In Those Days: Inuit and Explorers

Kenn Harper is a historian, writer, and linguist, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and a former member of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He is the author of the In Those Days series, Minik: The New York Eskimo, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice, and the Canadian Arctic. “Taissumani,” his column on Arctic history, appears in Nunatsiaq News.

Table of Contents


Introduction


A Note on Word Choice


Preface


Collected Writings


Abduction: The “Countrie People” of Baffin Island Meet Martin Frobisher


“They Spake, But We Understood Them Not”: Christopher Hall’s Inuktitut Word List


“Take Heed of the Savage People”: Hudson’s Mutineers Meet the Inuit


Slaughter at Bloody Fall


The Return of The Dog-Children: Parry and Lyon at Iglulik


Parry’s Medallions


“A Greater Instance of Courage has not been Recorded”: Tatannuaq, the Peacemaker


First Encounter: The Nattilingmiut Meet John Ross


A Wooden Leg for Tulluahiu


“The Deep Footprints of Tired Men”: John Franklin’s Lost Expedition


“A Nice Steady Lad and a Favourite with his Tribe”: Albert One-Eye


Charles Dickens, John Rae, and the “Good Interpreter, William Ouligbuck”


Inuit Evidence in a British Court


A Fortuitous Meeting: Tookoolito and Ipiirvik, and Charles Francis Hall


Inuit Adrift: 1,500 Miles on an Ice Floe


An Inuit Plan to Find the North Pole


Robert Peary, the Inughuit, and the Iron Mountain


Minik, the New York Eskimo: A Victim of Peary’s Neglect


I Will Find a Way or Fake One: Robert Peary Claims the North Pole


Ittukusuk, Aapilak , and Daagtikoorsuaq: Travels with Dr. Cook


“The Trail That Is Always New”: Matthew Henson and his Inuit Family


Inughuit and the Myth of Crocker Land


Getting Away with Murder


Sovereignty 101: Captain Joseph-Elzéar Bernier and the Inuit 


“We’re Going to Keep On Living”: Ruth Makpii Ipalook on Stefansson’s Karluk Expedition 


“I Thank God for Living”: Ada Blackjack and Stefansson’s Wrangel Island Fiasco


Joe Panipakuttuk on the St. Roch: Through the Northwest Passage