Four
Leonie Sammurtok, 1902–97 Chesterfield Inlet
My husband always said it was really dangerous to go into Ukkusiksalik.
Before I was born, my parents used to live up in Ukkusiksalik. My mother — my real mother — and my father lived in that area before I was born. My mother’s name was Betty Tautu and my father’s name was Johnny Tamanguluk. They used to live around the Repulse Bay area before I was born, and they hunted in the Ukkusiksalik area for muskox. I don’t know how long they lived and hunted in Ukkusiksalik.
When I was born, they lived in Aivilik, in Maluksitaq, on the other side of Repulse Bay. I don’t know what year I was born — my parents were not worried about the year. There were no trading posts in Repulse Bay at the time [so, it was before 1921].
I don’t remember moving from Aivilik to Qatiktalik [Cape Fullerton]. I started to remember things after I got to Qatiktalik. I remember there were two policemen in Qatiktalik. Inuit called them Kayukuluk [“dear brown-haired one”] and the other one Keekiaksik [“big nail” to imply that he was a big boss]. That’s what they were called in Inuktitut. I remember my father going on patrol with Keekiaksik to Repulse Bay and back. I remember because I was tired of my father being gone for so long.
My father never told any stories about Ukkusiksalik. I don’t know if the RCMP established a post in Ukkusiksalik when I was young. Maybe. I don’t remember when ships were travelling with sails only. I heard about the whalers back then, around Qatiktalik and up the coast to Repulse Bay, but I don’t remember whether I saw them.
The buildings were built in Ukkusiksalik when I was an adult, after I had my first child, Nutaratnaq, when my husband was piloting a ship for the Hudson’s Bay Company. My husband, Sammurtok, and my brother Kusugak, and two other men, Kadjuk and Iqungajuq, were working on that ship, when they started building the post in Ukkusiksalik. Iqungajuq has a [adopted] daughter in Coral Harbour [Tuinnaq Kanayuk Bruce], but she is actually the daughter of the Bay manager at Ukkusiksalik.
The Nascopie used to come in to Chesterfield Inlet to bring supplies for communities like Repulse Bay and Coral Harbour. Then a smaller ship would take the supplies to Repulse Bay and Baker Lake. The smaller ship would stay in Baker Lake. It would just get frozen in, at Baker Lake. These three men were working, bringing supplies from here on that smaller ship.
There was one winter that Iqungajuq was the manager for the year. And the following year a white man came in who managed the store with him. I think for one year the Inuit manager was alone there and then the second year the qablunaaq came. He stayed working for the Bay even after qablunaat came. The manager would leave and somebody else would come in to replace him but Iqungajuq was always there. He stayed on even after they left. He had a house there. If he needed supplies for his post, Iqungajuq had a smaller boat, not as big as a Peterhead,* that he would use to get supplies from either Repulse Bay or Chesterfield to trade at his post.
My husband said there was quite a strong current in the entrance and it was really hard to navigate that current, it’s so powerful. My husband said it was way too far into the bay, where they established the post. They put the post in so far inland so that people could get to them easier, when they were hunting or had traps inland. The Hudson’s Bay Company had competition back then. They were trying to be accessible to everybody. It was easier for them to trade from here than anywhere else. They wouldn’t be so far from one group of people. The main competition was called Ningikliit [Revillon Frères, a French trading company in direct competition with the HBC, eventually absorbed into the HBC in 1927].
Isumatakuluk was a white man; he worked for the competition to the Hudson’s Bay. Isumatakuluk went up to Repulse Bay when my second son was born, when he was still an infant. He went to work up in Repulse Bay for the other store. The manager from the other store went to Baker Lake. Eventually they folded, and then everybody left from that company.
I heard that people would hunt seal through the ice at Ukkusiksalik. Whenever they came from inland to the coast, they would be hunting for seal anywhere there’s ice along the coast.
My husband always said it was really dangerous to go into Ukkusiksalik. One time, in the spring, when my husband was living there with his parents as a very young man, they were travelling back into Ukkusiksalik. They were trying to go in, waiting for the current to start flowing inward rather than out. It was still flowing out. They saw this big piece of ice. So they were going to wait for it to pass through. They landed their boat on the floe edge but there were two big pieces of ice pushed up by the current. They watched for this ice that was coming through the passage, and when that big piece of ice hit one of the other two pieces of ice, they fell down and the boat was wrecked. My husband broke his leg when the mast fell on him. Ovinik’s two wives were both killed in the accident and one of them had a child in her amautiq, and Puyatak, a brother. There were other people killed in that accident, too.
* The Peterhead boat, referring to a style of boat that originated in Peterhead, Scotland, became a popular vessel in the Arctic, particularly among the more affluent Inuit.