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May 26, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 29, 1983 — The death of Ada Blackjack

KENN HARPER

Ada Blackjack, the sole survivor of the ill-fated Wrangel Island Expedition.

Wrangel Island is situated directly north of Russia. Alaska lies between it and Canada. Perhaps no-one other than the most irresponsible of all Arctic explorers, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, would have thought that it should belong to Canada. But he did, and launched a hare-brained expedition to the island, an expedition that sent three young Americans and one Canadian to their deaths.

Stefansson himself never set foot on Wrangel Island. But in September of 1921, he sent four men there to raise the British flag and claim the island for Canada. They were accompanied by a 23-year old Inuit woman, Ada Blackjack, who had signed on as seamstress.

Born in Spruce Creek, Alaska, she had been sent to Nome to attend a Methodist school. She had married young, to an abusive husband, who abandoned her and their young son, Bennett, who suffered from tuberculosis.

Things went reasonably well on Wrangel Island for the first year. But the following summer the expected supply boat did not arrive. The next winter three of the men, Allan Crawford, Fred Maurer and Milton Galle, left for Siberia, hoping to make their way to Alaska, as Bob Bartlett had done eight years earlier on another disastrous Stefansson expedition, to seek help. They never returned. That left Ada Blackjack alone on the island with Lorne Knight, who was sick and too weak to travel. From that point on, Ada Blackjack would be responsible for his and her own survival. She taught herself to trap, to use a gun, and to hunt. But her care for Knight was to no avail. The young man died on June 22 of scurvy.

Now Ada was completely alone, helpless on an island infested with polar bears. Once, while hunting seals, she came upon a mother bear and cub. “Finally, I realized it was a polar bear,” she wrote, “and I was four hundred yards from my tent. I turned and ran just as hard as I could until I got to my tent. I was just about ready to faint when I got there, too.”

Ada had begun to keep a journal in the spring. In the lonely summer of 1923, she began to use Galle’s typewriter. Each day, before heading out in search of food, she wrote a note on the typewriter. But this was more than just a diary. It was a dated message to her would-be rescuers, should they arrive while she was off on an excursion, that she was still alive and that they should not leave the island without her. On July 23 her message was brief and stark: “I thank God for living.”

In early August she finished making a boat of driftwood and canvas, the better to be able to hunt during the remainder of the summer. At the same time she finished a pair of beaded slippers for her son, although she wondered if she would ever see him again.

On August 19, a relief vessel, the Donaldson, arrived to pick up the abandoned party. Harold Noice, in charge of the rescue, was shocked to discover that all the men had died, that only Ada survived. Ada in turn was stunned to learn that the party of three who had left for Siberia had never reached Nome.

On board the Donaldson, while bound back to Alaska, Ada Blackjack wrote out the story of her ordeal. Of Lorne Knight, she wrote, “I had hard time when he was dying. I never will forget that all my life. I was crying while he was living. I try my best to save his life but I can’t quite save him.”

Amazingly, Noice blamed Ada Blackjack for the death of Lorne Knight and for a time she was vilified in the press. But Knight’s parents saw through Noice’s malice. They became friends with Ada, and Mr. Knight issued a statement, “I still maintain that Ada Blackjack is a real heroine, and that there is nothing to justify me in the faintest belief that she did not do for Lorne all that she was able to do... I feel that I owe [this statement] to the public and to a poor Eskimo woman who is being wronged and is helpless to defend herself.”

Ada remarried and had another son, Billy Johnson, but the marriage was loveless and ended in divorce. The rest of Ada’s life was a constant battle against grief, poverty and illness, amidst humiliation at the accusations that were periodically made against her. She died at the Palmer Pioneer’s Nursing Home in Palmer, Alaska, on May 29, 1983, aged 85. She was buried in Anchorage.

A month after her death, the Alaska Legislature officially recognized Ada’s heroism with a citation which it described as “a small token of remembrance for a woman whose bravery and heroic deeds have gone unnoticed for so many years.”

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.

May 19, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 25, 1953 — The expulsion of the Inughuit

KENN HARPER

The Inughuit live in northwestern Greenland north of Melville Bay. Their traditional territory is a strip of land hemmed in between the frigid waters of the Arctic and the inland ice that covers most of Greenland, a coastal strip 600 km long. They are the northernmost human society in the world.

The Inughuit lived in isolation, from other Inuit as well as from white men, until 1818 when the explorer John Ross came upon them and made their existence known to the world. But for three-quarters of a century after that, their isolation remained almost complete. They were visited periodically by explorers and whalers until 1891, when Robert Peary arrived on the first of his many expeditions, which would end in 1909 when he claimed to reach the North Pole.

In 1909 Peary left for good. That year, Knud Rasmussen arrived with Peter Freuchen to establish the Thule Station, a combined trading post and scientific research station. This was an unusual type of colonization for it was private rather than state-supported — Denmark was not sure at the time that it owned northern Greenland.

Rasmussen’s colonization disturbed the Inughuit very little. Indeed, it probably saved them a great many hardships because he provided them with trade goods on which they had become dependent during the 18 years of Peary’s occupation of the region.

Although the Inughuit lived in many scattered camps, their main population centre was Uummannaq, a village on North Star Bay, at the base of a distinctively-shaped, almost flat-topped mountain, which became known as Thule Mountain. It was near the base of this mountain that Rasmussen built his trading post. The area was extremely productive in wildlife, a favoured place for hunting seal, walrus, birds, foxes and polar bears.

While the Inughuit continued to live their traditional life, Denmark eventually assumed sovereignty over all of Greenland.

During the Second World War, Denmark was occupied by Nazi forces while, at the same time, the Thule District became of strategic military interest. With Denmark occupied, the Danish ambassador in Washington assumed power over Greenland and entered into an agreement with the Americans in 1941 to give the United States the right to operate military and meteorological bases in Greenland. Between 1941 and 1944, the Americans built 17 bases there. One was a weather base built in the Thule District in 1943.

One might have thought that once the war was over there would be no more need for an American presence in Greenland. But the Second World War was replaced by the Cold War — a war of words. In 1951, Denmark and the United States entered into a treaty on the defence of Greenland. Unfortunately for the Inughuit, Thule played the major role in this new reality. The flat plain around the base of Thule Mountain was an ideal location for a major airfield.

The Americans could hardly wait. Even before the treaty was adopted, a massive airlift took place. Three thousand round-trip flights were augmented by a convoy of 120 ships bringing construction equipment to bulldoze America’s way into Greenland. Twelve thousand construction workers inundated the Inuit population of just over 200 people. By 1952 Thule Air Base covered 320 square kilometres of Inughuit territory, and included quarters for a permanent contingent of between five and 10 thousand men.

In April of the following year, the Americans wanted to place an anti-aircraft battery near the Uummannaq settlement. They asked the Danes to move the people.

On May 25, 1953, Danish officials told 27 Inughuit families, totalling 116 people, that they would have to leave their traditional home — immediately. Within days the families were relocated to Qaanaaq, 150 kilometres north, where a new village was established.

The quest for adequate compensation and the right to return to their rich traditional hunting grounds has continued to this day.

May 12, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 13, 1854 - Abandoning ship: The failure of Sir Edward Belcher

KENN HARPER

Edward Belcher was a rarity among explorers in the search for the missing Sir John Franklin expedition. He was born in what would eventually become Canada, whereas almost all of the others involved in the futile quest were British or American. Belcher was born in Halifax in 1799, but moved to England with his family twelve years later. A year after that, just into his teens, he joined the Royal Navy. By the time he was 19, he had made the rank of lieutenant and traveled widely.

Belcher's first major voyage was also his first trip to the Arctic. He served as assistant surveyor on the Blossom, commanded by Frederick William Beechey, on a voyage around Cape Horn and northward through the Pacific Ocean, through Bering Strait and as far into the Arctic Ocean as Point Barrow, Alaska. After the Blossom returned to England, Belcher was promoted to the rank of commander.

His subsequent career was marred by controversy. On a number of occasions his crew members laid charges against him for abusive treatment, and Belcher eventually fell from favour with the Admiralty.

He fell from favour with his wife, too. After only three years of marriage, she separated from him, claiming that he had infected her with venereal disease. But 10 years later, when Belcher was knighted, she was proud to adopt the title of Lady Belcher. His knighthood was a reward for heroic service he had performed in a maritime battle in Asia, which resulted in Great Britain acquiring Hong Kong.

In 1852 Belcher was given command of an expedition of five ships bound for the Arctic to search for the Franklin expedition, which had left England in 1845 and never returned. Belcher was ordered to search for Franklin in Wellington Channel and to take supplies to Melville Island for the relief of other search expeditions. Belcher himself commanded the HMS Assistance which, with another ship, Pioneer, sailed up Wellington Channel and wintered in Northumberland Sound, off northern Devon Island. The Resolute and Intrepid sailed to Melville Island, while the North Star remained at Beechey Island, off the southern coast of Devon Island, to be used as an expedition base.

The following spring, the Assistance and the Pioneer attempted to return to Beechey Island, but heavy ice blocked their passage and they wintered again off the Devon Island coast. This was probably Belcher's own fault. The Pioneer was under the command of a seasoned Arctic navigator, Sherard Osborn, but Belcher refused to take his advice and ended up amongst the heaviest ice.

Resolute and Intrepid also encountered impassable ice conditions attempting to return from Melville Island, and were forced to winter off the coast of Bathurst Island. With the arrival of spring, there was communication between the ships by sled, so Beechey was aware of the situation of the other crews.

On May 13, 1854, he ordered the abandonment of the Resolute, commanded by Henry Kellett, and the Intrepid, commanded by Francis Leopold McClintock. Kellett vigourously protested the order, thinking it premature. It was still early in the spring and there was a good chance, he reasoned, that the ships would be released from their icy prison come summer. But Belcher was obstinate and the officers under his command had no alternative but to follow his orders. The vessels were abandoned and their crews set off to join the North Star at Beechey Island.

In August, Belcher's ship and its companion were finally released from the ice but once again could not reach Lancaster Sound. Belcher abandoned them as well, and made for the safety of the North Star.

Back in England in the fall of 1854, Belcher was court-martialled for the abandonment of his ships. However he argued that his orders granted him complete discretion over the expedition and he was acquitted. His incompetence continued to be rewarded. In his retirement he was successively given the rank of rear-admiral, vice-admiral and finally admiral.

Edward Belcher was brave, energetic, and competent in the technical aspects of his career. But these positive qualities were overshadowed by other characteristics which made it impossible for him to get along with most of his colleagues, be they his superiors or his crew members. He was, in the words of a biographer, "irritable, quarrelsome, and hypercritical." Edward Belcher died in 1877, one of the most controversial characters ever to rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy.

May 5, 2006

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History
May 7, 1901 — The making of a missionary

KENN HARPER

In 1875 John Horden, the Bishop of Moosonee, put out a call for a young man to take up the post of missionary to the Inuit in lower Hudson Bay and James Bay. He wanted a practical man, preferably someone who had been a sailor.

Edmund James Peck took up the challenge. When the Church Missionary Society interviewed him, they asked what climate he preferred. “Cold,” was his one-word answer. He told them that he was “keenly desirous of being sent to the wildest and roughest mission-field in the world.”

The CMS had been founded in 1799 as a conservative, evangelical movement within the Church of England. Its activities centred on Africa and China, but it extended its reach to other parts of the globe including, eventually, the Arctic. The Society operated its own theological college and a pre-college preparatory institute. The focus at these training institutions was on taking poorly-educated young men with practical skills, and training them in theology, Hebrew, Latin, Greek and elementary medicine as well as practical trades like printing, tin-smithing, blacksmithing and carpentry.

Edmund Peck left his Hudson Bay mission in 1892, intent on moving farther north to minister to Inuit who had not heard the gospel. In 1894 he opened a mission on remote Blacklead Island, an isolated whaling station in Cumberland Sound.

The name of Peck is synonymous with early Arctic mission work, but if a second name were asked, it would surely be that of Reverend Greenshield. Edgar William Tyler Greenshield was born in 1877 in Newport on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England. His father was a draper who was determined that his son would receive a good education.

So young Edgar was sent to Portland House Academy, a local school designed to qualify boys for “commercial or professional life.” The curriculum was ambitious. Students got a thorough grounding in English, arithmetic, algebra, history, geography, scripture, languages, chemistry, shorthand and bookkeeping. Greenshield received an all-round education there, but he excelled only at chemistry.

In 1895, when he was 15, Greenshield left school. Probably his family could no longer afford his tuition. Putting his practical skills to use, he went to work as a cabinetmaker, working for his uncle. At about the same time, he decided that he wanted to become a missionary.

When he was only four years old, his father had taken him to hear a talk given by John Horden, the same man who had called Edmund Peck to the mission field. The Bishop of Moosonee was on a fund-raising tour in England, raising money to support his mission. After his lecture, Horden placed his hand on young Greenshield’s head and blessed him, praying that some day the boy would enter mission work. Greenshield always looked on that event as his calling to the field.

He applied to CMS for acceptance at the preparatory school, but was rebuffed because of his youth and lack of education. Determined, he went back to Portland House Academy, this time for night classes. In 1897 he reapplied to CMS and this time was accepted at the preparatory school. Two years later, he entered the theological college at Islington, a course designed to last three years.

Greenshield made it known that his heart was set on going to the Arctic, but CMS told him that there was little hope of this as the Society was not expanding its work there. Instead, he volunteered to go to Sierra Leone when his course of studies would be finished. Then, unexpectedly, Edmund Peck appealed for a young man to assist him on Blacklead Island. Greenshield still had a year to go to graduate but he spontaneously answered Peck’s call. On May 7, 1901, CMS accepted Greenshield as a missionary to the Inuit. Two months later he was heading north on the whaling vessel, Alert, bound for Blacklead.

The wheel had come full circle. A four-year-old boy had been blessed by John Horden, the bishop who had called Edmund Peck to the mission field. Twenty years later, that young man was bound for the Arctic to join Edmund Peck. The Inuit named Greenshield “ilataaqauq.” His association with Arctic missions would last for the next 12 years.

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