Ilatsiak - 72 - Agayuq's Bear

All three men and their dogs were in action now. Hurrying back the way Tulugak had come they followed the dogs. Noting the wind was coming directly from the south, they stayed slightly to the west so as not to excite the dogs too early. Finally cresting a hill just to the west of the trail, they peered down at the boat. Sure enough a bear was still there and was busy dragging something away from the boat. All three untied their dogs and sent them racing down the slope. The bear only looked up at the last moment and raising on ts hind legs, spun around to face the dogs.
Agayuq readied his harpoon. This was the bear he’d been given. He knew it immediately. The dogs raced about the bear howling and jumping at it. The bear would spin to give a clout to the nearest dog, but kept missing. It was obviously hungry and slower than it would have normally been. Agayuq wait for his chance. He was only a few yards from the bear. Suddenly he grunted and the harpoon struck the bear in the chest, just below the throat. The bear tried to paw at the harpoon, then leapt towards Agayuq, the shaft swinging to the side. David could see Agayuq was in danger. He ran to face the charging bear. Agayuq grabbed David’s harpoon and pushed the end onto the ground just as the bear fell towards them. The harpoon head pierced the bear’s chest , the shaft broke with a loud crack as the bear hit the ground. The dogs were all over it, biting its neck and back wherever they could. The bear slowly stopped struggling. It was dead. Agayuq having made the first hit, had got his bear.
After skinning and cutting the bear, all three men began collecting rocks to bury the meat until it could be retrieved during the winter when sledding was easy. That finally done, David wandered back up the trail to look at the boat for the first time. The others stayed behind. The bear had been dragging a skeleton still inside a Navy greatcoat. There was little to eat. Inside the boat were two other skeletons also bundled up as if they needed protection from the cold. The boat was full of items , but little food. Only some chocolate squares remained that David could recognize. Sadly he returned to the bear cache.
“Let’s head home, father. We’ve got your bear. There’s nothing else to do here...”

Ilatsiak - 71 - The Rowboat

By the fall of that year, many things had changed. David was being openly called ‘Ilatsiak’ by people. It seemed to be a joke, something to do with a man who’d lived years ago who’d miraculously learned to understand the language of the white people who came on ships. At that time several ships had become locked in a small bay on the east side of Boothia. As the ships remained there a number of winters, many Inuit became accustomed to visiting the sailors and getting favours of one sort and another from them. A few people learned words spoken by the sailors, but only Ilatsiak was able to speak full sentences. He became well known among the people and was often sought out when visiting the ships.
Given David’s origins, it seemed natural that David would acquire the name of this old man, especially given he had died some years before David began living with Agayuq’s family. Taking on the name of a person who’d passed away was commonplace especially if some sort of relationship was apparent.
This was made more clear to David as he, his son Tulugak and Agayuq walked along the broken rocks of the beach, each leading a dog on a line. They’d come to the west side of King William Island to hunt bears, something they rarely did. This year the aging Agayuq had woken up one morning with the dream of killing a bear. He’d killed one when he was young, but not since and something deep inside him told him that a bear was his if he wanted to hunt one. So gathering the boys together, they set off from the fishing camp by the lake when they’d spent the late summer. Finally they’d reached the shore and stared out at the ice they seem to never melt in this area.
“No wonder the ships got stuck here.” Agayuq said. “This sea never melts...”
David said nothing and headed off walking along the beach towards the south. His dog seemed to have sensed something, although as far as he could see, there seemed to be just more of the light brown fractured rock they’d been walking on for the past few days. The only change was that almost nothing grew in the area and here and there heavy pans of dirty ice lay shoved up on the beach, melting. The other dogs had caught the scent now and they too pulled at their traces, eager to be off towards whatever it was.
Coming to a wide bay leading westward, the dogs all pulled south. Whatever it was, they indicated it was inland along the old trail that led over to the south coast. Agayuq was not eager to go that way hoping to find his bear roaming the shoreline. He could see the ice was jammed close to the shore further west and was sure that would be where his bear was waiting. After a brief discussion t was decided that Tulugak would take his dog up the trail, while David and his father continued around the bay to the west.
It was a difficult time to hunt bears as they left no tracks either on the ice or the shore. Still hungry bears often searched the floes just offshore for seals hunting the small fish which frequented the shallow water. So as they walked along, both men stared out to sea, watching for any movement which might be a bear. They failed to notice Tulugak when he ran up the highest hill and waved his arms trying to catch their attention far below.
As the afternoon stretched on, David began to tire and suggested they walk up the small hill behind the point of and they were on. They could scour the ice floes in the bay and wait for Tulugak to catch up with them. Agayuq was getting tired as well, in fact David was amazed at his stamina, better than he’d seen it in years. This bear was giving him new strength, it seemed! They walked up the hill and as they neared the crest, Tulugak came bounding over it, obviously excited about something.
Catching his breath, the story spilled out in bits and pieces. There was a boat up the trail. A boat miles from the water. It was heading towards the bay. He’d seen a bear... He’d tried to signal them...

Illatsiak - 70 - Old Names

He tried to busy himself with his wife’s assortment of stretched seal skins, moving them to better catch the drying rays of the spring sunshine. He turned some caribou meat, also sun drying, as it hung over a stretched out seal skin line. Then he turned his attention to some slabs of seal blubber, moving them away from a couple of poles, the two wooden snow shovels, one still having parts of the wood painted in a pale yellow colour. Rotting seal blubber would stick to anything, he’d better get it out of the way before someone stepped into it... David watched his father doing chores usually reserved for his mother. “He is upset.” he thought to himself.”I have never seen him doing things like this...”
In spite of his outward showing of unconcern, inside, Agayuq was worried about the sudden arrival of these white people. He kept thinking of how they had suddenly appeared from the northeast with dog sleds and lots of equipment. It bothered him how they had stayed around most of the morning and then continued on to the south towards Back’s Fish River to the land of the Utku’miut where his son David was living with Qajaq’s family. The strangers didn’t speak the language of the people very well. It had been hard to understand them, but it was clear that their questions were all about where the ships were, how could they get to see them and what had happened to the shipmen. Agayuq had been so afraid of them, he had told them nothing except that the ships had sunk long ago, maybe eight or ten years ago. Finally he pretended not to understand the words of the Inuk translator who told him what they wanted. Agayuq didn’t want to admit to them that all the men must have died because most of them were never seen again after that awful summer when people had encountered them walking along the south coast. He knew the stories about how upset the white man who had come from Repulse Bay had been when he was told the stories of the camps of the starving ship men. He knew there had been at least three of these camps and, in some of them, men had eated the ones who died. The Inuit had found pots of cut up legs. Although there were similar tales of such things among his own people, it was so awful to think about, especially when his son could have been one of them had he not come to live with them. It was not something people talked about anymore.
Finally he turned and headed back into the snow house. The family would leave this camp and return further east to where his relatives would be spending the late winter and spring. It would be better there in the company of real people who didn’t always ask so many nosy questions about a time best forgotten.
“All those men from the ships died...” remarked his son seeing his father back on the sleeping bench.
“Yes, they all died...all of them. There are no more of them.” Agayuq, changed the subject seemingly relieved him and he began to tease his wife about what a fine cook she was. David knew what was coming next. He motioned to his daughter to follow him as he pulled on his boots and crawled out the doorway. Once outside, he stood up, peering to the south, wondering what those men might be doing. His father had been acting so strangely since he had arrived on a rare visit to go spring hunting. Had the strange men been dangerous? It was so unlike him to act this way. Maybe Agayuq is getting old and is worried about things too much. Hunting will cheer him up. It always did. Taking his daughter’s hand, he pushed her into their newly built snow house entrance ahead of him. He followed her into the snowhouse he and Qayak had built only a few yards further along the glistening snowdrift. When they had arrived the day before, he had not anticipated his father’s stories. He would tell Qayak. She would have something to say about the visit of the white men. She always had good advice, and would straighten things out.
“My father says white people have come,” David whispered to Qayaq later than evening as they sipped the hot seal gravy she had prepared.
“I know, “ Qajaq answered. “Your mother told me yesterday about them. Everyone was afraid, but they have gone. Strange they would come to our land. Why are they coming here when they don’t like it here?”
After pausing a moment in thought, David looked up at Qayaq, “I don’t know.
"Did you ever know your grandfather, your father’s father?”
“My grandfather? No. I was too young. Why?” David was curious where this was leading.
“You have his name. He was a brave man who knew white people. Your mother told me that when the white people came, she thought they were looking for him because he had learned to talk with white people who had come a long time ago. She was afraid they would want to take you with them because you have the same name.”
"He had my name?"
"Yes. The name people call you when you're not around: Ilatsiak..."
"I don't understand. Why am I called that? I am David. Everyone knows that..." David was genuinely puzzled by Qayaq's strange remark. He had another name?
"Yes, but don't tell anyone. I shouldn't have told you that. Forget it..." Qayaq was embarrassed to have openly mentioned this secret name. It wasn't normally done.
“We should not speak of the old ones. I will go hunting with Agayuq tomorrow if the wind calms.” The questions and explanations ended there, which relieved Qayaq immensely. She knew she had gone too far.

Illatsiak - 69 - More Whitemen Come Searching

“Blue eyed people have come here again looking for the frozen ships...” were the first words out of old Agayuq’s mouth when he finally sat down and finished sipping the hot juice from the boiling seal meat stew in the snow house.
“The frozen ships? When?” David looked confused. What an odd thing to mention after all these years. He and Qajaq had not seen the old man for at least two winters now and this was the first thing on his mind on their return from living in the Fish River area.
“Yes, a few days ago. There was a strange sounding Inuk and two other white men, one with blue eyes. They were looking for the dead shipmen. They wanted to find them, but I told them they had all died a long way away from here. I don’t know if they understood. Perhaps not. It was such a long time ago the frozen ships were here and these new men didn’t speak our language very well.”
“Blue eyes? White men? Where did they come from?” David became more and more puzzled. White men have not come to Kigitarjuk for many, many years. Not since the men from the frozen-in ships had died had they come here. It was usually a sign of bad things to come, illness and dying. But it also meant interesting things and supplies of rare things like wood and metal.
“They wanted to take my wooden things with them, but I said no. They asked if the wood had came from the ships where men had died long ago. They asked where the ships were and wanted to know where the men had gone. I could see them looking at my tent poles and spear handle. I was afraid of these men. It was not my fault their men had died or their ships had sunk. It was so long ago, maybe ten years have passed since that time.”
“What did you tell them?” David asked his father hesitantly. He found this whole conversation somehow confusing and could feel it upsetting him, but he couldn’t tell what exactly it was that was bothering him. It was true, so many years had passed since those days.
“I said nothing about the white men who died. I was afraid to speak of them. They are not our people. Finally I told them that the two ships had sunk. I said the wood came from the ship that sank about five days travel from here, past Malerulalik, past where the caribou cross over the ice to the mainland in the fall, over in the Ootjoolik area. No wood was had from the other ship. It sank too fast.”
“What about the wood? What did you say about the things you’ve made with it?” David could see his father was quite shaken from his experience, and even now, after the white men had left, he was reluctant to say much more about meeting these strange white men. He was afraid to lose the wood which had been so hard to obtain. Did he still have bad dreams about the ships and what had happened to the men on them? It was not something they had talked about very much especially in recent years. It semed to be painful to both of them so was never brought up.
“I said nothing. The wood we have now came from trading with some Utku’miut. You know that is true.” At that old Agayuq dropped to his knees and crawled out of the snow house in company with his favourite old dog, his constant companion these days. Once outside, he stood up and scanned the southern horizon. There was no one to be seen in any direction. They were gone for good, swallowed up by the vast snow fields which at this time of year stretched beyond the land, onto the sea ice and to the horizon. He knew they would not be coming back. That’s how it always was. White people seemed to only pass through this land, although he had heard the new stories about the whalers who had been coming to the land of the Aivilingmiut in Hudson Bay. Nothing seemed to interest white people in Kikitarjuk except the frozen-in ships, and that was only rarely these days. Yet these men had come. What did they really want?

Illatsiak - 68 - Second Child

Tulukaq was almost five when David and Qayaq found themselves once again pregnant. As before they were living with Agayua and Maneetaq, this time on the west coast of Boothia. When they discovered the baby was a girl, both immediately knew her name must be Assita after Qayaq’s mother had died the previous fall. Now here she was back again as their daughter. Living on the Boothia was a good choice for the young family. Hunting was good and hardly anyone ever brought up the old stories of the frozen-in ships. With Qayaq’s mother dead they seldom visited the Fish River area as her father now lived with them and had become good friend’s with Agayuq.
The years began to slowly go by, season by season. Each year they moved back and forth along routes which became ever more familiar and homelike. Only exceptionally did they venture off the usual path to hunt or camp in new areas or stay with new people. David came to realise these times were good ones, living with happy people and an abundant land.

Illatsiak - 67 - Qallunaq Come from the East

The remainder of the journey to Qayaq’s people on the Fish River had gone quickly, almost as if David’s actions burying the past had also cleared up their traveling problems as well. On their arrival, it was decided to hold a party to celebrate Qayaq’s new baby and also the successful fishing season.
The children began falling asleep from exhaustion around the walls of the tent, but for the adults, the dancing and stories continued into the night. An old man’s much younger wife began to speak. She began by lamenting the loss of the shiny spoons she had been given one day about a year or so ago. She had had to give them, she said, to another strange white man who had come to Pelly Bay from even farther to the east that spring. It had seemed like a good trade at first, but, now it was the shiny spoons she remembered and she wished she still had them. They were so pretty and had interesting markings carved into them which she liked to think had magical powers. Then she began to tell a story of meeting the whiteman from Repulse Bay.
It was at a time when she and her husband had been living with the Netsilingmiut near Pelly Bay. It was late during the winter when her son had been born. Two men, one of whom could speak their language had walked into their camp and asked them to come and visit them. At first they didn’t want to go, but several of the Netsilingmiut knew people from Repulse Bay and decided to go and see if they had come. In the end everyone, all 17 or so went to see the people from Repulse Bay and the whitemen they had brought with them. The white man was dressed just like them in caribou skins, not in strange clothes like the ship men who have died several year previously in their area. This whiteman was very tall, she remembered, and had lots of whiskers, but not too much hair on top of his head. He didn’t speak their language. He wanted to know all about their land, how the sea coast went, where the rivers were and things like that. He knew about Ross’s ships. He wanted someone to stay with him and show him our land, especially here around Boothia, but no one wanted to go. The people were suspicious and afraid. She said people were afraid this stranger was going to punish them for not helping save the sailors. We were hunting seals then, she said. It wasn’t a good time to be traveling.
At that point, another man broke in and told how he had heard about this whiteman too. He began a similar story which told how this man had managed to travel into the Boothia and how he had asked many questions about the two ships where the men had died. He told of how several stories had been given to the Repulse Bay man about the ship men and some of the places where they had died. Finally he told how many things taken from the ships had been given to him. The man was very happy to collect these things and asked many times to be given more. In the end he had to return to Repulse Bay, but after that more spoons and forks and other things were taken there to be traded. Some things were lost because the man left Repulse Bay on a little boat and never returned for the things brought there for him. The man ended his story by saying this whiteman had become very upset when he was told about how the ship men had begun to eat each other. It was after hearing these things that he had left and not come back. It was never nice to think about, but sometimes people had to eat their dead in order to survive themselves.
David listened to these stories, but now more than ever before, they seemed un-real somehow. He no longer felt they were part of them. It was so hard to actually see them as being real or meaningful in any way. They were no longer stories about real people like them. It was odd to be wondering about men who had died so long ago, or had been in the area so long ago. At least, David wondered why would white people be interested now after all these years? Many of the people who had seen them were old now if not already dead themselves. Why had the whitemen not come when the ship men were still alive? Maybe they would not have died had white people come back for them earlier. Maybe they would have all died anyway. It was too big a puzzle for him to wonder about.
Finally, he got up, pulled his boots on and slipped his outer parka over his head and went outside. The wind was calming and he could see the night sky again above full of stars, the homes of all the ones who had died and left this world. Inside the snowhouse several people thought about the stories they had just heard. Inside they wanted to say something, but it wasn’t polite to openly criticize. Instead, they said nothing. One man began singing an old song “Ai, ai, ya....ya, ee, yaa, ya...” The mood changed and suddenly people smiled again and found they still had the strength to dance again. Another man passed the skin drum to the singer who immediately began beating it along the rim with the padded baton, twisting and turning as he sang.

Ilatsiak - 66 - The Cache

Returning to the cache, David suddenly had an idea. These men, his old shipmates, needed to be honoured in some way for what they had been through. They needed to be buried, they needed someone to speak for them at their graves, but how? There was no possible way to find their bodies now that years had passed. He could try to bury those bodies that he knew about, but what of the others? There had been so many. Then the thought came suddenly clear. He’s bury the log books, their memories and dreams! He bury the books at sea in honour of the sailors! Returning the books and the copper cylinder to the barrel. After filling the remaining space with rocks, he did his best to refasten the hoops and the top. Carefully rolling the barrel down the slope and onto the ice, David then dragged it out as far as he dared on the rotting ice. Coming to an open lead, he tried to the best of his ability to say a few words for his departed shipmates, and then slid the barrel into the water. It floated briefly, but as the water entered through the cracks between the staves, it slowly sank out of sight.
For David, the action produced an overwhelming sense of peace and relief. Saying goodbye to his past and the people he had known seem to change so much. The guilt and confusion which he had been keeping buried deep inside himself was gone for the first time in ages. Now he was truly free to be an Inuk, a father and husband, and if he wanted to believe it, a shaman if that’s what the people wanted.

Ilatsiak - 65 - Reading the Past

The trip south a few months later to visit Qayaq’s Utkuh people in the Fish River area seemed to be plagued with problems from the beginning. The further west they traveled, the less snow they found and they had to make numerous detours to keep some snow under the sled’s runners. Finally arriving at the narrows, it was clear that the usually firm ice was too far into its melting phase to risk the crossing. They would have to wait until fall or perhaps, if they were lucky someone might come along with a large skin covered umiaq big enough to get them across. A few people had these boats, but none were on this side of the narrows at the moment.
Instead, it was decided that David would go hunting for caribou and seals along the coast, while Qayaq and Tulukaq remained at the narrows to wait in case an umiaq showed up.
David had seldom been along the part of the coast he now walked. It was one of those places that his people tended to avoid, even more since the white sailors had all died there. Even David gave the bay where he had discovered the tents full of dead men some years ago, a wide birth, convincing himself that he’d more likely see caibou further inland than along the coast at that spot. Heading further west than he had ever gone before, David was fascinated by a pillar he could see on a point of land ahead of him. By the end of the second day, he reached it. It was obviously built by white people as its shape and size were unlike the inuksuit frequently made by Inuit. This one was about three feet in diameter and came up to his shoulder in height. Built of the usual flat, brown stones that lay scattered everywhere, he could see that it was not that old compared to most markers seen around the country.
Knowing that canisters of information were frequently placed in these cairns, David began pulling rocks out here and there to see if anything had been placed in this one. Sure enough, he soon found a small wooden barrel, about 18 inches across and double that in length. It was the kind that many food stuffs on board the ship had come in. David removed more rocks until he freed the barrel from its rocky nest. Pulling it out, he found it heavier than he expected and he allowed it to fall to the ground. As it hit the ground, the barrel hoops gave way and the contents spilled out. There was a copper cylinder, now turned a greenish colour and two large books, which David recognized as the two ship’s logs! Opening the one from the Erebus first, he began with the last entry at the end. Now he’s learn the truth.
As he read, he once again started to feel his old illness returning. He had thought he was free of it, but here it was, coming back to him. He had to stop frequently and take a walk out to the end of the point. He would sit there and stare at the glistening sea ice covered with old melt pools and even small streams which rapidly carried more melt water off the top and into the cracks which appeared here and there. In a way it was calming just to sit there. Each time he returned to read some more, the nausea would return. Finally, David gave up. There was nothing he could have done to alter what had happened, the crushing they had taken in the ice, the abandonment several years ago, nor the desperate attempt to break out, one group heading to the Fish River under Crozier and the other led by Fitzjames heading westward to link up with Franklin’s Point Turnaround and then on to Alaska and the whalers who’d be there. Both groups had taken modified ships boats which had been dragged overland from points further north. The last entry written by Fitzjames after Crozier’s party had departed, revealed that a small group had rebelled and had returned to the Erebus. They feared leaving the ships and Fitjames gave them responsibility for guarding the ships while he was away. It was clear he knew they wouldn’t survive, but he had little choice. It was that or admit a mutiny had occurred.
The Terror, it appeared had been crushed and pushed into the shallows and destroyed during the third spring in the ice forcing the small group of ‘mutineers’ onto the Erebus.
Fitzjames had set out from the cairn with the remaining small crew of mostly ill-fit men for his voyage west. David knew immediately that they were too few in number to have been able to make it very far. There were only sufficient to man the oars with no one to spare. He wondered how far they had managed to get. The boat he had found the previous summer not far from the Fish River was obviously one of the ones used by Crozier. Those men had not got very far either it seemed, but it appeared they were crewed mostly by the most severely weakened, the men who would never have managed the trip west in open boats. It was hoped that once they had benefited from a month or two of fresh food reputedly found in the Fish River mouth, they would follow Fitzjames west. David wondered if any had. Remembering his meeting with Crozier, he didn’t look like it.