Mckay Jenkins - Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands

No one would claim to understand every part of these stories, or to have a ready explanation for people, events, or processes that are confusing and strange. These are stories that defy any complete understanding. To tell and to listen to them is to experience the delight and enigma of incomprehension. Mysteries are repeated, not explained.

HUGH BRODY, The Other Side of Eden

IN THE DARK, NEARLY SUNLESS DAYS OF AN ARCTIC NOVEMBER, two Catholic priests, exhausted, freezing, and nearly mad from starvation, were hauling their gear south, away from the continents northern edge. Father Jean-Baptiste Rouvire, slight and dark-eyed, and Father Guillaume LeRoux, strong chinned and defiant, were dressed unusually, given the increasingly severe weather. Under their parkas, their long black cassocks, buttoned down the front, seemed insufficient protection against weather that in winter has been described as feeling like iron on stone. Indeed, the priests seemed to be in retreat from their pioneering mission of spreading religion to a group of people named for the Coppermine River, which bisected the tribes hunting grounds. The year was 1913, exactly three years after the Copper Eskimos became some of the very last North Americans to encounter Europeans.

Living above the Arctic Circle had taken its toll on the missionaries. A diary, discovered later by police, would reveal their last written thoughts: We are at the mouth of the Coppermine. Some families have already left. Disillusioned with the Eskimos. We are threatened with starvation; also we dont know what to do. The priests were members of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a group known for some of the Catholic Churchs most remote missionary work. Oblate priests had been offering spiritual solace to the Dog Rib and Hare Skin Indians in Canadas far Northwest for years. Fathers Rouvire and LeRoux, at the ages of thirty and twenty-eight, were pushing this work to the very edge of the continent. They planned to follow the migrating Eskimos to the sea, live with them, care for them. They intended to build a church and get the Eskimos to come. They wanted to conduct baptisms, and marriages, and funerals. The fact that they spoke little of the native language did not deter them. There will be some tough nuts up there, Father Rouvire had said, but they are too good-hearted to put up much of a fight against grace.

In fact, Eskimo country did not, on its face, seem to offer promising soil in which to plant the seeds of Christianity. For one thing, the landscape itself offered few parallels to the places where the religion had been born. There were no gardens, no vineyards, no deserts with which to illustrate biblical parables. There were no sheep or shepherds. There was no daily bread. There was no easy way to describe a crucifixion, because there were no trees. There was no notion of God. Early translators of the Lords Prayer had settled on Our boat owner, who is in heaven.1