An Inuit Ambassadress

Two members of the Schwatka expedition, the American journalist Henry Gilder and the german speaking cartographer and drawer Heinrich Klutschak, published their reports and experiences in the 1880ies. Being able to read the reports in their original language, I started to wonder about the differences. In my opinion, Gilder's interpretation is more audacious, and therefore his views and values become apparent in the text itself. As an example, I chose a "ceremony of opening communication", as he puts it. In an Inlet of Richardson point or Nu-oo-tar-ro, how he transcribed the Inuit name for the place, the party met some Netsilingmiut for the first time: 

The ceremony of opening communication was similar to that with the Ooquee-sik-silliks a few days before, with the exception that instead of remaining in their igloos the men were drawn up in line of battle in front of them, and sent out an old woman to find out who we were and what we wanted. If our designs had been hostile, and we had killed the old woman, their fighting strength would not have been reduced, and it would only have been one less old woman to care for. They carried their bows in their hands, with arrows fixed to the strings ; but when the old woman shouted back that we were white men, they laid aside their arms and received us in a friendly manner, striking their breasts and saying, " Many-tu-me," though Joe afterward told me that one of the men wanted a fight anyhow.

The reader knows that a woman was the first person to find out who the party was and that Henry Gilder assumed she approached the party because her death would not have reduced the fighting power. Based on a drawing of Klutschak, he added a print of the "Neitchillik Ambassadress".

The woman in the foreground wears fur clothing with an enormous collar. Her facial tattoos are visible, and she holds a weapon in her hand. In the background, the men stand in a line in front of the igloos, holding spears in their hands. Interestingly, Klutschak's drawing that was the basis for this print is today in the Library and Archives Canada collection under the title "The Neitchillik Ambassadress".

In the drawing, the tattoos are less highlighted, and the woman seems to hesitate. At the end of the page, Klutschak wrote the title of the drawing in German: Ein Eskimo Parlamentär. In his writings, Klutschak portrays the woman differently from Gilder. I tried to translate it into English:

Eskimos came out of every hut and looked at us in wonder. As we do at every new encounter, we left the sledges to the female companions and walked toward the settlement. Halfway there, a mediator [Parlamentär] in the shape of a woman of middle years met us, and the closer she came to our groups, the slower and smaller her steps became, and her features betrayed a certain uneasiness. She was carrying a small knife as a weapon, and as strange as the way of sending a woman to meet strangers is, this tribe always uses it.

In contrast to Gilder, Klutschak focuses on the feelings of the woman, clearly stating her uneasiness. He mentions that, in his opinion, it seemed to be expected for the Netsilingmiut to send women as negotiators to unknown groups. A "Parlamentär" in German, according to Meyers Lexikon from 1885-1892, is a person that is sent to a hostile army. Usually an officer, he carries messages to an officer of the other army. By choosing this title, Klutschak reveals, on the one hand, that he feared a certain amount of hostility, but also that he considered the woman as having a unique standing among her peers. I cannot verify if Netsilingmiut women generally had the role of negotiators or mediators when meeting strangers. However, while reading various expedition reports, I found some women who played a crucial role in the relationship between their peers and westerners. May it be Taqulittuq, Charles Francis Halls translator, or later Nivisanaaq, an Aivilingmiut woman in charge of the trade between whalers and Inuit peers. Women played a crucial role in mediating knowledge, trading, and intimate knowledge with Western objects and materials. 

 
To stretch my point, I would like to include Nivisanaaq's tuilli, a woman's upper garment, now in the American Museum of Natural History collection in New York. Nivisanaaq, an Aivilik woman, was not only famous for her intimate knowledge of fabrics and objects from Western contexts but was also an essential intermediary between American whalers and the Inuit community. She lived at around 1900 in Qatiktalik (Cape Fullerton) in the Kangiqsualuk Ilua (Hudson Bay).

Since the 19th century, Qatiktalik became more and more critical for whalers. The increasing demand for whalebone, used for corsets and other constructions in the latest fashion, led to an increase in whaling. Highly lucrative for English and American whalers, more and more ships and Western men came to the Arctic. While the hunting season was relatively short, they overwintered in the Kangiqsualuk Ilua (Hudson Bay). Inuit groups and whalers traded with each other, formed friendships and relationships, and even helped each other hunting whales. While the whalers were most interested in whalebone, the Inuit used the bone of the whales for tools and the meat for eating. Since most of the whalers came back for a second, third or even more whaling expedition, some Inuit and whalers formed solid friendships and connections. With this increase in whalers, Qatiktalik became a site of mediation, where Inuit and Whalers traded knowledge and materials. Nivisanaaq organised the trade between whalers and her Inuit peers and decided who got which object or material. Photographs of her wearing an amautiq on board of the Era, the ship of Captain Comer, still circulate in today's publication about traditional Aivilingmiut clothing.

George Comer (Photographer), Eskimo woman (Anm. Nivisanaaq/Shoofly) in Era "studio", silver gelatin print, 22.12.1900, New Bedford (MA, USA): New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1980.37.34.

It is this tuilli that is today part of the American Museum of Natural History's collection. In 2009, Inuit Elders travelled to five Museums in North America to see some of the objects kept in their collection. Isuma TV accompanied them and made the excellent documentary Inuit Piqutingit (What Belongs to Inuit), in which they also discuss Nivisanaaq's tuilli.

Nivisanaaq, Aivilik amautiq/tuilli, Parka: hide, furs, beads, teeth, cloth, metal, pigment, 185 cm x 76 cm, Qatiktalik (Cape Fullerton), Nunavut, Canada: ca. 1900. New York: American Museum of Natural History, collection: George Comer

The beadwork accentuates certain parts of the garment and body parts. Attached to the shoulders, wrists, flap and hood, it depicts intricate ornaments and a figural scene. Small strings with white, black, yellow, red and blue pearls were attached, giving horizontal lines in the beadwork at the shoulders. At the end of the strings, small Caribou teeth shine like ivory on the garment. A flap attached to the hood consists of two vertical sections, in which a Y-shaped ornament, a compass star and a small shoe were stitched on. On one side, the seamstress Nivisanaaq even stitched her nickname "ShooFLY" on it. According to her granddaughter, Bernadette Miqqusaq Dean, the other ornaments on the garment are closely linked to Nivisanaaq's relationship with the whaling captain, George Comer:

I have been told by various elders and elderly relatives that the late Captain Comer designed some of the patterns on my grandmother Shoofly’s tuilli […]. Another elder told me that the boots on her parka represent the boots that Captain Comer brought back to Shoofly. The actual boots were too small, so a replica of the boots went on the chest piece. Was it a symbol of their love for each other?

Being the garment's focal point, the richly embroidered flap will immediately draw the opposite person's eye. On the hood, accentuating the face's opening, Nivisanaaq embroidered small triangles, which end in a Caribou hunting scene. Interestingly, the hunter wears a hat in a Western-style, carrying a gun. Rhonda Karetak, an Inuit elder from Arviat, tells the documentary viewer how she thinks that the Aivilingmiut women were forced to give away their amautiit, their upper garments.

Adding these ornaments and materials to her amautiq and knowing how to work with them, Nivisanaaq showed her skills as a seamstress and showed her extensive network in her community. However, it also worked the other way around: Including the whaler's name and writing it onto her garment, the whalers and other Westerners knew her name and her skills immediately as a seamstress, but also her navigational skills. To put it in a more theoretical frame, one may assume that she used the ornaments and the materials as messengers to communicate with an Inuk or a Westerner.  Going back to the unknown Inuit ambassadress, I cannot stop wondering about her role. Was she an older woman whose death would not reduce the fighting power, as Henry Gilder put it in his report? Or was she the person who traded and negotiated with other groups? I think the latter is appropriate. Knowing the prejudices against women in the western world, especially at this time, Gilder fuelled these further, including an idea about the Inuit as ferocious and caring about the fighting numbers.