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?