In case anyone is interested, and you donât fancy crawling through Charles Francis Hallâs journals yourself, Iâll give a brief summary of these two menâs most significant interactions.
Kokleearngnun told Hall about seeing a white manâs ship that became overwhelmed with ice and sank. He met a man by the name of Aglooka and a âpee-e-tuâ (commonly interpreted to be a steward or non-seaman) who was called âNar-tarâ. Hall believed that that was a way of pronouncing âdoctorâ. Kokleearngnun was given two spoons with the initials FRMC stamped on them.
He met qallunaat at least twice (IIRC). I think that the most interesting testimony he gave was set aboard a ship. Itâs quite controversial account, but I strongly believe that it is of the FE rather than of a different expedition. Hall, April 1866:
The Pelly Bay men described the Esh-emut-ta as an old man with broad shoulders, thick and heavier set than Hall, with gray hair, full face, and bald head. He was always wearing something over his eyes (spectacles, as Too-koo-li-too interpreted it), was quite lame, and appeared sick when they last saw him. He was very kind to the Innuits;âalways wanting them to eat something. Ag-loo-ka (Crozier) and another man would go and do everything that Too-loo-ark told them, just like boys; he was a very cheerful man, always laughing; everybody liked himâall the kob-lu-nas and all the Innuits. Kok-lee-arng-nun showed how Too-loo-ark and Ag-loo-ka used to meet him. They would take hold of his hand, giving it a few warm and friendly shakes, and Too-loo-ark would say, âMa-my-too-mig-tey-ma.â Ag-loo-kaâs hand-shaking was short and jerky, and he would only say, âMan-nig-too-mĂ©.â âAfter the first summer and first winter, they saw no more of Too-loo-ark; then Ag-loo-ka (Crozier) was the Esh-e-mut-ta.â
Kokleearngnun's wife, Koo-narg, as well as several other women, also took tea aboard the ship with Toolooark, who gave them all ulus and, to Koo-narg, a silver pocket watch. Itâs curious, because in the accounts from other expeditions, the British mostly gave the Inuit worthless (and sometimes insulting) gifts in exchange for information and items (e.g. pieces of old barrel).
Meanwhile, Too-shoo-art-thar-u definitely met the men after they abandoned ship. His group hadnât heard that there were qallunaat on the island, so they sent their two bravest hunters (Ow-wer and Too-shoo-art-thar-u) (to use Hallâs renderings of their names) to go and investigate. They meet them at an ice crack, putting distance between them; one of the white men had a gun pointing at the hunters, but the man who was in front told him to put it down. He showed them an ulu and used it to make a line in the snow. He then pantomimed asking for something to eat. Too-shoo-art-thar-u called this first man âAglookaâ. Aglooka couldnât speak much Inuktitut, but Too-shoo-art-thar-u eventually understood that he had come from two ships up north that had been crushed in ice. Quoting Hall again:
After this first interview the two men went ashore with the Innuits. While Aglooka was trying to talk with the Innuits (Ow-wer [my note: probably a shortening of Ukuararssuk] & Too-shoo-art-thar-u), the party with the boat and one other sledge passed by going a little lower down to a point or cape of the little bay where they then were. On getting ashore Aglooka wanted everything - every pack opened & opened them himself, the dogs' saddle bag packs, the women's packs and the men's packs, for everything was ready for making a journey across the land. Aglooka wanted meat & for this he wanted every pack opened. The Innuits were all willing he should do as he did.
After each man Innuit had given him some seal meat, it was all put on a (one) dog's back & then by the request of Aglooka all 4 Innuit men with the dog laden with meat went down with Aglooka and the man with him to where the men and the boat where, the men erecting a tent. As they approached the tent, one man came out to meet them. Aglooka spoke to the men when he and the Innuits were near the tent. The men along side the tent and the men alongside of the boat stood in line holding up their arms and open hands above their heads, showing they had nothing (that is no weapons) about them.
The men stayed for a bit. One of them caught a fish and one shot down a bird. In exchange for helping them, Aglooka handed out gifts.
The strange thing is that, several years earlier, in 1864, Hall heard a different story from the one above. That one was given by Too-shoo-art-thariu's cousins, and in it the white men stay for one night. The 1864 testimony was given by Too-shoo-art-thariu's mother and son. In that one, the white men stay all winter. They travel with Too-shoo-art-thariu and his family. They hunted and travelled in an inflatable boat. One of them died of illness, and the others left so that they could go back to their country. In thanks, Aglooka offered Too-shoo-art-thariu his rifle - Too-shoo-art-thariu turned it down because he didnât know how to use it, so Aglooka gave him a âlong knifeâ instead.
Ten years later, Schwatka met Ahlangyah, his wife, who claimed that the family had met ten qallunaat who stayed for five days. Just like in the previous accounts, two of the men were called Aglooka and Toolooah, but their physical descriptions donât match Kokleearngnun's descriptions of the men he had dinner with. Furthermore, Rasmussen collected the testimony of a man whose father (Mangaq) had been with the group. It has similar features - the hunters meet the white men at a crack in the ice, the qallunaat (three this time) stay in their own tent (which is peculiar because it is not made of animal skins), they say their ships were crushed by the ice, they exchanged a knife for seal meat, and the white men leave because they want to go home. Rasmussen, as quoted in Unravelling the Franklin Mystery by Dave Woodman:
Father and his people would willingly have helped the white men, but could not understand them; they tried to explain themselves by signs, and in fact learned to know a lot by this means. They had once been many they said; now they were only few, and they had left their ship out in the pack-ice. They pointed to the south, and it was understood that they wanted to go home overland. They were not met again, and no one knows where they went to.
However, there was not a caribou hunt like in the first account, and this time they share a tent with Mangaq and the white men stay at least three days.
Iâll admit, I chose Too-shoo-art-thar-u at sort of random, because heâs a candidate for the man who was given the sword of a great officer , but when I checked my books and notes the story turned out to be more complicated than I remembered! But I decided to relay it to show everyone how difficult it can be to interpret Inuit testimony.
If you want to learn more, the best secondary sources with free pdfs of them floating around tumblr are Unravelling the Franklin Mystery by David Woodman and Encounters on the Passage: Inuit Meet the Explorers by Dorothy Harley Eber (slightly problematic in that it uses peopleâs Christian names instead of their proper names, so please ignore them). For an Inuit perspective, and what a lot of people say is the best book, there is The Land Was Always Used: An Inuit Oral History of the Franklin Expedition (if you have ÂŁ40 to spare).
