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Imagining History

In the book ANCIENT PEOPLE OF THE ARCTIC, chapter A People of the Imagination on page 10, Robert McGhee writes, "The Palaeo-Eskimos provide a fascinating challenge to archaeology. The well-preserved tools, weapons, and carvings that they lost or abandoned in the snow and darkness of their winter camps remain as witnesses to a distant and very distinctive way of life. Yet these remains, abundant and pristine though they may be, are all that the archaeologists have to work with. The Palaeo-Eskimos left no cultural descendents to preserve the language, social arrangements, and belief systems that make up the greatest portion of any cultural tradition. There are no written records and only the vaguest of oral traditions resulting from other peoples' contact with Palaeo-Eskimos. (p. 10)

Eskimo History
"Therkel Mathiassen, the leading archaeologist of the Fifth Thule Expedition, regarded the Thule culture people as the ancestors of the Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit. In contrast to Steensby's earlier theory, he suggested that ancestral Eskimos had been maritime hunters who had moved east from a homeland in coastal Alaska, and he dated this movement to approximately 1,000 years ago. Subsequent archaeological work has shown Mathiassen to have been essentially correct. Archaeology has also revealed a series of maritime-oriented cultures earlier than the Thule along the coasts of Alaska and eastern Siberia through which the ancestry of the Thule culture can be traced to between 2,000 3,000 years ago.
Thus, archaeology confirmed the much earlier speculations that Eskimos were relatively recent arrivals in Arctic Canada and Greenland and their ancestors had come from Alaska. Nevertheless, all of the archaeological cultures that could be placed on the direct ancestral line of the Eskimos could be identified with Steensby's Neo-Eskimo culture, in which the basic economic pattern was grounded in maritime hunting of seals and whales. No archaeological trace could be found of the older, interior-oriented Palaeo-Eskimo culture that Steensby had postulated. Most archaeologists discarded the hypothetical Palaeo-Eskimos as the unnecessary constructs of an incorrect theory... (p 23)

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An Asiatic People in America

The evidence that Therkel Mathiassen and his colleagues recovered on the Danish Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921-4 suggested that the Inuit, far from having an ancient history in the area, were descended from the whale-hunting Thule people who had expanded across Arctic Canada from Alaska within the past 1,000 years. The deeper roots of Eskimo history seemed to be found in the western Arctic, around the coasts of the Bering and Chukchi seas. (24)
Diamond Jenness, an ethnologist with the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa, received a large collection of archaeological specimens. These had been excavated or purchased by Major L.T. Burwash, a government engineer working in the Arctic, from several locations around northern Hudson Bay. Many of the specimens were identical to those from the newly defined Thule culture and were similar in form to artifacts used by the traditional Inuit - those of the past century or so who lived a 'traditional' rather than a 'westernized' life. Other parts of the collection, however, were clearly different. Other parts of the collection, however, were clearly different. Jenness described his approach to the collection:
I placed on one side all the specimens that, from our own museum collections and from the works of Boas, Mathiassen, and other, I recognized as belonging to either the Thule or the modern culture... (24)

The Inuit songs and legends use words that Inuit normally do not use anymore. For all songs and legends, staff at Inuit Heritage Centre consulted Inuit elders, not only because they should be consulted but also out of necessity.

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Walrus hunter on the ice edge of Igloolik
1822
Nunavut, Canada


Credits:
McGhee, Robert
Canadian Museum of Civilization

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There was a giant who adopted a baby Inuk. When the giant slept he would sleep for one year so before he went to sleep he told his Inuk boy that if a polar bear should come the little Inuk should wake him up. There were two big rocks that the Inuk was supposed to use to wake up the giant. When the Inuk saw a polar bear he woke up the giant so that the giant could go hunting. "No," said the giant, "That's not a polar bear, that is a fox." The giant was calling our polar bears little foxes. "Wake me up when you see a polar bear." "When you see the polar bear it will block the two big hills, Tikingujaak, over there."
The giant gave the Inuk instructions that when the polar bear came and if the giant could not wake up, then the Inuk was suppose to use the bigger rock to hit the giant on the head to wake him up. When the giant went back to sleep, the Inuk saw that the two giant hills started to be blocked by a polar bear and as instructed, he hit the giant on the head with a rock but the giant didn't wake up. The Inuk then grabbed the bigger rock to use to try to wake up the giant. The giant woke up and put the Inuk in the string hole (the skin boots had a loop which was used to tie the string around the ankle of boots) of his kamik (boot) to bring him along while he went hunting for the polar bear. Later on, the giant was still so sleepy, he gave the Inuk his cane and told him to go look for other Inuit with whom he could live. The giant pointed out to the Inuk the direction or region where the Inuit lived and told him that if he got lost, he should let the cane point in the direction of the Inuit as the cane knew. The cane had some kind of a direction indicator which when twirled would point in the direction of the Inuit. The Inuk started to look for Inuit and with the help of the cane, the Inuk did find the Inuit.

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Whale bones, used as the walls and rafters of winter houses
2005
Arctic, Canada


Credits:
Image taken from "ANCIENT PEOPLE OF THE ARCTIC", by Robert McGhee
Canadian Museum of Civilization

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A Man and a Beached Bowhead whale Story

There was a woman who had two husbands, as people use to have more than one spouse at a time. The two husbands would go hunting together umiaq or boat. One day while the two husbands were hunting the older husband went inland on an island and as soon as he got far from shore, the newer husband quickly left on the boat to go home. As he was leaving the newer husband said to the older husband, "I'll come back for you next summer." So the older husband was left on the island alone and without food. A dead bowhead whale was washed ashore on the island of the older husband. The older husband made a house out of the bones of the bowhead whale and ate the food and used its fat for heating. When the year passed and it was summer again the younger husband came back to the island expecting to find a dead person. The older husband hid as the younger husband landed onto the island. The younger husband went up on the highest point of the island to look around and as soon as he was further away from the kayak the older husband took off on the kayak and as he was leaving he also said that he'll be back in a year. He then went home. So in a year's time he went back to the island where he discovered the dead younger husband because this time no narwhal had been washed ashore. He had starved to death. So the older husband went back to his wife to live with her once again.

Story told by Martha Taliruq.

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Paleo-Eskimo tent camp
2005
High Arctic, Canada


Credits:
McGhee, Robert
Canadian Museum of Civilization

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Start of voice story telling here (1 minute)

Navaranaaq, was adopted by Inuit of a clan different to her own. Navaranaaq would say when the wind came from the South that where her people lived probably that this time the women would be all alone because the men would be out hunting. So her adoptive people went to check if in fact the women were alone. All the women were killed except for two young girls who hid themselves in animal holes in the ground, hiding behind bitch with puppies. They held onto a grown puppy to shield themselves from being discovered. The two girls hid so they were spared. The igluit use to have neighbors so there was one woman in one of the neighboring igluit and who knew that they were going to come for her so she burnt all her beddings. Someone took out the ice window and started to feel to see if he could find find a person while he was shouting down into the iglu, "Where is that one below."

End of voice story telling here