Policemen and Priests
Explorers, whalers, and traders were not the only qablunaat to visit the Ukkusiksalingmiut. The first police patrol to Wager Inlet occurred in the summer of 1904, by boat from the newly established Royal North West Mounted Police post at Cape Fullerton. The police were guided by Inuit special constable Scottie on this trip, the first of many to check on the Ukkusiksalingmiut and the condition of local game. About this time, the government decided to restrict the hunting of muskoxen, so the police advised Inuit that they were not to shoot muskoxen except in circumstances of dire hunger. Inuit, on the other hand, wanted to trade the muskox skins to the whalers. And some of the whalers, including George Comer, encouraged the hunt notwithstanding the anti-hunting regulation.
Similar patrols became a part of the routine for the Mounties stationed at Cape Fullerton. One such patrol, by Sergeant D. McArthur, set out from Cape Fullerton on December 4, 1907. As McArthur reported later, “from information received from Natives around Fullerton that some of the Ivilicks natives [Aivilingmiut] were sent muskox hunting in the vicinity of Wager bay or inlet I thought it advisable to make a patrol and investigate.”[1] On arrival at Wager he found no one, so continued on toward Repulse Bay. “I found on arriving there that three men and their families intended to go on a muskox hunt. I gave them all to understand that they must not kill muskox unless they were starving, and in that case they had to hand over the skins to the Government (or police). They said they would not go and kill muskox as they did not want to get into trouble.”
McArthur then pushed his dogs on to the Frozen Strait, where he found George Cleveland in the whaler Ernest William, who “informed me that he had orders from his firm in Dundee not to take any muskox skins under any circumstances, and not to allow any of his natives to kill any.
“Mr. Cleveland informs me that the natives told him that Capt. Comer told some of the Ivilicks [Aivilingmiut] to go muskox hunting last fall when Capt. Comer was in Repulse bay with the schooner A.T. Gifford. He also informed me that two natives by the names of By & By and Cock-Eyed Jack were at present at the Wager killing muskox [for Comer].” With that, McArthur headed back to Wager and on January 10 found the two hunters, whom he instructed to stop. By & By explained that Captain Comer had indeed sent them, and that he “thought because a white man told him to go it must be all right.” The skins of nine muskoxen were turned over to the police. The patrol completed its journey, arriving back in Fullerton on January 22, 1908, after an absence of fifty days.
Two years later, the regulations had changed. Inuit were now permitted to hunt muskox for skins during the winter season, until March 20. Corporal M. Joyce reported on his patrol from Fullerton to Wager Inlet in February and March of 1910 to ensure that the cessation date was respected, but he discovered that only one muskox had been killed all winter. Apparently, the Ukkusiksalingmiut felt the muskox population had been depleted because there were so many wolves in the region.[2]
In 1910 the police chartered the schooner Jeanie, under Captain Robert Bartlett, to deliver supplies needed at Cape Fullerton and to deliver mater-ial needed to establish small outposts along the west coast of Hudson Bay, including the most northerly at Wager Inlet, part of a plan to facilitate regular winter patrols of the Ukkusiksalik area. The Jeanie sailed into Wager Inlet on September 7 and anchored in a bay along the south shore of the inlet some fifty kilometres from the mouth. As Constable J.G. Jones reported, “This harbour is on the direct route taken by the dog teams in winter to Repulse bay.”[3] The men began to build the new station, a small wooden building. On the ninth, a severe gale blew the schooner onto the shore. The ship was wrecked and the men stranded. They eventually made their way back to the Fullerton post in a whale boat. The Jeanie never left, and nearly a hundred years later, older Inuit spoke of seeing remnants of its hull when they were younger.
Guy Amarok of Chesterfield Inlet recalled at least part of the story. “One story I heard, from before I was born, there was a wooden ship with sails that came in, and it was shipwrecked. The place where it was wrecked, there used to be a little shack that was probably used by the whalers. That’s where that wreck happened. After that ship got wrecked, people used the ship for firewood.”
A police report dated January 31, 1911, indicates that the total population of Aivilingmiut then was fifty-five men, sixty-five women, forty-five boys, and thirty-one girls. There is, of course, no way to assess the completeness of their census taking.
The RCMP never established a permanently manned post in Ukkusiksalik. “There was no RCMP there,” confirmed Guy Amarok. “The only time that they ever came was if somebody did something wrong. That’s when they would come up. But there was no post, no permanent RCMP, there. They just went in for patrols, or to work on a case.” One of those occasions was the death of Amarok’s grandfather, Siksaaq, in the mid-1930s.*
“The RCMP came by dog team in winter,” recalled Tuinnaq Kanayuk Bruce from her childhood at the Tasiujaq post. “I am not sure for what reason they came, but I think they were investigating the deaths of two men, Siksaaq and Sutuqsi.” Like Siksaaq, Sutuqsi had disappeared while out hunting and was found some time later, lying on the ground.
The first missionaries arrived in Ukkusiksalik in 1915, but in the years that followed, like the RCMP, the Roman Catholic missionaries passed through with some regularity. Mary Nuvak of Chesterfield Inlet remembered both. “There were police patrols going up there. They went up by boat and they went up by dog team. They would go up to Repulse Bay, but I don’t know if they went in to Ukkusiksalik on a lot of those trips. I remember the first bishop for this diocese; he was here [in Chesterfield Inlet] and there were other priests here, and they travelled up to Ukkusiksalik, to conduct baptisms, stuff like that. The priests travelled a lot up to Ukkusiksalik.”
As a young man, Octave Sivaniqtoq actually worked for the RCMP, although not in Ukkusiksalik. “When I was in my late twenties, I was working for the RCMP, stationed out of Chesterfield Inlet. Then I was told that my wages were too small and they didn’t have enough money to give me at that time. So what they did was they asked the headquarters in Winnipeg, or some place, if they had heard about this building that had belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company. They asked the Hudson’s Bay Company if I could have that building, and they said yes. So I was told to get that building. When I was going to get it, Father Didier found out and he told me that I was not to use that building, that he was going to take it himself. I gave this building to the priest. We took it apart and even helped him bring it down to Nuvuk&it.”
From that time on, through the 1940s and 1950s, the priest from Repulse Bay made occasional trips down to Nuvuk&it in order to visit the people there, using the small building that remains today. Elizabeth Aglukka, who spent the winters there from 1951 onward, remembers his annual visit. He stayed approximately two weeks. “They used to come by dog team. When the priest came, we would have services, and he would teach us when he was there.” Elizabeth Aglukka was baptized in that little mission building.
During Theresie Tungilik’s early childhood in Ukkusiksalik in the 1950s, the priests’ visits were a highlight. “I remember Father Didier, who was the one who arranged for my parents to be married to each other. He would come in by his own dog team. He had his own team of husky dogs. The priests knew how to provide for themselves. They were well taught and they knew how to make their own iglu, hunt their own food. They didn’t need a guide. He would travel and come and visit us, and I remember rejoicing then because he would bring me some candy. And butter. Those two things I remember the most. I remember one time, one of the priests brought me a windup toy mouse and we had it running around on the floor in the iglu.”
Today, although the need for visits to the outpost mission has vanished, a small cross still hangs just inside the door of the building at Nuvuk&it — a reminder of its history.
* For more details of this mystery, see the accounts of Francis Kaput (page 57) and Guy Amarok (page 85).