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Nuvujen
also known to Qallunaat as New Boyen, Cape Truelove and Nuvuyen
Nuvujen is an island along the southwest shore of Cumberland Sound named for its prominent headland that can be seen from far away. Before the whalers came, it was traditionally a winter camp. At break-up, it was especially known for its abundance of nattiaviniit (silver jar seals).
In 1857, Scottish whaling crews commanded by William Penny built the first two Qallunaaq-style houses in Cumberland Sound. One was at Kekerten; the other was at Nuvujen. The Nuvujen house was at least partly prefabricated in Scotland. It took Penny's men three long days to put it together. The missionary Matthäus Warmow remarked that the house was better suited for the tropics than for the Arctic, but Penny planned to insulate it with animal skins on the inside and snow on the outside. He also had his men move stoves and seven tons of coal onto the island; they carried the coal over the rocks in sacks on their shoulders. With these two stations, Penny was able to successfully catch whales migrating up both shores of the Sound.
Penny left only two of his men at Nuvujen that first winter. One of them, John Falconer, must have failed to eat country food because he perished of scurvy. Penny presumably intended for Falconer and his companion to hire Inuit to hunt whales for them. There were families camped there when Penny arrived, and more would soon come. Over 100 Inuit may have lived permanently on the island in this period. Two other whaling companies, at least one of them American, quickly built their own bases on Nuvujen.
The Nuvujen houses must have been important into the early 1860s since logbooks of several ships report that captains, officers and Inuit often travelled there. They went just to visit, to obtain news of other ships and whales and to trade for supplies in one case for 60 dogs.
The Qallunaat soon abandoned Nuvujen, however. The island did not offer good anchorage for large ships, and whales may have become less numerous due to overhunting. The largest house burned down. In April 1868, a whaler passed by Nuvujen on a dog sled trip and observed that the Scottish station was now in ruins. The late Inuk whaler Markosie Pitseolak said that Americans gave his father one of their houses at Nuvujen. His family lived in it until the Scottish traded him a boat and some other goods for the house, which they dismantled and took to Umanaqjuaq (Blacklead Island).
Inuit continued to camp on Nuvujen. They came in the spring for young seals, stopped in on their way to and from caribou hunting and used it as a base for sealing in the winter. In 1883, the anthropologist Franz Boas recorded 26 Inuit living on the island. In May 1910, there were 12 Inuit camped there, and they had plenty of seal to eat.
A decade later, after the whaling ships had stopped coming, the Inuit whaler Kaka relocated to Nuvujen with his wife, two sons and another family. In 1927, Kaka fought with his son, Petaosie, who moved away. Soon afterwards, Kaka shot both his wife and himself. The camp was abandoned in 1927, but it is still occasionally used as a great anchoring spot for Pangnirtung boaters during stormy weather.
This article was co-written by Karen Routledge and Andrew Dialla
NOTE : Milwood journal, 1867-1868.