TAN’NGIT ARRIVE 1800s–1900s
Strangers Appear Inuvialuit thrive in their traditional homeland, which extends from Qikiqtaryuk (Herschel Island) in the west to beyond Ingniryuat, the Smoking Hills, in the east. Drawing on traditions, knowledge, skills and technology passed down over many generations, people harvest resources at hand for food, shelter, tools and clothing. People trade amongst themselves and with Inuit and Inupiat in neighbouring areas to obtain materials that are not available locally. From their eastern neighbours, Inuvialuit hear stories about the Krablunet, people with ‘big eyebrows’ who travel in large boats, and their neighbours to the west tell about Tan’ngit, ‘people who bathe’, who have appeared on the southern coast of Alaska. The people who inspired these rumours soon arrive in the Inuvialuit homeland: explorers, traders, missionaries, adventurers and emissaries of foreign governments. Prophecies foretell of unsettled times ahead.
“To the west, on a great sea, on a large island, the beaver then created two men […] one was the father of the Men (Inuvialuit); the other was the father of the Blowers (whales), from whom they supposed the Europeans to have been derived, because they came among them by sea.” Translation of an Inuvialuit legend (Émile Petitot, Monograph of the Esquimaux Tchiglit of the Mackenzie and of the Anderson, 1878.)
First White Man’s Ship, by Mark Emerak. (Holman Eskimo Cooperative) WHO WE ARE
and lived all over the coast, […] [in] very good locations along the Arctic coast, from Alaska to Greenland, from Kitigaaryuit to the East, and here is the story I heard. A long, long time ago, a hundred years or more ago, a huge creature, a giant lived inland somewhere […] one day […] he left his hiding place and began his travelling, taking pleasure in scaring and frightening game and people […] He saw something interesting in the sea and decided to investigate. It was a ship, a whaling ship.
Felix Nuyaviak (L) at a drum dance in Tuktoyaktuk, circa 1950. (Terrence Hunt/NWT Archives/N-1979-062-0064)
Felix Nuyaviak (1892-1981) told this story, which is part history and part prophecy, of things that were to come after Tan’ngit arrived amongst the Inuvialuit: “[…] This story is very old and I heard it when I was a small boy. I heard it from the old folk, talking about the old days when Eskimos, our ancestors, were numerous
Wading into the water he got closer, and he was so big that it was a child’s game to seize the mast and he began to heave to shift it to and fro and from the big schooner as if she was as light as a piece of cork. The sailors […] were frightened and at loss about what could they do. It seemed that fear paralyzed them […] and they couldn’t think, or find a solution to get rid of the giant […] As a last and only resource, one member of the crew, and then the others following his move, threw kegs of rum and packs of tobacco overboard. Curious, the giant let go of the mast and picked up the closed keg and emptied it, drinking all the liquor, and another one, eating the pieces of chewing tobacco, or rather swallowing it all […] liquid and solid […] The sailors, watching from the deck, not believing what they saw, kept the giant busy with more kegs of rum and more tobacco until he had no more interest in the schooner. Fully satiated, and even more sick and drunk he slipped into the water, drowning himself.
Hastily, the sailors heaved anchor and sailed off, wishing to put miles and distance between them and this cursed place. They succeeded, as from that time no whaling ships were bothered in the future […] and they kept sailing the Arctic water in search of sperm (bowhead) whales […] But if the whales were in safety, not so the Eskimo living along the coast. Every summer or fall dead whale carcasses drifted towards the shore and the Eskimo feasted on maktak and meat. The whalers, after taking baleen and heads, abandoned the rest. Somewhere around Baillie Island the people found one of these carcasses and began to cut, to carve the maktak and ate it […] although they all were aware of something being amiss, something strange in the look of this whale, and of the maktak. Around the body of the whale, tied or encrusted on was a belt […] and the maktak [was] all black in colour. According to the story this was the remains of the evil giant not in a human form but as a whale. People searching for food ate most of it and died off. Populations decreased, maybe disappeared east and west of that place […] […] From then on there was no more communication between east and west as to the existence of others, it seems that a barrier, a fence had been drawn, a kind of ice curtain of old. That was the story I heard when I was small, explaining the divisions and the dispersions of the Eskimos along the coast, and why we didn’t think of other Eskimos at that time.”
(COPE/NWT Archives/N-1992-007-166)
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