bed there named the “Gabriel Pomiuk Memorial Cot,” a lasting tribute to the sad life of “Pomiuk, a Prince of Labrador.”
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.
September 16, 2005
Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
Sept. 16, 1408 – Wedding at Hvalsey Church
KENN HARPER
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At its peak, the Norse population probably reached four or five thousand. In the “Eastern Settlement,” actually in southern Greenland near present-day Qaqortoq, there were about 190 dwellings, and in the “Western Settlement,” 500 kilometres farther north near present-day Nuuk, were another 90.
The Norse hunted too. They traveled north along the coast as far as Upernavik in search of polar bear, walrus and narwhal. They traded bear skins and ivory tusks to Europe. The narwhal tusk, in particular, was highly prized; it was thought to be the horn of the legendary unicorn, and was worth its weight in gold.
About the year 1250, the ancestors of the present-day Greenlanders entered Greenland by way of Ellesmere Island. These were Inuit of the Thule Culture. They migrated rapidly southwards along the coast. The Norse first encountered them on their hunting trips to the north. They called them “Skraellings.”
Within a hundred years of their arrival in Greenland they had reached the Western Settlement. In fact, by the mid-fourteenth century no Norse were to be found in that settlement. A relief expedition from the Eastern Settlement reported in the 1350s: “Now the Skraellings have the entire Western Settlement; though there are plenty of horses, goats, oxen and sheep, all wild, but no people, Christian or heathen.”
During the 1400s, contact between Europe and the Norse in Greenland ceased. In 1721 Hans Egede, a Norwegian missionary, arrived in Greenland in quest of the remnants of the Norse colony. He assumed that they had survived and his intention was to reconvert them to Christianity. But he found only Inuit in the country.
Egede’s son, Niels, who learned well the language of the Greenlandic Inuit, heard from a shaman about attacks on the Norse colonies by European pirates. After one attack, Niels Egede wrote:
“The surviving Norsemen loaded their vessels with what was left and set sail to the south of the country, leaving some behind, whom the Greenlanders [Inuit] promised to assist if something bad should happen. A year later, the evil pirates returned and, when the Greenlanders saw them, they took flight, taking along some of the Norse women and children, to the fjord, leaving the others in the lurch. When the Greenlanders returned in the fall... they saw to their horror that everything had been pillaged, houses and farms set ablaze and destroyed. Upon this sight, the Greenlanders took the Norse women and children with them, fleeing far into the fjord. And there they remained in peace for many years, taking the Norse women into marriage.”
These reports tell of three causes of the disappearance of the Norse from Greenland. Undoubtedly there were instances of friction between the Norse and the Inuit, and Inuit legends tell of battles between the two sides. There were also attacks by European pirates. No doubt some of the Norse left the country and returned to Europe, or tried to. Others may have tried to escape to North America, their fabled Vinland.
But other causes of their disappearance must also be accepted. Bubonic plague had ravaged Europe in the mid-1300s, ruining its economy. Demand for Greenlandic products declined. The climate had also worsened. A period of severe climate called the Little Ice Age had begun, and the land was no longer conducive to agriculture. The Norse failed to adapt their life style to the deteriorating conditions — they did not learn from their Inuit neighbours how to make their living from the sea. Those who did not leave or were not killed in battle died or intermarried with the Inuit.
The last dated reference to the Norse in Greenland is an account of a wedding at Hvalsey Church near Qaqortoq, in the Eastern Settlement. The marriage of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Torstein Olavsson took place on September 16, 1408, officiated by two priests who had read the banns on three consecutive Sundays. By this time the colony was in decline. Sporadic references to the Norse in Greenland continued to appear in Europe from time to time until eventually the colony was forgotten.
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.
September 2, 2005
Taissumani: A Day
in Arctic History
Sept. 12, 1893 - The "Snowbaby" is Born in Greenland
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On Robert Peary's first expedition to northwestern Greenland in 1891, he was accompanied by his wife, Josephine, who chronicled her own experiences of that winter in her book, "My Arctic Journal," published in 1893. One thing she did not relate was the reaction of one Inuit man on seeing her for the first time. The Inuit had long been familiar with white men - explorers and whalers - but Josephine Peary was the first white woman to ever visit the district.
Equ, a hunter, made a dogsled trip to Peary's camp to see this novelty. On his arrival, he asked to see the white woman. Peary and his wife both stepped outside. It was the first time that Equ had seen either of them and, after examining them silently for a few moments, finally asked, "Which one is the woman?"
In 1893 Josephine accompanied her husband to the High Arctic again, but this time against the advice of her doctor, for she was six months pregnant when the ship left New York in June. The party established its base at Anniversary Lodge, not far from present-day Qaanaaq.
In September, Josephine gave birth there to her first child, a daughter. This, apparently, was another novelty for the Inuit. "Day after day, a series of solemn Eskimo visitors came to pay their respects and to see for themselves the new wonder which the white man had to show them," wrote Marie in her autobiography. "Thus it was that I received the nickname which still clings to me. For with one accord the Eskimos called me 'Ah-poo Mickaninny' which translated means 'Snowbaby.'"
"Ah-poo" is of course the Inuit word "aput" and means "snow." Used as part of Marie's name, it probably referred to her light complexion, or that of her mother. "Mickaninny" is apparently a variation of "pickaninny," a pidgin word for baby, used in many parts of the world as part of a lingua franca that developed between explorers, traders and native people. It derives from the Portuguese "pequenino" meaning "little." The word was used throughout the Arctic, appearing occasionally in whalers' and explorers' journals.
And what of her middle name? Marie herself dispelled a popular misconception: "My middle name, Ahnighito, does not mean 'Snowbaby' as is so commonly believed. It is the name of the Eskimo woman who made my first suit of fur clothing." The name is properly spelled Arnakittoq.
Marie's claim to fame was her northern birth. She put this dubious distinction in perspective when she wrote, "Just why I should get all the glory for being the most northerly born white person in the world will always be an unsolved mystery to me. It certainly seems as if what admiration there is should go to my mother. It was she who unhesitatingly went to Greenland knowing that her first baby would be born away from home and friends and at the outermost limit of the world... She went where no white woman had ever been before and where many a man would have hesitated to go."
Nonetheless, news of this farthest northern white baby fascinated southerners. Manufacturers, particularly in Germany, began to make dolls of unglazed porcelain covered with small granules to give them a snowy look. Some were even clothed in imitation fur. They became immediately popular as Snow Babies and are highly collectible today.
Josephine Peary wrote two well-illustrated children's books, one of which she called "The Snow Baby." Published in 1901, when Marie was eight, it was, of course, about her daughter.
The Snow Baby and her mother returned to the United States in 1894. Marie went back to Greenland twice more as a child, and again in 1932 as one member of a party who went to Greenland to erect a memorial to Peary. She lived on her fame as the Snowbaby until her death in 1978. In addition to three children's books, she wrote her life story, a bestseller which was called, naturally, "The Snowbaby's Own Story."
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.
September 2, 2005
Taissumani: A Day
in Arctic History
Sept. 6, 1923 - An Old Arctic Trader Becomes a New Canadian
It is nothing unusual today for immigrants to Canada, who have chosen to live in the Arctic, to take out Canadian citizenship. A judge presides over a ceremony and welcomes the proud immigrants to Canada. A news photographer is usually in attendance and pictures grace the pages of northern newspapers. But in 1923, when William Duval applied for Canadian citizenship, there was no precedent and the government didn't know how to handle the request.
Duval (whom Inuit remember by his Inuktitut name, Sivutiksaq) was German-born but had emigrated to the United States as a child with his family. In 1879, at the age of 21, he joined the crew of an American whaler headed for Cumberland Sound, the main whaling ground in the Scottish and American hunt which almost exterminated the gentle giant of the Arctic seas, the bowhead whale.
For the next few years he was a restless soul, returning to the United States for a year, then to a whaling station in Hudson Strait and on to another station at Cape Haven near the mouth of Frobisher Bay. In 1887 he returned permanently to the Arctic and settled at Cumberland Sound, one of two whaling stations in Cumberland Sound.
In 1922, Duval went to the United States for medical attention. In those days, a trip out meant an absence of a year. That winter, the Canadian government contacted him in New Jersey and arranged to hire him as interpreter for a murder trial to be held the following summer in Pond Inlet. At about the same time, the trading company that had employed him for many years sold out to the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Bay agreed to hire Duval on his return.
For some reason, Duval decided, at the age of 65, that he should become a Canadian citizen. Ralph Parsons, district manager of his soon-to-be employer drafted a letter, which Duval sent to the Canadian government:
"Having resided for 36 years in Cumberland Gulf Section of Baffin Land, I am desirous of becoming a Canadian citizen. Upon making application in Montreal, I was informed that I would have to apply to the nearest Court in the vicinity of my place of residence; this, of course, is impossible, as there are no Courts with the necessary jurisdiction in Baffin Land. I was also informed that even had I filled up the necessary papers, and fulfilled all the requirements my case could not be considered in Montreal until next September."
He pointed out that he was to leave shortly for Pond Inlet, and would then be landed at Cumberland Sound. He concluded, "It will therefore be seen that to go through the ordinary routine of becoming a naturalized Canadian Citizen is impossible for a person placed in my position." He enclosed an "Application for a Decision" and sent the letter off to Ottawa.
Thomas Mulvey, Under Secretary of State, had never received such a request before and was at a loss to know how to respond. He wrote to the Deputy Minister of Justice, describing Duval's case as "a rather unusual application for naturalization." He pointed out that the relevant act was unhelpful in this case: "The Governor in Council may, of course, appoint certain authorities to receive the application for naturalization. It is not stated who they may be or where they may reside... there is no provision under which the authorities appointed with respect to applications in the North-West Territories are to deal with the application."
E. L. Newcombe, the very practical Deputy Minister of Justice, took the matter in hand, and by the end of June, shortly before the C.G.S. Arctic departed for Pond Inlet, Mulvey wrote to Duval telling him that Mr. John Davidson Craig, an officer of the Department of the Interior and commander of the expedition to Pond Inlet, had been appointed a Commissioner "to receive applications for naturalization by aliens residing in the Franklin District."
On September 6, 1923, the Arctic was off Cape Kater on the east coast of Baffin Island, southward bound after the trial at Pond Inlet. On that day, Craig accepted Duval's application. The actual citizenship certificate could only be issued in Ottawa, but Craig's recommendation of Duval was tacit approval.
The Arctic detoured into Cumberland Sound to deliver Duval home to his waiting family and to his new career as an outpost manager for the Hudson's Bay Company. The next month, Ottawa issued Certificate of Naturalization #26473 Series A, on the 4th of October. Duval would not receive it for almost a year. This German-born man, the progenitor of a large and far-flung Inuit family, was the first resident of the Northwest Territories to become a naturalized Canadian. He died in Cumberland Sound in 1931.
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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