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W. Gillies Ross
The first voyages to Hudson Bay took place in 1860. I came across one reference to a voyage into Hudson Strait in 1857, but I don’t know anything about it. Exploitation began in this territory in 1860. It had already been attempted farther south by the Hudson Bay Company, but not with their ships wintering. They made oneseason voyages up from Churchill and back. That didn’t work out very well, so the American whalers wintered there.
The Americans set up certain facilities ashore. When a ship was frozen in, they had to have a storehouse ashore to store extra food in case there was a disaster on the ship. They stored whale products there. Most of the ships would set up a few buildings, storehouses, on shore.
This is the era of George Comer, the most famous of all the Hudson Bay whal ing masters. He put his boat in at Cape Fullerton, in Fullerton Harbour, and then whale boats would cruise all the way up to Repulse Bay and back, looking for whales. They had special covers over the whale boats so that they could sleep inside the boats. They would haul them up on the ice and sleep inside. They would also cook inside them. They were like mobile homes.
Their whaling area was rather limited. There were only about 200 American and Scottish voyages into Hudson Bay. Fewer than 800 whales were killed. It is a small chapter in the story of whaling but it was very important for all these Inuit groups there. It was like a magnet drawing people to Repulse Bay, or Marble Island, or wherever the whaling happened to be taking place. The important thing was not simply that they were centralized, but that the Inuit were having day-to-day, face-to-face contact with white people and their material goods. The goods were flowing into Inuit society. These groups, Iglulingmiut, Netsilingmiut, Qairnirmiut, Aivilingmiut, they were not too friendly to one another before the whalers came, but they realized they could achieve something by cooperating in mixing genially, so they did. In this way, some of the barriers between Inuit groups were broken down or dissolved. People from the Caribou Inuit would work for a whaling ship at Repulse Bay, right up to Foxe Basin, with Iglulingmiut.
There was a completely different group, the Sallirmiut, who were living on Southampton Island. In 1902, all but four of them were killed by a disease introduced by the Scottish whaling ship, the Active.
The Americans believed they had the right to enter Hudson Bay. The British government said it was a closed sea. “It’s part of our territorial waters. The Americans should not go in there.” But the Americans still kept on coming in. In those days there was a 3mile territorial limit off coasts. But that was of no importance because the whalers had to do something ashore. They had to go ashore to hunt musk oxen and caribou, build their storehouses and contact Inuit. They were on the land that was under the aegis of the Hudson Bay Company.
In the late 1800s, 1892 I think it was, the Hudson Bay Company chartered a whaler and sent it from London into Roes Welcome Sound to compete with the American whalers. They didn’t get along very well with the Americans but there was no hostility.
Compared to other whaling episodes, the Hudson Bay whaling period was not very important. At the most, explains Gillies Ross, approximately 800 whales were slaughtered there from 1860 to 1915 for a total of about 200 voyages. But it has been a very significant encounter for Inuit who were living close to this last arctic whaling ground, as whalers at that time relied mostly on Inuit for their operations.
Fred Calabretta
The opening of Hudson Bay to whaling in 1860 was a major event. Although there were two New Bedford ships, the captains were both New London whalers. One of them was Christopher Chapel, who had been on the McLellan (a continuation of the link to the McLellan). From 1860 until the end of the whaling era in New London, in the early 1890s, Eastern Arctic whaling accounted for half of the voyages and income. It helped to keep whaling alive locally.
Captain George Comer was born in 1858 in Quebec. Very little is known of his early years. Apparently his father was a sailor who disappeared at sea shortly after George was born. His mother was originally from England, and for reasons we don’t understand she ended up in the States. She evidently had very difficult times.
George Comer then grew up on a farm, doing farm work until he turned 17, in April of 1875. At that time, for reasons that are not clear, he left the farm, walked to New London and shipped out on an arctic whaler. This was the beginning of his whaling career and his career as a sailor, and was also his introduction to the Arctic.
Comer got his opportunity to sail as captain for the first time in 1895, on the Era, the ship on which he had so much experience. He went to Hudson Bay, and there he specialized. Voyage after voyage, he returned to Hudson Bay.
He gathered plants in Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait in the early 1890s. He began to focus on what eventually became his life’s work, which was the study and documentation of the Inuit. He started informally by collecting a few things and trading for cultural objects. 1897 was a turning point in Comer’s life. In that year, a man named Franz Boas, who was the founding father of North American anthropology, a huge figure in that field, contacted Captain Spicer, looking for information about the Inuit of the Eastern Arctic. Captain Spicer told Boas he was retired and referred him to Captain Comer.
Boas said, “Take photographs. Make sound recordings. Take plaster life masks of Inuit faces.” In this way, the documentation became comprehensive. Comer kept detailed written notes of Inuit traditions. He collected stories, oral history, information about the Franklin Expedition, drawings, maps, anything it was possible to collect. Most of what he collected went to the American Museum of Natural History. By about 1907 or 1908, they had the largest arctic collection in the world, most of it acquired by Comer and by Robert Peary. This established Comer as an anthropologist. He continued to make profitable voyages as a whaler, but he added this second career.
Dorothy H. Eber
There was a wonderful person, Leah Arnaujaq. of Repulse Bay - descendants still live there- who was on the whaling ships in her youth. She used to talk a lot about the American Captain George Comer, although she was more acquainted with the Murray brothers – the whaling captains Alexander and John. Apparently she was a daughter of Alexander Murray, but she told me she had closer contact with “Cross-eyes” - John Murray who had a cast to his eye. Comer’s Inuit name was angakkuq , shaman, because he astonished everyone with his photographs which he took on board his vessel (Comer’s photographs are a remarkable documentation of Inuit life of the time.) and she told me, “Oh, Comer, the angakkuq! He could make these photographs appear just out of a piece of paper! He was a very good man to the Inuit”. These different captains, Comer and John and Alexander Murray, each had their own people when the ships were up there, and while the Inuit were friendly with each other, because most of them were related, they didn’t get together much while whaling was going on. ‘The captains were always a little afraid that the other captains might take some of their men. Because of the competition they weren’t enemies, but they weren’t too friendly either.’
In this video clip, Fred Calabretta introduces the most famous American whaler in Hudson Bay, Captain George Comer. Comer gained such a notoriarity because of his long experience as a whaler in the Hudson Bay, but also because he worked closely with the anthropologist Franz Boas of the New York Museum of Natural History in collecting Inuit artefacts and oral history. Dorothy Eber had the opportunity to meet Hudson Bay elders who had known Comer. Inuit called him Angakkuq, the shaman, because he took pictures and could make people appear on paper.
The Last Days of the Whaling Industry
A Shamanistic Spell
Q. What is your name in English and Inuktitut?
John: I am called John these days, but I am actually Harry Junior. If you use John Towtongie everybody will know who that is.
Q. Did the Baffin and Keewatin Inuit got along with each other?
John:
Yes, when ever they got together they would become friends and become related to each other. However, there was a time when the shaman of the original residents of Salliq and the shaman of the people of Baffin became angry at each other. The people from Baffin and the people from Salliq became enemies. That is why almost all of the residents of Salliq were killed by the Baffin shaman Pitseolak. The shaman from Baffin, Pitseolak and the shaman from Salliq, Avaralaak, started fighting with each other and the people of Salliq started having visions of whales and all died.
They lived in a part of Salliq called Qilautituu. There was a large settlement there. The original people of Salliq, along with the people from Nauyaat and Baffin lived together at Salliq.
A man by the name of Angutimmarik had adopted one of the children of Salliq, a baby girl, and she was one of the survivors, Naniqtaq, Leesee Ittinuar is named after her. She was one of the original people of Salliq. There was also a boy by the name of Qingaq who had been adopted by someone from around here. I only heard about him. They were the only people left from the original people of Salliq. Naniqtaq and Qingaq. I suspect there may have been other survivors but those two are the only ones I know about.
The only ones I know about are the Sallirngmiut who were wiped out by someone from the Baffin through shamanism.
When the whalers first came to Nauyaat, the Inuit were very scared of them. When the big ship anchored off shore and the little boat was coming towards shore, all the people hid out on the land leaving their tents. Because they didn't know what these things were that were coming towards them. They seemed to have wings as they came towards them. (The oars moving look like duck wings on water! Andrew Dialla's note). The whalers came ashore and went to the seal skin tents and looked at their things, and laid some things down when they were interested in something, and picked up some of the Inuit's things, intending to trade. But the Inuit had no idea of what the things the white people had were, and how to use them.
From an interview with John Towtongie, January 2010 in Rankin Inlet
Memories from the Whaling Days
My name is Okpik Patterk, Bernadette Patterk. Originally from Salliq, I grew up there. But I was betrothed to a man from Ukkusiksalik and we lived there for about three years. When grandma was dying and wanted to see me, we moved to Salliq, and then we moved to Igluligaarjuk. I did not return to Ukkusiksalik because my in laws moved away from there too. My mother was Qunguliq, Mary, my father was John Ell, Aullannaaq. My grandmother was Shoofly, Nivittannaaq and my grandfather was Angutimmarik, I think his Qallunaaq name was Tommy. Scotch Tom I think he was called, because he had learned English and worked for some Qallunaat. My Grandmother could also speak in English. But myself, not at all. They both learned English from the whalers. Before I was born, my grandmother worked as a dishwasher for the whalers. In those days Inuit were fed on the ships for working for the whalers. My grandfather worked for the whalers too apparently because his old boss came to Salliq once. I am not sure what type of work he did.
The whalers survived over-wintering by bringing lots of supplies with them, and also because of the Inuit hunted for them.
They would hold square dances during the long winter on the ship because there were no buildings on the land then. Today, Inuit have a way of dancing that they learned from the whalers.
My grandmother worked for Captain Comer. I don't really know stories about Captain Comer but I heard that Pameolik used to tell a story about Captain Comer where he was offered a promotion to become a big boss, but he was hesitant. When asked why he was hesitant, he replied, `I want to go back to the land of the Inuit`. So his boat was totally outfitted and he was on his way back here but the boat sank and he never made it here. So he did try to come back here.
Captain Comer's Inuk name was Angakkuq, I don't know why.
Before we moved to Salliq, the original residents had died out from a sickness.
Angutimmarik took one of the children into his arms and adopted her from there. She grew up to adulthood and had children and a husband. Well, after she grew up, when she got a husband, she had children. Naniqtaq was a little girl when she was adopted. I saw her once, when we went to Igluligaarjuk to go shopping. Saimanaq was Naniqtaq's daughter, and my mother and her were sisters. She was my Arngnaqatiksaapik, my precious step cousin. Naniqtaq was my father's precious step sister.
From an interview with Bernadette Okpik Patterk, January 2010 in Rankin Inlet
An Intense Sharing of Culture in the Hudson Bay
The first American whaling voyage to Hudson Bay took place in 1860. The whaling area here was rather limited; there were only about 200 American and Scottish voyages into the Hudson Bay, and fewer than 800 whales were killed. It seems like a small chapter in the story of whaling, but it was very important for all the Inuit groups there. The ships were like magnets, drawing people to Repulse Bay or Marble Island or wherever the whaling happened to be taking place.
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The American whaler Era in winter quarters, Cape Fullerton, Hudson Bay.
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Whaling boats towing the schooner A.T. Gifford, Hudson Bay, Nunavut
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Whaling schooner A.T. GIFFORD in winter quarters, west coast Hudson Bay, 1907-1912
The important thing was not simply that the Inuit were increasingly centralized around the whaling stations, but that the Inuit were having daily face-to-face contact with white people and their material goods. These goods were flowing into Inuit society. The Inuit groups, the Iglulingmiut, Netsilingmiut, Qainimiut, Aivilingmiut, were not particularly friendly to one another before the whalers came, but now they realized they could achieve something by cooperating, in mixing harmoniously, so they did. In this way, some of the barriers between Inuit groups were broken down or dissolved. In fact, some Caribou Inuit went right up to Foxe Basin and worked together with some Iglulingmiut for a whaling ship at Repulse Bay.
Another illustration of the impact of these meetings involved a different group, the Sallirmiut, who were living on Southampton Island. In 1902, all but four members of the group were killed by a disease introduced by the Scottish whaling ship, the Active. Fifty-eight died, just from that one pathogen. The disease has never been identified, although some people said it was venereal disease, others said typhus, or typhoid. To me, it seems like gastroenteritis. There was an entry in the Active log book that one man died from a gastric illness of some sort; the word gastric appeared in the log book entry.
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Crewmen on deck of whaling schooner ERA; tryworks in background
The whaling ship Active played a big role in shifting Inuit around from one region to another. This was a very important demographic impact of whaling. The ship would take people from Cumberland Sound and from around Big Island, and set up a station at Cape Low on Southampton Island. People would work at the whaling there, and at the end of the season they would be brought back home to Big Island.
This is the era of George Comer, the most famous of all the Hudson Bay whalemasters. He put his ship in at Cape Fullerton, in Fullerton Harbour, and then his whale boats would cruise all the way up to Repulse Bay and back looking for whales. They had special covers over the whale boats so that the men could sleep and cook inside them; they were like mobile homes. They would haul them up on the ice and camp in them. Meanwhile, back at the ship the Americans were setting up some of their facilities ashore. When a ship was frozen in, they had to have a storehouse on land to store extra food in case there was a disaster onboard. They also stored whale products in the storehouses.
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Hudson Bay
This was all part of Rupert's Land, and the Hudson's Bay Company had a monopoly over it, covering millions of square miles. The Americans believed they had the right to enter Hudson Bay, and did, although the British government said it was a closed sea, part of their territorial waters. In those days there was a three mile territorial limit off coasts, but that was of no importance because the whalers had to do some things ashore, like hunting musk oxen and caribou, building their storehouses and contacting Inuit. They were on land that was under the aegis of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Around 1892, the Hudson's Bay Company chartered a whaler from London and sent it into Roes Welcome Sound to compete with the American whalers. They didn't get along very well with the Americans, but there was no hostility. The Americans were better at dealing with the Inuit and catching the whales, and for the HBC, it was a failure. They never again tried to interfere with the Americans.
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Foxe Channel
The Hudson's Bay Company's failure might have had some connection to the type of trade goods the different parties were introducing. From their post down in Churchill, the Hudson's Bay Company had boats go into the coast every summer, into the Caribou Inuit territory, with trade goods. They had a standard gun called the Hudson's Bay gun, a flintlock musket with a plain barrel which came in three different lengths. But the Americans were introducing breachloading repeating guns with metal centrefire cartridges, like the Winchester.
There were also some British expeditions to the North to control the whaling activity. Geologist AP Low led the Neptune expedition in 1903 for the government in Ottawa, the Canadian government, but it was British and carried the Union Jack. Low's orders were to see what the whalers were doing, because reports had been appearing in the newspapers about American whalers interloping on Hudson Bay Company territory, which was by extension Canadian territory.
They wintered intentionally right beside Captain Comer's schooner, the Era. Low's expedition had a police officer, Moodie, on board and he set up a police detachment at Cape Fullerton. Moodie also forbade Captain Comer and other American whalemen to kill musk oxen. As whales were getting scarcer, whalers had begun turning to musk oxen skins, among other things. In one voyage, Comer obtained 330 musk ox skins. Moodie stopped this trade. It was the first assertion of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.
From an interview with W. Gillies Ross, December 2008
Professor emeritus of geography, Bishop's University
Whaling Competition in Hudson Bay
Captain Comer and John and Alexander Murray each had their own people when their ships were up there. While the Inuit were friendly with each other, because most of them were related, they didn't get together much during the whaling time. The captains were always a little afraid that the other captain might take some of their men. Because of the competition they weren't enemies, but they weren't too friendly either.
Harry was the great boss for the American whaling ships, but I know more about John Murray's people simply because Joe Curley and most of the people I interviewed seemed to have worked for the Scots. There was another ship, the Albert; I think Alexander Murray was the captain of that vessel. But both the Murray brothers were in and out of the bay a great deal. Their father was Alexander Murray who was on the Franklin searches, so they were really like natives of the bay.
Angutimmarik (Scotch Tom) was the Inuit boss for the Scotsman John Murray. He was the adoptive father of Joe Curley, who was a very famous personality when I was up in the area. Joe had spent his youth on the whaling vessels. He's the father of Tagak Curley and has a very large family of descendants. Joe grew up on a whaling vessel.
Joe Curley talked about Shoofly quite a bit. She was an incredible personality, and Joe Curley, who knew her when she was quite young, said she was quite a brilliant woman. There are such wonderful photographs of her, dressed up in her beaded parka. She was getting all the women in the area to make her beaded garments so that she could give them to Comer to take back to museums in the South. In return she would give them new cloth so that they could sew up the new skirts, which were just cotton cloth. It seemed in a way that the museums were getting the better part of the bargain, but people loved these cotton skirts.
From an Interview with Dorothy Harley Eber, November 2009
Dorothy Harley Eber is a Montreal writer and researcher