Do You See Ice?

Inuit and Americans at Home and Away

Karen Routledge

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780226580272
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Many Americans imagine the Arctic as harsh, freezing, and nearly uninhabitable. The living Arctic, however—the one experienced by native Inuit and others who work and travel there—is a diverse region shaped by much more than stereotype and mythology. Do You See Ice? presents a history of Arctic encounters from 1850 to 1920 based on Inuit and American accounts, revealing how people made sense of new or changing environments.Routledge vividly depicts the experiences of American whalers and explorers in Inuit homelands. Conversely, she relates stories of Inuit who traveled to the northeastern United States and were similarly challenged by the norms, practices, and weather they found there. Standing apart from earlier books of Arctic cultural research—which tend to focus on either Western expeditions or Inuit life— Do You See Ice? explores relationships between these two groups in a range of northern and temperate locations. Based on archival research and conversations with Inuit Elders and experts, Routledge's book is grounded by ideas of home: how Inuit and Americans often experienced each other's countries as dangerous and inhospitable, how they tried to feel at home in unfamiliar places, and why these feelings and experiences continue to resonate today. The author intends to donate all royalties from this book to the Elders' Room at the Angmarlik Center in Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

1

Americans in Cumberland Sound

July 3, 1860, was a calm day in the Arctic waters of Cumberland Sound. The American whaling bark Antelope slid slowly along, cruising for bowhead whales. The ship cut through lifting fog and passed drifting icebergs that glowed blue and white against the dark water. Hills and rocky islands faded in and out of view. On deck, the ship’s officers were attempting to deal with an insubordinate, low-ranking crewmember recorded only as Peter. Peter had been told to climb up into the riggings, probably for his regular watch, but he refused to go aloft. Instead he jumped out onto the ice beside the ship and shouted that he “would not come aboard again.” The third mate eventually clambered off the ship and dragged Peter back on board, presumably with the entire crew watching. The Antelope’s logbook offers no clues to what Peter hoped to accomplish with this brief act of defiance.1

In 1860, bleak Arctic stereotypes were gaining widespread currency. Icebergs, polar bears, and Arctic sailors adorned buttons, dishes, playing cards, tea tins, and textiles. The previous year, the press had reported evidence that the British explorer Sir John Franklin, and likely his entire crew of 128 men, had perished while seeking a northern sea route to Asia that had become known as the Northwest Passage. The mystery of Franklin’s disappearance had gripped British and North American publics for a decade. In the United States, the explorer Elisha Kent Kane had captivated a broad audience with his searches for the missing men. The press coverage of Franklin, at least in Britain, was at its most intense in 1859–60. Popular ideas of the Arctic as a harsh and desperate place were hardening.2 Peter’s decision to abandon the relative safety of an Arctic whaling ship—for a piece of ice, no less—would have struck many of his contemporaries as suicidal.

But what if Peter actually wanted to be left on the ice? The environment into which he jumped bore little resemblance to Arctic stereotypes. In early July, it was the Inuit season of upingaaq: the warmest, wettest, most verdant time of the year. In this season it was never dark, not even at midnight. Cumberland Sound could be drizzly, chilly, and damp in upingaaq, but it could also be warm and sunny. On the day Peter jumped ship, the Antelope’s logbook keeper described the weather as “pleasant.”3 In 1860, there was still pack ice moving out of the sound on its way south, but most of the area was easily navigable. Many of the rocky hillsides were carpeted in greenery and flowers. Waters and shorelines were home to whales, seals, caribou, Arctic char, clams, and a variety of migratory birds.

Even if Peter’s captain had abandoned him, he could have turned to others for assistance. Hundreds of Inuit inhabited Cumberland Sound in the mid-nineteenth century.4 Inuit families approached arriving whaling ships in boats, bringing furs and fish to trade. One captain recalled that on arrival, his “cabin was soon crowded [with Inuit visitors], and not only the cabin, but the cabin-steps, the companion-way, and the after-part of the deck.”5 There were also dozens of Qallunaat in the vicinity. Both American and Scottish whaling ships visited Cumberland Sound that spring, and several of them were in sight when Peter took to the ice. Even at the height of the search for Franklin, there were ten times as many commercial whaling ships as expedition vessels in Arctic waters.6 These ships frequently exchanged equipment, provisions, letters, and employees with each other. That winter, along with eleven other Scottish and American vessels, the Antelope’s captain would anchor next to Inuit communities and deliberately freeze his ship into the ice.7 In short, Cumberland Sound was not a deserted place.

But if Peter did want to abandon ship, he was in the minority. Most Qallunaat whalers struggled to see Cumberland Sound as anything approximating home. Many were miserable, fell ill, and perished there. I will consider why these whalers legitimately experienced Cumberland Sound as a hard place to live, how this related more to their background and circumstances than to an inherently harsh environment, and what this can tell us about how Qallunaat have related to the Arctic and to Inuit.

American whalers who kept logbooks and journals in Cumberland Sound often considered winter to be the only season worth noting. They contrasted Arctic weather with their own seasons, and the climate constantly reminded them they were not at home. Yet at least six seasons are self-evident to many Inuit, just as four seasons are perceived in most temperate regions and three in many tropical ones. Below I follow the overwintering whalers through six Cumberland Sound seasons: aujaq (summer), ukiaksaaq (early fall), ukiaq (fall), ukiuq (winter), upingaksaaq (early spring), and upingaaq (spring). These are not the only possible seasons. Seasonal distinctions are somewhat arbitrary in all societies, and some Inuit consider there to be more than six seasons or use more specific seasonal terms depending on the context of the conversation.8 The timing of the seasons also varies from year to year, as they are tied to the weather and movements of animals. Even though American whalers did not use these Inuit seasonal terms, their records show distinct events occurring as each season turned.

Aujaq (Summer)

Peter was not the first whaler to abandon ship in Cumberland Sound. Nine years previously, on September 1, 1851, the American vessel McLellan sailed into the sound. It was then aujaq, or summer, the season when the waters are freest of ice. The air was getting drier and crisper. The sun dipped below the horizon, and in August it had become dark enough for stars. Berries were ripening; the leaves of some of the plants that clung to the shorelines had begun to change color. Cumberland Sound Inuit harvested the downy seedpods of the Arctic willow in this season; when mixed with dried moss, these provided the wicks for the stone oil lamps that were the source of light in their winter houses.9 They also traveled inland to hunt caribou, primarily to get the skins necessary for winter clothing. During aujaq, the whales began to migrate out of the sound, but sightings kept whalers busy and hopeful throughout the season.

In 1851, the crew of the McLellan caught “a few whales,” but not enough to fill their ship. A local man told the crew that whales were most numerous earlier in the year, when the entrance to the sound was still too choked with ice for foreign ships to enter it. The only way to hunt these whales would be to spend the winter in the sound, in order to be there when the whales returned. No Qallunaaq had ever before attempted to overwinter in Cumberland Sound, but Arctic explorers had done it elsewhere.10 Captain William Quayle asked if twelve men—a third of the crew—would consider spending the winter, probably near the Inuit community of Qimiqsuut. This was a major settlement and gathering place: two years later, a whaling captain would report 270 Inuit there. Quayle promised to return to pick up the men, along with their anticipated mother lode of blubber and baleen, no later than July 1852. Twelve men including the first mate volunteered. Money was almost certainly a major factor in their decision. Whalers were paid on the lay system, meaning their wages were a percentage of their ship’s net profits, so there was a strong incentive to return home with a full ship. After a month in Cumberland Sound, the volunteers were apparently willing to gamble that they would neither starve nor freeze to death.11

While these men must have been among the more adventurous whalers, they were fairly representative of mid-nineteenth-century crews. Eight of the twelve were single; most were in their early twenties. Ten were described as Americans, a relatively high percentage in the cosmopolitan whaling world.12 They were all from the northeastern states. Most of the men were likely farm boys, factory hands, or unskilled laborers—apart from the first mate who came from a whaling family and had been at sea since the age of thirteen. The cook William Bandwell was the lone African American. He would have been among the lowest paid of the crew members, with the least opportunity for advancement.13

The twelve volunteers unloaded their personal belongings and ship’s supplies, went ashore in two small whaleboats, and watched the McLellan sail away. Aujaq was fading; the days were getting shorter and the nights colder. Their first act was, literally, to build a home. Greenhand volunteer George Tyson described this in the vocabulary of American resettlement: the men “pre-empted a section of land whereupon to build a hut or house.” They had taken some lumber from the ship, but it was not enough for a cabin. Instead, the men constructed a shelter out of the “stone of the country.” They packed the walls with turf, laid poles across the top, and roofed the shelter either with canvas or with sealskins sewn together. A section of the roof was made “of the entrails of the whale,” to allow light to pass through. This design seems to have owed much to Inuit qammat, which were dwellings with sod walls, framed with wood or whale bones, insulated with heather, and covered with skins that could include translucent sections of dried intestine. Inuit women presumably sewed the roof of the McLellan house; if not, it almost certainly leaked. After the snow came, the crew would bank walls six feet thick around their house.14

The Americans fared better that winter than many who followed them in the years and decades to come. Their captain had given them all the food he could spare, but it was not nearly enough to sustain twelve men for eight or nine months. Out of necessity, they traded for Inuit food and clothing, and they ate more nutritious food and lived more comfortably than on many whaling ships. They “occasionally secur[ed] a seal” for themselves, but were in large part dependent on Inuit, who shared game in exchange for Qallunaat goods. The Americans thrived on this diet; according to one of them, they “never were more healthy” and actually “increased in weight.” No one contracted scurvy or any other serious illness. When their coal ran out, Inuit helped them collect whale skeletons from previous kills. The bones were easy to chop and apparently made a good fire. According to the American explorer Charles Francis Hall, burning whalebones produced a great heat, and he speculated that “one cord of bone must be equivalent to four cords of live oak.” In 2008, Inuit Elder Pauloosie Veevee said he had heard that there is lots of oil inside bowhead ribs when they are fresh.15

Figure 1.1. Taken at Qimiqsuut, this photo likely shows the remains of the McLellan crew’s house. Photo by Philip Goldring, 1984.

When the bowhead whales returned in the spring, the McLellan overwintering party killed sixteen or seventeen of them. The Americans stripped off the blubber and baleen and left the rest, but Inuit ate parts of the whale and stored large quantities of meat in sealskin bags on various islands, likely for dog food. With perhaps $60,344 in oil and baleen put up—at a time when a single man could live in New York on roughly $250 a year—the Americans waited for their ship to pick them up.16

It never arrived. On its return voyage, the McLellan was smashed between ice floes “in terrible conflict” and wrecked in Davis Strait. The men waited through upingaaq and well into another aujaq. Having nearly exhausted their supplies, they struggled to find enough to eat, relying in large part on Inuit to keep them alive. They also ate whale meat from the bags that Inuit had cached. They heedlessly helped themselves to this old meat and were “very glad, indeed, to get it.”17

Finally, in September 1852, a year after the men had been left behind, the McLellan’s captain arrived in Cumberland Sound on a British whaling ship, the Truelove. He became alarmed when the Truelove’s crew spotted an American whaleboat full of Inuit, wearing American clothing and carrying rifles. But he need not have worried. Two days later they found the twelve volunteers, who were clad in Inuit clothing made of fur and skins. The men loaded themselves and their oil and bone onto the Truelove. At least from the perspective of a British whaler, “The Americans and natives seemed very loth to part, having been so long accustomed to each other’s society. . . . I believe it would have taken some of our friends very little persuasion to stay another winter.”18

What happened to the voyage’s profits? The Truelove’s crew came out well: they agreed to transport the oil in exchange for being paid out for it at the same rate as their own. It’s unclear what the McLellan volunteers received, as they were no longer official employees since their ship had been wrecked. I have found no evidence of any of them receiving a life-changing payout in 1852. The Inuit were paid only with “whale boats, belonging to the Americans, and some harpoons, lances and lines, rifles, ammunitions, etc.”19 These were items that Inuit truly wanted, but during commercial whaling low-ranking Qallunaat were not compensated fairly for their hard labor, and Inuit even less so.

Even though the Americans likely failed to receive their expected windfall, at least three of them returned to Cumberland Sound and built careers there. William Sterry was a reportedly cheerful man who would also join several more Arctic whaling voyages. He learned enough Inuktitut to get by, and at least twice left his ships voluntarily and took up residence in Inuit homes. We do not know what the Inuit families thought, but, ten years later, Sterry said he had “never enjoyed himself better—or had better health” than when he was with them. He added that he would “like a piece of raw seal meat” right now. Sidney Budington, the first mate, and George Tyson, a greenhand, both became renowned Arctic whaling captains. They went on to spend at least eleven winters each up north. We will encounter Budington and Tyson many times in these pages. Although their ties to Cumberland Sound were strong, they always remained ambiguous. Indeed, it is Budington’s dismissal of the Arctic as “unfit for a white man or any one else to live in” which opens this book.20

The voyage had a ripple effect in Qallunaat whaling communities. The following summer, the McLellan’s owners outfitted two ships and sent them north to spend the winter. They were captained by Sidney Budington and his uncle James Monroe Buddington, and both ships returned full of oil and baleen.21 British ships sailed that year as well. By the time Peter arrived eight years later, overwintering was commonplace. Most Qallunaat returned home safely, even thoug...