Julian William Bilby (1871–1932) - Among unknown Eskimo

In offering the present book on the Eskimo tribes of the Arctics to the reading British public, I must discharge the grateful and pleasing duty of acknowledging my indebtedness for much courtesy and documentary assistance to the Canadian Government, in the person of F. C. C. Lynch, Esq., Superintendent of the National Resources Branch of the Department of the Interior. He has been zealously instrumental in enabling me to consult sources of classic recent information of which otherwise I should not have had the confirmation and the benefit, and also has placed at my publishers disposal the section of the official map which represents the most up-to-date geographical information about Baffin Land.

There is a considerable literature about the Eskimo (as distinct from a quite formidable list of works dealing with travel and voyages in the Arctics) which should be consulted by students of ethnography.

The classical authorities in this department are Dr Franz Boas and Dr Rink, a study of whose researches should underlie all the more recent first-hand contributions to what must remain for a long time to come a new subject.

For the photographs I am greatly indebted to the Rev. A. L. Fleming, L.T.H., who spent several years among the Eskimo of South Baffin Land. His photos were taken during many intrepid journeys in those wilds, and he knew exactly the scenes it was desired to record by photography in this work. I am also indebted to Miss A. B. Teetgen for her assistance in the literary construction of the book.

Finally, I wish to record my admiration and respect for the genial and brave Eskimos of those barren lands, and for the way they face and overcome the difficulties of the Arctic wilds.

The legends to illustrations facing pages 40 and 88 have been transposed.

In this edition, this is corrected by also transposing the illustrations.

A voyage to the Arctics has always been a dangerous and exciting adventure, whether entered upon by whalers and hunters, intrepid men lured by the hardy business of the frozen North, or by the no less intrepid pioneers of exploration and of science. For the moment, we are not concerned with the latter, but rather with some aspects of life in the barren lands and icy seas north of the Circle, and with the adventures and experiences of the few ships crews who have been making yearly voyages in those regions for trading purposes ever since the efforts of the sixteenth century navigators to discover the famous North West Passage began to chart out these hitherto unnavigated seas.

The search, indeed, for this passage, a sea route of communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (or, in other words, a short way to the East Indies without doubling the Cape of Good Hope)was incidentally the means of opening up the whole of the north polar regions to exploration and discovery. As early as the year 1527, the idea of such a passage was suggested to Henry VIII by a merchant of Bristol; but it was not until the beginning of the following century that a first expedition was fitted out at the expense of some London merchants and despatched to the arctic seas.

Centuries before this, however, the Arctic Ocean was entered by a Norwegian adventurer about the time of King Alfred; and the west coast of Greenland was colonised from Iceland early in the eleventh century. But no further progress was made in arctic discovery until the sixteenth century, when various seas and points of land were mapped out, mainly in the eastern hemisphere. The navigator Henry Hudson discovered the Straits and Bay named after him in the great North American archipelago, in 1610. Frobisher, Drake, and Hall, made voyages to the west coasts of Greenland and to the opposite coasts; but the entrance to the arctic regions west of that continent was discovered by John Davis in 1585. In 1616, Baffin and Bylot passed through this passage and sailed up Smith Sound, but nothing further was learned of these parts for another two hundred years.

The Eskimo preserve to this day the story of Frobisher. It was, indeed, narrated to the writer with a wealth of authentic detail by a native, to whom it had been handed down amid other oral traditions of his tribe and locality.

Now it is said that Frobisher, coming to Nauyatlik for the first time, not knowing the place or where there was a safe anchorage, crept along the side (of the land) in his small ship, and was wrecked. For it was shallow water there, and getting aground, he ordered the fuel (coal) to be taken out and carried ashore to a place called Akkelasak. For the ship was no longer habitable. The crew found refuge on a small, flat island, and pitched tents there of the vessels sails, and began to fashion a graving dock by digging out the soft ground. When it was finished, they towed the wreck to the spot and docked her. All this happened a long time ago, but traces of their work are still visible. The shipwrecked sailors overhauled the hull. When at length their repairs and rebuilding were complete, they towed out the ship and moored her alongside a cliff, at the top of which they fixed their tackle, unstepped and restepped the mast, their task being completed. At last, and having buried those of their shipmates who had died during this weary time, they abandoned the remainder of their fuel and set sail for home. This is the narrative of one who had it from her mother, who in turn had received it from her dead father, who had it from his forbears; for thus they were accustomed to narrate it.

The above translation, of course, is very free. It would interest the philologist to have it in the original, or even in a literal version; but possibly the foregoing will convey to the general reader that graphic grasp of the story which renders all Eskimo history so reliable and enduring.