Newsletter

Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History

May 2018 www.mnh.si.edu/arctic Number 25

NOTES FROM THE DIRECTOR

By William Fitzhugh

The past year was a relatively quiet time for the ASC, a 

period that gave us time to consolidate and think about 

the future. It’s been thirty years since we ‘hung out our 

shingle’ in 1988, when initiatives were easier to launch 

than in today’s fiscal and political climate. Devolution, 

decentralization, and populism facilitated by new 

media affect our central institutions and make them 

challenged from many 

directions. Fortunately, 

the Smithsonian has 

managed to chart a 

steady course and has 

done better than the 

regulatory agencies in 

maintaining its staff and 

budget, despite overall 

institutional growth, 

most recently seen by 

the huge success of 

the National Museum 

of African American 

History and Culture.

One major 

accomplishment in 2017 

was the August opening 

of Narwhal: Revealing 

an Arctic Legend in a 

prime space near the 

Rotunda. Narwhal had 

been under development 

for three years, curated 

by Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia, a dental surgeon and 

clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Medicine 

whose investigation of narwhal tusk brought this 

mysterious animal to scientific and public attention. 

The exhibit has helped create a space for narwhals 

in the current discussion of the changing Arctic. 

Decreasing ice cover (this year’s winter ice extent 

nearly matched the lowest ever recorded), plans for 

trans-Arctic shipping, industrialization and mining, 

increasing threats of pollution, legal and military 

issues, impacts on subsistence species, and the rights 

of indigenous peoples all intersect with the present 

and future status of this species. The iconic nature of 

the narwhal has promoted media coverage and makes 

a useful vehicle for journalism and education. Most 

pleasing to the exhibit team headed by Christyna 

Solhan was the positive feedback from our Inuit 

partners. Our narwhal book, prepared with the 

assistance of 48 co-authors, recieved the 2017 Polar 

Libraries Colloquy's William Mills prize for Arctic 

literature. The exhibit 

will be up until July 

2019 and after that 

will tour several years 

for the Smithsonian 

Traveling Exhibit 

Service (SITES.) This 

broad exposure will 

help spread Narwhal’s 

themes of history, 

folklore, biology, 

Inuit knowledge, 

climate change, 

and environmental 

protection at a time 

when the changing 

Arctic environment 

and its wider impacts 

are receiving 

widespread attention.

Another major 

accomplishment 

has been a new 

exhibition plan for Anchorage. Our loans for the 

current exhibition are expiring, and most of the 

existing collections will be returning to storage in 

Washington. Aron Crowell has devised a plan based 

on the theme of indigenous knowledge that requires 

fewer objects, adds materials from non-Smithsonian 

institutions, and demonstrates the contributions of new 

scientific analyses. Kirk Johnson and Julie Decker

of the Anchorage Museum have generaly agreed on 

Exhibition Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend. 

Model by Paul Brodie
2 ASC Newsletter

terms for extending the NMNH-Anchorage Memoof Agreement (MOU), and Anchorage has begun 

fund-raising anticipating an opening date of 2022.

In addition to SITES’ interest in Narwhal, Stephen 

Loring, Rob Mullen and others have been working to 

produce Boreal: Visions of the Wilderness, the northern 

forest exhibit that once was a Natural History project. 

As awareness has risen about the adverse impacts of 

global warming and commercial encroachment upon 

this largest forest on Earth, SITES’ Carol Bossert 

hosted a workshop to identify themes and approaches. 

The workshop produced a rough plan that is being 

circulated nationally to identify venue prospects.

Also looking forward, the ASC staff has begun 

consulting with international colleagues about 

programs connected to the 100th anniversary 

of the Danish Fifth Thule Expedition led 

by Knud Rasmussen in 1921-24. The 

expedition and Rasmussen’s concluding dogsled dash across Arctic America, eventually 

reaching Bering Strait and Chukotka, Russia, 

laid the groundwork for many subsequent 

anthropological studies. We envision something 

like our former Jesup-2 program, a series of 

conferences, research projects, and public events 

taking place during this period with venues 

distributed around the circumpolar region.

Last year also saw progress on what may become an 

important knowledge infrastructure system supporting 

digital resources. The National Science Foundation 

(NSF)—supported workshops in 2017 and early 2018 

identified the need for a centralized retrieval system 

for the Arctic's highly dispersed information resources, 

a more advanced version of a shared web portal. 

NMNH’s experience with the Encyclopedia of Life 

has demonstrated the power of such a system for the 

biological sciences. An Arctic Digital Library (ADL) 

project would be more complicated but would have 

great benefits to science, the public, and indigenous 

Arctic groups. During the coming year, we plan to test 

the ADL concept by cross-connecting collections and 

archives from the 1881-83 International Polar Year in 

the Stefansson papers of Dartmouth College’s Rauner

Special Collections Library and International Polar 

Year (IPY) materials in Smithsonian collections.

Other activities in 2017 included our 3rd annual Ernest S. 

Burch Memorial lecture—this time by Hannah Voorhees

and Rhonda Sparks, studying climate change and polar 

bear exploitation in northwest Alaska. Bill Fitzhugh

attended the Arctic Circle meetings in Reykjavik, 

the Labrador Research Forum in Goose Bay, spent a 

week studying and lecturing in Basque Country, and 

had productive field projects in Labrador and Quebec. 

Stephen Loring explored the Labrador interior by canoe 

and helped shepherded a vintage St. Lawrence Island 

angyapik skin boat from Oregon to Washington DC (more 

on this below.) Aron Crowell and Dawn Biddison of the 

Arctic Studies Center's Alaska Office created the program, 

Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way.

Igor Krupnik and Aron Crowell finished editing papers 

for our forthcoming Arctic Crashes: People and Animals 

in the Changing North and Igor reached the halfway point 

in his editorial task assembling the opening summary 

volume for the Smithsonian Handbook of North American 

Indians. Our collection volume, Early Inuit Studies 

(2016), a product of the 18th Inuit Studies Conference 

of 2012 that we hosted at the Smithsonian, received 

the NMNH Science Achievement Award. Last but not 

least, the NMNH Arctic ethnology collections received 

a major addition in the form of a beautifully preserved 

large skin boat (angyapik) from St. Lawrence Island, 

Alaska, formerly in the possession of the University 

of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. 

The move was carefully orchestrated by Igor, Stephen, 

David Rosenthal (Anthropology collection manager), 

and our generous colleagues in Oregon. These and many 

other activities are reported in the following pages.

As usual, I thank all those who have worked with the 

ASC during 2017, including our dynamic exhibit core 

team, advisors, and authors, photographers, and our 

book designers and publishers. Our office assistants 

led by Nancy Shorey have performed wonders: 

Chelsi Slotten, Mary Maisel, Igor Chechushkov, 

Jacob Marchman, and many more. Anthropology 

Chair’s office help came from Torben Rick, Laurie 

Burgess, Zaborian Payne, and Michelle Reed.

We hope you enjoy more detailed stories in our 

review of the past year’s ASC activities. You can 

follow our current work online, using Twitter 

@ArcticStudies and on our blog, Magnetic North. 
 ASC Newsletter 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Notes from the Director...............................................1

ASC Anchorage, Alaska Office...................................5

Indigenous Knowledge of Alaska and the 

Circumpolar North – A New Exhibition 

Planned for Anchorage in 2022

Glacial Retreat at Yakutat Bay, Alaska, Based On 

Geology, Archaeology, and Indigenous Oral 

Tradition 

Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in the Dene Way

Ivory Advocacy Session 

Polar Lab: Collective

Sharing Knowledge Alaska: Microsite Update

Notice..........................................................................14

Arctic Studies Center Website Change

News............................................................................15

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend

Exhibit View: Ningiukulu Teevee: Kinngait Stories

A Russian Archaeology Conference in Salekhard

Up From the Dead: Labrador’s First 

Snowmobile Drives Again!

The Antarctic Snow Cruiser

A Labrador Research Forum: Truth, Respect, 

Reciprocity, Humility, and Reconciliation

Arctic Circle Conference: Reykjavik 2017

The New Arctic Mohn Prize Awarded to “The 

Meaning of Ice” Team and Eddy Carmack

ICASS IX Charts Arctic Social Science Course 

Early Inuit Studies: Themes and Transitions receives 

NMNH Science Achievement Award for 2016

Research.....................................................................25

Quebec Gateways 2017: Hart 

Chalet and St. Paul Survey

Archaeological Surveys in Hamilton Inlet

Some Archaeological Dating can be 

as Simple as Flipping a Coin

The Toad-Man’s Estate: an Archaeological 

Reconnaissance of the Shapeiau (Shapio) 

Lake region, Nitassinan (Labrador)

From Siberia to Norway and Back: The journeys of 

Nita Kakot Amundsen and Camilla Carpendale

Mapping Alaskan Ethnography

They Live on the Ice and They’re Hunters 

Like We Are: Climate Change and 

Human-Polar Bear Relationships in Alaska

Collections..................................................................45

Arctic Digital Library

A New National Museum for the Ainu

Charles Francis Hall: Searching for 

Franklin and Discovering the Arctic

Further Adventures of Charles Francis Hall

St. Lawrence Island Yupik Skin Boat 

Arrives at the Smithsonian

The General Thomas Gage BirchBark Canoe at Firle, U.K.

Firle Place: Visiting an Indian Canoe in British Rafters

Outreach.....................................................................59

Captain George Comer and the Inuit 

of Hudson Bay Exhibit Preview

A Sweet Saga: Building a Chocolate Viking Ship

Research Associates, Fellows and Interns................62

From One Pole to the Other: an Intern’s 

Summer Introduction to the Arctic

After 68 Years McBride' Return to Hokkaido, Japan

Uncovering F. W. Stokes

Book reviews...............................................................65

Discovering Uummannaq: an Arctic 

Greenland Community

On the Arctic Frontier: Ernest Leffingwell’s 

Polar Explorations and Legacy

Ramah Chert: a Lithic Odyssey

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend

On Frankenstein

White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western 

Arctic. The Fur Trade, Transportation, 

and Change in the Early Twentieth Century 

Menadelook: An Inupiat Teacher's Photographs of 

Alaska Villiage Life, 1907-1932

Memories....................................................................71

Full-circle: Taught and Teaching at Dartmouth

Transitions..................................................................72

Elaine Elizabeth Abraham, Chuu Shaa (1929-2016)

Stanwyn Shetler (1933-2017)

Willis Walunga (1924–2017) – Yupik Historian

Paul Apangalook (1951–2018)

2017 ASC Staff Publications.....................................76

Afterword...................................................................77
4 ASC Newsletter

ERNEST “TIGER” BURCH ENDOWMENT

JAMES VANSTONE ENDOWMENT 

Alaska State Council on the Arts

Anchorage Museum Foundation

Carlson Family Trust

Central Council of the Tlingit and 

Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska

CIRI Foundation

Karen and Steven Compton

Dartmouth College Goodman Fund

Tina and John DeLapp

First National Bank Alaska

Priscilla Fitzhugh

William W. Fitzhugh

Haayk Foundation

Dr. Donald Holly

Margy Johnson

Labrador Nunatsiavut Inuit Government

Margaret A. Cargill Foundation

Memorial University

Metlakatia Indian Community

Rika and John Mouw

National Science Foundation

National Park Foundation

National Park Service

NMNH Q?rius Education Center

Notre Dame University 

Sealaska Heritage Foundation

Gail Sieberts

Smithsonian Recovering Voices Program

The Provincial Archaeology Office, 

Government of Newfoundland-Labrador

Frances Ulmer

Gary Weil

Windland (Wendy) Smith Rice Endowment 

Special thanks to following members of the 

Smithsonian Council for Arctic Studies who 

provide annual philanthropic support to the 

Alaska Office of the Arctic Studies Center:

Morgan Christen and James Torgerson

Cook Inlet Tribal Council

Heather Flynn

Betsy and David Lawer

Lynden Incorporated

Jo and Peter Michalski

The Smithsonian Arctic Center (ASC) is sustained 

through a public-private partnership. Philanthropic 

donations provide funding for essential communitybased collaborations, impactful educational 

programming for the public, and continuous 

research in the ever-changing Arctic region.

STAFF

William Fitzhugh, Director and 

Curator: fitzhugh@si.edu

Aron Crowell, Alaska Director: crowella@si.edu

Igor Krupnik, Curator and 

Ethnologist: krupniki@si.edu

Stephen Loring, Museum Anthropologist 

and Arctic Archaeologist: lorings@si.edu

Noel Broadbent, Archaeologist: broadben@si.edu

Dawn Biddison, ASC Alaska, Assistant Curator: 

BiddisonD@si.edu

Chelsi Slotten, Research Assistant and 

Social Media Manager: slottenc@si.edu

Nancy Shorey, Program Specialist: shoreyn@si.edu

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES AND 

COLLABORATORS

Judith Varney Burch, Charlottesville,VA: 

judithvarneyburch@gmail.com

John Cloud, Washington, DC:

john.cloud666@gmail.com

Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad, Kensington, MD:

bengelstad@aol.com

Ann Fienup-Riordan, Anchorage: riordan@alaska.net

Scott Heyes, Australia: scott.heyes@canberra.edu.au

William Honeychurch, Yale University: 

honeychw@si.edu

Wilfred E. Richard, Maine: 34pondroad@gmail.com

Ted Timreck, New York: theodore.timreck@verizon.net

Norman Hallendy, Carp, Ontario, Canada

Christopher B. Wolff, SUNY, 

Plattsburgh, NY: wolffc@si.edu

Kenneth Pratt, BIA, Anchorage:

Kenneth.Pratt@bia.gov

Hunter Snyder, Dartmouth College: 

hunter.snyder@gmail.com

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR 2017/2018 

ASC INTERNS AND VOLUNTEERS

Igor Chechushkov

Mary Maisel

Cara Reeves

M. Schuyler (Skye) Litten

Iris Wang

Ming-Yi Wong

To make a tax deductible contribution, please 

contact the NMNH Office of Development at 

202-633-0821 or NMNH-Advancement@si.edu

THANKS TO OUR 

2017/2018 PARTNERS AND DONORS
 ASC Newsletter 5

ASC ANCHORAGE, ALASKA OFFICE

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE OF 

ALASKA AND THE CIRCUMPOLAR 

NORTH – A NEW EXHIBITION PLANNED 

FOR ANCHORAGE IN 2022

By Aron L. Crowell

The Arctic Studies Center and the Anchorage Museum, 

in collaboration with Indigenous, humanities, scientific, 

and educational advisors, have begun planning for 

the exhibition “Indigenous Knowledge of Alaska and 

the Circumpolar North,“ scheduled to open at the 

Anchorage Museum in 2022 to succeed the current 

Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First 

Peoples of Alaska. The project heralds a new phase for 

the ASC’s research and educational program in Alaska, 

as pending a renewed Memorandum of Understanding 

(MOU) effective through 2022, to be signed by 

National Museum of Natural History Director Kirk 

Johnson and Anchorage Museum Director Julie 

Decker. The MOU looks forward to the next four 

years of partnership, exhibition development, and 

joint programming by the two museums, extending a 

highly productive relationship that began in 1994. As 

with the Living Our Cultures exhibition which opened 

in 2010, it is anticipated that Indigenous Knowledge

will draw on extensive circumpolar ethnological 

collections held by NMNH and the National Museum 

of the American Indian, with objects made available 

to Anchorage through long-term Smithsonian 

loan agreements. Exhibition grant proposals to 

the National Endowment for the Humanities 

and other funders are pending or in process.

Development of the Indigenous Knowledge exhibition 

promises to be both challenging and exciting, not 

only because of its expansive geographical scope 

(including Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia, 

and northern Russia) but because it will be guided 

by a broad conception of northern Indigenous 

Knowledge (IK) that encompasses its many and 

varied humanistic, scientific, technical, artistic, 

and spiritual dimensions. IK will be highlighted 

as a critically important foundation for resilient 

community responses to social and environmental 

change in the North today, and its contemporary 

application (sometimes in tandem with Western 

knowledge and technologies) will be emphasized.

Thus conceived, Indigenous Knowledge includes 

comprehensive knowledge of northern environments, 

both the sea and land; practical, ecological, and 

spiritual knowledge of the plant and animal species 

that support human life and health; effective, naturallysourced technologies and designs for Arctic living; 

oral traditions that preserve knowledge of human and 

environmental history; social knowledge, norms, ethics, 

and values that extend security and identity to each 

generation; and arts and languages that express this 

manifold realm of thought and belief. According to the 

Inuit Circumpolar Council, Indigenous (or traditional) 

knowledge is a “systematic way of thinking applied 

to phenomena across biological, physical, cultural and 

spiritual systems. It includes insights based on evidence 

acquired through direct and long-term experiences 

and extensive and multi-generational observations, 

lessons and skills. It has developed over millennia and 

is still developing in a living process” (ICC 2013.)

The Indigenous Knowledge exhibition will present 

dozens of key “feature stories“ that exemplify these 

IK themes, told through video and digital media 

by northern residents and physically represented 

by historic objects and artifacts of the present. For 

arctic locations, traditional ecological knowledge of 

marine mammals and observations of changing sea 

ice conditions might be one featured topic, including 

the incorporation of cross-over technologies such 

as weather satellite imagery to predict locations of 

ice-edge animals. In southeastern Alaska and the 

Northwest Coast of Canada, Indigenous knowledge 

of anadromous fish and forest ecology is contributing 

to natural resource co-management and development 

decisions. All across the North, traditional values, 

ceremonies, languages, oral traditions, and 

spiritual conceptions of human relationships to the 

environment are interconnected and remain highly 

relevant, both as principles for living on the land 

and as resources for health, well-being, and identity. 

The scientific principles and technical mastery 

embodied by traditional technologies from arctic 

clothing and snowshoes to watercraft, tools, basketry, 

and hunting weapons will be another important 

exhibition theme, designed to connect with and 

support STEM education (science, technology, 

engineering, and math) in northern schools.

Starting in the fall of 2018, the Arctic Studies Center’s 

Alaska team – with Aron Crowell as project director 

and exhibition curator and Dawn Biddison as assistant 

curator and community programs manager – will 

begin intensive work with a distinguished advisory 

panel and with collections and curatorial staff at 

NMNH, NMAI, and the Anchorage Museum to 

prepare for the Indigenous Knowledge exhibition, 

catalog, web site, and educational programs. The 

NEH advisory panel includes Ann Fienup-Riordan 

(Calista Elders Council), Shari Fox (National Snow 

and Ice Data Center), Henry Huntington (Ocean 
6 ASC Newsletter

Conservancy), Joel Isaak (Kenaitze Indian Tribe/Kenai 

Peninsula College), Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (The 

CIRI Foundation), Mark John (Calista Culture and 

Education, Inc.), Igor Krupnik (Arctic Studies Center, 

Smithsonian), Jonella Larson White (Foraker Group), 

Aaron Leggett (Anchorage Museum), Edna MacLean 

(Ilisaġvik College), Ilarion Merculieff (Global 

Center for Indigenous Leadership), Pitseolak Pfiefer

(Nunavut Resources and Sustainable Development), 

Alice Rearden (Calista Culture and Education, 

Inc.), Melissa Shaginoff (Anchorage Museum), 

and Rosita Worl (Sealaska Heritage Foundation.)

We anticipate that this core group and others who may 

join it will guide and inspire the Indigenous Knowledge 

Exhibition and provide a conduit to other people and 

stories on the community level, collectively engaging 

in the process of collaborative exhibition creation. The 

project will also build on the large body of Indigenous 

knowledge documentation and videography that the 

Arctic Studies Center has gathered through thirty 

years of exhibitions and programs in circumpolar 

arts, languages, cultures, history, and archaeology. 

GLACIAL RETREAT AT YAKUTAT 

BAY, ALASKA, BASED ON 

GEOLOGY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND 

INDIGENOUS ORAL TRADITION 

By Aron L. Crowell

Alaskan and Northwest Coast oral traditions, 

including accounts of glacial movements, 

earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, have 

been substantiated by archaeological and 

geological data (Connor et al. 2009; Crowell 

et al. 2013; Cruikshank 2001; McMillan 

and Hutchinson 2002.) At Yakutat Bay 

in southeastern Alaska, archaeological 

evidence, Tlingit oral narratives, and local 

Tlingit/Eyak place names illuminate the 

timing and extent of glacial movements by 

the Hubbard and Malaspina glaciers, and 

may be combined with glaciological data 

to model glacial retreat after 1200 AD.

The Arctic Studies Center’s research 

program Glacial Retreat and the Cultural 

Landscape of Ice Floe Sealing at Yakutat 

Bay, Alaska (2011-2014) demonstrated that 

Eyak, Ahtna, and Tlingit settlements in 

Yakutat Bay followed the receding glacial 

front over time as residents focused hunting 

efforts at the glacier’s ice floe seal rookery 

where thousands of harbor seals congregate 

each summer. Three major stages of human 

settlement and glacial retreat have been identified. 

During Stage 1 (late Neoglacial to ~1200 AD) the 

Malaspina Glacier and the western lobe of Hubbard 

Glacier were merged in a single ice mass that 

filled Yakutat Bay and covered the western part of 

the Yakutat foreland (Fig. 1.) The eastern lobe of 

Hubbard Glacier filled Russell Fiord, as shown. The 

conformation of the two glaciers at their maxima is 

indicated by bottom channels and deposits recorded 

in bathymetric and seismic studies (Elmore et al. 

2013; Zurbechen et al. 2015) and by prominent 

terminal moraines at the mouth of Yakutat Bay and 

the head of Russell Fiord (Barclay et al. 2001). 

Two large archaeological village sites on the Yakutat 

foreland at Lost River – Diyaaguna.éit (YAK-00019) 

and Wulilaayi Aan (Shallow Water Town) (YAK00020) – were occupied during Stage 1 (Davis 1996; 

De Laguna et al. 1964.) The oldest radiocarbon date 

for Diyaaguna.éit is 1110 +/- 50 BP (784-987 cal. AD.) 

The oldest date for the nearby Wulilaayi Aan village 

site is 740 +/- 80 BP (1218-1285 cal. AD.)According to 

oral tradition the original inhabitants of the Yakutat Bay 

area were Eyak, which is supported by artifacts and 

residential architecture at the two sites (Davis 1996.)

During Stage 2 (~1200 to 1450 AD), the confluent 

Malaspina and Hubbard glaciers withdrew to a 

mid-bay position with a combined tidewater front 

Figure 1
 ASC Newsletter 7

that extended from the Malaspina foreland across 

Yakutat Bay, marked by a prominent submarine 

moraine at Blizhni Point (Fig. 2.) The eastern lobe 

of Hubbard Glacier remained at its maximum. 

Paradoxically, this period of glacial shrinking at 

Yakutat Bay coincided with colder temperatures 

of the Little Ice Age and the advance of most other 

glaciers in southern Alaska (Calkin et al. 2001.)

The retreat of Malaspina Glacier during Stage 2 left 

the western part of the Malaspina foreland free of ice 

by no later than about 1450 AD, as demonstrated by 

radiocarbon dates from Spoon Lake 3 (YAK-00076) 

and Spoon Lake 2 (YAK-00075), small village sites 

located east of Point Manby at Spoon lake. At Spoon 

Lake 3 a standard date of 750 +/- 100 BP (1040-

1410 cal. AD) was obtained in 1996, and four AMS 

dates obtained in 2014 ranged from 422 +/-22 BP 

(1440-1470 cal. AD) to 477 +/-22 (1420-1450 cal. 

AD). At Spoon Lake 2, a single standard date of 550 

+/- 140 BP (1225-1650 cal. AD) is available. No 

identifiable animal bones were preserved at these sites, 

so harbor seal hunting cannot be confirmed, although 

stone scraping tools suggest seal hide processing.

Evidence that the eastern front of the combined 

Malaspina-Hubbard Glacier retreated to the Blizhni 

Point moraine by 1400-1450 AD at the end of Stage 

2 is provided by a tree cored near the moraine which 

had an estimated germination date of 1466 AD (Barclay 

et al. 2001.) Knight Island must have been deglaciated 

prior to this date as the ice retreated north, although 

human settlement of the island did not take place until 

the mid-1400s at the earliest, as shown by dates from 

the Tlákw.aan (Old Town) site (YAK-00007) and the 

North Knight Island Village site (YAK-00205). The 

lowest midden stratum at Tlákw.aan yielded seven 

AMS dates ranging from 371 +/- 23 BP to 310 +/- 24 

BP. These dates fall in the late 1500s to early 1600s 

in radiocarbon years (i.e. prior to 1950) but intersect 

a plateau in the dendrochronological calibration curve 

with the result that calendar age estimates are bimodal 

with early date ranges in the mid-1400s to early 1500s 

and later ranges in the mid-1500s to early 1600s, 

both with approximately equal probability (Crowell 

2018.) A single AMS age determination from the 

North Knight Island Village site (YAK-00205) was 

384 +/-22 BP (1450-1620 cal. AD). Animal bones 

preserved at Tlákw.aan show a dominant focus on 

harbor seal hunting, and the over-representation of 

pups in the age profile of seal remains indicates rookery 

hunting at the glacial front north of Knight Island.

Yakutat oral traditions (Crowell 2018; Cruikshank 

2001; De Laguna 1972; Swanton 1909) state that 

Tlákw.aan was founded by Ahtna and Eyak clans from 

the Copper River and Gulf of Alaska coast who arrived 

at Yakutat Bay when Knight Island was treeless, sandy, 

and covered only with patches of strawberries. 

These observations describe an early stage 

of postglacial plant succession that would be 

consistent with the uncovering of Knight Island 

perhaps a century earlier as the ice retreated 

north toward Blizhni Point. Oral narratives 

describe the position of the Yakutat glacier 

at the time of the Ahtna-Eyak migration as a 

single ice front that extended across Yakutat 

Bay to its eastern shore as depicted in Figure 

2. Travelers who wished to cross the bay by 

canoe or by walking on the glacier would 

first listen from inside a hollow tree at Point 

Manby for sounds of approaching storms (De 

Laguna 1972). A group of brothers who led 

the migration to Yakutat Bay are said to have 

gone hunting in a canoe near the glacier, which 

was “the seals’ home” (Swanton 1909.)

Residents of Yakutat Bay refer to both 

Malaspina and Hubbard glaciers by the same 

toponym, Sít’ Tlein (Tlingit, “big glacier”) 

because in oral tradition the two glaciers 

used to be one (Thornton 2012:17-23), as in 

Stages 1 and 2. Additionally, the toponym for 

Yakutat Bay is Yaakwdáat (“the place where 

canoes rest”), but originally derives from an Figure 2
8 ASC Newsletter

Eyak name Diyaʼqudaʼt, or Ya.gada.at “a lagoon 

is forming” which refers to the opening up of the 

bay during glacial retreat (Deur et al. 2015:23). 

During Stage 3 (~1450 to 1880 AD) withdrawal 

of the ice continued to the extent that Malaspina 

Glacier became landlocked and Hubbard Glacier 

retreated to approximately its modern positon at the 

head of Disenchantment Bay (the inner portion of 

Yakutat Bay) (Fig. 3.) The eastern lobe of Hubbard 

Glacier began retreating about 1750 AD and reached 

the head of its drainage in about 1860 AD (Barclay 

et al. 2001). Glacial positions and archaeological 

sites during Stage 3 are shown in Figure 3. 

The exact timing of Hubbard Glacier’s withdrawal 

from the Blizhni Point moraine has not been 

established, but by July 1791 when the Alessandro 

Malaspina expedition visited Yakutat Bay the ice 

had retreated far into Disenchantment Bay (Olson 

2002.) Malaspina’s chart and a view painted by 

expedition artist Tomas de Suria both show Hubbard 

Glacier in approximately modern position, or 

possibly somewhat farther north than today. Despite 

the intense cold of the late Little Ice Age there is no 

indication that Hubbard Glacier was re-advancing.

Malaspina met Tlingit residents of a small shoreline 

settlement south of Disenchantment Bay known as 

Laaxaa Tá (or Tłaxátà) – from the Eyak word laaxaa 

meaning “near the glacier” (Thornton 2012:20.) This 

village is said to have been an “old sealing camp” 

used at an earlier time when densely packed ice floes 

in Disenchantment Bay made camping there difficult 

(De Laguna 1972.) The Laaxaa Tá site (YAK-00011) 

was researched by the Smithsonian team in 2013 

and although no datable organics were recovered 

from archaeological testing it can be assumed that 

it is older than any camps in Disenchantment Bay.

In oral tradition Woogaani Yé (YAK-00202) is known 

as an ancestral Laaxaayík Teikweidí clan sealing 

camp and fort that was destroyed (the name means 

“burned up”) in an attack by the L’uknax.adí clan in 

about 1805 (De Laguna 1972.) The oral information 

suggests that Woogaani Yé was established after 

Laaxaa Tá and that hunters may have been seasonally 

exploiting the seal rookery in Disenchantment 

Bay for some time prior to Malaspina’s visit. No 

remains of this site have been discovered.

The final phase of intensive indigenous settlement and 

seal hunting in Disenchantment Bay is represented by 

a large historic sealing camp (YAK-00012) just north 

of Point Latouche known as Keik’uliyáa in Eyak and 

Shaanáx Kuwóox’ (“wide valley”) in Tlingit. Several 

separate components of this camp were investigated 

by the Smithsonian project in 2011 and 2013. Oral, 

historical, and artifact evidence indicate that it 

was used for both subsistence and market seal 

hunting from about 1840 through the 1930s 

(Crowell 2017). Although the original site was 

tectonically uplifted and displaced back from 

the shoreline during the Yakutat earthquakes 

of 1899, significant portions of it are entirely 

undisturbed, ruling out any 19th century 

Hubbard re-advance to this location or beyond.

In conclusion, archaeological sites and 

oral information including place names 

provide important dating control for analysis 

of the Yakutat Bay’s glacial history. 

These data indicate that the behavior of 

Hubbard Glacier has been quite unusual 

– retreating throughout the Little Ice Age 

but advancing and retreating repeatedly 

during recent warm decades, including 

expansionary episodes that closed off 

Russell Fiord in 1986 and 1992. From a 

cultural standpoint, glacial dynamics and 

the linked biological phenomenon of mass 

harbor seal concentrations in the glacial 

floe field have been important elements 

of Yakutat history, so it is not surprising 

Figure 3
 ASC Newsletter 9

that the glacial story is so well documented by 

Yakutat oral traditions and place names. 

A full interdisciplinary exploration of this topic is 

planned by archaeologist Aron Crowell (Arctic Studies 

Center), Tlingit cultural specialist Judith Ramos

(Indigenous Studies Program, University of Alaska 

Fairbanks), geologist Sean P. Gulick (University of 

Texas, Austin), and glaciologist Daniel E. Lawson 

(Dartmouth College) for journal publication.

TANNING AND SEWING MOOSEHIDE 

IN THE DENE WAY

By Aron L. Crowell and Dawn Biddison

Older generations of Alaskan Dene (Athabascan) 

peoples tanned moosehides using time-tested methods 

that transformed raw skins into strong, supple leather 

for sewing beaded or quill-embroidered tunics, jackets, 

mittens, bags, and moccasins as well as everyday 

essentials such as dogsled harnesses. Hides were aged 

and scraped to remove flesh and hair; soaked with 

a tanning solution made of animal brains (usually 

the moose’s own); scraped again and stretched on 

a frame; and smoked over rotten spruce wood to 

impart water resistance, a golden-brown color, and an 

evocative scent. Tanned skins take on characteristics 

that are entirely different from unprocessed rawhide 

or “rawmane,” which is stiff, tough, and best 

suited for making strong lines and lashings. 

The processes that transform highly degradable fresh 

hide into soft, stable leather comprise a branch of 

Indigenous science. For example, the purpose of 

scraping the inner dermis layer after removing the hair 

and epidermis is to thin and relax the skin by breaking 

down tough collagen and elastin fibers. Brain matter 

used in tanning contains lipids which penetrate and 

replace the water content of the dermis, allowing 

the processed hide to remain soft instead of drying 

and stiffening. A rule of thumb is that every animal 

has a brain just large enough to tan its own hide.

Because traditional tanning is arduous, time-consuming, 

and requires technical knowledge that has declined in 

recent generations, most moosehides are now sent out 

to commercial tanneries for processing with synthetic 

chemicals. The resulting product is of poor quality and 

aesthetically unappealing in comparison with handprocessed skins. The experiential connection between 

the living animal and a finished work of sewn art is 

diminished, and an essential dimension of Dene heritage 

is endangered by the loss of tanning knowledge.

Recognizing this, contemporary Dene artists including 

Joel Isaak (Dena’ina, Kenai) and Melissa Shaginoff 

Helen Dick and Joel Isaak use drawknives to deflesh a 

moosehide (Kenai). Photo by: M. Scott Moon

Helen Dick and Joel Isaak use hand tools to push out 

moisture and soften a moosehide lashed to a wooden frame 

(Kenai). Photo by: Sarah Owens

Jasmine Koster, Monica Shah, Sarah Owens, James Starkloff 

and Joel Isaak soften and stretch a moosehide over a 

softening frame (Kenai). Photo by: Wayde Carroll
10 ASC Newsletter

(Ahtna, Chickaloon) have been learning to process 

moosehides in the old way for use in their work, and 

both are teaching students in their communities, where 

they have discovered strong and growing interest. Joel 

and Melissa have been mentored by elders and culture 

bearers including Helen Dick (Dena’ina, Lime Village), 

Jeannie Maxim (Ahtna, Chickaloon), and Sondra 

Shaginoff-Stuart (Ahtna, Rural and Native Student 

Services Coordinator, Kenai Peninsula College).

The Alaska Office of the Arctic Studies Center was 

delighted to work with this group of committed 

artists, elders, and students during 2017-18 to 

carry out Moosehide Tanning and Sewing in 

the Dene Way, the latest project in the Material 

Traditions series. This collaborative program 

(see ASC newsletters 2011-2017) supports and 

documents the renaissance of Alaska Native arts 

and knowledge and engages audiences in Anchorage 

and Indigenous communities around the state. 

For Moosehide, Dawn Biddison coordinated with 

the two lead artists, the Anchorage Museum, the 

Kenaitze Indian Tribe, the Chickaloon Traditional 

Council, and the Dena’ina Wellness Center to 

produce a series of five community events and 

work sessions in Kenai and Chickaloon from Sept. 

2017 through Feb. 2018 in addition to a five-day 

artists’ residency in Anchorage (Dec. 11-15, 2017). 

During the first events in September and October, held 

at the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai and on a 

beach by the Kenai River, Joel Isaak and Helen Dick 

took students and apprentices through the steps of 

Dena’ina-style tanning, which begins with pulling the 

hair from a slightly aged or “rotten” skin. That step is 

followed by fleshing, scraping, washing, and wringing 

out of the hide, then soaking it with brain solution and 

stretching it on a wooden frame for more scraping 

and softening. Under Helen and Joel’s guidance the 

students used an eclectic mix of traditional hand 

implements (various scrapers made from slate, bone, 

caribou teeth, and steel saw blades) and electric 

tools (a power washer and drills fitted with steel wire 

brushes) to get the job done. Witnesses and hands-on 

participants included artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, 

apprentices Jasmine Koster and Jimmy Starkloff, 

Helen Dick’s granddaughter, Andrea Ivanoff, 

Anchorage Museum conservators Monica Shah

and Sarah Owens, several of Joel Isaak’s Dena’ina 

language students at Kenai Peninsula College, and 

a stream of public visitors. In December, Melissa 

joined Helen, Joel, Sonya, Monica, and Sarah in the 

backyard of Sonya’s studio in Anchorage to smoke the 

hide by tenting it over a smoldering punk wood fire. 

To record the slightly different process of Ahtna tanning, 

Dawn and Melissa traveled to Chickaloon in November 

to film the soaking of a hide in a swift-flowing stream, 

which helps with softening and depilation. They also 

documented the harvest and use of silverberries, a 

traditional decoration for moosehide garments. In 

February Melissa worked with Ahtna instructor Sondra 

Shaginoff-Stuart to scrape a hide with stone tools, 

Helen Dick shows Jasmine Koster and Andrea Ivanoff how to 

use a drill with wire brush to soften the hide (Kenai). Photo 

by: Dawn Biddison

During the smoking process, Joel Isaak and Helen Dick 

adjust the frame which holds the moosehide over a 

smoldering fire (Anchorage). Photo by: Dawn Biddison
 ASC Newsletter 11

assisted by Joel Isaak and Helen Dick. In April, 2018 

elder Jeannie Maxim will show the Ahtna technique 

of knife-shaving the hair from a hide and Sondra will 

demonstrate Ahtna smoking. Dawn Biddison has 

filmed all steps involved in both Dena’ina and Ahtna 

moosehide processing, and the completed project video 

will compare the techniques used by these two closelyrelated Dene peoples.

During the December 

artists’ residency in 

Anchorage at the Arctic 

Studies Center Joel and 

Melissa demonstrated 

moosehide sewing and 

beading to museum 

visitors, Anchorage 

School District 

students, and beginning 

skin sewers Yvonne 

Flynn and Daniel 

Harrison. They studied 

moosehide pieces in 

the Smithsonian and 

Anchorage Museum 

collections including 

a 19th century Ahtna 

tunic ornamented with porcupine quills, fringes, and 

dried silverberries. Joel adapted the pattern of this 

garment for his residency project, a tunic sewn from 

the hide he had prepared in Kenai, and Melissa began 

beading a moosehide regalia collar. When interviewed 

for local television, Melissa reflected on the experiences 

of artistic rediscovery and cross-cultural connection 

that emerged during the project. She said, “The art, 

at its core, is problem solving, figuring out how to 

do things; you see the sort of engineering that our 

people had and it’s really inspiring. And it provides an 

opportunity for Joel and I to work together. Dena’ina 

and Ahtna people are really the same; we’re separated 

by a linguistic border that’s been 

imposed on us, but we’re the 

same. Working together allows 

us to break down those walls.”

ASC films and produces detailed 

video documentation for each 

Material Traditions project, and past 

videos are accessible online (https://

naturalhistory.si.edu/arctic/

html/sharing-knowledge-alaska/

Index.html) and on DVD (free 

upon request to Biddisond@si.edu 

or Crowella@si.edu). Moosehide 

Tanning and Sewing in the Dene 

Way will be available later in 2018. 

Tanning and Sewing Moosehide in 

the Dene Way was made possible 

by grants and gifts from The 

CIRI Foundation, the Alaska 

State Council on the Arts, the First National Bank 

of Alaska, the Smithsonian Council for Arctic 

Studies, and the Anchorage Museum. We thank these 

generous sponsors for supporting Alaska Native arts, 

cultures, and knowledge through ASC programs.

Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart and Helen Dick advise 

Melissa Shaginoff on the moosehide yoke she created 

during the artists' residency at the Arctic Studies 

Center. Photo by: Wayde Carroll

Left: Melissa Shaginoff and Joel Isaak study an Ahtna Athabascan moosehide tunic (circa 1870) with silverberry beads 

decorating its fringes, on exhibit in the “Alaska” exhibition at the Anchorage Museum. Photo by: Wayde Carroll

Center: Joel Isaak tries on his partially finished tunic at the Arctic Studies Center residency in Anchorage. The tunic was 

sewn from the moosehide tanned in Kenai. Photo by: Wayde Carroll

Right: Silverberries harvested at Chickaloon were frozen for storage (below) then boiled, scraped and strung to make beads 

(above). Photo by: Wayde Carroll
12 ASC Newsletter

IVORY ADVOCACY SESSION 

By Dawn Biddison

From "Alaska Native Ivory," a brochure produced 

by the U.S. Department of Interior and the Indian 

Arts and Crafts Board in collaboration with the 

Alaska State Council on the Arts (see link below):

“In accordance with our cultural value 

of no waste, we’ve made our boats, tools, 

clothing, spiritual items, and artwork 

from the inedible parts of the gift of the 

walrus. They are inextricably a part of our 

ancient and sustainable relationship with 

the land and sea, and provide critical food 

and an important economic resource for 

hunters and artists in rural Alaska.” 

– Susie Silook, St. Lawrence Island Yupik artist

“Alaska Native artists who carve Pacific walrus 

ivory harvested during subsistence hunting are 

key to our communities’ economic development, 

keep our traditions alive and strong, and pass 

down our rich heritage from one generation to 

the next. Our communities protect the walrus 

on which our continued subsistence depends.”

– Alice Bioff, Kawerak, Inc.

Recent state bans on the sale of all ivory are disrupting 

the rights and livelihoods of Alaska Native artists who 

legally, customarily and sustainably utilize walrus 

ivory. Recommended online resources about walrus 

ivory (www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/06/

ivory-ban-criminalize-indigenous-artists-alaska). The 

IACB provides details on how to buy and transport 

walrus ivory (https://www.doi.gov/iacb/552017-

iacb-publishes-new-brochure-alaskanative-ivory).

Given Alaskans' growing concerns, Dawn Biddison

organized a meeting on walrus ivory advocacy in 

October 2017, after being contacted by Iñupiaq artist 

Denise Wallace on upcoming trip to Anchorage. 

Invitations grew to over thirty Alaska Native artists, 

scholars and organizational representatives, along 

with state and federal agency representatives. Twentytwo people attended, including: Alvin Amason

(Sugpiaq artist; Professor of Art, University of Alaska 

Anchorage), Susan Anderson (Tlingit; President/

CEO, The CIRI Foundation), Susie Bevins-Ericson

(Iñupiaq artist; Alaska Native Arts Foundation 

founding board member), Crystal Leonetti (Yup'ik; 

Alaska Native Affairs Specialist, U.S. Fish and 

Wildlife Service), Meridith Z. Stanton (Director, 

Indian Arts and Crafts Board) and Kate Wolgemuth

(Iñupiaq; Congressional staffer, Senator Sullivan's 

office). The meeting was structured as an opportunity 

for communicating concerns about walrus ivory 

restrictions and ideas for promoting change. It 

was also an opportunity for sharing information. 

Distributed documents included a letter urging the 

Cover of the brochure produced by the U.S. Department of 

Interior and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, featuring 

artwork by St. Lawrence Island Yupik artist Susie Silook
 ASC Newsletter 13

exclusion of walrus ivory from state bans sent from 

Alaska congressional members to the National 

Conference of State Legislators and to the National 

Governors Association and the ‘‘Allowing Alaska 

Ivory Act’’ proposed by Senator Dan Sullivan

introduced on the same day to protect Alaska Native 

use and sale of walrus ivory, as well as mammoth 

ivory and whale bone (https://www.congress.gov/115/

bills/s1965/BILLS-115s1965is.pdf). A group email 

was maintained after the meeting for sharing updates, 

which was replaced by a listserv maintained by 

Angela Linn (Senior Collections Manager, Ethnology 

& History, University of Alaska Museum of the North).

objects in the Living Our Cultures exhibition 

and of the Anchorage Museum collections. 

This experience advances their development as 

artists and strengthens the relationship between 

Alaska Native artists and museums through increased 

access to staff and collections. Developed by Dawn 

Biddison in partnership with Monica Shah, Director 

of Collections at the Anchorage Museum, two to 

three artists are selected annually through open-call 

application, and they are funded with an honorarium 

and travel costs. The program hosted two artists in 

2017: Jacinthe LeCornu and Melissa Shaginoff.

Jacinthe is Sdast’a.aas clan of the Haida Nation and 

was raised in Hydaburg. She is a weaver and works 

with cedar bark, spruce roots, nettles, maidenhair fern 

and wool. Melissa is Athna Athabascan and Paiute 

and was raised in Kenai. She is a painter and creates 

beadwork and jewelry. Prior to their visit, the artists 

spoke with Dawn and Monica to discuss their interests 

and to select objects and object types for study. 

Over two days, they studied pieces taken off 

exhibit and from collections, and spent time with 

Anchorage Museum archives staff for additional 

research. The artists received object photos and 

documentation, links to online resources for Alaska 

Native collections and archival photographs, and 

information about artist opportunities at other 

museums. You can view a short video about the 

program's first participant, Iñupiaq performance 

artist Allison Warden, at https://polarlab.

anchoragemuseum.org/projects/polar-lab-collective.

SHARING KNOWLEDGE ALASKA: 

MICROSITE UPDATE

By Dawn Biddison

The Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center’s Sharing 

Knowledge Alaska website offers educational and 

instructional videos – some with teacher’s guides and 

lessons – from its community collaboration programs. 

With assistance from NMNH website administrator 

James Kochert, the site has been updated to include 

a set of fifteen videos, Twining Cedar: Annette Island 

Tsimshian Basket Weaving. The Twining Cedar project 

was based on a partnership with The Haayk Foundation 

(THF) of Metlakatla, Alaska (see the 2016 newsletter 

article for details), with project organization and 

management and video filming (partial) and editing 

by Dawn Biddison. Key project contributors were 

Kandi McGilton, Tsimshian weaver and co-founder 

of THF, master Haida weavers Delores Churchill

and her daughter, artist Holly Churchill, with 

additional support from Tsimshian weavers Annette 

 Ad produced by the Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat.

POLAR LAB: COLLECTIVE

By Dawn Biddison 

Polar Lab: Collective is a program that 

provides emerging Alaska Native artists with 

an introduction to museum collections research 

through up-close study of NMNH and NMAI 
14 ASC Newsletter

Topham (daughter of master carver Jack Hudson

and granddaughter of master Tsimshian weaver 

Lillian Buchert) and Karla Booth (granddaughter 

of master Tsimshian weaver Violet Booth).

The videos, filmed in the village of Metlakatla and 

at the Anchorage Museum, provide over four hours 

of comprehensive instruction and cultural context on 

how to make materials for and weave Annette Islandstyle twined cedarbark baskets. On materials: how 

to harvest and process red cedar bark, maiden hair 

 Jacinthe LeCornu photographs a Tsimshian neck ring made 

from cedar bark. Photo by: Dawn Biddison

Delores Churchill holds a basket from her collection woven by 

Tsimshian master weaver Dora Bolton. Photo by: Wayde Carroll

ARCTIC STUDIES WEBSITE CHANGE

Sometime in July 2018, after 30 years of development, 

the ASC website and most other National Museum of 

Natural History websites, will be taken down. This 

dire event is necessary because of accessibility and 

security issues mandated across the government and 

the Smithsonian, and is accompanied by a museum 

decision to establish a standard NMNH website format. 

In November 2018, we expect to have a single ASC 

page up containing basic information about contacts, 

staff, programs, and links. Future websites will have 

‘term limits’ of a few to ten years and are not meant 

to serve, as in the past, as ‘publications’. We have 

arranged to have the ASC Newsletters and Field Reports 

accessible on the Smithsonian Institution Library site 

with links provided on the ASC page that appears in 

NOTICE

fern and canary grass. On weaving: how to plait and 

twine a bottom; how to weave the edge, sides and 

rim; and how to weave designs using overlay and 

false embroidery (supplemental weft) techniques. 

Go to https://naturalhistory.si.edu/arctic/html/

sharing-knowledge-alaska/Index.html or search 

for “ASC Sharing Knowledge Alaska” with 

Google Chrome (for best viewing) to find the link.

Limited number of DVD copies are available by 

request, as well as full resolution HD files.

November. Archive copies of old pages will be stored 

at the ASC and can be made available upon request. 

We will continue to maintain our ASC blog, 

Magnetic North (http://nmnh.typepad.com/arctic 

studies/), the ASC twitter account (@arcticstudies), 

and facebook account (http://www.facebook.com/

pages/Arctic-Studies-Center/133066950060693). 

In addition, the museum will maintain the ASC 

Alaska Office website (https:// Alaska.si.edu). 

Please bear with us as we go through the transition 

period. In the meantime, we will post the urls 

for our newsletter and field reports as soon as 

we have that information. For more information, 

contact Nancy Shorey at shoreyn@si.edu
 ASC Newsletter 15

NARWHAL: REVEALING AN ARCTIC LEGEND

narwhal as an Inuit subsistence resource, a source 

of raw material for tools, and a partner revered in 

oral history and myth. A video loop captures Inuit 

hunters intercepting narwhals at the ice edge and 

shows dramatic drone footage of narwhals feeding 

on a school of fish, apparently by stunning them 

with high frequency sonic emissions. This section 

of the exhibit displays an elaborate soapstone 

sculpture by Canadian Inuit artist Abraham Anghik 

Ruben made in the form of an inuksuk interlaced 

with arctic animals, hunters, and narwhals. 

Scientists have long been perplexed about the 

function of the narwhal tusk. Many explanations 

have been proposed, including breaking ice, 

competing for mates, spearing fish for food, or 

digging molluscs from the seabed. In fact, there 

is little evidence for any of these explanations. 

Instead, the exhibit explores other hypotheses. 

Some scientists believe the tusk is a “secondary 

sexual characteristic” that develops in males to 

attract females. However, recent studies by Martin 

Nweeia and his colleagues, who studied the tusk‘s 

anatomy in fossil and living narwhals, find that 

it may also have a sensory function, aiding the 

NEWS

By William Fitzhugh

In August 2017, following three years of 

planning and production, the National Museum of 

Natural History opened “Narwhal: Revealing an 

Arctic Legend.” The exhibition is accompanied 

by a book edited by William Fitzhugh and 

Martin Nweeia, who also curated the exhibit. 

Narwhal will be on view until mid-2019.

Commonly called the “unicorn of the sea,” the 

narwhal and its unique tusk, which is a tooth, have 

inspired art, legend, and cultural practices for 

centuries. Modern science coupled with Native 

knowledge is now revealing surprising information 

about the narwhal, whose name comes from an Old 

Norse term for the spotty coloration of drowned 

sailors. The exhibit presents the science and cultural 

history of the animal and serves as an entry point 

for learning about Arctic cultures, climate change, 

and the rapidly changing Arctic environments. 

The exhibition presents four main messages: 

narwhal biology, ecology, and environment; the 

narwhal’s place in European history and mythology; 

new research on the function of the tusk; and 

its relationship with Inuit communities. The 

exhibition also explores the future of the narwhal 

whose fortunes are entwined with the changing 

Arctic climate and reduction of its icy habitat. 

Much of this new knowledge results from 

collaboration between scientists and Inuit people 

who have known and lived with narwhals for 

millennia. Throughout the exhibit, we sense the 

footprints and voices of the Inuit. By highlighting 

this long-term relationship, the exhibit underscores 

the value of these animals to Inuit and demonstrates 

how Inuit knowledge has informed and guided 

modern scientific study of this fascinating mammal.

The exhibit begins with a huge map of the 

circumpolar Arctic, the sounds of narwhals recorded 

in their habitat, and a full-size model of a male 

narwhal seen arching at the beginning of a dive, 

which can reach 1000 feet deep. A center case 

displays male and female narwhal skulls (normally, 

only the male has a tusk) together with a rare 

double-tusked male. Quotes and illustrations from 

medieval manuscripts track the slow evolution of 

European scientific awareness of narwhals that began 

with its introduction by Greenland Norse in the 11th 

century. The last section of the gallery presents the Model of a male narwhal crafted by marine mammal 

scientist-sculptor, Paul Brodie
16 ASC Newsletter

animal's navigation in icy waters and helping it 

avoid drowning by being entrapped in the winter ice.

The Inuit 

connection is an 

important part of 

the exhibition. 

Inuit hunt narwhals 

and other marine 

mammals for 

subsistence—to 

feed and support 

their families—and 

take only what is 

needed. As a result, 

Inuit have a strong 

spiritual connection 

to the animal, 

which visits their 

communities only for a few months of the year. The 

hunt is carried out with great respect for the animals. 

Inuit eat a traditional diet—including seal, walrus, 

narwhal, caribou, birds, and fish—which results in a 

lowered risk of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, 

and at the same time strengthen community bonds by 

sharing food with extended family and neighbors. 

Narwhal tusks are a valuable source of income for 

communities that need modern technology and 

have high costs of energy and food. Only Inuit are 

permitted to hunt narwhals, and it is a practice that 

is regulated to ensure sustainability. At present, the 

narwhal population is between 180,000 to 200,000 

animals and is found mostly around northern 

Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic.

The final section of the exhibit presents information 

on narwhal conservation and the impacts of climate 

and growing industrialization of the Arctic. The rapid 

loss of Arctic sea ice is encouraging nations to expand 

commercial activities like fishing, trans-Arctic ship 

transport, mining, and hydrocarbon developments. 

Military activities are increasing, and there are disputes 

over territorial and resource rights. One of the most 

damaging activities is sonic testing in the search for 

oil and gas reserves; these high-decibel blasts damage 

marine life and cause changes in sea mammal migration 

routes and nurseries. All of these, and the uncertain 

effects of climate change and sea-ice loss, make the 

Arctic one of the world’s most vulnerable regions.

Narwhal was produced with support from the National 

Museum of Natural History and an anonymous 

donor. William Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia guided 

the scholarly content and spent nearly three years 

working with a production team coordinated by 

Christyna Solhan. Members of the team including 

designer Kim Moeller, writer-researcher Laura 

Donnelly-Smith, researcher Caitlin Gillis, educators 

Trish Mace, Nicole Webster, Colleen Popson, and 

Jennifer Collins,

and Inuit consultants 

Philippa Ootoowak, 

Charlie and 

Enookie Inuarak. 

Photographs used in 

the exhibition were 

taken by Gretchen 

Freund, Wilfred 

Richard, and 

Joseph Meehan, 

and others.

We hope that the 

narwhal exhibit 

educates viewers 

about a new “old” 

place on earth, 

little known to the public, whose people, lands, and 

animals need consideration so that what has happened 

in many other places does not happen there.

EXHIBIT VIEW: NINGIUKULU 

TEEVEE: KINNGAIT STORIES

By Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad

Through the summer and early fall of 2017, the 

Embassy of Canada in Washington, D.C. presented 

a solo exhibit by Inuit graphic artist, Ningiukulu 

Teevee of Cape Dorset/Kinngait, Nunavut. Organized 

by Dr. Darlene Coward Wight, Curator of Inuit 

Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), the exhibit 

featured thirty drawings and prints from the WAG 

collection as well as the Government of Nunavut Fine 

Art Collection, on long-term loan to the Gallery. Since 

2004, Ning Teevee’s images have appeared annually 

in the Cape Dorset print collection, and her work 

has been featured in commercial galleries in major 

cities from Montreal to Toronto, Vancouver and San 

Francisco. Surprisingly, however, this exhibit was the 

artist’s first solo presentation in a non-commercial art 

space. Although the exhibit has now closed, the finely 

illustrated catalogue, featuring curatorial essays and 

texts based on interviews with the artist, provides a key 

insight into Ning’s subject matter and artistic style. 

The exhibit subtitle, “Kinngait Stories” highlights 

Ning’s avid interest in Inuit mythology, the subject 

of many images, including portrayals of the Inuit sea 

goddess, Nuliajuk, who controls the release of sea 

animals to the hunter. The drawing, Appeased (2011) 

depicts an angakkuq (shaman) brushing Nuliajuk’s 

The fabled unicorn seen in the 

medieval “Unicorn tapestries.”

Exhibit panel featuring Inuktitut 

words for different types of Narwhal 

and a photo of Cornelius Nutarak
 ASC Newsletter 17

hair, tangled by human transgressions. As the artist 

remarks, “I’ve heard stories about how people would 

go hungry; they couldn’t catch any animals. A shaman 

would go through a ritual to go down to Nuliajuk 

and brush her hair; she is enjoying it.” As he combs 

her hair, a seal is released through his efforts. 

Much of Ning’s work reveals a predilection for nature 

and bold renderings of birds and marine animals. 

Executed with exquisite detail, her artistic style often 

recalls the graphic precision of contemporary artists, 

such as Mark Tobey. The fine mark-making in Owl’s 

Lookout (2014) is just such a work – a special treat for 

Washington viewers where a pair of snowy owls have 

taken winter roost amidst the industrial piping of the 

Department of Agriculture, just a few blocks west of 

the Embassy. Likewise, Timmiqti (Bull Walrus) 2008 

shows succulent tones of color in the rich patina of 

the animal’s neck and creamy ivory tusks, masterfully 

rendered by printmaker Qiatsuq Niviaqsi. The graceful 

image, Two Loons Nesting, reflects the collaborative 

partnership between the Kinngait Studios and Studio 

PM of Montreal in which the etching and aquatint 

image is formally editioned in Montreal following 

its approval by the artist and Kinngait Studios.

Ningiukulu’s upbringing along the south coast of Baffin 

Island is evident in her attachment to the sea. A series 

of early drawings recount childhood walks along the 

shore, clam digging with her grandmother. Set aside for 

several years, the drawings, discovered by Leslie Boyd, 

became the source for Ning’s children’s book, Alego 

in 2010. The 2016 drawing Ammuumajiit (Clams) 

provides a contemporary rendering of the artist’s own 

excursions along the beach with a heaping pail of clam, 

mussel (uviluq), and snail (siupiruq) shells in a plastic 

ice cream bucket, complete with a digital bar code on 

the side. An apparent reflection of global warming, 

Ning notes, “We never used to have mussels”. 

Beyond the artist’s interest in themes of nature and 

mythology, Ningiukulu reveals a sharp talent for 

social commentary, particularly on women’s issues. 

The drawing of a young woman Arnait Tunnili 

(2010) with her dark hair streaming down her 

back, and arms richly tattooed in ancestral patterns, 

graces the cover of the exhibit catalogue – though 

the cigarette poised in her hand provides a notso-subtle allusion to health issues of the day. 

A remarkably powerful image in the exhibit is 

Untitled (There is no excuse for abuse). Striking 

in both its size – 214.8 cm (over 6 feet) long – and 

message. Like Arnait Tunnili, the drawing is part of 

the curatorial endeavor to bring several new drawings 

by Ningiukulu into the WAG collection. The drawing 

reveals a recumbent woman with facial tattooing, 

her arm stretching over her head in an Odalisque 

manner. Dressed in a traditional amautik (woman’s 

parka), the shoulder of the parka slips down to expose 

a surgical scar. As Ning writes, “[The drawing] is 

about all the things that women go through. Some 

women have breast cancer.” The woman’s lower 

body is inscribed with a mélange of modern-day 

references to the North: an airplane, fox pelts, a trap, 

snow house, ulus, iPod, TV, propane tank, and dog 

team. Mid-image shows the back of a male figure, 

his wrists handcuffed “arrested for being abusive.” 

The lower segment of the drawing erupts in conflict, 

“The red bra is in the man’s hand: the woman is 

trying to fight him off. She’s covering her face; you 

can see her eye and her ear. And his fist.” 

Both the exhibition and catalogue, Ningiukulu Teevee: 

Kinngait Stories, provide a tantalizing introduction 

to the exceptional work of a gifted artist. The fully 

illustrated catalogue, published by the Winnipeg Art 

Gallery, provides thoughtful reflections on individual 

works by both the artist and curator. Demonstrating the 

impressive talent and productivity of the artist, this will 

have to satisfy the viewer until a full retrospective of her 

art work can be organized. An eager audience awaits!

A RUSSIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 

CONFERENCE IN SALEKHARD

By William Fitzhugh

Every few years Russia hosts an international 

conference to mark developments in the history and 

archaeology of the Russian North. This year the 

site was Salekhard, located on the Arctic Circle 

near the mouth of the Ob River. The program was 

dedicated to the topic of “sustainable development” 

as measured through an archaeological lens: 

“the existence of traditional culture in historical 

Conference opening remarks by Natalia Fedorova, Alexei 

Titovsky, Vyacheslav Molodin, and William Fitzhugh.

Photo: B. Frohlich
18 ASC Newsletter

perspective and possibilities of its development 

potential in the future...the more ancient the 

period studied, the more important they become.” 

Organizers noted that despite the high cost of 

logistics, substantial progress occurred during 

the past decade, both in terms of new discoveries 

and the expansion of interdisciplinary studies. 

The Smithsonian was represented by William 

Fitzhugh and Bruno Frohlich. Fitzhugh offered 

a paper co-authored with Harri Luukkanen

summarizing their forthcoming book, Bark Canoes 

and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia, to be published 

by Smithsonian Books in 2019. Much of the data 

in this historical atlas of traditional watercraft 

comes from Russian records, museum collections, 

and documentation of explorers, travelers, and 

ethnographers in the 16-20th centuries. Due to the 

fragile nature of these boats, archaeological data 

is almost completely missing from these records. 

An the important exception are the small ivory 

archaeological models of skin boats from the 1500-

year old Ekven Old Bering Sea cemetery in Chukotka, 

Russia. Frohlich’s paper described how Aleut 

(Unangan, Russia) mortuary practices changed under 

influence of Russian and later American control. 

Strong environmental contributions came from 

Bruce Forbes and his colleagues documenting 

threats to reindeer herding from climate change and 

overgrazing. Vladimir Pitulko and Elena Pavlova

reviewed cultural and environmental results of 

their Yana and Zhokov excavations. Sergei Gusev

reported on preservation issues and Old Whaling 

sites. Mikhail Bronshtein spoke eloquently 

about Old Bering Sea art, and Kiril Dneprovsky

on Old Bering Sea and Punuk settlements. 

There were excellent papers on archaeology in 

the White Sea, the Lower Ob, Yamal and many 

others. See http://arctic-arc.ru/en/abstracts/

The Salekhard program was packed with interesting 

papers and discussions. It was exciting to see the 

huge expansion of archaeology in the Yamal region 

under the leadership of Natalia Fedorova and the 

Salekhard Arctic Center. Their activities are strongly 

supported by the Yamal-Nenets government and 

local civic administration. Conference sessions 

took place in a new town hall equipped with 

excellent projection and translation facilities. 

Large models showed the traditional, pre-Gazprom 

Yamal region and the development planned for 

the coming decades based on oil and gas revenue. 

These indications of great progress and opportunity 

contrast strongly with my recollections of Salekhard 

from the mid-1990s. The western part of the 

Russian North has experienced booming growth, 

and archaeology has been a major beneficiary. 

One of the highlights of the meetings was an 

evening tour of the Salekhard museum by Natalia 

Fedorova. Here we saw finds from excavations I 

participated in in the 1990s, including the famous 

Iron Age mummies from Zeleny Yar and a woven 

belt I coaxed from permafrost at Yarte 6. The 

conference included a sumptuous evening at a 

reconstructed Nenets/Khanty tourist village in 

the snowy woods outside Salekhard where we 

enjoyed a dinner of traditional food and drink 

that inspired revelry and singing. If there was 

anything disturbing about this highly stimulating 

conference, it was the foreboding that Yamal’s 

traditional societies are being overwhelmed by 

industrialization, a huge influx of southerners, and 

climate change, all of which pose grave threats to 

the indigenous culture and economy of the Nenets—

the last vibrant reindeer herders of the Arctic.

UP FROM THE DEAD: LABRADOR’S FIRST 

SNOWMOBILE DRIVES AGAIN!

By Jamie Brake

In 2013 and 2014 a Model T Ford truck with a patented 

Snowmobile conversion kit was recovered from an 

archaeological site in northern Labrador that served 

as the expedition base for the Rawson-MacMillian 

Subarctic Expedition station of 1927-28. The recovery 

was made with the help of people from the Inuit 

community of Nain, including Rodney Gear, Shawn 

Soloman, Russell Barbour, Antone Harris, David 

Harris, Wayne Jenkins and Elsie Jenkins of Aivek 

Holdings; Jacob Larkin; Jens Haven Memorial 

Modern Salekhard with planned development and old city in 

distance. In the background is a model of anticipated oil and 

gas infrastructure on the Yamal Peninsula. 

Photo: W. Fitzhugh
 ASC Newsletter 19

School; and Johannes Lampe, Richard Pamak, 

Sean Lyall, and Richard Okkuatsiak. The expedition 

site and the Model T were known locally ever since 

they were used in the 1920s, and they became 

recognized as an archaeological site in mid-1990s. 

This was the first snowmobile ever used in Labrador, 

and during the recovery process it became clear it 

would be possible to make a complete restoration. This 

option would be a wonderful opportunity to display a 

significant piece of Labrador history by actually using 

it. The restoration work was done for the Nunatsiavut 

Government by a machinist named Frank Noseworthy, 

in Port au Choix, Newfoundland, between 2015 and 

2017. Numerous others helped over the duration of the 

project, including the former radio broadcaster, Winston 

White, his son Richard White Jr.,conservator Miki 

Lee, Model T enthusiasts like Andy Lasso, the late 

Robert MacDonald, Enos Wiseman, David Hiltz, 

Norman Weatherly, Apple Autoglass, the Model 

T Ford Club of America, and the Model T Ford 

Snowmobile Club. Anthropologist Peter Armitage

provided photos of the machine taken in the mid-1990s 

when the station was first recorded as an archaeological 

site. Susan Kaplan and Genevieve Lemoine of the 

Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies 

Centre at Bowdoin College provided encouragement, 

advice and access to MacMillan’s historical records.

The fully restored modified Model T, now in running 

condition, arrived back in Nain in late November 

2017. Between late November and late December 

the machine was setup for winter use with skis and 

tracks installed by NG staff and local people in Nain, 

including Joey Angnatok, Kyle Crotty, Michelle 

Davies, David Harris, Noah Nochasak, Sam 

Ittulak, Jimmy Dyson, and the author. Numerous 

transmission adjustments were made to allow the 

use of low gear, reverse, and brakes. When all these 

adjustments were made, we were able to test drive the 

restored snowmobile for the first time, almost exactly 

90 years from the day it was first driven into Nain 

in 1927, just in time for New Year’s celebrations. 

Several additional test rides have been taken since 

early January, and on February 22nd it was driven 

onto the sea ice under its own power for the first time 

since 1928. This unique piece of Labrador history 

can now be used year-round to generate interest in 

the archaeology and history of the region, for cultural 

activities, and as a tourist attraction. It is regularly being 

viewed by excited community members, students and 

visitors, and the machine is attracting considerable 

international attention. Labrador’s first snowmobile will 

be out again in the coming days for a local biannual 

event known as the Heritage Cup Dog Team Race 

that will be held in Nain this winter and involves a 

dog-sled competition with teams representing north 

coast communities. What do you suppose the sled 

dogs will think of the new/old-fangled competition? 

THE ANTARCTIC SNOW CRUISER

By John Cloud

A recent fascinating blog (http://nddaily.blogspot.

com/2017/02/fdrs-new-deal-for-antarctica-andtodays.html) devoted to the FDR administration’s New 

Deal revived the story of the little-known US Antarctic 

Service (1939-41) and its short interesting history.

In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided there 

should be a New Deal for the Antarctic as well as the 

"The Ford Model T converted for snow travel with Martin 

Vorse, a member of the 1927-28 MacMillan expedition to a 

remote region of Labrador. Credit: The Peary-MacMillan 

Arctic Museum, Bowdoin College." Reprinted from New 

York Times "Labrador’s ‘First Snowmobile’ Heads Down the 

Comeback Trail" by Denis Calnan on December 5, 2014

The Snow Cruiser outside the Armour Institute of Technology, which 

was later merged into the University of Chicago
20 ASC Newsletter

US, so he launched a huge new expedition to study the 

Antarctic, with Admiral Richard Byrd in charge. 

The Service personnel in Antarctica were supplied with 

parkas, mukluks, gloves, and much other necessary 

clothing and equipment—all made in Alaska—in a 

project that was part of what was called “the Indian 

New Deal.” The US Antarctic Service also provided 

the southern continent with one of the largest—and 

looniest—vehicles the southern hemisphere was 

ever subjected to: the Antarctic Snow Cruiser. 

The Snow Cruiser was designed and built in Illinois—for 

the conditions of Illinois. It had a diesel-electric engine, 

like modern trains, a kitchen and berths, and enough fuel 

for a range of, so they said, thousands of miles. It also 

had treadless giant rubber tires. In Antarctica, the giant 

wheels spun their way down into the snow constantly. 

So they put on chains, without much improvement. 

Then they discovered the behemoth got more traction 

in reverse, so they drove it that way. It’s longest single 

trip was over 90 miles—going backwards the entire 

route. In 1941, the Service was discontinued when the 

US went into WWII. The Snow Cruiser was left—in the 

snow, appropriately. It was covered for many years, and 

eventually was dug out and tried again. It performed no 

better and was consigned to the snow once more. No one 

in Antarctica presently has any idea what became of it. 

No doubt there are lessons to be learned 

from all this government work.

A LABRADOR RESEARCH FORUM: 

TRUTH, RESPECT, RECIPROCITY, 

HUMILITY, AND RECONCILIATION

By William Fitzhugh

In recent years, research in Labrador has seen many 

new developments, prime among them being active 

participation of local and indigenous people and 

communities. While community research has been a 

steadily growing enterprise, this trend reached a new 

level with the organization of a province-wide colloquy 

called the Labrador Research Forum. As advertised 

in the website announcing the meetings held from 

30 April- 3 May, 2017, in Happy Valley-Goose Bay: 

“The Labrador Research Forum is a new biennial 

initiative led by the Labrador Institute in partnership 

with the Innu Nation, the Nunatsiavut Government, the 

NunatuKavut Community Corporation, the Town of 

Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the Torngat Secretariat, and 

the Department of 

Fisheries and Oceans. 

The goal of the first 

biennial conference is 

to bring researchers, 

community leaders 

and organizations, 

Indigenous 

governments and 

organizations, 

students, and 

government 

representatives 

together in dialogue 

and co-learning 

to share research 

taking place in 

Labrador, and to 

initiate important discussions, connections, 

and networks, and discuss pathways forward 

for a Northern-led research community.”

The conference took place in Happy Valley with 

assists from Sheshatshiu, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, 

Northwest River, and Mud Lake. Participants came from 

across the province, Canada, and the U.S. to discuss 

results and opportunities for collaborative research. A 

pronounced feature of the program was to highlight 

research instigated by communities and residents in 

collaboration with researchers from outside university 

and research centers. In addition to conference sessions, 

the conference included visits to an Innu field camp 

and a lavish concluding banquet with country foods. 

The program was organized by a team headed by 

Ashlee Cunsolo, director of the Memorial University’s 

Labrador Institute for Northern Studies in Happy Valley.

The conference program emphasized the new brand 

of research collaboration that has emerged in Labrador 

in recent years. Almost all papers included local coauthors and co-presenters. Formal talks were limited 

essentially to abstracts to allow for the meat of the matter 

to emerge in open discussion. Topics focused on issues 

of importance to local needs and interests, not to esoteric 

subjects of concern only to scholars. Among the issues 

The Snow Cruiser stuck—in the snow

Innu elder Elizabeth Penashue speaking 

at a reception attended by plenary 

speaker Margaret Kovach and Labrador 

Institute director Ashlee Cunsolo
 ASC Newsletter 21

covered were wildlife policies (the caribou crash!), 

the Muskrat Falls Dam controversy; climate change 

and its effects on subsistence hunting and trapping; 

educational policy; sustainable fishing; community 

responses to tourism; mining and forestry policies; and 

issues of sanitation, water quality, and food security.

Several hundred people participated. The conference 

was full of energy, and plenary sessions were attended 

by government officials, wildlife officers, and 

Memorial University leaders as well as by local and 

external researchers. 

Mayor Jamie Snook 

of Happy Valley-Goose 

Bay hosted sessions, and 

business leaders from 

HV-GB were present 

and chimed in. The 

concluding banquet on 

the old Goose Bay air 

base was a lavish affair 

with beautiful slide 

shows of the conference 

and raffle prizes. 

The LRF has initiated a 

new design for scholarly 

research in the service 

of local communities, 

one that places the enterprise squarely in the hands of local 

initiators. Major themes emerging from the conference 

were for researchers to practice truth, respect, reciprocity, 

and to conduct research as reconciliation. The message is a 

clear departure from past practice: from now on, research 

is to be collaborative, address local concerns, and include a 

significant element of community control and participation.

CRUISING THE VIKING HOMELAND

By William Fitzhugh

Dartmouth College asked me to guide a group of 

Dartmouth alumni on a Viking-themed North Sea 

tour in early June. Shaking off my research into 16th 

century Basque whalers and diving into Viking history 

of the 8th to 10th centuries, I flew from Bilbao to 

Glascow and climbed about Gohagen’s Le Boreal for a 

week visiting Norse and earlier sites around the North 

Sea. Steaming out of Glascow harbor and passing 

Scotland’s western isles immediately transported one 

back to the Viking Age; not much has changed in 

some of the small, seaside fishing and sheep-herding 

communities nestled among the skerries and coves.

Early the next morning we arrived at Oban and 

bussed to Fort William where we boarded the Jacobite 

Train to Mallaig, learning about the failed Jacobite 

Rebellion seeking to return James VII of Scotland 

to the English throne in the early 18th century. The 

train from Fort William to Mallaig passed through 

the spectacular Scottish Highlands. A lecture by 

Elizabeth Pierce provided deep archaeological 

background for the northern British Isles. 

Our second day took us to Kirkwall in the Orkneys, 

and visits to the Neolithic sites of Skara Brae, famous 

for the 1920s excavations here by V. Gordon Childe

and later by David Clark. Its near perfectly preserved 

stone dwellings at 

the sea document 

the importance 

of maritime 

subsistence and 

trade as a unique 

feature of early 

European culture 

history. Even more 

dramatic was our 

visit to the Ring 

of Brodgar with 

its huge circle of 

standing stones, 

and the Ness of 

Brodgar village 

being excavated 

by Nick Card. 

These excavations 

have revolutionized 

our understanding of 

the British Neolithic, 

whose monuments 

pre-date Stonehenge 

of southern Britain by 

nearly one thousand 

years. In Kirkwall we 

visited St. Magnus 

Cathedral and 

the town that 

produced early 

Labrador settlers, 

Hudson’s Bay men, and the famous explorer 

of the Canadian Arctic, John Rae. 

Back on board, we had informative lectures on Neolithic 

prehistory and the famous site of Jarlshof by Gillian 

Hovell. Jarlshof—beautifully excavated and restored—

scoops Skara Brae by demonstrating a sequence of 

villages from Neolithic times to the Medieval Period. Its 

spectacular location at the southern tip of the Shetland 

Islands demonstrates further the significance of 5000 

years of North Sea maritime economy and history. This 

history and Scandinavia’s connections to circumpolar 

regions was discussed in a lecture by William Fitzhugh.

Poster session in progress. 

Photo: Sherilee Harper

Grave of Hudson Bay Company explorer 

John Rae in St. Magnus cathedral, 

Kirkwall, Orkney

Restored seaside Neolithic village of 

Skara Brae, Orkney
22 ASC Newsletter

Our night crossing of the North Sea was illuminated by 

the gas flares and lights of countless oil platforms that 

have produced immense wealth for Norway and Scotland 

during the past several decades. Arriving at Sognefjord 

in the morning we experienced the grandeur of one of 

the most dramatic fjords of southern Norway and took 

the Flamm railway, one of the steepest-grade railways in 

the world, constructed between 1924-1940, to Myrdal.

Our final visit in Norway was Bergen, whose mild climate, 

deep history, and cultural wonders make it one of the jewels 

of the North Sea for visitors. Its harbors and skerries have 

been homeports for voyagers for millennia, and in modern 

times, it was the home of musician Edvard Grieg and artist 

Edvard Munch, Norway has preserved Stavkirkes and 

the historic Bryygen harbor village whose reconstructed 

medieval village and underwater archaeological excavations 

have revealed treasures from Viking times to the present. 

Our voyage ended with arrival in Copenhagen 

and a bus tour on the way to the airport. It’s hard 

to believe that seven days could produce such a 

fabulous tour, with so much educational value. In 

addition to visiting important archaeological sites 

like Jarlshof for the first time, I found the other 

lecturers to be fascinating. Hats off to Gohagen and 

its team of tour operators for a fabulous experience! 

ARCTIC CIRCLE CONFERENCE: 

REYKJAVIK 2017

By William Fitzhugh

According to Arcticcircle.

org: “The Annual Arctic Circle 

Assembly is the largest annual 

international gathering on the 

Arctic, attended by more than 

2000 participants from 60 

countries. It is attended by heads 

of states and governments, 

ministers, members of 

parliaments, officials, experts, 

scientists, entrepreneurs, 

business leader, indigenous 

representative, environmentalists, 

students and others from the 

growing community of partners 

and participants interested in 

the future of the Arctic.” (See 

http://www.arcticcircle.org/)

In previous years, Wilfred 

Richard represented the Arctic Studies Center at the 

AC conference and wrote reports on the proceedings 

in this Newsletter. This year, Will and William 

Fitzhugh attended the conference, which took place 

on 13-15 October in the Harpa Conference Center 

in Reykjavik. As in previous years, the conference 

chair was Iceland’s past president, Olafur Ragnar 

Grimsson. One of the meeting highlights was 

a keynote talk by Eastern Orthodox Patriarch 

Barthomew I who called for nations to address 

the issues of rapid climate change in the Arctic and 

its impacts on indigenous peoples. Senator Lisa 

Murkowsky and John Holdren, former science 

advisor to President Barack Obama, gave talks 

calling for science to help solve emerging problems 

of the North. Special events included tours of the 

Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica which was moored 

next to Harpa. The meeting’s social calendar was 

replete with receptions, musical performances, 

films, and art and photography exhibits.

The conference hosted more than 60 panels, 

several plenaries, and special keynotes on each of 

the three days. Scholarly sessions ranged across 

fields of science, history, literature, art, business, 

shipping, tourism, fisheries, Arctic town mayors, 

and many others. Topics included issues related 

to youth culture and empowerment, medical care, 

suicide prevention, mental illness, and gender 

relations. Indigenous interests were well represented. 

Governmental policy was a central theme running 

through many sessions, as was concern about 

environmental protection and sustainable growth, 

given the upsurge in Arctic development. Media 

coverage was extensive.

One area not well-represented 

was contributions to Arctic 

knowledge and education 

by museums and cultural 

organizations. Relatively 

few museum scientists and 

curators were present, and most 

presentations were oriented 

toward policy formation. 

Given that the Arctic Circle 

Assembly is probably the largest 

international gathering of Arcticinterested individuals, and that 

representatives of most Arctic 

national governments attend 

(this year Russians were mostly 

absent), stronger representation 

from museums and northern 

research and educational 

institutions would help publicize the important roles 

these organizations have in the North today. Next 

year’s meeting will be held in Reykjavik on 18-21 

October. Session proposals are due by 20 May.

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, former president 

of Iceland and conference organizer.
 ASC Newsletter 23

THE NEW ARCTIC MOHN PRIZE 

AWARDED TO “THE MEANING OF 

ICE” TEAM AND EDDY CARMACK

By Igor Krupnik

A new major arctic research prize called “The 

International Mohn Prize” (which could be 

considered as the “Arctic Science Nobel Prize”) was 

established in 2017 by the University of Tromsø/Arctic 

University of Norway for excellence in research related 

to the Arctic. The prize is named after Henrik Mohn

(1835–1916), Norwegian meteorologist and director 

general of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in 

1866–1913. Mohn was instrumental in the success of 

the first International Polar Year, 1881–1882 and of 

several Norwegian polar expeditions, including that 

by Fridtjof Nansen in Fram in 1893–1896. The Mohn 

Prize conducted in collaboration with the Academia 

Borealis – The Academy of Sciences and Letters of 

Northern Norway, 

Tromsø Research 

Foundation, the Arctic 

University of Norway 

(UiT), and the Mohn 

family. The prize 

amounts to 2 million 

NOK (approximately 

210 000 €), and is 

awarded biennially by 

the Steering Committee 

upon recommendation of 

the international ‘science 

committee’ made of five 

members: Jody Deming

(Oceanography), 

Ander Elverhøl

(Geosciences), Gail 

Fondahl (Geography), 

Oran Young

(Political Science), 

and Igor Krupnik

(Anthropology). 

The first nominations for the prize were solicited 

internationally in summer-fall 2017.

Following committee’s deliberation, the firstever Mohn Prizes were awarded in December 

2017 to two nominees. One went to Canadian 

oceanographer Eddy Carmack “for groundbreaking 

contributions to understanding the physics of the 

Arctic Ocean, its interactions with climate, land and 

ecosystems.” The second was to an international 

team of researchers and indigenous knowledge 

experts from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, for 

a multi-year project, called "The Dynamics of 

Human-Sea Ice Relations: Comparing Changing 

Environments in Alaska, Nunavut, and Greenland" 

(also known as "Siku-Inuit-Hila"/Sea Ice-PeopleWeather.) The team led the publication of the 

project’s results, especially as represented in the 

illustrated book titled The Meaning of Ice (2013, 

Shari Gearheard, lead editor – see ASC NSL 21, 

p.50). The book has subsequently been translated 

into three indigenous Arctic languages – North 

Alaskan Iñupiaq, Central Canadian Inuktitut, and 

West Greenlandic Kalaallistun. The set of four books 

represents the first time that the results of a major 

Arctic research project have been presented in an 

equal format in English and three Arctic indigenous 

languages, for use by local communities, in language 

and heritage programs, and in promoting Arctic 

people’s education and contribution to science.

The Arctic Studies Center joins many colleagues 

and institutions in 

congratulating Eddy 

Carmack and the 

“Meaning of Ice” team 

that, beyond Shari 

Gearheard, includes local 

community observers; 

indigenous translators 

from Utqiagvik (Barrow), 

Iqaluit, and Nuuk; 

scientists with long 

collaborative ties to ASC, 

like Henry Huntington

(Eagle River, Alaska) 

and Lene Kielsen Holm 

(Nuuk, Greenland), and 

publishers at the IPI Press 

in Hanover, NH (Peter 

Mittenthal and James 

Robb.) The next Mohn 

Prize for the outstanding 

research on the Arctic will 

be awarded in late 2019.

ICASS IX CHARTS ARCTIC SOCIAL 

SCIENCE COURSE FOR 2017–2020

By Igor Krupnik

The Ninth International Congress of Arctic Social 

Sciences (ICASS IX) took place in the northern 

Swedish city of Umeå on June 8–12, 2017. The 

Congress was organized by the International Arctic 

Social Sciences Association (IASSA) and hosted 

jointly by several units at the Umeå University, the 

Arcum (Arctic Research Centre), the Sámi dutkan 

(Sami Language studies), and Vaartoe (Centre for 

Shari Gearheard (center), Lene Kielsen Holm, and Toku 

Oshima (Qaanaaq, Greenland, right) receive the Mohn 

Prize from Anne Husebekk, Rector of the UiT(left) – Tromso, 

January 2018 (Photo IPI website)
24 ASC Newsletter

Sami Research). Peter Sköld, the Arcum Director 

and professor of history, Sami culture, and society 

development was the Congress’ president in his 

capacity of the outgoing president of IASSA. More 

than 800 registered participants from 20+ states and 

several indigenous nations from places as far away 

as Australia and New Zealand attended the Congress, 

whose official theme was “People and Places.”

IASSA’s Congresses held every three years are 

definitely growing in size and attention over past 

decades. This time, the number of speakers and 

session applications was so large that the organizers 

were forced to abandon the usual practice of 

individual plenary speakers and replaced it with 

‘plenary panels’ of five to seven participants 

each. The papers submitted to the Congress were 

arranged into 20 thematic fields, from archaeology to 

contemporary migrations and mobilities, with each 

theme assigned a special leader to select the best 

papers and organize them into sessions. I was asked 

to lead the theme called “Museums and Heritage,” 

that—with its 22 presented papers and one poster in 

four sessions—was one of the small venues of the 

Congress. The big topics, like resource development 

and extractive industries or international relations and 

law had 10-12 sessions and more than 100 speakers.

The ASC team of Chelsi Slotten, our volunteer 

researcher, Nicholas Parlato, now a Master’s student 

at the University of Northern British Columbia, and 

myself participated in the session under the museums 

and heritage theme titled “Sustaining Arctic Cultural 

Heritage in the 21st Century.” At the session I 

chaired, Nicholas presented our joint paper telling 

the story of the International Guide to Online Arctic 

Ethnographic Collections (see ASC Newsletter 24).

The highlight of the Congress was the presntation of 

the IASSA Honorary Lifetime Membership awards to 

scientists who made groundbreaking contributions to 

the development of Arctic Social Sciences. The 2017 

awardees were our Research Associate, anthropologist 

Ann Fienup-Riordan from Anchorage and Carl 

Christian Olsen (Puju) from Nuuk, Greenland, director 

of the Greenland Language Secretariat and the chair of 

the ICC Language Commission and of the Greenland 

Language Committee. We whole-heartedly congratulate 

Ann and Puju on winning this prestigious award from 

the world community of Arctic social scientists.

In the concluding plenary several bids to host ICASS 

X in 2020 and to lead IASSA were put to a vote. The 

majority of the association members voted Andrey 

Petrov, Director of the Arctic Center and professor 

of geography at the University of Northern Iowa, 

in Cedar Falls, Iowa, to serve as the next IASSA 

president for 2017–2020 and to organize the next 

Congress to be held at the Northern Arctic Federal 

University in Arkhangelsk, Russia, in summer of 2020.

EARLY INUIT STUDIES: THEMES AND 

TRANSITIONS RECEIVES NMNH SCIENCE 

ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR 2016

By Igor Krupnik

An Arctic Studies Center (ASC) initiated collection 

on the history of Inuit/Eskimo research, Early Inuit 

Studies: Themes and Transitions, 1850s–1980s (Igor 

Krupnik, ed., 2016, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly 

Press) received the NMNH Science Achievement 

Award for the best scholarly works published in 

2016. The entire process, including the selection of 

nominees, was supervised by the NMNH Senate of 

Scientists (SoS), via a special committee chaired 

by Robert Hershler (curator, Dept. of Invertebrate 

Zoology). Altogether, five publications produced 

by NMNH scholars and their collaborators received 

the 2016 awards, including another paper from 

Anthropology, by Torben Rick and co-authors, 

on the role of indigenous oyster harvesting in the 

Chesapeake Bay for maintaining biological diversity. 

The awards were given at the NMNH all-staff 

meeting on November 15, 2017, by the then Associate 

Director for Science, Dr. Maureen Kearney. 

The Early Inuit Studies volume (ASC Newsletter 

23, p.60) was an outcome of a special session on 

the history of Eskimology organized at the 18th 

Inuit Studies Conference hosted by the ASC at the 

Smithsonian in October 2012. The book contained 

15 chapters written by an international team of 

authors that also included Bill Fitzhugh, the ASC 

director, as well as our colleagues from Denmark, 

Canada, Russia, U.S.A., France, and Austria.
 ASC Newsletter 25

QUEBEC GATEWAYS 2017: HART 

CHALET AND ST. PAUL SURVEY

By William Fitzhugh

The Quebec Gateways Project returned to the 

Quebec Lower North Shore for several weeks during 

August. Our field plans included the completion of 

excavations at House 3 in the Hart Chalet Inuit winter 

village and surveys and excavations at Groswater 

and Inuit sites found in 2016 in the St. Paul River 

archipelago. We hoped to expand our surveys 

around St. Paul and Salmon Bay, giving particular 

attention to Inuit and Paleoeskimo sites. Our work 

in both areas was stimulated by local interest in 

archeology and the use of heritage information 

that could be used for economic development and 

tourism. This summer’s project produced excellent 

results. We had a fine team, completed three 

excavations, and discovered several new sites.

Hart Chalet (EiBh-47) Our work at the Hart Chalet 

Inuit site began in 2008 when we discovered that 

archaeological finds and mounds surrounding Clifford 

and Florence Hart’s cottage near the mouth of the 

Brador River were the foundations of three Inuit sod 

houses and not Basque earthworks as previously 

supposed by René Levesque. In subsequent years 

we excavated portions of Houses 1 and 2, and since 

2014 nearly completed full excavation of the largest 

structure, House 3. The settlement plan, consisting of 

three sod-walled dwellings set side-by-side, suggested 

a single occupation by three extended families—a 

common pattern for 17-18th century Labrador Inuit 

settlements on the central Labrador coast. Caribou 

and harp seal remains indicated a winter occupation. 

European material culture including Basque roof 

RESEARCH tiles and Normandy stoneware supported a 17th 

century date with significant trade with Europeans, 

perhaps at the Courtemanche’s 1705 Brador fort and 

trading establishment located across Brador Bay. 

Previous work had shown that House 3 was different 

from Houses 1 and 2 in several respects. It was 

excavated a meter deep into a sand dune and lacked 

the clearly-defined rectangular wall outline of the 

other dwellings. In other respects is was similar: 

absence of a long entrance passage and cold-trap, 

and presence of plank sleeping benches, an external 

cooking hearth, large amounts of faunal remains and 

European objects and raw materials. Like most of 

the other Inuit winter sites on the LNS Hart Chalet 

organic artifacts were poorly preserved due to the 

mild and moist climate and acidic subarctic soil.

Excavation in 2017 explored the external hearth 

and the southwest, northwest, and northeast walls. 

Finds were relatively few; in addition to nails, 

tile fragments, and glass, we found a 17th century 

French Louis XIII ‘double tournois’ coin (1632-34), 

a whalebone knife handle, a bear tooth toggle (both 

badly preserved), an iron deer spear, fragments of 

a large stoneware vessel, stoneware and painted 

faience ceramics, a lead-wrapped jigger hook, and a 

fragment of a cast iron pot. The coin helps explain the 

absence of clay pipes and Basque earthenware—the 

site was too early for common use of clay pipes, and 

too late for Basque earthenware. While excavating 

the sod walls of the house we found evidence of 

previous visitors: prehistoric Indian and Groswater 

Inuit artifacts dating to the last 2500 years made 

of Ramah chert and other local chert varieties. 

The house did not have the usual rectangular shape 

but was slightly oval; its lack of well-defined wall 

Left: The Jolly Pitsiulak Crew (minus Perry): l-r: Haley Adams, Iris Wang, WF, Alexandra Castellanos, Jacob Marchman

Center: Soggy digging at Grand Plain Groswater site

Right: Alexandra with the clincher find at Grand Isle-2: 

an Inuit soapstone pot fragment. Skipper Perry seen in his usual supporting role
26 ASC Newsletter

boundaries may have resulted from its excavation 

in a sand dune. Bone and artifact midden had been 

dumped around the outside wall, mostly around the 

front of the structure. The lack of clear wall definition 

and the three superimposed cooking hearths found 

in the cooking alcove in 2016 suggest the structure 

had multiple re-building episodes. The absence of 

soapstone vessel fragments and presence of an iron pot 

suggest significant change in Inuit domestic practice. 

Grand Isle-2 (EiBk-54) For many years we considered 

the St. Paul River region as the most likely territory 

for Inuit settlement on the LNS, especially after 

discovering Inuit winter dwellings at Petit Mecatina, 

Jacques Cartier 

Bay, Belles 

Amour, and 

Brador. Why 

would Inuit have 

chosen NOT to 

occupy St. Paul, 

one of the richest 

resource zones 

on the LNS? 

When our 2016 

survey failed 

to reveal Inuit 

winter settlements 

or any sign of 

graves or summer 

tent-rings, it 

seemed that the 

region might have 

been avoided 

because it was 

already occupied 

by Europeans when Inuit appeared here 

from the north in the early 1600s. 

Our 2017 excavations forced us to reassess this 

view when a rectangular foundation found in 2016 

(Grand Isle-2, Fea. 1) turned out to be Inuit rather 

than Innu. The structure was eroding at the edge of a 

shore-side terrace on the north side of Grand Isle and 

had lost its north wall and part of the interior to the 

sea. Its low foundation made it barely distinguishable 

from the surrounding tundra. When tested in 2016, 

the presence of dark chert flakes, bits of rusted iron, 

and a c14 date of AD 1415-1455 suggested the house 

was a European contact period Innu dwelling. 

In 2017 we returned and excavated three 2x2 meter 

squares in the center of the structure and found most 

of its contents were Inuit based on the presence of 

Basque roof tiles, Inuit soapstone pot fragments, iron 

sheet metal, and large iron spikes. These materials 

were found on the partially preserved remains of a 

wood floor. Below the floor a thin peat-humus level 

representing the original vegetated ground surface 

contained flakes of dark chert, Ramah chert, and the 

charcoal dated above. Apparently Inuit had built a 

small rectangular dwelling at a location previously 

occupied by prehistoric Innu. The rectangular 

shape of the structure and its low sod walls and 

excavated interior suggested that it was an Inuit 

qarmat-type structure used during the fall when 

summer tents did not provide sufficient protection, 

but before winter pithouses were occupied. 

To our surprise, only 75 meters up-slope we found the 

partial remains of an Inuit winter dwelling 

(Grand Isle-2, L2). Testing revealed an 

excavated paved entry passage and a hearth 

pile containing fire-cracked rock and caribou 

bones. But what seemed at first to be an 

Inuit semi-subterranean winter house lacked 

any evidence of an interior: not sign of a 

floor or cultural level with artifacts, bones, 

or charcoal. The 

“interior” turned out to 

be a natural depression 

where Inuit had begun 

building a dwelling 

that was abandoned 

after creating the 

entry way and hearth. 

Probably both the 

rectangular L1 qarmat 

and the L2 unfinished 

winter dwelling 

were created by a 

single Inuit group. 

The Grand Isle-2 site 

complex is our first 

evidence of Inuit 

occupation in St. 

Paul, but it appears 

to have been a short-lived 17th century occupation. 

This group may also have contributed to the nearby 

boulder structures where Charles Martijn (1974) 

reported human remains and an Inuit snowknife 

at Kettle Head (Grand Isle-1) at the top of the hill 

a few hundred meters south of Grand Isle-2. 

Perhaps our initial interpretation was not so unlikely 

after all. The continued lack of substantial Inuit 

settlements like those found elsewhere on the LNS 

may result from Europeans having established 

prior ‘ownership’ of this important resource 

zone. Grand Isle-2 may have been the result of a 

failed Inuit colonization attempt. Full excavation 

The team with Garland 

Nadeau at the Grand 

Isle-2 Inuit qarmat site

Collecting Groswater artifacts from 

an eroding blowout at Belles Amours
 ASC Newsletter 27

is planned for 2018 in collaboration with the 

Whiteley Museum and St. Paul communities. 

Grand Plain-1, L1 (EiBj-41) Grand Plain-1/

L1 is located about a kilometer east of the Old 

Salmon Bay settlement at the southwestern edge 

of a huge series of raised beaches north of Wild 

Cove and above Point Scramble. Tests revealed 

Groswater Paleoeskimo artifacts beneath a thin 

veneer of caribou moss, lichen, and birch shrubs. 

We returned in 2017 and excavated a small trench 

across the top of a low rocky ridge, finding flakes 

and tools scattered evenly across the excavation 

area. The site produced endscrapers, sidenotched and box-based points, flake scrapers, 

microblades, and ground and spalled burin-like 

tools. The abundance of endscrapers suggested 

skin-working was an important activity. The 

site produced a small collection of Groswater 

Paleoeskimo artifacts dating ca. 2400-2200 BP.

New Survey Sites Brief surveys were conducted 

at several locations between St. Paul and Brador. 

At Belles Amours Harbor North we found a large 

field of boulders where the Belles Amours Harbor 

Peninsula joins the mainland northeast of Isthmus 

Bay. This site contains a score or more of boulder 

pit structures, some of which are caches while 

others may be dwellings. The high site elevation 

suggests an early Maritime Archaic date. 

A foot survey in the blowouts in the raised beaches 

west of Belles Amour inner harbor produced 

a small collection of Groswater implements 

eroding from a buried soil horizon. In addition to 

scrapers, side-notched points, and microblades, 

we recovered the smallest ground burin-like tool 

I have ever seen, measuring less than a centimeter 

on a side. Chert nodules from the surrounding 

gravel closely resembles the material used in 

Groswater technology, suggesting the possibility 

of a source of Groswater chert in this region.

The 2017 season produced important new 

information on Inuit and Groswater Paleoeskimo 

occupations of the Quebec Lower North shore, 

including the first instance of 16/17 century Inuit 

occupation of the St. Paul region. Our work 

was made comfortable and enjoyable by the 

assistance of Florence Hart, Garland Nadeau, 

and Eileen Schofield. As usual, Perry Colbourne

as Pitsiulak skipper and his family provided 

critical support. Our tireless crew of students—

Jake Marchman, Iris Wang, Haley Adams, and 

Alexandra Castellanos—supplied tireless labor 

and cheer, and will all become rich or famous.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEYS 

IN HAMILTON INLET

By William Fitzhugh

The Rigolet Project completed a fourth 

season of surveys that included research at 

Mason Island, Snooks and Caravalla Coves, 

and the eastern part of Lake Melville. 

A survey in 2015 of Mason’s Island (also known as 

Tinker Harbor) resulted in the discovery of an unusual 

stone cache consisting of a circular arrangement of 

flat slabs surrounding a storage pit. This feature was 

located on a gravel terrace where we found a stemmed 

point, tent rings, and small circular “Indian Island” 

hearth features in 2015. The finds suggested several 

Indian groups had visited the site during the past 

2000 years, attracted in part by a small harbor at the 

southeast edge of the terrace. The stemmed point find 

suggested that the cache might be connected to the 

David Michelin or Sid Blake sites in Northwest River. 

We excavated four square meters around the pit 

feature without encountering cultural finds. The 

sides of the cache pit were lined with stone slab, 

and at the bottom of the pit we found wood and 

charcoal dating 1246–1302 ca. AD (Beta 481306). 

No artifacts, bones, red ocher, or charcoal stains were 

present. The feature appears to have been a cache 

for food or other perishable material. The radial 

arrangement of surface rocks around the pit may 

have held down skin or birch bark covering. On the 

island’s northwest point we found an Inuit site with 

several tent rings, a grave cairn (already opened), and 

U-shaped Inuit hearth. Several tent rings and caches 

were also noted along the shore of the old harbor.

On Saddle Island we extended our 2015 survey of 

its northern shore. This island is known for bears 

and bakeapples, but both were absent during our 

visit. Instead, we recorded tent rings and boulder 

caches in five locations; both Inuit and recent Settler 

sites were identified, while others may be Innu.

Snook’s Cove was first investigated in the early 

1970s by Richard Jordan during his work on 

Eskimo Island. Jordan excavated one Inuit house and 

part of a second, which Brian Pritchard of MUN 

returned to excavate in 2009. Our contribution was 

locating two rectangular sod building foundations on 

the forested bank of the River north of the modern 

settlement area, with a midden containing 19th 

century artifacts. These structures appear are new 

additions to the site inventory of the Hunt and Henley 

trading post that operated here starting in the 1830s 

and was sold to (and closed by) the Hudson’s Bay 
28 ASC Newsletter

Company in 1865. The combined presence of an Inuit 

settlement with a mid-19th century trading post make 

Snooks Cove of special archaeological, historical, 

and local interest. At nearby Caravalla Cove, we 

identified two rectangular sod foundations near the 

shore west of the mid-cove point. Tests in the sod 

foundations produced 19th and 20th century artifacts, 

including a nearly complete annular ware tea cup. 

St. John Island holds a strategic location at the 

eastern end of Lake Melville, but until this year it 

had never been surveyed. We found sites on both 

sides of the tickle separating St. John from Haines 

Island. St. John Island Tickle-1 has three site loci 

on the north side of the tickle. Structures 1 and 2 

are located in two clusters of midden vegetation 

and produced clay pipe fragments. Structure 3 is a 

tent ring on a gravel patch at the high tide line that 

produced several large iron spikes. SJI Tickle-2, lying 

on a grassy tombolo beach extending into the tickle 

from the north side of Haines Island, has numerous 

tent structures, including a circular Inuit tent ring.

The most important new site of the season, St. John 

Island-1, is located on a high, precipitous bank at 

the northern tip of the island. This exposed location 

has a rectangular Labrador Inuit winter sod-house 

dwelling with an entry passage, two lateral sleeping 

platforms, and a central work area. Tests produced 

birch bark, food bone, a white seed bead and a lead 

artifact resembling the figure of a human. The site is 

perfectly preserved. Its exposed location was a mystery 

until Charlie Tooktoshina of Rigolet told us that this 

location is a great place for netting seals under the ice 

during winter. This site fifteen miles west of the large 

Inuit site concentration on Eskimo Island make it the 

western-most Inuit winter settlement in Hamilton Inlet.

Raised boulder beaches on the west side St. John Island 

were found to have six boulder features including tent 

rings, a possible Inuit grave cairn, and an Inuit fox 

trap. Some of these may be associated with the nearby 

winter settlement. We saw no sign of Paleoeskimo 

activity, and none of the high beaches had boulder pit 

or cache features. Two raised boulder beaches on the 

mainland north of English River had a few tent and 

cache features, but no cultural materials were present. 

Neveisik (Pelter), Bear, and Indian Islands lie north of 

St. John’s Island near the southern entrance to Valley 

Bight. These islands have protected coves and skerries 

and are popular hunting and summer and winter camp 

locations. This area has been a transitional zone for 

Innu and Inuit peoples. In 2016 we found Inuit sites 

on Neveisik, and this summer, Inuit sites on St. John’s. 

We also found two groups of tent rings on a small islet 

extension at the eastern end of Indian Island. Many 

were cannibalized, and none could be identified as 

Inuit, Innu, or settler because of vegetation growth. 

The nearby waters teem with bird life and seals.

Lying south of Burnt Head at the southern entrance 

of Valley Bight, Andy Island is treeless with high 

knobs at its north and south ends connected by 

a low saddle. Three recent tent ring loci were 

identified, all appeared of recent origin, when it 

becomes difficult to determine cultural identity 

from tent rings and hearths due to culture blending 

and the common use of modern technology.

Green Island is in the middle of Lake Melville’s 

eastern end and is made of a soft red-purple sandstone 

rather than granite-gneiss that dominates the 

surrounding lands. The soft sandstone has enabled 

the island to record a long history post-glacial uplift 

in its raised beaches, which extend from the shore 

to the island’s crest. Despite the ideal setting for 

beach-ridge chronology, we found only four small 

recent features. None of the higher beaches showed 

any sign of cultural activity. Early travelers and 

hunters seem to have avoided Green Island until 

the advent of outboards and snowmobiles made 

it safely accessible to goose and seal hunters.

Located midway along the south shore of Lake 

Melville, Etagaulet Point is known to Rigolet people 

as “Deer Point.” Charlie Tooktoshina says this site 

used to be an important spring seal hunting camp 

as well as a place to hunt young caribou in the 

nearby Mealy Mountains. I visited Etagaulet briefly 

in 1968 and in 1986 and saw tent rings, komatik 

parts, seal skin stretcher frames and other materials. 

Today none of this evidence remains visible. We 

recorded three tent rings containing 19/20th century 

artifacts. Organic deterioration and robust forest 

and shrub encroachment partially account for the 

site’s transformation. As seen in other locations, 

Etagaulet Point has fallen out of use in the new 

era of rapid outboard and skidoo transportation.

The 2017 Rigolet Project documented many new sites, 

especially in eastern Lake Melville. Snooks Cove 

offers good opportunity for studying 19th century 

Inuit-European interactions and should be developed 

for tourism. A similar opportunity exists for the site 

cluster at the eastern end of Lake Melville, of which 

the foremost prospect is the new Inuit winter site on 

the northern tip of St. John Island. This site probably 

served as the basecamp for Inuit sites we identified 

at the Haines Island Tickle, the boulder beach sites, 

and perhaps for the Inuit sites on Neveisik, Bear, and 

Indian Islands. Nearly all of the raised beaches and 

points between St. John Island and Etagaulet Point 

have evidence of Inuit activity in the 19th and early 
 ASC Newsletter 29

20th century and were used for a variety of activities, 

especially spring sealing and caribou hunting. All 

are within range for future tourism development 

connected with the Mealy Mountains National Park. 

English River may still conceal Viking mysteries 

concerning the saga report of a Norse visit to 

a river flowing from east-to-west (very rare in 

Labrador!) where Thorvald Erikson was wounded 

and purportedly buried at a keel-shaped ness, 

perhaps on the Port Disappointment peninsula. 

Our survey demonstrates a major change in 

settlement patterns related to the traditional use of 

the eastern and southern shores of Lake Melville by 

the Inuit through the 19th and mid-20th century. The 

introduction of rapid outboard and skidoo transport 

has resulted in abandonment of these traditional 

locations and replacement by daily forays from 

Rigolet or the growing cottage community at English 

River. As usual, there is difficulty in assessing Innu 

settlements because Innu tend to utilize less visible 

site locations, some of which we may have found 

but could not identify as Innu. Finally, the Mason’s 

Island cache adds a useful marker for a type of 

excavated pit cache not known previously, dating 

ca. AD 1200s, and likely of Innu affiliation.

As usual, our work could not have been 

possible without the assistance of our captain, 

Perry Colbourne, our crew (see photo), the 

fine people of Rigolet, and financial support 

of the Nunatsiavut government, Memorial 

University, and the Smithsonian. 

SOME ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATING CAN 

BE AS SIMPLE AS FLIPPING A COIN

By William Fitzhugh 

Reprinted from Smithsonian Magazine 

October 20, 2017

“A coin? You found a coin in your square? 

Why didn’t you tell me?!” I asked Allie.

Alexandra Castellanos, Halie Adams, and Jake 

Marchman had been excavating at the Hart Chalet 

site for a few days in early August while I was in 

Washington, D.C. opening the new exhibition, 

"Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend" at the 

Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. 

Narwhals are neat animals. They live farther north than 

any mammal on earth and they have that mysterious 

tusk that inspired the medieval story of the unicorn.

But, while I was in 

Washington, I really 

wanted to be back in 

coveralls and mud 

boots digging up a 

four hundred year 

old Eskimo site in 

subarctic Quebec. 

“It’s just a coin,” 

Allie said. “No big 

deal. We found a 

lot more interesting 

stuff while you were 

away in D.C.”

“Like what?” 

I asked.

“Well, we showed 

you the whalebone 

knife with an iron 

blade and that 

cool bear tooth 

with two holes 

drilled through it—like it was a charm to 

string around your neck. Maybe it protected 

an Inuit hunter from polar bears, or drowning 

in a storm, or something.” Allied replied.

“Yeah. Those things are pretty neat and they show 

how the early Labrador Inuit used local products like 

whalebone together with iron knife blades obtained 

by trading with Basque fishermen from the Bay of 

Biscay in Europe. And the tooth—it looks like a black 

bear tooth, not polar bear—probably wasn’t a charm. 

It looks to me like a toggle handle—something used 

as a handle to drag a seal you’ve caught across the 

ice to camp. I’ve seen lots of drag handles like it 

from other Inuit sites in Arctic Alaska and Canada.”

“So, what’s so neat about the coin?” Allie asked. 

“I found it in my excavation pit mixed in with 

lots of caribou bones—they were all broken up, 

so I think they were cooked to get the marrow 

and grease out, probably to make soup. It was 

right next to the hearth outside the door of the old 

Inuit sod house. They obviously didn’t care much 

about it if they threw it out with all that trash.” 

“Well, I guess you didn’t take that Archaeology 101 

course at Notre Dame, did you?” I joked. “If you 

had—or if you’d been in my class at Dartmouth—

you’d have learned how important coins are to 

an archaeologist. Even if they’re not worth much 

back when they were made, they can be invaluable 

to someone trying to reconstruct history.”

Excavated at the Hart Chalet site, this 

double tournois copper coin minted 

for French King Louis XIII in 1634 

(reverse side) helped Archaeologists 

determine when the Inuit occupied the 

site. Photo: Perry Colbourne
30 ASC Newsletter

For forty years, I have been studying the migration 

of Inuit people (the proper name for the people we 

used to call “Eskimos”) from the Canadian Arctic 

into Labrador and the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

I’ve dug up thousands of artifacts and written many 

papers about Inuit history and archaeology. I’ve 

always had to date these movements by the types and 

styles of artifacts found in their old dwelling sites.

Harpoon heads are good because their shapes 

change over time. Pottery and clay tobacco pipes 

can be great time-markers too because they change 

like fashion-designers’ clothes. We also use 

radiocarbon dates—a chemical method based on 

the decay of radioactive Carbon-14 to Carbon-12. 

These dates always have a built-in error of plus 

or minus 40 years—so you can be 80 years off 

right from the start. And by AD 1600 you don’t 

get accurate results anyway; not enough C-14 has 

decayed to C-12 to give a statistically accurate age.

Then, I gave Allie a bit of history. “When the 

Inuit, migrating south, reached central Labrador 

around 1550, they met European fishermen and 

whalers—many of them Basque whalers from 

northern Spain. For a couple hundred years the 

Inuit traded walrus ivory, whale baleen, eider duck 

down, and seal and walrus hides with Europeans 

to obtain boats, iron tools, cloth, tobacco, and 

ceramics. The Inuit carried these products back 

north to their settlements along the icy coasts 

where Europeans ships could not travel.”

“The appearance of European artifacts in the arctic 

helps archaeologists in many ways,” I continued. 

“We learn how Inuit adapted to European culture 

and technology—replacing their stone tools with 

iron, their soapstone pots with copper, their ivory 

beads with more colorful glass beads, their skin 

boats with wooden whaleboats, and many other 

things. The introduction of European artifacts 

and technologies also helps us date Inuit sites: 

clay pipes and glass beads appear only after 

1600; Spanish faience earthenware pottery is 

more present in the 1500s. But, none of these 

materials is as good as a coin with the name of 

a king and a date stamped into the metal.”

We were lucky. Allie’s coin was not badly corroded. 

We could read a few of the letters by holding a tiny 

flashlight along the surface so that the raking light 

created shadow effects that revealed a few of the 

letters and what seemed like a 16-something date. 

But we couldn’t be sure. If we could identify it, we 

would have a certain date before which the Hart 

Chalet Inuit site could not have been occupied. 

Archaeologists call this a terminus post quem date. 

Meaning, the earliest possible date for something to 

happen. Our boat captain, Perry Colbourne, used 

a small flashlight and a Nikon cool-pix camera to 

get shots of both sides of the coin which we sent off 

to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural 

History to see if someone there could identify it.

Twenty minutes later, I got an email response from 

my student intern Margaret Litten. ”You maybe 

didn’t know, but I have a hobby. I am a pretty good 

numismatist [coin expert],” she wrote. “I looked at 

the photos you sent and I think I found what coin it 

is but I left a message with the Collections Manager 

[of the National Numismatic Collection] at American 

[Smithsonian’s National Museum of American 

History] for an official ID. I think it’s a double 

tournois copper coin minted for French King Louis 

XIII between 1632 and 1634. About 100,000 were 

minted and it’s worth about 32 British Pounds.”

Later, I had a confirmation from the Smithsonian’s 

Collections Manager of coins, Hillery York. 

Its inscription reads: “DOVBLE TOVRNOIS 

1643.” The more abraded reverse reads: 

“LVD.XIIID.G.FRET.NAVRFEX.”

“But, don’t we still have problems?” Allie asked. 

“Maybe it did not get to the site until many years later.”

“You’re right there, Allie,” I replied. “A Louis XIII 

double tournois coin does not solve all of our dating 

problems at the Hart Chalet site, but it does give 

us important information we cannot get from other 

types of artifacts like beads or ceramics because 

they don’t come with a precise date stamped on 

them. Also, because it’s not perforated, it was 

probably not worn as an ornament for many years 

by the Inuit who obtained it. Chances are that it got 

into the site within a decade or two after the 1630s 

because it was not a valuable coin in those days—not 

something a European would have treasured. And, 

as for the Inuit, it was just found in a trash heap!”

“Regardless, this little coin means a lot to us,” I 

continued. “As we try to piece together the Inuit and 

European history of the Quebec Lower North Shore, 

we know that Inuit were dealing with some French 

or French Basque people in the early 17th century as 

a result of this find. It’s the best date we have for the 

site and explains why we don’t have clay pipes, glass 

beads, and other European materials that we would 

have found if the site had been dated after 1700.”

“Okay. I get it,” Allie said. “Next time I find a coin, 

I’ll let you know. And, by the way, wouldn’t this make 

a good story for International Archaeology Day?” 
 ASC Newsletter 31

THE TOAD-MAN’S ESTATE: AN 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONNAISSANCE 

OF THE SHAPEIAU (SHAPIO) LAKE 

REGION, NITASSINAN (LABRADOR)

By Stephen Loring

Anikapeu –the Toad Man—lives in his house 

Petshishkapishkau, far to the west of Shapeiau 

(Shapio), yet his tenure, his estate, extends 

beyond the shores of Michikamau, throughout 

much of the forested regions of Nitassinan. 

The country is a web of stories and legends 

(atanukana), place names, Innu oral histories 

(tipatshimuna), traveler’s accounts and memories.

Since 1998 the Tshikapisk Foundation-Smithsonian 

Institution collaboration has been centered in and about 

Kamestastin, 

a dramatic 

meteorite-impact 

crater situated near 

the height-of-land 

approximately 130 

kilometers west of 

the coastal village 

of Natuashish. 

The Tshikapisk 

initiative seeks 

a concordance 

between 

archaeology, as 

practiced by the 

academy, and 

Innu history. 

Over the years 

systematic 

survey and 

excavation have 

documented 

over 260 sites 

that attest to 

the significance 

of the area during times 

of caribou abundance when large numbers of caribou 

could be speared while swimming across the lake 

narrows in the fall and ambushed in the spring 

when crossing on the ice. To date the archaeological 

work at Kamestastin reveals that ancient Innu 

hunters – the Tshiash Innu (“the old Innu from a 

long time ago”, equivalent to “Archaic”) arrived 

in the Kamestatin region around 7000 years ago. 

Surface collections of stone tools and excavations 

of a number of small camp sites attest to the 

presence of small Tshiash Innu groups hunting 

in the region over the next several millennia. 

Archaeology in Hamilton Inlet, Lake Melville, and 

along the central Labrador Coast reveals that sometime 

after 3800 B.P. Innu cultures exhibit a number of 

changes that evidence a retreat from northernmost 

Labrador coupled with an intensification of the 

exploitation of inshore and interior resources. These 

Shashish Innu sites (“old Innu”) are referred to in the 

archaeological literature as the “Intermediate Indian 

Period." Shashish Innu stone tool assemblages are quite 

distinct from the earlier Tshiash Innu: tools of Ramah 

chert and ground-slate are almost non-existent. Instead, 

a variety of multi-colored fine-grained opaque cherts 

and quartzites are favored; stemmed projectile points 

are replaced by a variety of broad side-notched forms, 

and new tools including lanceolate bifaces and large 

unifacial scrapers predominate. Very few Shashish Innu 

sites have been identified at Kamestastin and only a 

single diagnostic 

projectile point has 

been recovered. 

The apparent 

paucity of Shashish 

Innu sites in the 

Kamestastin 

region is in 

marked contrast 

to the numbers 

of earlier Tshiash 

Innu sites and 

the very prolific 

19th-century Innu 

footprint that testify 

to times of caribou 

abundance. While 

not abandoning the 

region completely, 

it is apparent there 

is a major shift in 

Innu settlement 

and subsistence 

strategies that 

focuses more 

intently on forest and interior lacustrine resources. 

It has proven difficult to find sites along the river 

banks in central Labrador, as they are closely guarded 

by thick spruce forests and deep layers of moss 

and lichen. Aside from the occasional eroded site 

or isolated artifacts recovered from a sandy beach, 

it is only with intensive sampling (as has occurred 

with the Lower Churchill development) or urban 

expansion (as has occurred in Northwest River and 

Sheshatshiu) that the forest gives up its secrets. 

Even recent and contemporary Innu land-use can be 

difficult to document, especially for winter camps 

Typical Shashish Innu assemblage from the central coast of Labrador. Jim 

Saunder’s collection of Shashish Innu stone tools from Tunungayualok 

Island now at the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, 

Massachusetts. Recognition of Saunder’s contribution to Innu archaeology led 

to his name – the Saunders Complex of the Intermediate Indian Period—being 

applied to sites from this period (ca. 3500-2800 BP) along the Labrador coast. 

Photo: Stephen Loring
32 ASC Newsletter

was made of the entire beach and the terrace edge 

looking out over the lake. According to Napes (JeanPierre Ashini) and Richard Nuna in Sheshatshit, 

Innu families had camped here as recently as 1990, 

but we were chagrined not to be able to find any 

traces of former tent sites beyond the suggestion of 

a few cut stumps. Innu campsites, especially winterspring ones built atop snow, can disappear easily 

back into the forest they were shaped from. A few 

flakes of the distinctive opaque cherts favored by 

the Shashish Innu and several partially exposed 

hearths (sadly devoid of artifacts and debitage) were 

documented at the north and east ends of the lake. 

With the exception of the remarkable sand beach and 

terrace at the northeast end, Shapeiau Lake is nestled 

in low rocky hills whose steep slopes are covered 

with a dense stand of spruce and tamarack. Where 

streams enter the lake there is often a shallow sandy 

delta and beach built up and level enough to have 

provided suitable camping places if weather, or other 

contingencies, made them acceptable. However, these 

little beaches paled in comparison to the logistical 

advantages (adjacent travel routes) and amenities 

offered by the more expansive camping areas at both 

the north and south ends of the lake. Nevertheless, 

we stopped to investigate all the potential camping 

areas–basically defined as space enough for tents and 

canoes—as we worked down the east side of the lake. 

At the southwest corner of Shapeiau Lake is the outlet 

of the river that drains Mishtanipi Lake. On both sides 

of the outlet are broad sandy terraces that seemed to 

offer excellent prospects for camping (as indeed we 

did.) Several diagnostic Shashish Innu artifacts were 

exposed on the surface and we excavated a small 

cobble hearth. The conventional date obtained from 

the large mammal (presumably caribou but perhaps 

bear) calcined bone fragments from the hearth feature 

was 3320+30 B.P. (Beta 488082) –3632-3470 cal 

BP– very much in line with dates from Shashish Innu 

sites on the coast as reported by Christopher Nagle

in his 1978 Arctic Anthropology paper. This site is 

adjacent the terminus of a well-known Innu travel route 

from Mishtanipi that cuts off a particularly difficult 

and treacherous river section. That this was indeed a 

significant Innu travel route is affirmed by Sylvester 

Rich, a Mushuauinnu man who traversed the route in 

the company of a large group of people travelling from 

Utshimassits to Sheshatshit in the mid 1960’s. A map of 

this portage route (now at the Peabody Essex Museum 

in Salem, Massachusetts) which was drawn by an 

Innu informant from Sheshatshit for William Brooks 

Cabot in 1921, and a similar one that was made for 

William Duncan Strong by Innu at Voisey’s Bay 

further confirms the significance of this travel route. We 

and travel routes situated back from the river’s edge, 

invisible but for the chopped and sawn stumps of 

trees cut for tent poles or harvested for firewood. 

William Duncan Strong was an anthropologist and 

archaeologist with the Rawson-MacMillan SubArctic Expedition to Labrador in 1927-1928. Strong 

spent the winter with several Innu families trading 

out of Nain and Davis Inlet and accompanied them 

to their winter camps west of Vosiey’s Bay. During 

the summer of 1928 Strong conducted archaeological 

work at Inuit and Indian (“Old Stone Culture”) 

sites along the central coast and adjacent interior. 

In his diary for July 18, 1929 (kept at the National 

Anthropological Archives) Strong references a site on 

the Adlatok River south of Hopedale where Charlie 

Goudry [Goudie] had “located a lot of flint points 

in a sandy bank one day’s canoe trip up the Adlatuk 

[Adlatok] River, just beyond the forks and this side 

of Sapiou [Shapio].” It was this specter of a perhaps 

significant Sashish Innu site on the Adlatok that was 

the impetus behind our short 2017 field-season.

The Shapeiau-Adlatok-Ugjoktok Survey, 2017

The 17th of September dawned clear and calm 

and, together with Tony Jenkinson, we were soon 

underway in Jim Burton’s taxi-yellow 65 year old De 

Haviland Beaver for the flight into Shapeiau Lake. 

Along the entire northeast end of Shapeiau there is 

a broad sandy beach—the eroded face of a glacial 

outwash delta—that forms a prominent landmark. 

We established a basecamp here from which to 

survey a portion of the lake basin. A close inspection 

Left: View to east overlooking the Shapeiau River oxbow 

with the Adlatok (Ashuapun-shipu) River in the middle 

background. A vast glacial outwash delta forms a broad level 

terrace to the north and east of Shapeiau and high steep 

sandy banks where the rivers have cut down through it.
 ASC Newsletter 33

suspect that all the cultural materials we observed are 

derived from Shashish Innu but whether from a single 

visit, or more likely several, is impossible to determine. 

Continuing with the survey, we proceeded up the 

narrow six kilometer-long lake south of Shapeiau 

to its terminus where the rapids-filled river draining 

Mishtanipi comes in from the south. We found much 

evidence, on both sides of the river, indicating that 

this was a favored Innu camping ground in former 

times. In several locations on the north side of the 

river we found Innu camping places revealed by 

cleared tent areas, caribou antlers placed in trees, 

discarded hunting tools, cut trees, and stove parts. 

While on the south-side, moss-covered stone fire-rings 

and a tin lard 

bucket around 

which a tree had 

grown appear 

to be from the 

early decades of 

the 20th century.

Returning to 

Shapeiau, we 

continued our 

survey up along 

the lake’s west 

shore camping 

adjacent 

to a set of 

broad sandy 

terraces, an 

outwash delta, 

on the south 

side of the 

large stream 

entering from 

the west. All 

along the south side of the river were 

two recently-burned sandy terraces that 

were for the most part exposed. Given 

this delightful prospect, we expected 

to find evidence of early occupations. 

However, our exhaustive search of the 

terraces all along the lake shore up to the 

south bank of the river located only a 

single blocky flake of dark grey chert on 

the lower terrace and a small scattering 

of very small Ramah chert debitage 

on the upper terrace. The choice of 

raw material suggests that the isolated flake is from 

the same ephemeral Sashish Innu presence that we 

encountered elsewhere on Shapeiau; the Ramah chert 

debitage on the other hand is probably from a much 

later Ancestral Innu visit, given their preference for 

Ramah chert and conservative flaking practices. 

Having circumnavigated Shapeiau, we returned to 

our base camp and prepared for the trip out to the 

Adlatok River and down to the sea at Ugjuktuk Bay. 

We left Shapeiau on September 25, portaging the 

canoe and gear along the north side of the falls at the 

outlet of the lake. We followed the river around the 

dramatic ox-bow to the top of the beginning of a set 

of rapids and falls that plunge about 50 meters into 

the Adlatok River. We found Innu camps everywhere 

we stopped but no evidence of earlier occupations. 

Having portaged down to the broad Adlatok River 

(Labrador’s 4th largest) we reached the original 

inspiration for our survey trip, the vicinity of 

Goudie’s purported find of arrowheads around 

1925: “in a sandy bank one day’s canoe trip 

up the Adlatuk [Adlatok] River, just beyond 

the forks and this side of Sapiou [Shapio].” 

A curious feature of the Adlatok River is that 

about 17 kilometers below Shapeiau Falls the 

river forks with the northern branch flowing 

an additional 21 kilometers into Adlatok Bay, 

while the southern branch flows 14 kilometers 

to reach saltwater in 

Ugjoktok Bay, the two 

mouths being about 

14 kilometers apart. 

Between “The Forks” 

and Shapeiau Falls the 

river flows gently past 

high sandy banks. Back 

of the sand banks is a 

thick forest of spruce 

with an understory of 

lichen and moss. As 

noted earlier, the dense 

forest vegetation is 

very effective at hiding 

most traces of previous 

land-use and occupancy. 

We sought out animal 

trails and blowouts 

and occasionally tested 

attractive spots with a 

trenching shovel, but for 

the most part, we walked 

the river banks in the 

assumption that any 

significant sites would 

reveal themselves with eroded hearths, debitage or 

artifacts. In addition we made sorties to likely looking 

camping areas on lakes and streams north of the river. 

As luck would have it, we failed to identify any cultural 

Tin lard bucket found at 

an old Innu camp (GfCi03) overlooking the outlet 

of the river draining 

Mishtanipi Lake.

The Hudson Bay Toad (Bufo americanus 

copei) at an abandoned Innu camp (GfCi-3) 

at the western-end of the 6 kilometer-long 

narrow lake that flows into the southwest 

corner of Shapeiau. Very near its northern 

limit, the toad called to mind Innu stories of 

Anikapeu–the Toad Man—and served as a 

poignant reminder of the intangible features 

of Innu land tenure and occupancy.
34 ASC Newsletter

famous Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundsen 

(1872–1928), was part of this colonial tradition when 

he took responsibility for two Chukchi girls aged 

five and eleven from Chukotka, Russia, while on his 

expedition north of Siberia in 1921. This happened 

at the very end of Amundsen’s «Northeast Passage 

Expedition» of 1918–1921, when his small ship, 

Maud, travelled along the northern shores of Eurasia, 

from Oslo and Vardoe, Norway, to the Bering Strait, 

with two winterings, first off the Taymyr Peninsula, 

and then south of Wrangel Island, in between. 

The older of the two girls was Camilla Carpendale,

daughter of Australian-born trader Charlie (Clarendon 

Coulson) Carpendale who lived in the Chukchi 

community of Enmytaghin, south of Cape Dezhnev 

(also known as Dezhnev, Emmatown, or Kengiskun) 

and his Chukchi wife, Pung-I Tonanik. The younger 

girl’s precise origins and Chukchi name are not 

known; she may have been taken from the community 

of Neshkan, where her father Kakot was from. Her 

mother’s early death may have prompted Kakot to 

seek out Amundsen’s ship at Cape Serdze-Kamen 

(Cape Serdze) on the Arctic coast, where Maud

spent the winter of 1920–1921. The girl was called 

Kakonita or Nita by the Norwegian expedition crew. 

Researching the displacement and return of these two 

Native girls from Chukotka reveals the extraordinary 

life they led, as well as the connections between 

displacement, media exposure, and historical memory.

The Trip East

In early 1921, when Roald Amundsen took 

responsibility for the girls, he was at the tail end of an 

unsuccessful three-year expedition that aspired to have 

Maud frozen in the Arctic ice so it would drift towards 

the North Pole. Blocked by ice, Amundsen and his crew 

features or recover any artifacts on the Adlatok aside 

from portions of the old portage trail that led around the 

falls to Ugjoktok Bay, which we reached on October 

4th, 2017 just ahead of the first snow of the season. 

While we had hoped to conduct an archaeological 

survey of the islands at the head of Ugjoktok Bay—a 

similar canoe survey of Adlatok Bay in 1976 had 

discovered an important early Maritime Archaic 

site)—our dwindling supplies and the lateness of 

the season precluded such, and we proceeded on 

into Hopedale, dodging weather, and arriving late 

in the evening of the 10th simultaneously with 

The Northern Ranger, our transportation south.

Some Final Thoughts

From an archaeological/cultural heritage perspective 

our traverse of a small portion of Anikapeu’s estate 

had only modest results. The hoped-for discovery 

of a large Shashish Innu site proved a chimera. It 

is possible that some sites may have disappeared 

over the years from erosion or having been picked 

over by Innu, by geologists, prospectors, or other 

visitors. But the absence of hearths and debitage has 

us puzzled over the lack of more conspicuous traces. 

Still, our observations and collections contribute to 

the incremental accretion of knowledge that moves us 

ineluctably towards greater awareness and appreciation 

of Innu history as it played out through the forested 

interior of Nitassinan The few cultural traces we did 

recover are indicative of a central tenet of the Innu way 

of life: extraordinary mobility—mobility that leaves 

only a very faint, almost ephemeral, trace. Mobility 

as a key tenet of Innu adaptations past and present 

informs the practice of an Innu archaeology that has 

archaeologists moving through the land with canoe and 

tent in the course of procuring their needed resources, 

both material and immaterial. It is a profound 

experience to follow the trails that generations of 

Innu ancestors pioneered and to contribute to a 

revelation and appreciation of Innu cultural heritage. 

FROM SIBERIA TO NORWAY AND 

BACK: THE JOURNEYS OF NITA KAKOT 

AMUNDSEN AND CAMILLA CARPENDALE

By Espen Ytreberg

The history of colonialization not only involved 

the West conquering the so-called «rest», but also 

the displacement of indigenous people brought 

along by the Westerners when they returned from 

explorations in distant lands. Polar explorers, since 

the 1500s onward led the way in bringing Arctic 

indigenous people back home, after going North 

in the name of their sponsors and countries. The 

Nita Kakot (left) and Camilla Carpendale (right) upon their 

arrival to Oslo, 1922. 
 ASC Newsletter 35

spent their second winter (1920–1921) off the north 

coast of Chukotka, where they had frequent contacts 

with coastal settled Chukchis and Western traders, 

such as Charlie Carpendale. It was via this network 

that the opportunity to become a caretaker presented 

itself. His biographers have claimed that the reasons 

were psychological; Amundsen was almost 50, had no 

family, was at odds with several of his crew members, 

and needed emotional support. He was also following a 

longstanding tradition of northern explorers displacing 

indigenous peoples. Amundsen’s book account of this 

expedition, Nordvestpassagen, reveals that he himself 

contemplated bringing some Inuit from the Central 

Arctic to Norway while traversing the Northwest 

passage, 15 years prior, when his small expedition 

boat Gjøa overwintered at King William Island, near 

what is today Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, in 1903–1905. 

The displacement of indigenous people to the West 

was done for a variety of reasons: early on in colonial 

history out of curiosity, a wish to display exotic 

people and as a means of recruiting servants; later 

in the name of science, education and welfare. All 

motives were present in Amundsen’s case, but that of 

exhibiting Nita and Camilla is worth extra attention. 

The late 19th and early 20th century was after all an 

age of exhibitions, great and small, as well as an age 

of popular mass media attention to the Arctic. When 

Amundsen arrived with the girls in Nome and then 

Seattle, media attention was considerable. While 

spending some days in New York before leaving for 

Norway in the fall of 1921, the girls were constantly 

photographed and filmed. Reports appeared about 

them almost daily in the New York Post and New York 

Herald. Amundsen used media actively to establish 

his public fame and hero-image, as did most of the 

explorers of the day, including the American, Robert 

Peary, who had brought Greenland Inuit south to New 

York in 1897, resulting in the sad story and tragic 

end of Minik. To these explorers, media coverage 

was the key to fame, which could be converted into 

financing from politicians and rich backers. At the 

same time, both newspaper reports and Amundsen’s 

personal letters and diaries testify that a strong 

emotional bond existed between him and the girls.

In early 1922, Nita and Camilla arrived in Norway 

and lived in Amundsen’s house south of Oslo for two 

years. By most accounts they settled happily there, 

attending the local school and making friends. The girls 

led a bourgeois Norwegian life, attending relatively 

progressive schools; in this sense, their lives were 

privileged. Going east, Amundsen had cared for them 

daily and continued to do so intermittently, but for 

the most part, they were looked after by Amundsen’s 

family, friends, and servants while he himself pursued 

further polar 

explorations, 

including his 

several efforts to 

reach the North 

Pole using Maud

and a small plane 

in 1922–1925. 

This arrangement 

fell apart when 

Amundsen went 

bankrupt in 1924. 

He also fell out 

with his brothermanager Leon 

Amundsen around 

this time, and with 

several others in 

his network of 

helpers. Amundsen 

came to feel 

that he no longer 

had the financial 

and logistical 

resources to retain 

responsibility 

for Nita and Camilla, and he sent them back to 

Chukotka, this time alone. Amundsen visited 

the girls once, briefly, near Seattle before his 

death in 1928; they never saw Norway again. 

Westward Bound

In late 1924, after attending a Danish boarding 

school, the girls were put on a ship bound for San 

Francisco via the Suez Canal. Amundsen had made 

some arrangements with contacts in America for the 

girls to be helped in reaching Chukotka, but these 

plans failed to materialize. Provisional solutions 

resulted in the girls being placed improvisationally 

in orphanages and private homes as they slowly 

made their way to Seattle, then to Nome, and finally 

to the village of Wales at Cape Prince of Wales, 

Alaska. There they again relied on the kindness of 

strangers while contact was made with Camilla’s 

father, Charlie Carpendale, on the other side of 

the Bering Strait. The girls eventually crossed over 

and reached their destination after a journey that 

had taken them between nine and ten months.

It was not merely Amundsen’s lack of planning that 

made their journey complicated and arduous. In the 

1920s, Soviet-American relations rapidly worsened. 

Reaching Chukotka from the West in 1925 was 

risky, even more so when doing it without papers 

as was the case for Nita and Camilla. The family 

Nita Kakot (left) and Camilla 

Carpendale at Wales, Alaska on their 

return trip, fall 1925. Photo: UAF 

Collection
36 ASC Newsletter

of Charlie Carpendale and Pung-I Tonanik took in 

Nita; her father Kakot at this time was a down-andout labourer in Chukotka. Gradually, however, the 

Soviet authorities were forcing out Western traders 

like Charlie Carpendale. The family left Chukotka 

for good only one year after the girls returned from 

Norway. Back in Alaska, they applied for immigration 

to America, but isolationist policies prevented them. 

Camilla at least had a known origin and family 

background, while Nita lived in uncertainty for many 

years without statehood, a kind of global orphan.

They eventually settled in southern British Columbia, 

after a period near Seattle. Both Camilla and Nita were 

married and had children. Nita took the name Nita 

Kakot Amundsen, preserving both her biological 

father and her caretaker as part of her identity. In the 

1940s, Nita attended a teachers’ training college in 

Alberta. Following this training she made a series 

of lectures throughout Canada on the traditions of 

northern indigenous peoples, while also narrating 

the story of her life. Newspaper reports exist of one 

such talk in Winnipeg and another in Lethbridge, 

Alberta in 1945 (https://www.newspapers.com/

newspage/64057096/). In her Winnipeg talk, Nita 

painted a relatively idyllic picture of her time in 

Norway and made no mention of the return journey, 

other than to claim it was made of their own volition. 

From the available evidence this seems at best a partial 

account. At the same time, it is surely understandable if 

Nita Kakot Amundsen chose to emphasize the parts of 

her experience that were easier to live with as an adult.

Displacement, Media, and Memory

My ongoing research project on Nita Kakot Amundsen, 

Camilla Carpendale, and their displacement by 

Roald Amundsen combines polar and media history 

approaches. As for the former, it seeks to open 

the national, masculinist, and at times colonialist 

tradition of polar history to transnational, feminist, 

and postcolonial modes of thinking. As for its media 

history component, the project aims to find traces of 

marginalized indigenous people by using a wide range 

of source media. In Nita and Camilla’s case, traces 

are relatively few in written sources and secondary 

literature. They are more numerous in popular 

newspapers and photographs, as well as in popular film. 

Thus a media-historical approach can help to bring 

in a wider variety of sources. In a wider sense it can 

also sensitize us to the ways Nita and Camilla’s travels 

across the globe were facilitated by a combination 

of new technologies, including transportation, 

telegraphs guiding the ships, newspapers informing 

about ship and train routes, and media coverage 

bringing the kind of fame and legitimacy to 

Amundsen that made his exploits possible. 

In a wider sense, this media spread a general 

consciousness about other parts of the world and their 

availability to those in the West with money and power. 

Nita’s and Camilla’s displacement by Amundsen and 

their exposure in public media was a prime example. At 

the same time, paradoxically, this exposure produced 

records that enable us to know their stories. The 

project’s aim is to utilize those traces in an account 

of their travels that respects the girls’ experience and 

attends to its broader historical framework. Planned 

publications from the project include English-language 

academic articles and a Norwegian-language literary 

nonfiction book, due in August 2018. I am grateful to 

John Bockstoce and Igor Krupnik for adding details 

on local history and geography to this account.

MAPPING ALASKAN ETHNOGRAPHY

By Daniel G. Cole and John Cloud 

In the ASC Newsletter, #23, we discussed “The 

Persistence of Native Alaskan Place Names on 

Maps.” Building on that paper, in 1787 (and revised 

in 1802), Alexander Vilbrecht published “Map 

Presenting the Discoveries of Russian Navigators 

in the Pacific Oceans, as Well as Those of Captain 

Cook”. Below is a portion of that map of western 

Alaska, with an inset of Kodiak Island, illustrating 

Native Alaskan place names in Cyrillic, administrative 

borders, impassable ice, Cook’s routes in 1778-9. 

Next is Grigorii Shelikhov’s 1796 map, the first 

ethnolinguistic map of Alaska. This map was compiled 

while he was a co-owner of the Shelikhov-Golikov 

Company, a Russian fur-trading venture (endpaper 

map copied from Shelikhov, Grigorii I. 1981. A Voyage 

to America: 1783-1786. Trans. by Marina Ramsay, 

Kingston, Ontario: The Limestone Press). Nonetheless, 

according to Michael Krauss, (“A History of Eyak 

Language Documentation and Study: Frederica de 

Laguna in Memoriam,” Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 43, 

No. 2 (2006), pp. 172-217), this map “includes on 

Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound (and beyond) 

“Map Presenting the Discoveries of Russian Navigators in 

the Pacific Oceans, as Well as Those of Captain Cook”
 ASC Newsletter 37

over 50 of the 80 Inupiaq placenames gathered by Kobelev 

from an elder on Diomede in 

1779...” The map distinguishes 

five ethno-linguistic regions 

along the Pacific coast, dividing 

that clearly into five sectors 

labelled vertically as follows: 

KO-NIA-GI (Yup’ik / Alutiiq); 

KE-NAI-TSY (Dena’ina); 

CHU-GA-CHI (Sugpiaq); 

UGA-LAX-MIU-TY (Eyak); 

and KO-LIU-ZHI (Tlingit).

Previously, Shelikhov was 

responsible for the Awa’uq 

massacre of hundreds of Alutiiqs 

and enslavement of survivors 

on Kodiak Island in 1784. 

About 70 years later, an elderly 

Alutiiq, Arsenti Aminak, gave 

his recollections to Heinrich 

Johan Holmberg, who, in 

turn, was the first European 

to report the massacre.

The Geography Division of the 

Russian Admiralty mapped all 

of Alaska in 1844, and ASC’s 

Igor Krupnik verified that the 

map included Native toponyms 

along the Arctic, Bering Sea, 

and Gulf of Alaska coasts. This 

map can be download from the 

Library of Congress at https://

www.loc.gov/item/99447835/.

In 1854, Holmberg, a Finnish 

geologist, naturalist, and 

ethnographer, created the next 

map that accompanied his report: 

Ethnographic Sketches about 

the People of Russian America. 

This report was “originally 

delivered to the Russian American 

Company [which succeeded the 

Shelikhov-Golikhov Company] in 

1854 and later published in 1985 

within the Rasmuson Library 

Historical Translation Series: 

Volume I, by the University 

of Alaska Fairbanks Press.” 

(Drabek, Alisha Susana, 2012. 

Liitukut Sugpiat’stun (We 

are Learning How to be Real 

People): Exploring Kodiak Alutiiq 

Literature through Core Values, 

PhD Dissertation, University 

of Alaska, Fairbanks). This 

map covers four major groups 

including Thlinkithen (Tlingit), 

Konjagen (Koniag/Alutiiq), 

Thnaia (Dena'ina), and Aleuten 

(Aleut/Unangan), along with 

subgroups and Ansiedelungen der 

Eingebornen (Settlements of the 

Natives). Map downloaded from 

https://commons.wikimedia.

org/wiki/File:Heinrich_Johan_

Holmberg,_Karte_des _

Russischen_Amerika_(1854).jpg

In the transition from RussianAmerica to “Alaska”, the two 

most important people involved 

in early ethnographic mapping 

were William Dall and George 

Davidson. Dall came to RussianAmerica in 1865 as a member 

of the Scientific Corps of the 

Smithsonian’s Western Union 

Telegraph Expedition. The 

Expedition partners included the 

Russian-American Company 

(RAC), making this a prelude to 

the subsequent sale of the RAC 

holdings to the United States, and 

the Smithsonian Institution, and 

especially Spencer Baird, who 

received reports and letters from 

most of the Expedition members 

from the field and from ships. 

Through the Expedition, Dall 

traveled across the Bering Sea 

between Siberia and Alaska and 

acquired a broad familiarity with 

parts of what would become 

“Alaska” and its inhabitants. 

After the Expedition collapsed 

(because the just-completed North 

Atlantic telegraph cable made the 

project irrelevant), Dall continued 

on his own explorations along the 

lower and middle Yukon River. 

He returned to the United States 

with a vast set of Russian maps, 

and wrote up his research, in the 

Smithsonian castle, in a report 

titled Alaska and it Resources, 

published in 1870. 

By the end of the 1850s, George 

Davidson was the leader of the US 

Starting point for journey to Yukon

T-2268, the tracing cloth version of the 

Kohklux map, from NARA II,

RG 23 Records of the Coast & Geodetic 

Survey

Map from “Ethnographic Sketches about 

the People of Russian America”
38 ASC Newsletter

these visits yielded troves of Russian maps, and an 

ethnographic landmark in the Kohklux maps.

The base map for Powell’s linguistic map was 

the Coast Survey’s 1869 map of Alaska and the 

adjoining regions. The Survey’s relationship with 

the lithographic specialist Julius Bien allowed the 

use of chromo-lithographic color to present areas 

inhabited by different language families, with captions 

for different cultural areas and their peoples.

Despite the major changes in technologies, and the vast 

political changes, one can see the evident continuity 

between Alexander Vilbrecht’s 1778 map, and Dall/

Davidson/Powell’s map almost a century later, in 1875. 

ACROSS ARCTIC AMERICA: FIFTH THULE 

EXPEDITION (1921–1924) CENTENNIAL

By Igor Krupnik

The Arctic Studies Center is embarking on its 

next major venture, the centennial of the Fifth 

Thule Expedition (hereafter FTE) of 1921–1924. 

The expedition was led by Knud Rasmussen

(1879–1933), a Danish folklorist with an Inghuit 

grandmother, and a team of several Danish 

scientists, assisted by West Greenlandic (Kalaalliit) 

and Polar Inuit (Inughuit) field companions who 

participated in a three-year trek “across Arctic 

America,” from Greenland to Chukotka, Russia.

According to historian William Barr, the FTE under 

Rasmussen set a new standard of achievement by 

Coast Survey on the Pacific coast. Like most Survey 

scientists, he returned back to the east coast to fight the 

Civil War scientifically, returning to San Francisco in 

1867. He then left almost immediately, on assignment 

to evaluate the plan to buy the holdings of the RussianAmerican Company. His party steamed to Kodiak 

Island, then to Sitka, where he received a great store of 

Russian maps and charts. Eventually Davidson finally 

touched North America by traveling up the Lynn Canal 

to the mouth of the Chilkat River, to meet the Tlingit 

wolf moiety clan leader he knew as Kohklux. He had 

reason to return there, in 1868, for a total solar eclipse.

In 1869, Davidson and a small party returned to the 

Chilkat, to the village of Klukwan, for the eclipse. 

After the eclipse, which was suitably sublime to 

all, Kohklux and his wives, two raven moiety clan 

sisters, made a series of maps of the 400-500 miles of 

geography from Klukwan over the coast mountains and 

down tributaries of the Yukon. The Tlingit did the basic 

cartography, and then they talked over the map, for 

days, and Davidson annotated the map with more than 

a hundred place names, at the dictation of the Tlingit. 

In 1871, Dall joined the Coast Survey, and returned 

to Alaska, and also the Siberian coast, continuing 

his reconnaissance and amassing even more 

Russian and other charts. In 1875, John Wesley 

Powell, as a prelude to his establishment of the 

Bureau of American Ethnology, published the map 

“Distribution of Tribes of Alaska and Adjoining 

Territory,” by William Dall, “with astronomical 

positionings by Assistant Davidson himself.” The 

two men’s experiences were complementary: Dall 

had made extensive reconnaissance of the region, 

with much interaction with native speakers, while 

Davidson had made two short, intense visits, but 

The NAA’s copy of the map of the Distribution of Tribes of 

Alaska and Adjoining Territory, 1875

The great Beringian convergence zone on the 1875 map
 ASC Newsletter 39

which all later contributions 

to Arctic ethnology and 

archaeology would be 

measured. Rasmussen and 

his companions covered 

almost 20,000 miles by 

dog teams, small boats, and 

sailing ships, crossing the 

boundaries of four countries: 

Greenland, Canada, USA 

(Alaska), and Russia (then, 

the Soviet Union.) In over 

three years of fieldwork, the 

FTE collected over 20,000 

ethnographic, archaeological, 

and natural history 

specimens, and compiled 

thousands of pages of diaries, 

notebooks, word lists, and 

manuscripts, containing 

detailed characteristics of 

contemporary culture, language, 

folklore, and activities of the 

polar people they visited, as 

well as the natural environment and prehistory. 

The expedition results were presented in a 10-volume 

series, Reports of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 

1921–1924, comprising 36 separate issues (or 

‘parts’), some printed almost 30 years after the 

completion of fieldwork, not counting numerous 

scholarly and popular papers. Vol. 1 provided 

general summary of the expedition, as well as its 

research in topography and geology; Vol. 2 covered 

botany and zoology; Vol. 3 dealt with physical 

anthropology and linguistics; Vol. 4 summarized 

results of archaeology. The next five volumes were 

dedicated to ethnological studies of the Central 

Canadian Inuit (Eskimo) – the Kivallirmiut (Vol. 

5, Caribou Inuit), Iglulingmiut (vols. 6–7; Iglulik), 

Natsilingmiut (Vol. 8, Netsilik), and Inuinnait (Vol. 

9, Copper Inuit).) The last, Vol. 10, published almost 

twenty years after Rasmussen’s death, covered his 

research in the Mackenzie Delta and Alaska. The last 

issue focused on the masks of the Nunivak Island 

Yup’ik Eskimo and was published in 1988 (!) by 

Danish anthropologist Birgitte Sonne as “part 4” 

of Volume 10. Rasmussen also produced a popular 

summary of the expedition published in two volumes 

in Danish and as a single volume, Across Arctic 

America (1927), in English. The FTE materials have 

been reviewed numerous times, including in a special 

issue of the journal Etudes/Inuit/Studies (1988) coedited by Inge Kleivan and Ernest S. (Tiger) Burch, 

a longstanding research associate of the ASC.

ASC and the FTE

The ASC is no stranger to big ‘centennial’ programs 

or to Knud Rasmussen’s legacy. In 1992–2002, 

we organized the international “Jesup-2” program 

to celebrate the centennial of the Jesup North 

Pacific Expedition of 1897–1902, led by Franz 

Boas. That program engaged partners from the US, 

Canada, Russia, Germany, and Japan, and included 

ethnologists, archaeologists, museum and heritage 

specialists, linguists, folklorists, and indigenous 

knowledge holders (ASC Newsletters 1994, 1995, 

1996, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004.) We hosted several 

“Jesup-2” symposia; published three volumes of 

proceedings; initiated exhibits, collection tours, and 

international research exchanges. A special component 

was a ‘virtual’ sharing of the Jesup-era museum 

objects with their home communities in the North 

Pacific region, using the technologies of the day – 

CD-ROMs, photo prints, small traveling exhibits, 

and collection websites (see http://library.amnh.

org/finding_aids_Jesup/biographical_notes/index.

html; https://anthro.amnh.org/jesup_collection). 

We also consider the Smithsonian a legitimate player 

in a venture dedicated to Knud Rasmussen’s FTE 

legacy. Admittedly, our link is rather indirect and 

certainly not at the level of the Danish National 

Museum (that houses major FTE ethnographic and 

archaeological collections) or the Hundested Library in 

Hundested, Denmark, that holds most of Rasmussen’s 

personal archives. Yet on the final leg of his return 

Members of the FTE. Left to right: (front row) Captain Peder Pedersen, Knud 

Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, Jacob Olsen; (back row) Kaj Birket-Smith, Therkel 

Mathiassen, and Helge Bangsted. Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives
40 ASC Newsletter

trip from Alaska to Denmark via New York, Knud 

Rasmussen, together FTE photographer, Leo Hansen,

and two Inughuit collaborators, Arnarulunguaq

and Qávigarssuaq (Miteq), made a short stopover 

in Washington, DC in November 1924 Rasmussen’s 

primarily goal was to visit the ‘Science Service’ news 

organization established in 1921 for the popularization 

of science, with the support of the leading U.S. 

science groups, the American Association for the 

Advancement of Science, National Academy of 

Science, the Smithsonian, and the National Research 

Council. He left the Science Service with a small 

collection of documents, clips from contemporary news 

papers, and some expedition photographs that were 

eventually transferred 

to the Smithsonian 

Archives where they 

were discovered 

decades later by 

Marcel LaFollette

(ASC Newsletter 

2005, no. 12.1.)

The file included 

several photos of 

Rasmussen and 

his companions in 

Washington taken by 

Watson Davis of the 

Science Service. We 

used these pictures in 

several publications, 

including our recent 

book, Early Inuit Studies: Themes and Transitions, 

1850s–1980s (Krupnik, ed. 2016). Early Inuit Studies 

featured two chapters dedicated to Rasmussen and 

two lead scientists of the FTE, Kaj Birket-Smith and 

Therkel Mathiassen (written by Kirsten Hastrup and 

Hans Christian Gulløv). The third chapter in the same 

volume, by Bill Fitzhugh, covers life of Smithsonian 

archaeologist Henry Collins, whose research in Alaska 

contested key hypotheses on the origin of Eskimo 

culture produced by the FTE participants. Thirty years 

after Burch’s co-editing of the Rasmussen’s memorial 

issue of Etudes/Inuit/Studies in 1988, we plan to use 

the funds from the ASC “Tiger Burch Endowment” 

to support activities of the FTE centennial.

An Outline for a ‘Centennial’

The first time I heard of new plans to use the 

FTE materials in a contemporary context was 

in spring 2016 via my Danish colleagues, 

Daria Morgounova Schwalbe and Bent Nielsen. 

They reported briefly that they have been working 

with the Kitikmeot Heritage Society in Cambridge 

Bay, Nunavut, and some Canadian research partners 

to secure funding for a “prototype of the 5th Thule 

Expedition Atlas.” The message also included the first 

online links to the Fifth Thule Atlas project, barely two 

weeks after it went online, which I checked; one is still 

working, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/knudrasmussen-fifth-thule-expedition-atlas-1.3547847.

A brief opportunity to discuss a prospective celebration 

of the FTE legacy emerged in October 2016, on 

the last day of the 20th Inuit Studies Conference in 

St. Johns, Newfoundland. The conference program 

included a paper co-authored by Brendan Griebel, 

Pamela Gross, and Darren Keith, titled “Fifth Thule 

Expedition Atlas and 

The Digital Return 

of Inuit Knowledge.” 

Though I missed 

hearing the paper, 

I had a chance to 

discuss the matters 

with one of the coauthors, Darren 

Keith, who worked 

on this project for the 

Kitikmeot Heritage 

Society. Another 

person present was 

Amos Hayes, a 

former collaborator 

on the SIKU project 

of 2007–2010, from 

the Geomatics and 

Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University, 

Ottawa. Together they explained the concept and 

demonstrated a working prototype of the online “atlas” 

produced by the Geomatics and Cartographic team at 

Carleton, based on a set of interactive maps for the 

Inuinnait (Copper Inuit) and Caribou culture areas (see 

https://thuleatlas.org/index.html). By fall 2016, the 

prototype version of the atlas covered the portion of the 

Central Canadian Arctic between the Coronation Gulf 

and King William Island. The online “atlas” allows 

users to connect to FTE ethnographic collections 

at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen, 

with the addition of stories and explanation by 

Inuit knowledge experts from the communities 

of Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk, Nunavut. 

In these first talks with Darren and Amos and in 

follow-up correspondence we discussed the possibility 

of a larger program that might eventually involve 

other partners from Canada, Greenland, Alaska/US, 

Denmark, and perhaps Russia, to feature the entire area 

explored by the FTE. The correspondence continued 

intermittently, and in December 2017, a five-member 

Rasmussen on his departure from Barrow, Alaska, June 1924. 

Photo: Smithsonian Institution Archives
 ASC Newsletter 41

team from Cambridge Bay including Pam Gross, 

Kitikmeot Heritage Society executive director, elders 

Bessie Omilgoetok and Joseph Tikhak, interpreter 

Eva Ayalik, and Darren visited the National Museum of 

Denmark in Copenhagen. Their goal was to study the FTE 

ethnographic collections from the Central Arctic in order 

to prepare for future postings on the Thule Atlas website.

At the Smithsonian, a major breakthrough occurred 

in January 2018, when the ASC hosted a high-level 

Greenlandic delegation made of Greenland’s Minister 

of Independence, Foreign Affairs, and Agriculture, 

Ms. Suka K. Frederiksen, Deputy Minister Kenneth 

Hoeegh, Head of Department Jacob Isbosethsen, 

and Ms. Rebecca Lynge, First Secretary of the 

Greenland Representation in Washington, DC. 

We discussed the forthcoming FTE centennial and found 

our guests excited about a prospective international FTE 

program, with an active Greenlandic component. This 

meeting encouraged us to move forward in thinking about 

the goals and the contours for the 2021–2024 events. 

We quickly organized a small ‘planning team’, including 

Stephen Loring, Bill Fitzhugh, Bernadette Engelstad 

Driscoll, and myself. The emerging consensus was 

that we should use our international networks to 

engage partners in knowledge and data sharing, 

research, exhibits, and public programs. The primary 

goal would be to assist scientists, local educators, 

media, and particularly the Arctic communities in the 

areas visited by FTE, to reconnect with the records of 

their cultures and heritage created by the expedition 

members and other actors of the same era. 

As recently published biographies of Knud Rasmussen 

by Kirsten Hastrup (2010) and Knud Michelsen, 

Rasmussen’s grandnephew (2011, 2014) illustrate, 

a lot can be achieved by new research about Knud 

Rasmussen’s scientific ventures, writings, scholarly and 

political views, and particularly about his vision of the 

connectedness of the Inuit/Eskimo people. Stories of 

other players of the same era, such as Roald Amundsen 

(see this issue), as well as less-known local traders and 

adventurers (see this issue, review of John Bockstoce’s 

book) could help shed light on Native cultures along 

the expedition’s routes in 1921–1924. In addition, there 

remain some poorly analyzed segments of the FTE like 

Rasmussen’s unsuccessful journey to Chukotka and 

his connection to explorers and mediators in Alaska 

and the Bering Strait region. With the exception of the 

work undertaken by the Kitikmeot Heritage Society, 

little was done to document how FTE research and 

publications influenced contemporary heritage and 

language/knowledge preservation work across the FTE 

study area. Whereas FTE ethnographic collections at 

the Danish National Museum may be soon available 

online, the photographic and archaeological collections 

require major documentation and online accessibility.

The archaeological component of the FTE legacy is of 

special value because of the approaching centennial of 

Mathiassen’s 1922 excavations at the Naujan site in the 

Central Canadian Arctic that marked the beginning of 

professional archaeology in the North American Arctic 

and led to Mathiassen’s discovery of the ‘Thule culture.’ 

The ‘Thule centennial’ will be a major milestone in the 

history of Arctic archaeology that is certain to encourage 

new research, public symposia, and publications. 

In terms of public knowledge, it is clear that the impact 

of the FTE contribution is still underestimated in Alaska, 

despite the publication of Birgitte Sonne’s book, Agayut 

(1988), and it is practically non-existent in Russia, even 

though Rasmussen’s name is quite popular, thanks to an 

abridged Russian translation of Across Arctic America 

(1958). Even less known is the fate of the Native 

communities that Rasmussen visited in Chukotka – 

Dezhnev or Emmatown (closed by the authorities in 1952) 

and Uelen, as well as his ultimate destination, the Yupik 

community of Nuvuqaq (Naukan), also closed in 1958. To 

the Yupik and Chukchi people, Rasmussen was once in 

their homeland, but few know when and what he did there. 

March 2018: Copenhagen and Moscow

In March 2018, on visits to Moscow and Copenhagen, 

I discussed with colleagues and partners in earlier 

joint ASC ventures how we may lay the groundwork 

for the FTE centennial. In Moscow, the response was 

unanimously enthusiastic, since the area around Cape 

Dezhnev visited by Rasmussen in 1924 is currently 

the focus of major effort in research and heritage 

documentation being led by a team at the Russian 

Museum of Oriental Arts (Michael Bronshtein, 

Kiril Dneprovsky, and Sergei Shokarev), with 

the support of the Chukotka Area administration. 

Knud Rasmussen (left) and his Polar Inuit companions, 

Arnarulunguak and Qavigarssuaq (Miteq) in Washington 

DC, November 1924
42 ASC Newsletter

Aleksei Vakhrushev, a Moscow-based filmmaker who 

has produced several films of Chukotka Native people 

and has longstanding interest in Rasmussen, will be 

a great partner, as will be area’s Native activists and 

cultural organizations, like the ICC-Chukotka branch.

In Copenhagen, the response was equally enthusiastic. 

In my meetings with Kirsten Hastrup (Copenhagen 

University), Daria Morgounova Schwalbe (representing 

Danish Arctic Insitute and its director, Bent Nielsen), 

Bjarne Gronnøw and Martin Appelt (Danish 

National Museum), and Knud Michelsen (Rasmussen’s 

grandnephew), we agreed to share plans and join 

forces. Danish scholars and institutions are certain to 

step up efforts to commemorate Rasmussen and the 

FTE centennial; they also offered to provide 

connections to their partners in Greenland 

to build a larger international coalition.

Steps Forward

The first opportunity to present new materials 

and discuss plans for the FTE centennial program 

will come in February 2019, at the 46th annual 

meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association 

(AkAA.) This meeting, to be held in Nome 

at the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum, 

will be chaired by its energetic director and the 

ASC alumna, Amy Phillips-Chan. Nome is 

an ideal place for a meeting dedicated to FTE 

history, since Rasmussen and his small party 

visited Nome in September–October 1924 and 

gathered a large ethnographic collection. The 

official theme of the AkAA 2019 meeting, 

Alaska Anthropology in the Age of Engagement: 

Communities, Collections and Collaboration, 

is perfectly suited to inaugurate our program. 

We have already applied for a full-day session 

during the 2019 annual meeting on the FTE 

legacy and its implications for the people of the 

Arctic, and we hope that several of our Alaskan 

colleagues and collaborators will join us for the 

session. The main focus will be on Rasmussen’s 

work in Alaska in 1924 and the Alaska–Chukotka 

connections across Bering Strait. We plan to 

publish the proceedings as a special journal 

issue (a book?) to be released in 2021, during 

the first year of the FTE centennial program. 

We expect to brainstorm on other activities for 

the FTE centennial during 2018–2019 during 

meetings in Nome, Washington, Copenhagen, 

Ottawa, and hopefully other places. As the scope of the 

FTE centennial venture takes shape, we will update 

our readers on progress. Stay tuned for further news on 

the FTE program, beginning in earnest, and soon.

THEY LIVE ON THE ICE AND THEY’RE 

HUNTERS LIKE WE ARE: CLIMATE 

CHANGE AND HUMAN-POLAR BEAR 

RELATIONSHIPS IN ALASKA

By Hannah Voorhees and Rhonda Sparks

In the course of his long Arctic career, Ernest ‘Tiger’ 

Burch gathered oral histories from Alaska Native Elders, 

which he used to recreate the deep past of both human 

societies and polar animal populations. Burch valued 

oral histories not least because they provided a historical 

depth not otherwise available to anthropologists and 

Greenlandic delegation at ASC, January 2018. Left to right: 

Deputy Minister Kenneth Hoeegh, Head of Department 

Jacob Isbosethsen, Rebecca Lynge, and Foreign Minister 

Suka K. Frederiksen

Polar bear on shore in Point Hope, 2011. Photo: Rose Sjolander
 ASC Newsletter 43

biologists. At its heart, Burch’s oral history work was to 

salvage a different version of the Arctic environment, 

one that preceded the full impact of white settler 

society and which had remained largely invisible to 

the relatively new field of wildlife biology. In doing 

so, he resisted the “flattening” of our understanding of 

ecosystems that occurs when we project present-day, 

historically impoverished conditions into the past. 

Arguably, in a time of rapid climate change, the problem 

of forgetting what the Arctic once looked like is more 

important than ever. At the same time, the knowledge 

and observations of people living through climate change 

is not static, but of necessity adapts to accelerating 

changes. Therefore, in collecting and recording what 

is now called “Traditional Ecological Knowledge” 

(TEK), we find some of the most current, fine-grained 

data available on ice-dependent animal species, 

including polar bears. TEK helps us understand what 

large-scale climate change looks like on the ground.

Beginning in 2011, working with the Alaska Nanuuq 

(Polar Bear) Commission, an organization formed to 

protect both polar bears and traditional subsistence 

polar bear hunting practices, we recorded numerous 

interviews with subsistence hunters in the Bering Strait 

region of Alaska. Here, nanuuq (polar bear) act as a 

“cultural keystone species,” in that they both “provide 

material sustenance...and orient symbolic practice” for 

Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik communities. 

Scientists divide circum-Arctic polar bears into 19 

populations. Polar bears in the Bering Strait region 

fall within the Chukchi Sea population. Their low 

population density and large territory (which also includes 

northeastern parts of Russia) has made study through 

conventional field biology logistically challenging. 

Indeed, scientists currently list the status of Chukchi 

Sea polar bears as “data deficient.” Although in the U.S. 

the status of polar bears has been a heightened focus 

of scientific research and management since they were 

listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act 

in 2008, efforts to document indigenous knowledge 

about polar bears have not been commensurate. Prior to 

our study, the last time such knowledge was formally 

documented was in the early 1990s. Our work arose out of 

requests by Alaska Native communities that TEK receive 

greater consideration within polar bear management. 

For two years, our two-person team by an anthropologist 

(Voorhees) and a Native environmentalist and hunter 

(Sparks), with roots in Nome and Savoonga, traveled to 

Native Alaskan villages of Gambell, Savoonga, Wales, 

Shishmaref, Point Hope, and Point Lay. We also spent 

time in Nome with Elders from King Island who were 

relocated to the mainland in 1959. We interviewed 

approximately fifty Elders and younger active subsistence 

hunters with first-hand and inherited knowledge about 

polar bears. Using maps and the classic anthropological 

method of “semi-structured” interviews, we listened as 

hunters told stories about their encounters with polar bears 

and how the nature of these encounters changed over time. 

What we learned from hunters both reinforced and 

complicated current scientific accounts of polar bear 

ecology and endangerment. The individuals we 

interviewed suggested that a full understanding of the 

condition of polar bears in their region must consider 

local human-polar bear interactions and animal group 

histories in addition to human action writ large through 

Left: The authors interview a local polar bear expert in Point Hope, Alaska in 2011. Photo: Rose Sjolander

Right: Rhonda Sparks during fieldwork in 2011. Photo: Hannah Voorhees
44 ASC Newsletter

climate change. Indeed, Burch absorbed and reflected 

this indigenous perspective in his own work, arguing 

that even large-scale environmental changes affect 

animal groups differently, depending on how this change 

intersects with each group’s territory, lineage, and 

survival strategy. In short, we must consider groups as 

“animal tribes” rather than homogenous populations.

Both wildlife managers and Alaska Native communities 

have become alarmed when polar bears started to come 

into coastal villages and camps, where they scavenge 

for food around people’s houses. Hunters recalled this 

phenomenon occurring since at least the 1980s. Why are 

polar bears coming into villages, 

and why has their behavior towards 

people possibly changed? One 

factor is certainly reduced seaice habitat, which forces bears 

onto shore. With less access to 

ice seals, their preferred food, 

bears are attracted to food in 

human settlements. As sea ice 

loss continues, wildlife biologists 

anticipate that greater numbers 

of bears will follow this course, 

potentially increasing dangerous 

human-polar bear interactions. 

Indigenous observers are the first 

to recognize that disappearing 

sea ice has profoundly influenced 

both human and animal life in 

the Arctic. Yet in explaining the 

problem of bears coming into their 

villages, the knowledge-holders 

we interviewed offered a narrative that runs parallel with, 

yet complicates, explanations based on climate change 

alone. Their narrative highlights the legacy of sporthunting for polar bears prior to their protection by the 

federal government, and the surprising ways in which 

this hunting impacted subsequent polar bear generations. 

Until the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act 

in 1972, trophy hunting for polar bears by small plane 

was legal, unregulated, and only loosely documented. 

Although some Alaska Natives participated as guides, 

this was largely a pursuit of moneyed outsiders. We 

will probably never know exactly how many polar 

bears were killed during this period. However, from 

our interviews we know that there was enough of a 

population crash, at least locally, that subsistence hunters 

began to have trouble finding polar bears. The Marine 

Mammal Protection Act put an end to sport hunting, 

while protecting the small-scale subsistence hunt. 

As climate change is recognized as the main threat 

to polar bear survival, the impact of non-indigenous 

hunting has largely been forgotten outside of rural 

Alaska. However, the indigenous experts we interviewed 

kept coming back to this time as a point after which 

local polar bear populations were never the same. This 

is, they told us, because sport-hunters failed to follow 

the traditional hunting rule that pregnant females and 

family groups should never be targeted. Indigenous 

experts say that this resulted in a cohort of “orphaned” 

cubs that failed to learn how to behave like normal polar 

bears. Instead of learning how to hunt skillfully for seals, 

these bears were more likely to scavenge for human 

trash. Although the sport hunting era ended over 40 

years ago, the individuals we interviewed said that polar 

bear behavior continues to be affected by this historical 

rupture. Once knowledge 

of how to hunt and survive 

was interrupted, it was lost to 

subsequent polar bear generations 

as well. Rather than emphasizing 

instinct and genetics, Alaska 

Native perspectives highlight 

the role of social learning in 

shaping animal behavior. 

Polar bears are not the only beings 

for whom orphaning has longlived consequences in Alaska 

Native thinking. Walruses, which 

are normally bottom-feeders, 

sometimes display bizarre 

behavior in which they actively 

hunt other marine mammals. In 

this case, they are called “sealeaters,” a term that denotes 

deviation. Talking about the strange 

behavior of orphaned animals 

reproduces local hunting norms: that one should not kill 

an animal with young, and that doing so is destructive 

in a way that cannot be measured through population 

counts alone. Thus, when skinny, young, curious bears 

come into villages today looking for food, it may be 

because there is no sea ice, but it may at the same time 

be because some bears no longer know how to fully 

survive in a sea ice habitat. Certainly, there is likely 

to be a feedback relationship between the two. 

Inupiaq and Siberian Yupik perspectives do not chalenge 

dominant explanations linking climate change and 

polar bears so much as re-route them through more 

intimate and complicated relational webs. For many 

of the observers we interviewed, human-polar bear 

relationships are not simply a medium through which 

knowledge about polar bears is generated. Rather, such 

knowledge includes human-bear relationships as a subject 

of ecology. For some (though not all) biologists, this is 

a fairly radical proposal, but one that we believe must 

be taken seriously. After all, climate change is merely an 

example of human-polar bear relationships writ large. 

Hannah Voorhees, during fieldwork in 

Shishmaref, 2011. Photo: Rhonda Sparks
 ASC Newsletter 45

ARCTIC DIGITAL LIBRARY

By William W. Fitzhugh and David Nordlander

Last year’s ASC Newsletter described a series of NSFsponsored workshops and subsequent discussions 

about creating an Arctic digital library or information 

network. The ADL would be a virtual resource, a vast 

integrated inter-institutional library whose collections 

would consist of the Arctic holdings (collections, 

archives, photographs, scientific data files, etc.) of 

institutional members or participants that would be 

made available through a portal-like network. The 

original concept for the ADL was developed by Dr. 

David Nordlander based on his experience curating 

international collections for the Library of Congress. 

During the past year Nordlander and the ASC explored 

ways to advance this concept beyond the theoretical 

discussions held in the workshops of 2016 and 

2017. What was needed was a pilot study using real 

sets of digital Arctic data that could be married to 

a technological apparatus that searched for desired 

sets of data (for instance climatological records) and 

connected users to other data sets that users might not 

know about but that are relevant to a user’s research 

interest. In short, the ADL proposes to create curated 

sets of data that could be connected in useful ways for 

research, education, or other purposes. For instance, 

a climatologist might be aware of data from the 1882 

IPY field station at Point Barrow, Alaska, but not know 

of similar data sets from the Greeley Expedition to 

Ellesmere Island, Canada, or the contemporary records 

from the Russian Station at Tiksi on the Lena River 

Delta. An ADL search for Barrow would indicate the 

availability of records from these other IPY stations.

During the winter of 2018 the ADL concept was 

introduced to Dartmouth College, whose Rauner 

Archives and Hood Museum collections contain a 

large amount of well-curated Arctic materials, much 

of which is found in the voluminous Vilhjalmur 

Stefansson Collection, arguably the largest collection 

of Arctic-related unpublished material in the world. 

Dartmouth’s Hood Museum has a large collection of 

artifacts and artworks from the Arctic. The idea of 

enhancing digital library systems using Arctic data 

appealed to Dartmouth librarian Susan Mehrer, 

and discussions with Rauner Archive Director Jay 

Satterfield and Arctic Institute director Ross Virginia

led to the idea of utilizing Dartmouth collections as 

the raw material for a pilot study. In order to bring an 

inter-institutional element to the project Dartmouth 

proposed teaming up with the ASC at the Smithsonian 

COLLECTIONS in order to broaden Arctic curatorial expertise and draw 

upon the large Smithsonian collections and archives.

In addition to technology, the project needed a thematic 

focus. Ross Virginia proposed the International Polar 

Year enterprises might serve this purpose, since it 

was international, multi-disciplinary, and its records 

and collections are well-represented in the Dartmouth 

and Smithsonian collections. The IPY-1 of 1882-83 

was the first coordinated international effort to study 

the Arctic as a single global system from different 

vantage points around the Arctic Circle. Studies of 

magnetism. Aurora, natural history, oceanography, 

and climate were among the array of disciplines 

investigated. Despite initial grandiose plans for 

integrating regional data, very little synthesis occurred. 

As later IPYs were implemented in 1932-33, 1957-

58, and 2007-08 Arctic research advances in many 

directions, but all could be researched collectively 

to reveal trends and progress. An ADL that compiled 

data on component studies of these major waypoints 

could provide an instructive experiment that would 

produce excellent synthetic, integrated science 

at the same time it would test the viability of the 

ADL concept as a research and educational tool.

The Dartmouth discussions are on-going and are 

soon to include the missing technological search 

wizardry to come from Dartmouth’s computer 

engineers. We are hoping that a full-blown proposal 

will be ready for submission to potential funders 

in the fall of 2018. In the meantime curators 

at Rauner and the Smithsonian are canvassing 

their collections for appropriate materials to be 

made available for the first ADL experiment.

A NEW NATIONAL MUSEUM FOR THE AINU

By William Fitzhugh and Stephen Loring

The Japanese government is building a National 

Ainu Museum in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, Japan scheduled 

to open in April 2020. Curators planning the 

exhibition have proposed installing an exhibition of 

artifacts from the Smithsonian’s Romyn Hitchcock

Collection gathered in Hokkaido from the Ainu 

people in 1886. The Hitchcock collection includes 

180 artifacts and many ethnographic photographs; 

it is one of the largest and earliest of the Ainu 

collections in North America and was accompanied 

by an extensive monograph written by Hitchcock 

and published by the Smithsonian in 1890. 

A curatorial team from Hokkaido including Shiro 

Sasaki (director of the preparation office for National 

Ainu Museum), Masahiro Nomoto (director of the 
46 ASC Newsletter

existing "Ainu Museum"), Kazuyoshi Sasaki (research 

fellow of the Preparation Office), and Kenji Suzuki 

(research fellow of the preparation office) visited the 

Smithsonian in December 2017. The Ainu project 

team met with Anthropology Chairman Torrey Rick 

and Bill Fitzhugh. Stephen Loring facilitated their 

work at the Anthropological Archives and in the 

ethnographic collections. They hope to borrow about 

150 objects for their opening exhibition. While in 

DC, the group was surprised to discover the Ainu 

boat model that Nomoto built for the ASC/NMNH 

exhibition “Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People” in 1999 

in a case in a section of the museum’s Ocean Hall 

devoted to human travels and migration in the Pacific 

Ocean. During their visit, Nomoto visited with John 

Zastrow, whom he knew from his work building the 

Ainu boat model at the Office of Exhibit Central, SI. 

CHARLES FRANCIS HALL: SEARCHING FOR 

FRANKLIN AND DISCOVERING THE ARCTIC

[This article by Sarah Kaplan appeared in 

The Washington Post on August 16, 2018, as 

part of the publicity for the Narwhal exhibition 

opening. reprinted with permission.]

In 1845, two of the best ships England could build 

set off on a quest to find the fabled Northwest 

Passage — then vanished without a trace.

The mystery enthralled a generation of adventurers. 

No one could believe that the pride of the British 

Royal Navy, commanded by the legendary Sir 

John Franklin, had fallen victim to nature's wild 

menace. Convinced that there must be survivors, 

and tempted by the promise of a reward of 20,000 

pounds from Franklin's wife, Jane, the best 

explorers of the era converged on the Arctic.

But 15 years after Franklin went missing, 

nearly 20 rescue attempts had turned up only 

bones and wreckage, and more people had 

died searching for the missing men than had 

been lost on Franklin's original voyage.

Charles Francis Hall, a 38-year-old newspaper 

publisher from Cincinnati, was obsessed. 

Although he'd never so much as sailed on a 

boat, he became convinced that he knew how to 

solve the mystery of the missing ship. He filled 

four scrapbooks with clippings about the lost 

expedition and dashed off dozens of letters to 

Arctic adventurers, who occasionally wrote back.

“Perhaps many people would say ... 'what have 

you to do with it?'" Hall later wrote — and many 

people did say that. But Hall was undeterred: 

“It seemed to me as if I had been called.”

So, in February 1860, Hall talked his way on board 

a whaling vessel and set sail for the far north — a 

middle-aged nobody equipped with little more 

than a reporter's sense of curiosity, a hefty dose of 

Midwestern pluck and $27 borrowed from his wife.

For such an unlikely adventurer, Hall was 

shockingly successful: He uncovered a centuriesold archaeological site of European explorers, 

became a pioneering ethnographer of Arctic people 

and made it closer to the North Pole than any nonInuit explorer before him. He also faced hardship. 

Historians say they believe he was poisoned by a 

member of his own crew on his final expedition.

Today, maps reflect discoveries Hall made (there's 

even a chilly stretch of water named Cincinnati 

Press Channel), and artifacts he collected are 

still used for research at the Smithsonian.

“It's fascinating to me the fact that just some amateur 

jumps on a boat ... and he survives and does it 

well,” said Joe Hursey, a reference archivist at the 

Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, 

where Hall's journals are stored. “Not just does it 

well, but makes discoveries. How did he do it?”

Not the way Franklin did it, that's for sure. The British 

explorer's ships were powered by the latest steam 

engines and operated by a 130-person crew. He set sail 

for the Arctic with a 1,000-book library, two organs, 

8,000 tins of canned food and a porcelain dining 

set on which to serve it. When their vessels became 

trapped in the ice north of Canada, the voyagers 

Charles Francis Hall, center, with Inuit guides Tookoolito, 

left and Ebierbing from the frontispiece of Hall's 1865 

memoir, “Arctic researches, and life among the Esquimaux.” 

(Library of Congress)
 ASC Newsletter 47

cloistered themselves inside their ships, instead of 

seeking survival advice from the native Inuit.

Many of Franklin's failed rescuers also ignored the 

local people who might have guided their search.

“The pattern for interaction between white people and 

the Inuit in those early days was pretty disdainful,” 

said Bill Fitzhugh, director of the Center for Arctic 

studies at the National Museum of Natural History, 

which houses the other half of Hall's collection. 

“The Europeans thought that they came from this 

grand civilization of big cities and fancy technology 

and big boats and so forth, and they thought the 

Inuit were really living on the edge of survival.”

Hall saw things differently. In the introduction to 

his memoir, he quoted the advice of a fellow Arctic 

explorer: “We experienced many severe trials; but 

... the major part of them emanated from our mode 

of living. When we lived as the Eskimeaux [an 

outdated, derogatory term for the Inuit people] we 

immediately recovered and enjoyed our usual health.”

In other words, there was no reason to starve if 

you availed yourself of the generosity of the locals. 

(The memoir doesn't 

mention how Hall's 

Inuit companions 

felt about that.)

Hall also believed 

that Inuit stories of 

their interactions with 

Europeans would lead him 

to the Franklin survivors. 

While following one such 

tale, he stumbled upon 

the ruins of an abandoned 

mining operation. It 

was clearly European, 

but it was much too 

old to have been used 

by Franklin or any of 

his contemporaries. 

Relying heavily on 

help from two Inuit 

guides, Tookoolito and 

Ebierbing, Hall mapped and excavated the area. 

Ultimately he realized that he had uncovered 

relics of a failed expedition led by Elizabethan 

privateer Martin Frobisher 300 years earlier.

“Of course he didn’t know what he was doing with 

archaeology — we hadn’t even invented archaeology 

yet — but he was practicing it, recording where things 

came from,” said Fitzhugh, who in 1993 used Hall's 

records to write a book about Frobisher's voyages.

Similarly, Hall, who had no navigational training, 

helped redraw maps of the Arctic by pointing out 

that a strait named for Frobisher was actually a bay 

and was not a path to the fabled Northwest Passage. 

“Maps worldwide were changed,” Hursey said.

Except for a brief return to the United States to 

collect supplies and raise more funds, Hall spent 

all of the 1860s in the North. He filled thousands 

of pages with interviews with and detailed 

observations about his Inuit companions' lives.

Standing in the vast warehouse that holds the 

National Museum of Natural History's anthropology 

collections, Fitzhugh opened three drawers containing 

artifacts that Hall had collected on his voyages: 

wooden goggles that protected the eyes from blinding 

light reflected off brilliant white snow; sinew-backed 

bows made from bone, which made archery possible 

in a land without trees; sophisticated harpoons 

tipped with spurs that spun and hooked into a seal's 

flesh to prevent the animal from pulling away. The 

tools are testament to Inuit people's ability to adapt 

to the Arctic, honed 

over 4,000 years of 

living amid the ice.

“It really shows what 

life was like before 

Europeans started 

coming,” Fitzhugh said.

For Fitzhugh, who 

spends his summers 

doing archaeological 

research in the same 

areas of the Arctic that 

Hall once explored, 

artifacts like these are 

“gold bullion.” And 

Hall is a model of field 

work done right.

“I see myself a little 

in Hall's shoes,” he 

said. “He gave me 

a lot of ideas about how to pursue goals and to 

work with local people and to get to know them, 

to understand them and to adopt their ways.”

But Hall was far from flawless. Hursey pointed 

out that in thousands of pages of notes, the 

explorer never mentioned the wife and two young 

children he'd left behind in Cincinnati. And even 

Bill Fitzhugh holds a pair of Inuit snow goggles worn by 

Hall. Photo: Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post
48 ASC Newsletter

as he lived alongside the Inuit, he harbored the 

arrogance and prejudices of his era; Hall was quick 

to dismiss his companions as “uncivilized” even 

as he depended on their expertise for survival.

He also had an ego, which inflated more when 

he was made commander of a U.S. Naval 

expedition to the North Pole in 1871.

“Here's the problem with Hall, and why a lot of history 

has sort of forgotten him,” Hursey said. “All these 

people involved in all these searches and all this stuff 

were well known, were well educated. ... And then 

you've got this guy here, a nobody, and he's going to lead 

us and tell us what to do, and say 'I am the greatest?'”

Hall's swagger made him enemies 

on board the ship, particularly 

among the scientific staff. Soon, he 

was suffering from strange aches 

and unexplained fatigue. In late 

October, after the ship became 

trapped in ice for the winter, 

Hall fell violently ill. Convinced 

that he was being poisoned, he 

refused all food. But it was too 

late. Hall died on Nov. 8, 1871.

The ship's doctor, Emil Bessels,

attributed the explorer's death to 

apoplexy, and a Naval investigation 

concluded that Hall had died of 

natural causes. But later historians 

noted a suspicious passage in 

Hall's journal in which he wrote 

that his coffee tasted oddly 

sweet — a signature of arsenic.

A century later, Hall biographer 

Chauncey Loomis—who had been Fitzhugh's 

professor at Dartmouth College—ventured to northern 

Greenland to exhume Hall's body, which had been 

well preserved by permafrost. Tissue samples revealed 

that Hall had indeed ingested alarming amounts of 

arsenic shortly before his death. The element was a 

common component of the quack medicines of the 

19th century, so it's possible that Hall was trying 

to medicate himself. Neither Fitzhugh nor Hursey 

quite buys that argument: “Maybe the doctor dipped 

into his little chemistry kit,” Fitzhugh said.

Hall's last act was an attempt to reach the North 

Pole by sledge. It was a hard journey, Hall wrote 

in his journals, made more punishing by the 

poison already coursing through his veins.

Finally he reached a point at which he could go no 

further. It was an isolated spot on the northwest tip 

of Greenland hemmed in by impassable mountains 

and a channel packed with fast-moving ice. Judging 

by the stars, which had been visible since the long 

Arctic night began nearly a month before, Hall 

was within 600 miles of the North Pole. It was not 

the top of the world. But it was close enough.

There, Hall sat down to write his last message to 

the secretary of the Navy, which he sealed inside 

a copper tube that he then buried in a small rock 

cairn. Years from now, the thinking went, when 

future explorers happened upon this site they would 

see the cairn and know what Hall had done.

The tube was uncovered by Naval investigators 

a decade later and now sits in the National 

Museum of American History archives, alongside 

a report from the Navy's board of inquiry. Hursey 

opened the Navy's yellowed manuscript to one 

of its last pages and began to read the description 

of Hall's last venture: “The first step taken by 

Captain Hall fell upon land more northern than 

white man's foot had ever before touched.”

“Look at that,” Hursey said. “He made it." 

Charles Francis Hall's funeral in northern Greenland from the U.S. Navy's 

“Narrative of the North Polar expedition. U.S. Ship Polaris.”
 ASC Newsletter 49

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF 

CHARLES FRANCIS HALL

By Stephen Loring and Megan Gowen

Charles Francis Hall

(1821-1871), an American 

explorer, undertook several 

expeditions to the Arctic 

in search of possible 

survivors from Sir John 

Franklin’s Northwest 

Passage Expedition whose 

two ships, and 128 men, 

had disappeared in 1845. 

With the recent discovery 

of the Franklin expedition 

ships by Parks Canada 

personnel and renewed 

interest in the “Franklin 

Era” of Arctic exploration, 

Hall’s accomplishments and 

discoveries have received 

much attention. Two events, 

an exciting donation of 

Hall memorabilia and 

a detailed study of the 

ethnographic collections 

he acquired, came under 

ASC purview this year.

In 1860, Hall arranged 

transportation to the 

Arctic with New England 

whalers who brought him 

to Baffin Island, where 

he had the exceptional 

good fortune to befriend an 

Inuit couple, Tookoolito 

and Ebierbing (Hannah and Eskimo Joe), with 

whom he traveled on all his subsequent arctic 

journeys. Unique among his peers Hall lived and 

traveled with his Inuit companions, learned their 

language, and adopted their customs. While living 

with the Inuit he heard their stories about Kablunat 

(white men) who visited Frobisher Bay in ancient 

times and discovered the 16th century remains of 

Martin Frobisher’s camps and “gold mines.” 

Upon his return to New York he published Arctic 

Researches and Life Amongst the Esquimaux (1865). 

Hall’s second expedition (1864-1869) took him, 

Tookoolito and Ebierbing, to the central Canadian 

Arctic, to Foxe Basin, Roe’s Welcome Sound, 

and King William Island, where they gathered 

Inuit accounts of the doomed Franklin sailors and 

acquired from the Inuit relics of that expedition. The 

third expedition aboard the Polaris in 1871 took 

Hall to extreme northwest Greenland, farther north 

than any previous explorers. With his ship safely 

iced-in for the winter Hall made reconnaissance 

sled-trips in anticipation of a North Pole attempt. 

However, returning from 

one outing he suddenly 

took sick and died.

Hall’s decline and death 

raised suspicions he had 

been poisoned by crew 

members convinced he was 

leading them to an icy grave. 

The subsequent fate of the 

Polaris expedition crew is 

one of the more exceptional 

tales of Arctic struggle and 

survival. A portion of the 

crew, including Ebierbing 

and a Greenlander named 

Hans, were cast adrift on an 

ice-floe where they spent 

six months drifting south 

through Davis Strait before 

being rescued off southern 

Labrador. Meanwhile, 

the remainder of the crew 

abandoned the Polaris and 

eventually were rescued 

by Scottish whalers. 

Preparations for Hall’s 

North Pole Expedition 

brought him, Tookoolito 

and Ebierbing to the 

Smithsonian where they were 

in residence while negotiations 

for the expedition were taking place with the U.S. 

Navy. Tookoolito and Ebierbing were photographed 

in both traditional Inuit clothing (in which they also 

appeared during Hall’s fund-raising lectures) as well 

as contemporary western dress. Hall’s natural history 

and ethnology collections resulting from his first 

two expeditions, as well as the relics he recovered 

from the Martin Frobisher site and from the Franklin 

Expedition were entrusted to the Institution’s care 

for the duration of the Polar expedition, as were his 

correspondence, journals, notebooks and maps. 

Hall’s collections and archives were subsequently 

acquired by the Smithsonian from his widow. The 

collections were dispersed about the Institution and 

can today be found in both NMNH and the National 

Museum of American History (NMAH). All of Hall’s 

papers and archives—a historical treasure trove—are 

Charles Francis Hall. From a photograph 

courtesy the Estate of Chauncey Loomis
50 ASC Newsletter

now housed at the NMAH’s Archive Center where they 

are gradually being transcribed and placed on line.

A Lost Star

Hall’s journals and notebooks languished in obscurity 

until 1965 when Dartmouth professor Chauncey 

Loomis consulted them for his biography of Hall, 

Weird and Tragic Shores (1971). Fascinated by Hall’s 

life and accomplishments and inspired by a desire to 

bring closure to the mystery surrounding Hall’s death, 

Loomis, in 1968, acquired permission from Denmark’s 

Ministry for Greenland to travel to Hall Basin and 

conduct an autopsy on Hall’s frozen body. His team 

recovered tissue samples (fingernail and hair clippings) 

which revealed he died from arsenic poisoning! Hall’s 

body and clothing were remarkably intact having 

been frozen since his interment 97 years earlier. His 

burial shroud was found to be an American flag from 

which Loomis snipped a single star as the grave was 

reassembled and Hall’s remains were laid to rest again.

Chauncey Loomis passed away in 2009. As a 

friend of the family, Stephen Loring had on several 

occasions stayed at Chauncey’s modernist house on 

a bluff over the Housatonic River in Stockbridge, 

Massachusetts. Chauncey’s separate study was an 

arctic aficionado’s dream retreat whose bookshelves 

were a veritable cornucopia of expedition, arctic, 

and alpine books and atlases, decorated with antique 

maps of the polar regions. On a shelf full of framed 

awards and knickknacks—not a few of which 

pertained to Hall researches—Stephen found the star 

that Chauncey had saved from Hall’s burial shroud.

Concerned that such a unique object might be 

overlooked or lost in the passage of time, Stephen 

asked if Chauncey’s heirs would consider donating 

the star to the Smithsonian so it could be preserved 

along with his other collections and archives. The 

prospect of acquiring this “relic” was enthusiastically 

endorsed by Kathy Golden, a curator in the Division 

of Armed Forces History at the NMAH who oversees 

and cares for the Smithsonian collections from 

Arctic expeditions. Craig Loomis, Chauncey’s 

nephew and executor, graciously donated the star 

and also a small broken blue glass bottle embossed 

with the word 

POISON that 

Chauncey had 

recovered from 

about the ruins of 

the observatory 

that Hall’s men 

had erected near 

the expedition’s 

winter camp 

(see Chauncey’s 

discussion of 

this in Weird and 

Tragic Shores, 

p.340). These are 

modest items to 

be sure, but they 

bear witness to 

people and events 

and contribute to 

an appreciation of 

an extraordinary 

chapter of 

arctic history. 

Left: A star from the American flag found covering the body of Charles Francis Hall. Collected in 1968 by Chauncey Loomis, 

now in the collections at the NMAH

Right: Coiled grass basket with beaded rim from Cumberland Inlet, ca. 1860. Hall Collection NMNH E.10203

A scrap of paper from a mineral 

sample wrapping reading, in Hall’s 

hand: “From island where I had snow 

observatory middle of F+Hecla Strait 

western outlet...” and includes a sketch 

of the small island. Henry Collins 

papers, National Anthropological 

Archives. 
 ASC Newsletter 51

ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND YUPIK SKIN 

BOAT ARRIVES AT THE SMITHSONIAN

By Igor Krupnik

The remarkable story of an old St. Lawrence Island 

Yupik skin boat (Yupik angyaq, angyapik) and its 

journey from the island to a long-term stay in Oregon 

and finally to the NMNH ethnology collection 

storage at the Museum Support Center (MSC) in 

Suitland, MD took more than 55 years. Yet for us 

at the ASC this story began in early February 2017 

with a short e-mail from Anthropology Department 

chair, Torrey Rick who had received a message from 

Jon Erlandson, archaeologist and director of the 

Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH) 

at the University of Oregon. The museum had in its 

collections a skin boat (‘umiak’) from St. Lawrence 

Island “reportedly from the 1950s.” In the absence of 

a large enough collections space at the University of 

Oregon, it had been kept in temporary storage with 

the Oregon Historical Society in Portland OR, and, 

since the space agreement was expiring, the MNCH 

was looking for a new permanent home for the 

boat. They had approached, unsuccessfully, several 

museums on the West Coast and in Alaska (including 

the Anchorage Museum and the Katirvik Cultural 

Center in Nome), and were now inquiring whether the 

Smithsonian might be interested to take it.

This was an unbelievably generous offer. The 

Smithsonian Natural History Museum has a large 

collection of indigenous Arctic watercraft made of 

almost two dozen smaller skin boats, kayaks, from 

Alaska and Labrador, but just one collapsed frame of 

larger open skin boat known by its Inupiaq/Inuktitut 

name, umiak. According to my colleague, 

Stephen Loring, the lack of a large open skin 

umiak at the Smithsonian is a striking lacuna 

brought about in part by the difficulty in 

transportation and logistics, but also because 

of its decline in use across much of the Arctic 

during the late 19th-century as wooden 

manufactured whaleboats began to replace 

the traditional watercraft. Only in portions 

of Alaska and Greenland did the large skin 

umiaks survive well into the 20th century. 

St. Lawrence Island in the northern 

Bering Sea and some Russian indigenous 

communities on the opposite side of Bering 

Strait were a few places where the use 

of large Yupik angyapiget (plural) have 

been documented until the very end of the 

20th century. In the 1970s and 1980s, I travelled 

in these boats on the Russian side when they were 

still in active use. It looked as if we might have 

a chance to expand our collection, although the 

boat itself was still almost 3,000 miles away.

The Boat’s History

Our first call was to colleagues in Oregon with a 

simple question: “Does your boat have an intact frame 

and cover? From my past work in Chukotka, I knew 

that the wooden frames could last several decades 

if its broken or weakened parts were replaced. The 

skin covers, on the other hand, are made of split 

hides of female walruses and have a life-span of 

only 2–3 years before needing replacement, always 

a long and cumbersome operation. No skin cover 

could survive more than four years; in the old days, 

the old and stretched boat covers were re-used as 

flooring or roof covers in Native dwellings. 

The response from Pam Endzweig, Director of 

Collections of MNCH, was promising: the boat 

had an intact cover, in excellent shape, with its 

outer side painted white by the original owners 

for better preservation. Pam also sent some 

photos. It was readily apparent that we were 

indeed dealing with a true cultural treasure! 

My next step was to write Dr. Stephen R. Braund, 

an anthropologist in Anchorage, who authored 

the book, "The Skin Boats of St. Lawrence Island, 

Alaska" (1988), the most authoritative source on the 

subject. Braund responded immediately: “That boat 

and especially the skin are in very good condition... 

A very nice, well maintained angyapik... This is an 

opportunity for the Smithsonian to capture a unique 

episode in indigenous watercraft development...which 

will likely, over time due to non-use, disappear.”

Russian Yupik hunters carry a skin boat, angyapik to the 

surf area for launch. Photo: Nikolai Perov, 1980, Sireniki 

(published in Bogoslovskaya et al. 2007)
52 ASC Newsletter

From our colleagues in Oregon and through further 

search we learned the story of the boat. It was 

originally collected by Paul H. Jensen, a retired 

professor at Western Oregon University and a 

collector, who travelled to Alaska and St. Lawrence 

Island several times in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1985, 

he organized the Paul Jensen Arctic Museum in 

Monmouth, OR, containing more than 3,000 objects 

from his personal Alaskan collection. A special feature 

of the Jensen Museum was a 27-foot (8.2 m) Alaskan 

umiak, a boat with a wooden frame and covered with 

walrus skins. Jensen acquired the boat so he could 

take part in “a native hunt” around the entire island. 

Jensen passed away in 1994 and, almost 20 years later, 

his museum closed and its collections, including the 

boat, were transferred to the Museum of Natural and 

Cultural History at the University of Oregon. While 

at the Jensen Museum, the boat was prominently 

displayed and was cared for by museum curator Roben 

Jack Itchoak, who had grown up in Nome, Alaska.

A more detailed story of the boat was presented in a 

short self-published memoir by Arlene Jensen, Paul 

Jensen’s wife: “Adventures of a Collector: The Jensen 

Arctic Museum” (1995). Arlene Jensen notes that 

when her husband began visiting St. Lawrence Island 

in the 1960s, he expressed a desire to travel around the 

island in a Yupik boat. He began by purchasing an old 

wooden boat frame that had been equipped with a well 

for an outboard motor. He commissioned two Gambell 

women to split two new walrus hides from a recent 

kill and to sew them into a boat cover. He loaded the 

boat with food, tents, ammunition, and hired a local 

boat crew led by John Apangalook. At some point 

during their journey from Gambell, they stopped at 

the Air National Guard Station at the Northeast Cape, 

where Paul befriended a local military commander. 

That meeting later resulted in an offer to fly the boat 

to Oregon. (It is unclear when this was accomplished.) 

Once in Oregon, the boat was first kept in a warehouse 

of the Corvallis School District, and then at the Oregon 

Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, and 

finally, years later, it was transferred to the Paul Jensen 

Arctic Museum, where it became the object “most dear 

to his heart,” until his death. The booklet even features 

a photo of the boat being pushed into the water by 

scores of Yupik young men and boys–exactly the way 

I watched it being done so many times in Chukotka.

This story confirmed many pieces of information 

and added some new ones. The boat was clearly 

old–its frame was considered “old” already in 

the 1960s, though its design was aimed for the 

installation of the outboard motor in the central well, 

that is, after the 1920s. The skin cover was from 

the early 1960s; at 55+ years of age, it may be the 

oldest intact walrus-hide cover in any collection. 

It had travelled around St. Lawrence Island with 

a crew led by the well-known John Apangalook 

(1911–1978), a Yupik teacher at local school, 

Gambell postmaster and storekeeper, and the head 

of a prominent island family that included four sons 

(see Paul Apangalook, this NSL) and two daughters. 

John Apangalook was also a junior brother of Paul 

Silook (1892–1948), who had been a partner to two 

Smithsonian researchers, Riley Moore in 1912 and 

Henry B. Collins in 1928–1930 (see this NSL.) If 

anything, the fact that the boat was once steered 

by Apangalook made it even more desirable to us 

as a symbol of the century-old connection. It also 

offered a window to learn more of its history from 

Apangalook’s descendants living in Gambell.

Bringing the Boat East

In March 2017, I submitted a memo to the NMNH 

administration (director Kirk Johnson and assistant 

director for collections, Carol Butler) arguing for 

the addition of the Yupik angyapik to the museum’s 

Anthropology collection. That request was supported 

by Torrey Rick, Anthropology Department chair, and 

Bill Fitzhugh, the ASC director. The Director’s office 

and the ASC eventually split the costs for transporting 

the boat from Oregon. Our share came from the Ernest 

‘Tiger’ Burch Endowment funds, another example of 

how the Burch Endowment support has helped propel 

our programs. We also enjoyed generous assistance of 

the Anthropology collection manager, Dave Rosenthal 

and our new registrar, Allison Butler. The request to 

find space for the boat in the Museum Support Center 

(MSC) in Suitland, MD was eventually granted.

Skin boat in the storage area of the Oregon Historical 

Society in Portland, after its move from the Jensen Arctic 

Museum, 2014. Photo courtesy Pam Endzweig
 ASC Newsletter 53

Bringing a bulky, fragile skin boat across the 

continent required complex planning. In the early 

days of the Smithsonian, Native boats, totem 

poles, and large statues were routinely loaded onto 

steamers and into rail cars and shipped over long 

distances, with little if any concern about climate 

control and condition reports. Today, a 27-ft 55-year 

old skin boat could not be put on a rental truck and 

just carted 3,000 miles. As the final decision and 

paperwork dragged on, summer was approaching 

and with it would come scorching 100+° heat across 

most of the route. We could not risk subjecting the 

boat to the elements; we wanted it intact and safe. 

After several bids solicited by Dave Rosenthal, we 

settled on U.S. Art, a renowned fine art handling and 

moving company with over 60 years of experience. 

At every step, we consulted with, and were assisted 

by, our partners in Oregon–Pam Endzweig and 

Roben Itchoak at the UOregon MNCH, and Nicole 

Yasuhara, collection manager, and Lisa Noah, chief 

operation officer at the Oregon Historical Society.

As negotiations on the logistics continued throughout 

the summer, an unexpected factor emerged, the 

full solar eclipse of August 21. Though Portland 

itself was north of the total eclipse path across 

northern Oregon, huge crowds were expected to 

converge on Portland, creating massive traffic jams, 

so the move was rescheduled for early September. 

Stephen Loring travelled to Portland to inspect the 

boat and help prepare it for the trip East. He was 

accompanied by Claudine Scoville, former head 

registrar at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, 

MA. She documented the boat as remarkably stable 

in her condition report and gave it a 

clean bill of health for its final trip.

On September 5, a dozen volunteers 

summoned by the University of 

Oregon and the Oregon Historical 

Society carefully loaded the boat into 

a climate-conditioned truck supplied 

by the U.S. Art. Two professional 

drivers were to drive it in less than 50 

hours to Suitland, Maryland. Whereas 

loading went without a hitch, the 

departure was delayed because of the 

massive wild fires in the hills around 

Portland that clogged Interstate 84 and 

blanketed the area with smoke and 

ash. The truck finally departed using 

a route that safely by-passed the fire 

zone. To the boat’s encounter with 

water, ice, air, and eclipse, were added 

fire and smoke (Pam Endzweig).

On the morning of September 8, 

the truck arrived at the MSC loading dock. I had 

asked Bill Fitzhugh to bring his Yupik drum, so I 

greeted the boat with a song to make it comfortable 

in its new home. Unpacking processed smoothly, 

and in less than two hours the boat was resting at 

home in special ‘bubble-wrap’ storage, there for 

30 days before further conservation inspection 

and, later, a shift to the Anthropology storage 

space. The boat finally reached its new ‘dock’ in 

Pod 4, where it would live next to the Alaskan 

kayaks, Canadian birch-bark canoes, and other 

Native watercraft from around the world.

Returning to Gambell, October 2017

In May 2017, as we were negotiating the boat’s 

delivery, Stephen Braund shared his impressions after 

visiting two St. Lawrence Island villages, Gambell 

and Savoonga. “I walked the beaches and boat storage 

areas in both communities,” he wrote to me, “and I 

believe more firmly than before that the Smithsonian 

is making a wise decision... Neither Gambell nor 

Savoonga have used skin boats for several years, and 

although there are boat frames on racks, several are 

succumbing to the elements ... There are a few boats 

in Gambell that appear to have their walrus skins 

on (I saw three), but two are covered by a synthetic 

material over the walrus hide. I did not inspect the third 

one that closely. Hunters reported that they have had 

difficulty for several years harvesting female walrus 

skins of the right size and quality to cover their skin 

boat frames...To me, the future of split-walrus, skin 

boat usage on Saint Lawrence Island is unknown, 

making it all the more important for the Smithsonian 

It’s finally here! The angyapik being unloaded at the Smithsonian Museum 

Support Center in September 2017. Anthropology collection manager, Dave 

Rosenthal is in the right
54 ASC Newsletter

to acquire the boat from Oregon. This is a timely 

acquisition to capture a unique Bering Strait watercraft, 

and an opportunity that may not present itself in the 

future.” This was a powerful call for action.

During my two visits to St. Lawrence Island in 2017, 

I also had a chance to examine the boats stored on 

wooden storage racks on the beach at both villages. 

In Savoonga, the wooden frames were numerous, 

but none had skin covers, and local hunters said 

they stopped hunting in skin boats a few years ago. 

Nonetheless, some people expressed a 

desire to prepare new covers, at least 

for the educational purpose, so that their 

grandchildren might have the pleasure 

of traveling in a skin boat.

In Gambell, more than two dozen intact 

wooden boat frames are stored on the 

beach, and some also near people’s 

houses in town. Several more broken and 

disintegrating frames litter the beach area. 

Only a few boats preserve pieces of their 

old skin cover, also painted in white to 

protect the skin exterior from the elements. I found 

a couple of the boat frames covered in synthetic 

material mentioned by Braund; none looked as though 

they were ready for sea. No skin boat, reportedly, 

had sailed in Gambell for the past five years, as all 

hunting is now conducted with aluminum boats 

and high-powdered motors. As in Savoonga, many 

people lamented the loss of skin boats and expressed 

their wish that someone might yet cover his boat 

with a new skin so that Yupik youth could see a ‘real 

boat’ in use. The last skin-covered boat, a small 22-

ft version was built by Leonard Apangalook Sr., 

John Apangalook’s eldest son, for the Alaska Native 

Heritage Center in Anchorage after he moved there 

from Gambell in 2008. That boat now sits on the 

floor inside the building, so its cover may last.

While in Gambell, I also talked to senior hunters, 

including John Apangalook’s other son, Preston 

Apangalook and son-in-law, Anders Apassingok. 

Everyone remembered Paul Jensen and his many 

visits to Gambell in the 1960s; surprisingly, 

nobody could recall participating in a trip with 

Jensen and John Apangalook around St. Lawrence 

Island, including Preston and Anders, who were in 

Apangalook’s hunting crew at that time, being 18 

and 32 years of age, respectively. Both denied 

any chance that Apangalook could have 

sold to Jensen his own hunting boat, since 

good frames were highly prized and well 

cared for and could live through many skin 

replacements. The boats were often colored with 

white paint on the outside so that they would look 

like ‘pieces of ice’ on the water. One former hunter 

called the Yupik system extremely wise, as skin 

covers were “bio-degradable” and they were left 

to the elements after three years of service–unlike 

the aluminum boats of today. Many people were 

truly surprised that the Smithsonian received a 

55-year boat with an intact skin cover and claimed 

that they never heard of hides surviving that long.

I collected numerous stories of individual boats 

(frames), including who built them, when, for whom, 

and how long they served. Each frame’s story is well 

remembered; most frames are of the same size as 

Left: A wooden boat frame with the remains of 

disintegrated skin cover on the beach in Gambell. 

October 2017

Right: Boat frames without covers on storage racks 

in Savoonga. February 2017
 ASC Newsletter 55

our boat, 26–27-foot long, though some were slightly 

larger, up to 28, even 30 ft. The emerging consensus 

was that John Apangalook purchased someone else’s 

old frame using Jensen’s money and then commissioned 

local women to prepare a new skin cover. Months 

later, I realized that the boat crew for Jensen’s trip 

was perhaps made of Gambell schoolboys (based on 

Apangalook’s position as a teacher at school and one 

photo in Arlene Jensen’s booklet). So I was perhaps 

asking the wrong people if they remembered that trip.

From several interviews and conversations, it was clear 

that the skin boat building tradition is fully alive on St. 

Lawrence Island, even if no boats are on the water and 

no skin covers have been made in the past 5-8 years. 

We can learn (and document!) invaluable information 

about boat construction, boat use, selection of wood 

and hides, patterns of inheritance, social and spiritual 

rules associated with the possession and transmission 

of the boats, and much more, by using ‘our’ boat as a 

study piece. Therefore, we hope that the angyapik’s 

journey will continue, even if the boat itself remains 

safely in MSC storage. Our next step is to organize a 

‘reunion’ between the boat and its builders, perhaps by 

inviting Preston Apangalook to visit the Smithsonian 

to examine the boat that his late father once steered 

for Paul Jensen around St. Lawrence Island. 

We express our warmest gratitude to all the people 

who helped make the boat journey “across North 

America” possible: Pam Endzweig, Jon Erlandson, 

Elizabeth Kallenbach, and Roben Itchoak at the 

University of Oregon; Nicole Yasuhara, Lisa Noah, 

and Janet Wisdom at the Oregon Historical Society; 

Torrey Rick, Dave Rosenthal, Carol Butler, Allison 

Butler, Kirk Johnson at NMNH; J.R. Smith and the 

Collections Support Services staff at the Museum 

Support Center; Stephen Braund in Anchorage; 

Claudine Scoville; Phyllis Cottrell and the two truck 

drivers from U.S. Art Co, who delivered it to the East 

Coast despite all odds. Pam Endzweig, Bill Fitzhugh, 

Stephen Loring, and Dave Rosenthal offered useful 

details to this record of the boat’s remarkable story. 

Thank you ALL!

THE GENERAL THOMAS GAGE BIRCHBARK CANOE AT FIRLE, U.K.

By Stephen Loring

On ancient North American birchbark canoes discovered in England

In the fall of 2010 a remarkable discovery was made 

public: in a barn on the Enys estate in Cornwall, UK, 

was found preserved the remains of a six-meter long 

birch-bark canoe that appears to have been brought 

to England by Lieutenant John Enys (1757-1818) 

from Quebec in 1788 (or perhaps earlier). Enys had 

a distinguished military career during the American 

Revolution, seeing action during the siege of Quebec 

City and later in military campaigns in Quebec, and 

along Lake Champlain and Lake George. He was back 

in England in 1782 but returned to Canada in 1784 

with his regiment, spending three years in western 

Ontario and the Great Lakes. The exact provenance 

of the canoe has yet to be determined but no less an 

authority than Henri Vaillancourt–who viewed the 

canoe along with staff from the Peterborough Canoe 

Museum—thought it might have been made by 

Malecite or Abenaki–or perhaps by Mohawk or Huron 

craftsmen. It may have been presented to Enys as a 

parting gift from his regiment on his return to England. 

Despite having suffered some egregious damages over 

the past 235 years (plus or minus), the Enys canoe 

is one of only a handful of surviving mid-late 18th 

century birch-bark canoes from North America. The 

Enys family arranged to have the canoe displayed 

at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth in 

2011 prior to its being “repatriated” to Canada, to the 

Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario 

where it is now being conserved and curated.

Re-discovery of the Enys canoe caught the attention of 

Lady Diana Beatty, the former wife of Lord Nicolas 

Gage (the 8th Viscount Gage) who remembered seeing 

an ancient birch-bark canoe high in the rafters of an 

out-building at the 5000-acre Gage estate–Firle—near 

Lewes in the Sussex Downs. Upon reflection, Diana 

thought that the only logical way a birch-bark canoe 

might end-up at 

Firle was through 

the family’s 

most significant 

connection to 

North America: 

General Thomas 

Gage (1758-

1787).) Gage, 

the 2nd son of 

the 1st Viscount 

Gage, was the 

commander of His 

Majesty’s Forces 

in North America 

from 1763 to 

1774, Governor of 

Montreal, and the 

military governor 

of Massachusetts 

at the outbreak of 

hostilities in 1775. 

General Thomas Gage, 1788. Painting 

by John Singleton Copley. Yale Center 

for British Art. Photo credit: Courtesy 

Wikimedia Commons.
56 ASC Newsletter

Although his military prowess reputedly left something 

to be desired, he was a brilliant administrator. His 

military campaigns in Pennsylvania during the French 

and English War (1754) and in northern New England, 

Quebec and New York during the Revolution, brought 

him into contact with Native peoples throughout 

Lower Canada and the eastern Great Lakes. Gage had 

amble opportunity to see and use bark canoes. 

But when, where and how did the birch-bark 

canoe arrive at Firle? Alas, no family records or 

traditions pertaining to its history have passed down 

to the current generation. Diana contacted North 

Americanists at the British Museum who, in due 

course, sent out a pair of investigators who spent 

an hour or so clambering about and photographing 

it in its eyrie in the shed rafters. No one knows 

how long the canoe has been resting on the rafters 

but over the years the hull near the bow and stern 

gradually slumped over the two supports resulting 

in indentations in the otherwise smooth expanse 

of the hull. The lack of any specific provenance 

data and the fact that the canoe showed evidence 

of post-construction modifications and repairs, 

and the fact that it probably shouldn’t be moved 

except to a proper conservation facility apparently 

cooled any ardor the British Museum had for its 

accession. (One can’t help but imagine it would have 

received a more sustained reception had Jonathan 

King still been a Keeper at the Museum.) Not to be 

deterred, and convinced that Gage’s canoe might 

receive a better reception in its homeland, Diana 

reached out to the Smithsonian Institution in the 

spring of 2013. Twenty years ago her inquiry might 

have been directed to William Sturtevant, one 

of the premier museum anthropologists of his day 

with a vast knowledge of New World antiquities 

in British and European collections and an abiding 

interest in 18th century material culture. Her inquiry 

bounced around, eventually landing on the desk of 

archaeologist Bruce Smith of our Anthropology 

Department. Bruce’s professional interests were 

situated for the most-part in the southeastern 

United States, whose original inhabitants used dugout log –not bark—canoes, and he was gracious 

enough to put Diana Beatty in contact with me.

The significance of bark canoes 

in Eastern North America

Mobility has always been a key factor in the successful 

adaptation to the challenging physical constraints 

facing Arctic and Subarctic boreal forest peoples. 

The ability to move far and fast to acquire seasonally 

available fish and game, transport people and resources 

(including stone for manufacturing tools, trading 

goods and supplies), and facilitate social interactions 

between small dispersed populations, was predicated 

on the development of watercraft during open-water 

seasons and snowshoes and sleds during frozen 

months. The origin(s) of bark-canoe construction are 

lost in antiquity but archaeologists in the Northeast and 

Maritime Provinces have uncovered evidence of barkcanoe production stretching back at least 2000 years. 

There is no other aspect of the material culture of 

northern Algonquin peoples that speaks as eloquently 

to their lives, skills and knowledge sets as do their 

bark canoes. Practical and easy-to-repair bark canoes 

were always of the moment; their longevity was 

more a matter of the knowledge of how to construct 

them—passed down from generation to generation—

than to conserve them. Fragile and almost ethereal, 

few have withstood the test of time. Only a very 

few early 19th century bark canoes have survived: a 

Penobscot canoe made in 1826 at the Peabody-Essex 

Museum in Salem and the Grandfather Akwiten, a 

Maliseet canoe from New Brunswick built in 1824 

that is in the collections of the National University 

of Ireland in Galway. In addition to the Enys canoe 

now at the Peterborough Canoe Museum, I know 

of only one other late-18th century bark canoe still 

extant: an old Penobscot(?) canoe at the Pejepscot 

Museum and Research Center in Brunswick, Maine. 

Clearly, the Gates canoe, perhaps the oldest extant 

birch bark canoe known, is in very select company.

I had the opportunity to meet Diana Beatty during a trip 

she made to Washington in the spring of 2013. Over 

lunch we discussed the history of North American barkcanoes, their construction details and their regional 

functional and stylistic variation. We talked about 

potential conservation needs and the boat’s history 

The Thomas Gage canoe in the farm shed at Firle. View of 

the bottom of the canoe with the bow to the right. The canvas 

repair job to the bow is visible to the right. 

Photo by M. Schuyler Litten
 ASC Newsletter 57

and significance. Quite entranced by the prospects 

of documenting such a remarkable and unique 18th 

century bark canoe, I accepted Diana’s invitation 

to be her guest at Firle to examine the Gage canoe. 

Several years passed, and it was not until January, 

2018, that I finally found time to accept her invitation. 

A visit to Firle

On a cold, but bright January day we made our way 

to Lewes to rendezvous with Diana Beatty and her 

son Henry William Gage, who brought us out to 

Firle, an extraordinary English country house that has 

been the seat of the Gage family for over 500 years.

I was accompanied by Claudine Scoville, the former 

head registrar at the Peabody Essex Museum, and 

later by M. Schuyler Litten, a.k.a. Skye, a former 

research assistant with the Arctic Studies Center 

currently enrolled in the museum studies program 

at Newcastle University in northern England. 

Together we hoped to systematically photograph 

and document the Gage canoe and assess its 

conservation needs. But first we were treated to an 

introductory tour of the great house and some of its 

incredible treasures, an experience of a lifetime. 

As might be expected, the bedroom featured an 

enormous canopied bed that looked out over the 

estate grounds. As I drifted off to sleep, I couldn’t 

but help reflect on the irony and the strange twists 

of fate that a boy from Concord, Massachusetts, 

might be a guest in the house where the General 

who commanded the British troops that attacked 

Concord and Lexington in 1775 was born.

The Gage Canoe

The next morning we were all eager to make a close 

inspection of the canoe. It had, for long, resided under 

the eaves of an open shed on the Firle estate. Placed 

against a brick and flint wall high up in under the 

rafters, it was protected from direct exposure to sun 

and rain but not from humidity (which had caused 

some ribs to warp) and from plaster dust. But all things 

considered, it appeared to be in remarkably good shape.

While Claudine prepared a detailed condition report 

using an innovative program developed by Articheck 

(that enables one to transcribe notes directly on to 

photographs taken with a tablet), Skye and I—perched 

on ladders and rafters took detailed measurements 

and photographs. The canoe was relatively small, 

being 11’9” long and 42” wide in the center where 

it was 15” deep. It’s construction consisted of 27 

ribs placed on top of long-thin planks that ran the 

length of the canoe. The ribs were attached to the 

gunwales with what appeared to be spruce-root 

lashings. The gores made in the birch-bark sheet, so 

that it could conform to the intended shape of the 

canoe, were sewn up with spruce-root lashing and 

covered with spruce gum to prevent any leaks. 

The canoe originally had neither seats nor thwarts 

but sometime after it’s arrival in England a wooden 

strip had been nailed on top of the original gunwale 

from which an iron bar had been attached at the 

canoe’s midpoint so that (I surmise) it might be 

suspended for display. The attachment of gunwale 

strips was not the only post-construction modification 

of the canoe. Sometime in its history—I suspect 

when it was originally shipped from Canada or 

America—both the bow and stern had been crushed 

and subsequently expertly repaired with canvas 

and tacks. Also, sometime in the more recent past, 

someone had a wooden seat and back-rest and some 

floor boards mounted in the canoe, a distraction 

to be sure, from the integrity of the old vessel.

Firle, the ancestral home of the Gage family near Lewes in 

Sussex. Photo: http://www.countrylife.co.uk

The farm shed on the Firle estate where the Gage canoe was 

stored. Photo: Stephen Loring
58 ASC Newsletter

Adrienne Beatty, daughter of David Field Beatty,

2nd Earl Beatty and her son Hon. Henry Gage.

After spending the night in the beautiful Firle Place, 

we headed out to the barn where we found the birch 

bark canoe high in the rafters. We spent the next few 

hours photographing and taking measurements while 

perched precariously on ladders. The boat appears to 

be too small to have been a typical Indian canoe, and 

it has had extensive repairs and additions. According 

to family stories, the canoe may have been used by 

generations of Gage family children to paddle around 

their artificial lake. This could account for the damage to 

the bow and stern which had been repaired with canvas. 

An additional thwart and back rest had been added for 

comfort of an elderly paddler. Dr. Loring is researching 

the canoe by comparing it to other bark canoes in North 

American museums and to archival materials pertaining 

to bark canoes and to Gage family history. One theory 

is that it was built as a scaled-down souvenir vessel, 

perhaps as a gift, and had never been used as a full-size 

working Native American canoe. Hopefully, Stephen’s 

work in the collections and archives will contribute 

to resolving something of the mystery and provide 

answers about this fascinating family heirloom! 

We thank both Lady Diana Betty and the Hon. Henry 

Gage for their hospitality and kindness during our visit. 

It was an incredible experience we will never forget!

Gage canoe assessment team—mission accomplished! Leftto-right: the very cold Diana Beatty, Stephen Loring, Henry 

Gage, Skye Litten, missing is Claudine Scoville who is taking 

the picture

There is little doubt that the Gage canoe is a remarkable 

artifact of considerable historical significance. While 

the damage, and the repairs, it has sustained somewhat 

compromises it’s integrity as an ethnographic specimen 

it is hoped that when it is professionally cleaned and 

conserved that perhaps some of it’s secrets may be 

revealed. The papers of General Thomas Gage are 

curated at the Clements Library at the University 

of Michigan, and may hold clues or references to 

the canoe’s origins. Given the paucity of canoes of 

it’s vintage the Gage canoe warrants considerable 

attention. Hopefully, in the near future, it will be 

possible to secure conservation funds that will enable 

the canoe to be moved to a more hospitable situation 

and serve as a catalyst for more intensive research. 

We remain extremely appreciative of the many 

courtesies shown to our research team by Diana Beatty 

and Henry Gates and for their profound enthusiasm. 

Hopefully this is an exciting contribution to the 

study of indigenous North American watercraft.

FIRLE PLACE: VISITING AN INDIAN 

CANOE IN BRITISH RAFTERS

By M. Schuyler Litten 

The Gage family was faced with this strange 

problem. Bark and skin boats were some of the 

earliest types of boats ever made. Due to the 

family’s history, the question arose as to the 

origin and date of this peculiar family heirloom. 

Sir Thomas Gage served as commander in chief 

of the British Forces in North America between 

1763-1773. Dr. Stephen Loring was asked by the 

family to do an assessment of the canoe in order to 

determine its origin and possible date of creation. 

I was lucky enough to join him on this project! 

Firle Place is the stunning ancestral seat of the 

Viscounts Gage located in the center of the South 

Downs National Park in East Sussex. The house has 

stayed in the family for the last 500 years, which has 

allowed the family to house its treasures all in one 

place. Driving onto the estate, we took a winding path 

through the town of Lewes and Firle. Upon entering 

the estate grounds, the full beauty of the English 

countryside unfolded before us. The high flint walls 

of the out buildings were a dark blue gray, reflecting 

the evening sun. Turning a corner, the house rose up 

suddenly from behind a small group of trees, its big 

windows glowing with light. Pulling around to the 

back of the house we were greeted by the friendly 

housekeeper and a large assortment of affectionate 

dogs. Moving into the main part of the house, we were 

greeted by the charming and vivacious Lady Diana 
 ASC Newsletter 59

CAPTAIN GEORGE COMER AND THE INUIT 

OF HUDSON BAY EXHIBIT PREVIEW

By Bernadette Driscoll Engelstad

Opening on May 3, 

2018 the Embassy 

of Canada in 

Washington, D.C. will 

host the exhibition, 

Captain George 

Comer and the Inuit of 

Hudson Bay, through 

July 2018. Organized 

by Mystic Seaport 

Museum’s Senior 

Curator, the exhibit 

highlights the career 

of the New England 

whaling master, 

George Comer, and 

his interaction with 

Inuit at the whaling 

harbor of Qatiktalik 

(Cape Fullerton), 

located between the 

modern-day settlements 

of Naujaa (Repulse Bay) and Chesterfield Inlet 

(Igluligaarjuk), Nunavut. Throughout the 19th and 

early 20th century, the presence of American and 

Scottish whaling ships in Hudson Bay drew Inuit 

hunting families to the region to work and trade.

George Comer (1858-1937) of East Haddam, CT made 

his first whaling voyage on the Nile under Captain 

John O. Spicer, supplying American whaling stations 

at Cumberland Sound and Hudson Strait. After several 

years in the Antarctic sealing industry, Comer returned 

North, joining Captain Spicer’s crew on the schooner, 

Era. A successful season of rendering whale oil and 

gathering baleen brought a lucrative profit to New 

England whaling firms. With the whalers’ relentless 

pursuit, whale populations rapidly declined, so that 

by the late 19th century, crews began to overwinter 

to extend the hunting season in search of a more 

elusive prey. As Dorothy Eber recounts in the oral 

history memoir, When the Whalers Were Up North: 

Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic (1989), the 

practice of overwintering brought whaling crews into 

closer contact with Inuit families. Actively recruited 

by American and Scottish captains, hunters joined 

the whale hunt, proving far more successful than the 

often novice European crews of the time. In addition 

to whaling, Inuit hunters supplied fresh meat and 

fish (crucial for preventing scurvy) and augmented 

the ship’s income by trading furs. Women’s sewing 

skills were in high demand, producing fur clothing 

and sealskin kamiks for ill-clothed crew members and 

no doubt compromising women’s ability to provide 

more fully for the clothing needs of their families.

Following Captain 

Spicer’s retirement, 

Comer assumed 

command of the Era, 

owned by the New 

Bedford whaling 

firm, Tom Luce & 

Sons. The Captain 

made five voyages to 

Hudson Bay before 

the Era went aground 

near the island of 

Petite Miquelon, 

off the coast of 

Newfoundland, while 

northbound in 1906. 

Throughout his career, 

Comer demonstrated 

a propensity 

for collecting, 

solidifying a collegial 

relationship with Franz 

Boas at the American Museum of Natural History 

that was invaluable for both. Comer’s fieldwork 

at Qatiktalik provided primary research for Boas’ 

two-volume publication, Eskimo of Baffin Land 

and Hudson Bay (1901, 1907) and while museum 

payments provided a welcome income for the 

whaling captain, the recognition of his fieldwork 

efforts by museum curators was its own reward. The 

exhibit display of journals, photographs, camera, 

tripod, and graphophone—recording equipment 

pioneered by Alexander Graham Bell—focuses 

on Captain Comer’s dedication in documenting 

a textual, visual, and audio history of Inuit life in 

Hudson Bay. His work resulted in a major collection 

of photographs, journals, and artifacts for the Mystic 

Seaport Museum, a donation from the Comer family. 

Comer also assembled an unrivalled ethnographic 

representation of Inuit cultural history from the 

Kivalliq region of Nunavut at the American Museum 

of Natural History—over 2,200 artifacts collected 

by George Comer are registered on the Museum’s 

database (https://anthro.amnh.org/collections).

Along with Frozen In: Captain Comer and the Inuit of 

Hudson Bay, the first exhibit to explore the Captain’s 

multi-faceted career (presented at Mystic Seaport 

Museum in 2008), the Embassy exhibit brings the 

whaling era into sharp focus in a deeply personal 

OUTREACH

Comer photograph of Aivilik Inuit women
60 ASC Newsletter

way. The Captain’s journals record close personal 

relationships with Inuit partners, particularly the 

Aivilingmiut camp leader, Tassiuq (Harry) and his 

wife, Tulugak (called “Pouty” by the whalers).

His references to the skilled assistance of Inuit crew 

leaders, known by their whaling names, Gilbert, 

Paul, Ben, Sam, and Santa Anna, are recorded in his 

published 1903-1905 journal (W. G. Ross, ed. Arctic 

Whaling Diary: The Journal of Captain George Comer 

in Hudson Bay, 1903-1905). Through photography, 

Comer reveals a keen interest in Inuit social life, 

cultural practices, and the lives of individuals. 

The men, women, and children appearing in his 

photographs are seldom anonymous but are carefully 

identified by name (albeit often a whaling nickname). 

In addition to photographs and journal excerpts, the 

exhibit includes a selection of ivory cribbage boards, 

women’s combs, and carvings, some created by 

Tassiuq, from the Mystic Seaport collection, providing 

valuable insights into the historical foundation of 

contemporary Inuit art (https://www.historymuseum.

ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/art_inuit/inart26e.shtml). 

A photo-portrait of Qingailisaq, the celebrated 

angakkuq from Igloolik dressed in his striking 

shamanistic vestments, is featured in the exhibit 

together with individual and group photographs of 

women wearing elaborately beaded parkas, illustrating 

the artistic tradition of Inuit women’s fashion design 

which continues to this day. An exquisite beaded 

belt from the Comer Family collection, created as a 

parting gift for the Captain by Siusarnaq (known 

also as Nivitsanaq or Shoofly) is a highlight of 

the exhibit. The desire to locate Siusarnaq’s beaded 

parka culminated in a landmark visit to the American 

Museum of Natural History by grand-daughter, 

Rhoda Karetak, and Bernadette Dean, laying the 

groundwork for the subsequent study visit by Inuit 

Elders and community scholars to review collections 

of Inuit cultural history in several North American 

museums – a visit documented in the film Inuit 

Piqutingit: What Belongs to Inuit (www.isuma.tv/

isuma-productions/inuit-piqutingit), co-produced 

by Zacharias Kunuk and Bernadette Dean. 

Plaster facial casts, intimate portraits of individuals, 

including Tassiuq (Harry), his wife, Tulugak, and 

the crew leader, Tuugaaq (Gilbert), represent a small 

segment of the extraordinary collection of facial and 

hand casts (over 300) produced by Captain Comer

during his winters at Qatiktalik. Made at the initial 

request of Franz Boas, the majority of these casts 

are in the collection of the American Museum of 

Natural History; those included in the exhibit, on 

loan from the Canadian Museum of History, are 

part of a collection purchased by Edward Sapir, 

the founding director of the National Museum of 

Man (Ottawa), in 1913. At the Museum’s request, 

Bernadette Miqqusaaq Dean of the Kivalliq Inuit 

Association worked with Mystic Seaport Museum to 

identify descendants of those portrayed for permission 

to include the portrait images in the exhibit. 

A symposium accompanying the exhibit opening, 

moderated by Smithsonian curator, Stephen 

Loring, will include presentations by the curator, 

Fred Calabretta, and invited guests from Nunavu,, 

including Bernadette Miqqusaaq Dean, speaking 

on the Captain’s whaling career, the impact of 

the whaling era on Inuit life in Hudson Bay, and 

current issues and challenges facing Nunavut.

A SWEET SAGA: BUILDING A 

CHOCOLATE VIKING SHIP 

By Eric Hollinger and Chelsi Slotten

For the 2017 annual Anthropology Christmas holiday 

gathering I decided to make a chocolate Viking ship. 

This was the 14th year I’ve made a giant confectionary 

creation with an anthropological theme, and I was 

itching to try an Arctic subject. Coworkers encouraged 

me to recreate a Viking ship burial with flaming arrows 

at the end to make a funeral flambé, but museum safety 

policies against open flames quickly put that notion 

to rest. Nevertheless, the idea of creating a Viking 

ship made entirely out of chocolate, cake, candy, or 

other sweets (my self-imposed rule), was intriguing.

I began researching on the internet and borrowed 

books from Bill Fitzhugh’s Viking library. These 

provided a bounty of images of ships, sleds, houses, 

tools and other items, which stirred the creative 

juices. Much of what is known about Viking Age 

material culture comes from ship burials containing 

the remains of Viking chieftains along with a wide 

array of funerary offerings. Among the most famous 

is Norway’s Oseberg ship burial dating to A.D. 834, 

famous for its exceptional preservation that included 

a fine ship built around 820 A.D., skeletal remains 

of Queen Osa and a female attendant, and a wealth 

of artifacts including small boats, a funerary cart, 

sleighs, animals, beds, and textiles. I decided to base 

the design of my chocolate ship on the Oseberg find. 

After closely studying the shape of the original ship 

I poured two pans of melted milk chocolate into an 

aluminum foil pan bent to the rough shape of the 

hull. When the chocolate cooled, I carved away 

the excess to give it a smooth form. The same was 

done for the bow and stern—pouring and carving 

and then pouring and carving again. Even the ornate 
 ASC Newsletter 61

spiraling serpent heads on the bow and stern, carved 

by a master craftsman, were poured in chocolate 

and carved. The deck planks were made from thin 

Kit Kat bar wafers. The mast was made of two 

long pretzels covered with chocolate. Sixteen oars 

and a steering board were made of Pocky sticks 

with chocolate added to the ends. A sail, made of 

fondant, was furled because the ship, totaling 30 

inches in length, was going to be shown as docked.

Rather than depict the ship as it appeared when 

excavated, I elected to recreate it as it might have 

looked when still in use. To set the scene I placed 

it in a sea of blue Jell-O, alongside a dock made of 

pretzel logs, attached to a beach of brown sugar and 

an icing path leading to a Viking lodge on a hill. 

Reconstructions of settlements from Birka, L’Anse aux 

Meadows, and Hedeby 

appear remarkably similar 

to the confectionary 

version, although ours 

probably tastes better! 

The lodge was made of 

four layers of chocolate 

cake, faced with pretzels 

and cookies, and roofed 

with graham crackers 

shingled with cinnamon 

grahams cereal.

The process of making 

such archaeological 

confections requires 

learning about the 

sites and their cultures. 

Oseberg is an excellent 

example. Its burial 

mound was one of three major ship burials discovered 

between 1867 and 1904 in Vestfold, south of Oslo. The 

Oseberg, Tune, and Gokstad ships provide evidence 

of a grand ship-building and mortuary tradition. 

These graves are evidence of a wealthy elite who 

could afford to remove vessels and valuable materials 

from circulation. The construction of a Viking ship 

would have taken months and a large quantity of 

natural resources, so the decision to bury it speaks to 

the social importance of the interred. Other interred 

items, such as remnants of silk textiles that likely 

originated in Central Asia, indicate far-reaching 

trade networks and details about clothing styles. The 

placement of decorative elements on the Oseberg 

ship are also revealing. The carvings extend below 

the waterline, suggesting the ship was constructed 

specifically for the afterlife, not for earthly use. 

These ships, in particular the incredibly well preserved 

Oseberg ship, have also been used to reconstruct 

ship-building techniques from the Viking Age. Our 

understanding of how these vessels were structured is 

constantly changing. In the last thirty years two full 

sized Oseberg reconstructions have been undertaken 

by researchers and craftsmen to examine how it would 

have sailed before it was interred. The original 1904 

reconstruction utilized around 95% of the original 

wood. Unfortunately, the 

ship had been broken by 

the weight of the mound 

over 1,000 years so the 

wood was fragmented and 

deformed. When a replica 

was made in the 1980s it 

was discovered that the 

reconstructed ship would 

not have performed well 

on water. However, by 

making small changes 

to the hull shape, a 

very seaworthy vessel 

resulted. By this means, 

researchers discovered 

that the original 

reconstruction had been 

slightly incorrect due to 

the crushed original find.

In order to create this delicious replica, I had to 

be aware of how the different pieces fit together 

and what the best edible materials would be. Part 

of the fun of these creations is the challenge of 

making something from edibles when you’re not 

quite sure it can be done. You have to visualize 

what the creation should look like and then 

figure out what treats look like its parts or can 

be shaped to complete the final product.

 Eric Hollinger's Christmas 2017 chocolate Viking trade ship, 

crafted to perfection. 
62 ASC Newsletter

FROM ONE POLE TO THE 

OTHER: AN INTERN’S SUMMER 

INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCTIC

By Rebekah Albach

Perhaps the most 

appropriate way to 

describe my journey 

to the Smithsonian for 

the summer of 2017 

is this: the Antarctic 

picked me, and then 

I picked the Arctic. 

While still in high 

school in Austin, 

TX, I interned in a 

geophysics lab at 

the University of 

Texas where the 

day-to-day work 

was interpreting ice 

penetrating radar data 

from Antarctica. Ice sheets are layered, and these 

layers extend for thousands of kilometers, and I 

followed them with my dutiful line-drawing mouse 

for much of that distance. After three years, I was 

done and ready to tackle a new part of the world. 

During my first year at Wellesley College I only had 

a couple of geoscience courses under my belt when 

I began searching for summer internships. I scoured 

the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates 

(REU) program website and found, beneath the Ocean 

Sciences category (of all places) the Natural History 

Research Experience (NHRE) program. The Internet 

revealed that the NNHM also held the Arctic Studies 

Center, and, in my Wellesley dormitory, I theorized that 

one pole couldn’t be all that different from the other. 

I was wrong, but I am not opposed to being wrong. 

Thankfully, Dr. Igor Krupnik agreed to mentor me 

for the summer. We talked on the phone a few times 

before I arrived. Each time I walked away with a 

new list of readings, a trend that did not cease when I 

arrived at the museum, apart from the list becoming 

a physical piling of books on my desk. I had much to 

learn about the Arctic, and I still do. The Antarctic is 

a complicated system of ice sheets, subglacial lakes, 

and ice shelves. The Arctic has sea ice, permafrost, 

forests, tundra, whole ecosystems of creatures like 

caribou and walrus, and, most importantly, a significant 

and culturally rich population of indigenous peoples. 

My project was to help with the update of a 2006 ASC 

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES, 

FELLOWS AND INTERNS

exhibit, “Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely,” that was 

created when I was barely eight years of age. Changes 

in the Arctic have been significant since 2006, and I 

was fortunate to have a wealth of new publications 

to sink into during my time at the Smithsonian. 

Often, while researching topics like coastal erosion 

or rain-on-snow events, I referred to the experience 

as falling down a rabbit hole (although it may be 

more appropriate to say “falling into a polynya”). I 

borrowed Igor’s tendency to print everything and had 

pleasing piles of papers to read on my desk. By the end 

of my 10-week internship, I completed a document 

containing suggestions for changes to the exhibit. In 

addition, I prepared a poster that I presented alongside 

the other NHRE interns at the final symposium. 

The scope of research in the Arctic is so broad that I 

found myself having to switch gears frequently between 

geoscientist and anthropologist, a role I was new to but 

am increasingly interested in. When I applied to this 

internship, I stressed that I wanted to learn how people 

are involved with and affected by climate change. Since 

coming here I have learned how indigenous people in 

the Arctic observe and have their own rich terminology 

for the world around them. I was lucky enough to 

attend a conference at the Wilson Center, in cooperation 

with the Arctic Circle, called “The United States and 

Russia in the Arctic.” Igor referred to my two days of 

rapt-note-taking an “intellectual ball.” Following the 

conference, and after an entire summer of sitting in 

the Arctic Studies office, I have come to realize how 

dynamic, diverse, and complicated a region the Arctic is. 

Looking to the future, I plan to take more social science 

classes at Wellesley. I think that by incorporating social 

science into my study of geoscience I can understand 

and help more of the world. As long as my Texan 

genes don’t kick in after a few more Boston winters 

(nothing compared to the Arctic, I know!) I would like 

to continue studying the poles and someday visit them.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the kind 

community that is the Arctic Studies Center, and, 

indeed, the entire museum. Nancy Shorey welcomed 

me into the book-filled office with open arms while 

Igor was away. Skye Litten took pictures of Zack 

Youcha, another summer intern of 2017, and I as we 

rode the National Mall Carousel, and the both of them 

contributed to office merriment on the whole. The three 

of us journeyed to the Museum Support Center with 

Stephen Loring for a day of looking – opening cabinets 

in the cultural anthropology collections and enjoying 

the baskets, masks, and fans, amongst other things. I 

am thankful for the advice and company of everyone 

in the Arctic Studies Center, and hope to enjoy more 

charming office parties at some point in the future. 
 ASC Newsletter 63

AFTER 68 YEARS MC BRIDES' 

RETURN TO HOKKAIDO, JAPAN

By Michael McBride

The long reach of the Smithsonian Exhibits and 

publications is well known and reaches not only across 

international boundaries, but across family generations 

as well. Inspired by the exhibit “Kamui – Spirit of the 

Ainu” (the indigenous people of Japan and its northern 

islands) dysplayed at the American Museum of Natural 

History, my 15-year-old granddaughter and I began our 

“mini-expedition” from a roadless estuary we call home 

in Alaska to a similar area, Lake Akan in the mountains of 

eastern Hokkaido Japan. As a child growing up in Japan 

in the l950s, my thoughtful mother put me in contact with 

these good people and those impressions linger still. 

In late May of 2017, pushing away from the shore in a sea 

kayak, we headed across 

Kachemak Bay to Homer 

Alaska for a distant and 

unknown destination. Like 

other expeditions across 

history, this transition 

from shore to sea and 

back to land was just like 

the Ainu had done for 

centuries as they crossed 

ocean passages between 

their far-flung islands. In 

our case, we must launch 

from the shore by small 

sea-kayak to reach our boat 

which lives on an offshore 

mooring. In our part of the 

world the tide rises and falls 

20 vertical feet in 6 hours. Our small craft was not so 

unlike the ones used by the Ainu “people-of-the-bear”, 

whose sea-centric culture held sway for centuries over 

much of Japan and the Kurile and Sakhalin Islands just 

to the north. Indeed, our cliff-side front yard is regularly 

crossed by bears and our home is surrounded by longabandoned semi-subterranean dwellings not unlike the 

reconstructed Ainu homes we would find in Hokkaido. 

The trip was for me, a reconnection with a people I had 

not seen since my youth and for my grand-daughter, an 

educational reach across a vast ocean, across cultures 

and language. My parents in the l940s realized and 

passed to me, the value that can be added to good 

education with travel to distant lands and one-on-one 

interaction with cultures different from our own. 

As the first Alaskan elected to the Smithsonian National 

Board, I compared our adventure to a visit some make 

to the Institution on the Mall. I considered the countless 

thousands of grandparents and parents over the decades, 

who have brought their grand-children and children to 

the Smithsonian’s Museums in Washington DC as well 

as to the many other Smithsonian outreach programs 

around the country like our own Smithsonian Arctic 

Sciences Center in Anchorage Alaska. This is not to 

mention interacting with these venues electronically 

wherein most of the Smithsonian’s collections can be 

accessed from home or school and by computer. One need 

not travel to Washington to be educated about them. 

Communications with my old friend Bill Fitzhugh at 

the Museum of Natural History, the Exhibit curator, in 

turn put me in contact with his collaborator Chisato 

Dubreuil, an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure 

Univ. in New York who is of Ainu descent. The book 

they published for the Smithsonian, Ainu, Spirit of a 

Northern People, is a genuine treasure in my library and 

its pages greatly enhanced the educational opportunities 

ahead for both of us. 

The Ainu homelands around 

the mountain rimmed Lake 

Akan in eastern Hokkaido 

reminded us so much of 

Alaska. We rented kayaks and 

bicycles and hiked miles of 

little visited steep mountain 

trails where brown bears were 

not uncommon. We visited 

a cultural village, witnessed 

ancient dances and storytelling around wood fires. 

The adaptations of the ancient 

pre-Japanese people showed 

how an inventive mindset 

can prosper using what the 

land and sea are willing to give when treated respectfully. 

This respectful interaction with the land and sea typifies 

Alaskan Native and Ainu people alike. The value of 

educational travel to a young person comes alive with 

interaction between people where you have no common 

language. Smiles, graciousness, enthusiasm and body 

language that communicate louder than words. Watching 

my grand-daughter’s interactions with non-English 

speaking people like who were part of the Smithsonian 

Exhibit, was fascinating. A master carver, Takeke’s 

life-size carving of Ainu stood at the entrance of the 

Smithsonian Exhibit in Washington. We felt privileged 

to be welcomed into their home and workshop.

The Smithsonian has always excelled in bringing 

opposite sides of the world together. Our triangle 

from the Mall in Washington to the rugged Alaskan 

coast to the mountains of Hokkaido was but 

another example of this proud history of stimulating 

cross-cultural adventure and education. 

Photo of Ainu taken during a trip to Hokkaido.Michael 

McBride is the boy with the billed cap
64 ASC Newsletter

UNCOVERING F. W. STOKES

By Hannah Fitch and Stephen Loring

Frank Wilbert Stokes (1858-1955) was an American 

artist who, after studying under Thomas Eakins in 

Philadelphia and exhibiting in Paris, went to Northern 

Greenland in 1892 and 1893-94 as a member of two 

expeditions led by explorer Robert Peary. Stokes 

also went on subsequent expeditions to the Antarctic 

with Otto Nordenskjold and then finished his lengthy 

career in New York City. When he died, at the age of 

ninety-six, he had produced over five hundred works 

of art of both aesthetic and historical merit. Moreover, 

the works Stokes made in Greenland made him one 

of the most prolific artists of the Arctic. In addition 

to his numerous 

plein-air landscapes, 

produced in extreme 

weather conditions, 

Stokes created 

portraits of native 

Polar Eskimos—

the Inughuit. 

Before he passed 

away, Stokes 

bequeathed over two 

hundred artworks 

to the Smithsonian 

Museum of American 

Art (NMAA.) Included 

in the donation were 

a number of large 

finished works of high 

latitude landscapes 

(both Greenland 

and Antarctica) 

and historical moments such as Peary’s camp on the 

inland ice and Amundsen’s successful polar flight. 

The collection also contained a large number of 

oil sketches capturing moments of subtle light and 

beauty, a series of ethnographic paintings depicting 

Inughuit life and the aforementioned portraiture. 

In 1997, NMAA officials decided to deaccession many 

of the Stokes paintings. Recognizing their historical 

significance, Stephen Loring sought to have the 

collection transferred to the National Anthropological 

Archives (NAA). This request was somewhat awkward 

for NMAA administrators, who had previously arranged 

to have Stokes work placed at auction with Christie’s 

in London. One day, in the interest of intra-SI unit 

community, Loring was ushered into the NMNH’s 

Director’s office where Robert Fri encouraged him to 

make a representative selection of the Stokes oeuvre 

and allow the remainder to be sent to auction. As a 

consequence, 23 works of art were transferred from 

the NMAA to the NAA, including representative oil 

sketches of northern Greenland in the vicinity of Peary’s 

base-camp, finished paintings of Inughuit camps and 

all eleven pen and ink and charcoal Inughuit portraits. 

In addition to participating in several subsequent 

expeditions, Stokes painted the Eskimo-themed 

murals at the American Museum of Natural History 

in New York. The Stokes initiative gestated in 

Loring’s research files until last year when he saw 

an announcement from the Smithsonian’s Office 

of Fellowships and Grants calling for proposals 

for the Katzenberger Art History Internship 

Program that supports student art history research 

throughout the Institution. Hannah Fitch, an Art 

History graduate student at American University 

became interested in Stokes and subsequently was 

awarded a summer fellowship to research his life 

and create biographies of the Inughuit he sketched.

While researching in the Smithsonian archives, she 

discovered that a woman named Herdis B. Teilman, 

currently living in Oslo, grew up next door to 

Stokes in New York City and had studied his work 

extensively as both a graduate student and curator. 

With support from Dr. Carol Bird Ravenal, and 

grants from the American University (AU) Art History 

Department and AU College of Arts and Sciences, 

last November Hannah traveled to Oslo, where she 

met Herdis, who proved to be extraordinarily kind, 

open and generous. Herdis shared the Stokes diaries 

and her reminiscences and insights of Stokes and the 

New York City art scene of the 1940s and 1950s. 

As a result, we now have a greater understanding 

of Stokes, his artwork, and his impressions of the 

Arctic, which navigate the genre of expedition art and 

its often conflicting artistic and scientific demands. 

Based on his accounts, Stokes illustrated for his 

American viewers the tension between aesthetic 

realism and ethnographic empiricism, serving as 

a reflection both on the historical moment at the 

turn-of-the-century and his personal experiences in 

Greenland living and working with scientists and 

natives. Hanna has brought these insights into her 

2018 American University Department of Art History 

Master’s Thesis: An American in Greenland: Turn-ofthe-Century Arctic Visions by Frank Wilbert Stokes. 

Loring and Fitch plan to continue this research to 

further an appreciation and awareness of Frank 

Stokes as an Arctic visionary. Stokes’ Inughuit 

portraiture includes individuals who figured 

significantly in Peary’s subsequent Polar exploits 

and who appear again in the expedition accounts 

of Donald MacMillan and Knut Rasmussen. 

Portrait of Kachs-oo, Inughuit 

man - by Frank Stokes, 1894. NAA 

Collection, Smithsonian Institution
 ASC Newsletter 65

DISCOVERING UUMMANNAQ: AN 

ARCTIC GREENLAND COMMUNITY

By Wilfred E. Richard

The Arctic Studies Center has signed an agreement 

with IPI Press of Hanover, N.H., to publish 

Wilfred Richard’s book describing the town 

of Uummannaq in northwest Greenland. 

After exploring ever-farther—in Labrador and Baffin 

Island—Will settled seasonally into this beautiful and 

historic village, spending several years and becoming 

part of the local community. His book describes the 

geography of the region, the history of the town, and its 

role as the base for some of the earliest archaeological 

and geophysical studies conducted in Greenland 

by Therkel Mathiasen, Freddy DeLaguna, and 

Alfred Wegener. Both photographer and writer, 

Will tells the story of Uummannaq in vivid prose 

and with spectacular images. A charter member of 

Uummannaq’s Childrens’ Home, Will traveled widely 

with the children and with hunters and fishermen. He 

documents the impact of changing climate that has 

brought massive melting to the Greenland ice, forced 

hunters to become fishermen, decimated the sledge dog 

population, and brought scientists, cruise ships, artists, 

and ice-berg tourists to town. Uummannaq will be 

published by IPI and the Arctic Studies Center in 2019.

ON THE ARCTIC FRONTIER: 

ERNEST LEFFINGWELL’S POLAR 

EXPLORATIONS AND LEGACY

By Janet R. Collins. Washington 

State University Press. 2017

Review by William Fitzhugh 

While hiking in the Sadlerochit Mountains in the Arctic 

National Wildlife Refuge, Janet Collins, a geographer 

and map librarian, became curious about the name 

“Camp 263” on her map. Upon returning home, she 

learned the name was from Ernest Leffingwell’s 

1919 U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 109 

titled The Canning River Region, Northern Alaska. 

Surprised at finding little published information on 

Leffingwell, Collins traced his papers to the Rauner 

Archives at Dartmouth College and immersed herself 

in his voluminous diaries, maps, and notes. This book 

is Collins’ biography of a pioneering scientist who 

from 1906-1914 explored and mapped the northeast 

coast of Alaska, traveling 4500 miles during three 

trips that included nine summers and six winters.

Ernest Leffingwell came from a wealthy Illinois family. 

While studying geology at the University of Chicago 

he attended a lecture by Fridtjof Nansen describing 

BOOK REVIEWS his attempt to reach the North Pole in his ship, Fram. 

Four years later Leffingwell secured a position as 

scientific officer for the Baldwin-Ziegler expedition of 

1901. The expedition’s goal—to be the first to reach 

the North Pole—was not fulfilled, but the voyage 

succeeded in mapping parts of Franz Josef Land 

and gave Leffingwell the training needed to take up 

exploration in another remote region, northern Alaska.

Teaming up with Eijnar Mikkelsen, a Dane who 

was part of the Baldwin expedition, Leffingwell and 

Mikkelsen secured funding from their families to 

buy and outfit a small ship in Victoria, B.C. and set 

out for northern Alaska in 1906. After an arduous 

voyage, the Anglo-American Polar Expedition reached 

Flaxman Island, anchored in the lagoon and established 

a camp that Leffingwell would use until 1914.

One of the expedition’s 

goals was to determine 

if islands existed north 

of the Alaska coast. To 

do this, Leffinwell and 

Mikkelsen travelled by 

dog sled north over the 

sea ice to determine 

the location of the 

continental shelf. They 

found the shelf much 

closer to land than 

expected, quashing 

theories about large 

off-shore land masses. 

While conducting 

their bathymetry, they 

discovered strong 

currents were setting 

them to the northwest, 

putting them in grave 

danger of being swept 

off into the Arctic Ocean, a fate that had claimed many 

a whaler and later, Stefansson’s Karluk expedition.

Over the next several years, Leffingwell traveled 

widely along the north coast of Alaska from Barrow 

to Barter Island, mapping the coast, taking soundings, 

and establishing shore markers to aid in ship and 

land navigation. He also ventured inland, mapping 

the geography and geology of the Canning and 

other river valleys. In addition to his voluminous 

scientific records, he was the first to identify the oil 

seeps and oil-bearing formations that later became 

the U.S. Petroleum Reserve, and made important 

observations on the nature of permafrost.

Like many explorers, Leffingwell’s work would 

not have been possible without the assistance and 

participation of the Inuit—in this case the Alaska 

Inupiat. In return for their knowledge of the land, their 

service as guides and hunters and suppliers of sledge 

dogs, Leffingwell provided equipment, payment, 

medical services, and friendship. Unlike the transient 
66 ASC Newsletter

white traders and explorers, his long residence at 

Flaxman Island made him a welcome and respected 

neighbor, and he developed many close Inuit friends.

Collins’ book puts Leffingwell into the front ranks 

of Arctic explorers and scientists. His maps and 

geographical observations preceding the era of airphoto mapping are remarkable for their accuracy 

and comprehensive nature. After leaving Alaska in 

1917 he never returned. His 1919 monograph is a 

monumental contribution, but he never produced other 

written works about his life or experiences in the north. 

Collins’ biography does fitting work to bring this 

quite scientific hero to life. Amidst the bravado and 

cacophony of others of his day and whom he knew, like 

Nansen, Peary, and Stefansson, his accomplishments 

are all the more remarkable and estimable.

RAMAH CHERT: A LITHIC ODYSSEY

Edited by Jenneth Curtis and Pierre Desrosiers; 

published by the Avataq Cultural Institute

Reviewed by William Fitzhugh

In 2014 the Government of Canada made an unusual 

National Historic Site designation: a rock quarry in 

northern Labrador with an extraordinary archaeological 

history. The clear-to-milky- white, nearly transparent 

Ramah chert was the principal raw material for making 

chipped stone tools 

by Labrador’s native 

people for thousands 

of years. Ramah 

chert outcrops for 

30 miles, and can be 

collected easily from 

talus slopes along 

the shore or in places 

where glacial cirques 

have cut down into its 

horizontal strata, as in 

the principal quarry 

location, the Ramah 

Bay Quarry Bowl 

near Hilda’s Creek. 

Ramah Bay supplied 

chert to Dorset 

peoples as far away 

as Baffin Island 

and Ungava Bay. It 

was widely used by 

Labrador Maritime 

Archaic cultures from 

8000-3500 years 

ago and became the 

preferred raw material 

for Dorset and Indian 

(Innu) cultures of 

the past 2000 years. 

As an exotic trade good, it appeared in Moorehead 

Archaic and Middle Woodland cultures in the Canadian 

Maritimes and New England and sporadically as 

far south as Virginia and Maryland. 20th century 

Labrador Inuit call the stone kitjigat (“sharp stone”) 

and this name has been enshrined in the heritage site 

designation: “Kitjigattalik: the Ramah Chert Quarries.”

Ramah Chert: a Lithic Odyssey provides detailed 

documentation for the Parks Canada’s national historic 

site designation which originated as a 2011 Canadian 

Archaeological Association conference symposium. 

Following a brief introduction by editors Jenneth 

Curtis and Pierre Desrosiers, Derek Wilton (MUN) 

provides the geological context, noting its origin as a 

Precambrian silica precipitate, making it “a true chert” 

rather than a quartzite as has sometimes been argued.

Building upon Smithsonian research by Michael 

Gramly and Colleen Lazenby in the mid 1970s, 

Jenneth Curtis, Pierre Desrosiers, Jamie Brake, 

and Adrian Burke describe and map the Ramah 

chert quarry locations, in particular the Ramah 

Quarry Bowl and its setting, workshops, quarrying 

processes, detritus, and artifacts. Adrian Burke and 

Gilles Gauthier present a chapter on geoarchaeology 

that maps the Ramah outcrops from Saglek to 

Delabarre Bay and provides petrographic and XRF 

chemical constituent data on chert samples from 

different quarry locations. Their work suggests 

the possibility that future studies might enable 

sourcing to specific quarry locations. Nevertheless, 

Ramah is so distinctive that it usually can be 

identified positively in hand specimens from similar 

materials like Mistassini quartzite or Arkansas 

novaculite from its visual characteristics.

Several papers document the cultural dispersal of 

Ramah chert. John Erwin and Jenneth Curtis present 

a mammoth database of published Ramah chert finds 

from 1097 sites in eastern North America: Labrador 

(863), Quebec (99), Newfoundland (97), NE U.S. 

(23), Maritimes (7), Eastern Arctic (5), C. Atlantic 

States (2), and Ontario (1). They then categorize 

finds by culture period and site significance or 

size. Desrosiers follows with a detailed analytical 

discussion of Ramah chert use by Pre-Dorset, 

Groswater, and Dorset Palaeoeskimos. This discussion 

presents observations on cultural relationships, 

technology, and regional distributions that offer many 

opportunities for further research. Marianne Stopp

writes about Ramah chert use, discard behavior, and 

ritual connections at the Eva Luther site, a 1500-year 

old Daniel’s Rattle complex site in St. Lewis Inlet, 

southern Labrador. Might Dorset people have had a 

role in the dispersal of Ramah chert to late Prehistoric 

Innu, she wonders? Darrin Lowry, a specialist in 

central Atlantic coast archaeology presents data on 

Ramah chert projectile points made in local Kipp 

Island and Jack’s Reef styles from Virginia and Ramah chert biface from Kegashka Maryland sites during the Middle Woodland period 

cache. (photo: Will Richard)
 ASC Newsletter 67

ca. 1500-1000 BP. These finds provide evidence 

for a specialized market in Ramah cache blades or 

blanks throughout the Northeast coastal regions. 

Further evidence for such widespread connections is 

indicated by a Groswater Palaeoeskimo microblade 

core and microblades from the Delmarva Peninsula.

Stephen Loring—the widely-acknowledged doyen 

of Ramah chert studies—presents the book’s most 

comprehensive essay in a 3-act play replete with 

dramatis personae. He makes an elegant case for 

the special significance Ramah has held for many 

peoples and cultures over the past ten thousand years. 

Beginning with his description of a Ramah chert 

fluted point found on the shores of Lake Champlain, 

he describes its use by successive cultures, both 

Indian and Inuit, as both a vital technological 

material and a ritual, spiritual, and ceremonial 

anchor for these societies—a material that was 

accorded utmost respect and symbolic value.

The final essay is a condensed version of the 

site evaluation Marianne Stopp prepared for 

consideration by the Historic Sites and Monuments 

Board of Canada as part of their deliberations. Stopp’s 

essay describes the quarry site, its use by thousands 

of years of Inuit and Innu cultures, the importance in 

the cultural and spiritual identities of these peoples, 

its role as a connector across cultural boundaries, 

and why it is worthy of national heritage designation. 

Her concluding sentence credits the Smithsonian 

for bringing attention to Ramah chert, the Ramah 

quarries, and their cultural importance to light.

This is a remarkable volume, an important milestone 

in archaeology of the Far Northeast. Despite 

editorial glitches and insufficient proofing, the 

editors, authors, Parks Canada, Avataq, and the 

people of Labrador can be justly proud of this lithic 

odyssey and the historic designation it celebrates.

NARWHAL: REVEALING 

AN ARCTIC LEGEND

Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and 

Martin T. Nweeia. Arctic Studies Center, 

NMNH, Smithsonian Institution, and IPI 

Press. Distributed by Oxbow Books.

While the NMNH exhibits department was in final 

production for Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend, 

William Fitzhugh and Martin Nweeia became 

engaged in a crash program to publish a companion 

book. Selection of topics and authors began in 

December 2015. By the time manuscripts were ready 

for editing in April, we had forty-five authors/coauthors, a designer (Harp and Company Graphics), and 

a publisher (Peter Mittenthal of IPI Press). Layout 

and design was done by Douglas Harp and Susan 

Fisher, editing by Susan Salter Reynolds, and proofreading by Letitia O’Connor and Nancy Shorey.

Narwhal presents the story of one of the world’s most 

unusual creatures, whose tusk inspired legends and 

became known to Europe through tusks delivered by 

medieval Greenland Norse and White Sea hunters. 

The famous Danish narwhal throne commissioned 

by King Frederick III was installed in 1671.

Following an introduction by Nweeia and Fitzhugh, 

the book proceeds in four parts. Part One (The 

Narwhal World) answers the question: “what is a 

whale”—a delightful exposition authored by Joy 

Reidenberg. This is followed by Barbara Boehm’s 

“The Universally Beloved Unicorn,” a story that 

takes us romping across the world where singletusked or single-horned creatures are not all that 

rare historically. But only one—the unicorn—is 

beloved and instills peace throughout the animal 

kingdom. Narwhal tusk drinking cups—it turns 

out—ensured a king’s wine would be safe to drink.

Part Two (Tooth to Tail) provides a full-blown 

biological description of the narwhal, beginning 

with an essay by Courtney Watt of Fisheries and 

Oceans Canada. Here we discover how little we 

know of this elusive mammal. Watt’s discussion is 

enhanced by sidebars by Marianne Marcoux, who 

served as the exhibition’s narwhal zoologist and 

presents information on narwhal vocalizations and 

sonic emissions, and by Frank Fish who discusses 

the propulsion 

mechanics of 

narwhal flukes 

and perhaps 

why females 

dive deeper for 

prey than tuskencumbered 

males. Chapter 

4 by Frederick 

Eichmiller et 

al. presents the 

anatomy of the 

narwhal tusk, 

revealing that 

millions of neural 

fibers branch from 

the central nerve 

to the surface 

of the tooth, 

providing the 

animal with the 

ability to sense 

its environment 

unlike any other mammal. Other essays in this 

chapter describe the exciting capture and testing 

of live animals in their Arctic habitat by Jack 

Orr, Sandra Black, and Martin Nweeia.

Chapter 5 describes studies on narwhal DNA by 

Kinston Kuo and associates, Daniel Distel, and

Martin Nweeia. These reports tell of work in progress 
68 ASC Newsletter

that is likely to answer questions about narwhal 

evolution and the function of the tusk, why females 

rarely have one, and why the narwhal’s capability for 

a full set of teeth (like its closest genetic relative, 

the white whale), is genetically silenced during 

development. Narwhal paleontology is described by 

Ryan Paterson, Ewan Fordyce and others, revealing 

what is essentially an empty stage with few players 

and huge gaps in time. Did narwhals evolve in the 

Arctic, tropics, or temperate waters? No one knows! 

Part Three has chapters on Inuit knowledge by Henry 

Huntington and Kristin Westdal; a chapter by 

David Lee and George Wenzel on Inuit ethnography, 

narwhal hunting strategies, and how the narwhal is 

a sustaining part of Inuit life and community; and a 

chapter by Nweeia describing Inuit contributions to 

narwhal knowledge. Here we begin to see how the 

narwhal has sustained Inuit communities for thousands 

of years, becoming a focus for Inuit myth and spiritual 

life as well as a crucial subsistence resource.

Part Four (The Narwhal Future) explores the narwhal 

world in a global context. Mark Serreze discusses 

climate history and how rising temperatures is altering 

the sea ice environment. As the pack ice recedes, 

narwhal populations (estimated at 180-200,000 animals 

today) are becoming concentrated in regions around 

northern Baffin Bay and northern Greenland. Rune 

Dietz, Christian Sonne, Luc Bas, and Christopher 

Clark document how their habitats are being 

subjected to industrial and noise pollution—the latter 

a result of hydrocarbon exploration using seismic 

blasting technology. In Chapter 11 Noor Johnson

discusses how Inuit communities are adapting to 

the encroachment of the southern world by finding 

their voices and bringing their concerns to the wider 

world. These discussions conclude with sidebar essays 

by Pamela Peters, and by Melanie Lancaster and 

Brandon LaForest of the World Wildlife Fund. 

The final chapter provides a direct connection with 

the exhibition. Script-writer Laura Donnelly-Smith 

walks us through the production of the exhibition 

from project inception to installation. We meet 

deadlines, raise funds, select objects and illustrations, 

and work with a large cast of advisors who provided 

information and expert advice. The following endmatter provides snapshots and bios of our 45 authors, 

acknowledgments, references, credits, and an index.

Narwhal—the book—was a challenge to produce, 

but it serves admirably as a companion to the 

exhibition and will live long after the exhibition’s 

closing in mid-2019. With luck, it will have an 

afterlife as a traveling exhibition organized by the 

Smithsonian Traveling Exhibit Service. The book 

and the exhibit owe much to the energy, research, 

and generosity of Martin Nweeia, whose research 

and public-spirited nature has helped make the 

narwhal widely-recognized and revered.

ON FRANKENSTEIN

By John Cloud

"Frankenstein: The 1818 Text" by Mary Shelley, 

2018. How to Read "Frankenstein" by Charles E. 

Robinson. London: Penguin Classics. i-xxiii, 258 pp. 

For the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the 

publication of 

Mary Shelley's 

original version of 

"Frankenstein; or, The 

Modern Prometheus", 

Penguin Classics 

has republished the 

original version, with 

extensive commentaries 

and bibliographies. 

Why should that be of 

interest to the Arctic 

Studies Center? For 

more reasons than one 

might think. The world 

is divided into two 

major classes: those 

who have read Shelley's 

book, in either the 

original 1818 version, or 

the heavily revised 1831 

version, and those who 

"think" they know the 

story quite well because 

they saw various movie 

versions. The latter 

class doesn't really 

know the story at all.

There is a universal kernel: a troubled Swiss doctor, 

Victor Frankenstein, who has some issues, creates a 

Monster, a Daemon, a Fiend (the creature never receives 

a name) out of disgusting body parts and electricity and 

vague bits of alchemy. Frankenstein is horrified by his 

creation, and spurns it, and the Monster goes alone into 

the world and learns pretty much everything he needs 

to know. He pleads with Frankenstein to make another 

creature, female, a mate for him, so he won't be alone 

in this world. Frankenstein starts to do so, then bails 

out again. The monster seeks revenge, which involves 

gruesome murders in picturesque locations in Switzerland, 

France, the British Isles, and eventually the Arctic Ocean.

There are three major long framing narratives in the book. 

It opens and closes on an ice-bound ship somewhere 

between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans, 

captained by a wealthy adventurer named Robert 

Walton, who wants to reach the North Pole for reasons 

about as vague as Frankenstein's reasons for making 

the Monster. His narrative is a set of letters written to 

his sister, Mrs. Margaret Saville, in England. Much 

subsequent cultural history begins with this paragraph:
 ASC Newsletter 69

"About two o'clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, 

stretching out in every direction, vast and irregular 

plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of 

my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to 

grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange 

sight suddenly attracted our attention, and diverted our 

solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low 

carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on 

towards the north, at a distance of half a mile: a being 

which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic 

stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched 

the rapid progress of the traveler with our telescopes, 

until he was lost among the distant equalities of the ice."

The next day, the ship's crew rescues a stranger, 

about to die, from another sledge. The stranger is Dr. 

Frankenstein, who spins his own narrative over many 

chapters of the book, which was originally published 

in three small volumes, each ending in a "cliff-hanger" 

situation. In the middle volume, back in time in 

Switzerland, the Monster relates his own narrative to 

Frankenstein, detailing why and how, once abandoned 

by Frankenstein, he had learned the essence of western 

civilization, starting with fire itself, which is how the 

Monster himself is in fact the modern Prometheus.

Even two hundred years on, Mary Shelley's book reads 

quite well, apart from being endlessly influential in the 

realms of science fiction, fiction in general, studies of 

women in particular, and human society in general, 

plus lots of plays and movies. So I won't spoil the book 

for you with any more of the plot. But I will point out 

how eerily prophetic Shelley was about the subsequent 

history of Arctic exploration in the 19th and even 20th 

centuries. Shelley's masterpiece famously originated in a 

round of "ghost tales" invented by Shelley and her poet 

husband Percy Shelley and other luminaries, including 

Lord Byron, in the bitterly cold and wet summer of 

1816, the infamous year of "Eighteen hundred and froze 

to death" due to intense short-term global cooling in the 

northern hemisphere from a volcanic eruption in 1815.

In the preceding quarter century, there had been 

essentially no polar expeditions, because all the polarexploring nations were in the middle of the Napoleonic 

Wars, which ended in 1815 with Napoleon's final defeat 

at Waterloo. Then polar voyaging could resume. A small 

sideshow of the great conflict, but large for Americans, 

was the War of 1812. The British warships HMS Terror, 

a bomb ship, and HMS Erebus, equipped with Congreve 

rockets, besieged Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, 

later immortalized in the Star Spangled Banner: "the 

rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air...". Later 

that HMS Erebus was scrapped, and another bomb ship 

was built and given the same name. These two ships, the 

Erebus and Terror, sailed to Antarctica (Mount Terror 

and Mount Erebus are named for them) and later on the 

same ships carried Sir John Franklin and all his crew 

to their doom seeking the Northwest Passage in the 

terrible zone of death, to them, that the Inuit of Nunavut 

call by another name, which translates as "home."

WHITE FOX AND ICY SEAS IN THE 

WESTERN ARCTIC. THE FUR TRADE, 

TRANSPORTATION, AND CHANGE IN 

THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY 

Reviewed by Igor Krupnik

Our colleague, archaeologist-historian John R. 

Bockstoce, has produced another seminal book on 

the recent history of the Western Arctic. It is a sequel 

to his earlier 

masterpiece 

volume, Furs and 

Frontiers in the 

Far North: The 

Contest among 

Native and 

Foreign Nations 

for the Bering 

Strait Fur Trade 

(2009), though 

with a slightly 

expanded 

geographic 

focus to include 

a portion of the 

Canadian Central 

Arctic. The new 

book published 

by Yale 

University Press 

and released in 

March 2018, 

also deals with a 

later era, roughly 

from the late 

1890s to 1948.

The new book focuses specifically on trade in 

Arctic fox pelts and to a much lesser extent on other 

northern fur-baring animals, until the introduction 

of farm-raised mink fur in the 1940s. It introduces 

a new set of colorful characters,key among them 

being local Native traders (Yupik, Chukchi, Inupiat, 

Inuvialuit, and Inuinnait/Copper Inuit), as well as 

non-Native adventurers of all stripes and nationalities 

who pioneered commercial fox-trapping and locally 

based fur-trade in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort 

Seas, and along the islands of the Canadian Arctic 

archipelago. These industrious people often preceded, 

but sometimes went hand-in-hand, with missionaries, 

teachers, US Coast Guard officers, and Canadian 

Mounties in introducing new life and modern economic 

relations to the most distant corners of the Arctic. 

Whereas their economic system aimed at trading 

pelts with Native hunters and setting them onto the 

path of commercial fur-trapping that eventually 

collapsed around the 1930s and 1940s, they succeeded 

in modernizing Native lives and in making local 

people a part of the global economy, particularly in 

North Alaska and Northwestern Arctic Canada. 
70 ASC Newsletter

Many of the characters described in Bosktoce’s new 

book who ventured to the most distant corners of 

the world had life stories quite out of the ordinary 

– even in the era of daring polar explorations, gold 

rush, and early forays in polar aviation. They met, 

supported, and cared for the greatest Arctic explorers 

of their time, such as Knud Rasmussen, Diamond 

Jenness, and Roald Amundsen. They created a 

functioning system of commercial operations, credit, 

record and book-keeping, and regular communication 

among local communities that rivaled and often 

surpassed the one built by government agencies. 

They also left behind large families; some, like the 

Browers in Barrow (now Utqiagvik), the Dobrievs

in Chukotka, the Wolkis in Canadian Ulukhaktok and 

Sachs Harbor who became the leading force in their 

respective communities, often for several generations. 

Many also left diaries, even books, like Charles 

Brower’s Fifty Years Below Zero that remained the 

must-read source for cohorts of Arctic scholars.

We commend John Bockstoce on producing yet 

another indispensable sourcebook on the history of 

the Western Arctic, one built on years of meticulous 

research, archival studies, and first-hand knowledge 

of many communities described in the text. As in 

any book of such broad geographic scope, some 

chapters are more informative and some characters 

look more colorful than others. Yet, this latest volume 

is a prized addition to the Arctic ethnohistory shelf 

and a great introduction to anyone interested in life 

in northern communities in the decades that preceded 

personal experience of today’s anthropology elders 

and their first monographs. Thank you, John!

MENADELOOK: AN INUPIAT TEACHER’S 

PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALASKA VILLAGE LIFE, 

1907–1932

Reviewed by Igor Krupnik

This is a very unusual Arctic book – half photographic 

catalog and half family stories about the author’s late 

grandfather, Charles Menadelook (1892–1933), 

an Inupiat intellectual and modernizer who became 

one of the first trained Native teachers and by far the 

first accomplished Native Alaskan photographer. His 

life story crossing barely four decades and several 

communities in Alaska, from his native Wales to 

Kotzebue, Diomede, Unalaska, Gambell, Shishmaref, 

and, of course, Nome, where Menadelook died 

at the age of 41, coincided with the time of rapid 

transformation of Native Alaskan lifeways that he 

depicted in his images. Menadelook’s story was indeed 

remarkable in many aspects, but so is also the book 

written by his granddaughter, Eileen Norbert and 

published by the University of Washington Press in 

2017 with the support of Sealaska Heritage Institute.

I first met Eileen Norbert on one of my early trips 

to Nome in the 1990s, where she was working for 

Kawerak, Inc., a local Native Alaskan community 

foundation that provided educational and social 

development, and cultural resource preservation and 

health services to the people of the northern Bering 

Sea region. In one of the meetings, she told me that 

she had been researching family photographs taken 

many decades ago by her late grandfather, intending 

to publish them in a book or illustrated photo catalog. 

It took Eileen almost twenty years to complete her 

project and to see its results printed as a beautiful 

book. The images are stunning in their ‘non-staged’ 

reality of people’s everyday life; yet the text written 

by Eileen is even more remarkable. She tells the 

story of Menadelook and his family, of their many 

relocations following Menadelook’s short stints as 

a schoolteacher at various government-run village 

schools, from the Aleutians to interior North Alaska, 

as a true family narrative. It makes her book a very 

unusual reading – personal, warm, inviting, and 

respectful of details and voices of the many people 

who helped her reconstitute Menadelook’ life. 

The book’s narrative is structured around the 

communities in which Menadelook served from 1907 

until his death in 1933, and so are the photographs, 

all supplied with extended captions, making the book 

a wonderful historical source, particularly for places 

like Diomede, Shaktoolik, and others for which there 

are few known photographs from that era. The book 

concludes with a useful appendix showing the results 

of modern restoration of dozens of old photographs and 

negatives that Eileen collected among Menadelook’s 

many descendants and attached for readers and future 

historians. We salute Eileen on her heroic work and 

on her invaluable addition to our knowledge about 

life in rural Alaska in the early 20th century.
 ASC Newsletter 71

FULL-CIRCLE: TAUGHT AND 

TEACHING AT DARTMOUTH

By William Fitzhugh

Dartmouth is in my blood. I guess that’s to be expected 

since my father—whose name I share apart from a 

postscript—spent his college years in Hanover (Class 

of ’35.) I arrived there with a cohort from Deerfield 

Academy, MA, moving a couple hundred miles upriver, 

so I stayed green and white, paddled the same river, 

and played in the Barbary Coast band with some 

of the same Deerfield gang. After I left Dartmouth 

with an anthropology degree I never would have 

guessed I’d return as a professor. When I graduated, 

my dad—a paper box manufacturer—wondered 

how I’d survive with that kind of training; and when 

my thesis describing 8000 years of environmental 

and cultural history in Labrador was published, he 

thought he’d end up bailing me out. Teaching at 

Dartmouth was the last thing he thought I’d do. 

And yet, that’s what happened. I went from 

Dartmouth into the Navy, ending up in the North 

Atlantic far from ‘Nam. Then to the Smithsonian 

as curator of North American archaeology. In 1963, 

the Dartmouth Anthropology Department had just 

been created; two of its profs, Elmer Harp and 

Robert McKennan (who we called ‘Nabesna Bob’ 

for the Alaska Indian band he studied) were Arctic 

experts. The third faculty was Al Whiting, the 

Wilson Hall museologist. He sat through our last 

class dressed as a Hopi Indian, in a breech-clout, 

smoking a stone pipe and offering us bowls of 

beans and squash. Eventually we realized we were 

supposed to ask about his kinship system. These 

were the profs who sent me off on my Arctic career.

Like my father, I never thought I would end up teaching 

at Dartmouth. But over the years I had watched the 

department change as its focus shifted to equatorial and 

temperate regions. I nagged them about maintaining 

the Arctic legacy that included the residency of 

the great Arctic explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 

whose papers at Dartmouth’s Rauner Archives make 

Dartmouth a renowned center for Arctic studies. 

Finally, as the Arctic began to heat up, they hired me.

I’ve been teaching Circumpolar Environments and 

Archeology during winter term for the past four years. 

The Anthro Department is on the fourth floor of Silsby. 

Going up and down those flights several times a day 

was a challenge until my hip got replaced. My class 

sizes have ranged from six to twenty-five. The students 

are unbelievable. They do all the stuff we used to do—

sports, road-tripping, hiking, canoeing, drinking—and 

yes—studying. They’re smart; I wouldn’t be admitted 

to Dartmouth today. They come trained and motivated. 

You nag them about getting their term papers done 

so they won’t get caught in the exam crunch. “OK,” 

I ask, “Any progress? Got your topic figured out?” 

Silence. And then, miraculously, a couple days before 

the exam, terrific papers tumble in. And the exams and 

final grades? I struggle to deliver a few C's to the deans 

who are always nagging the faculty about grade-creep.

As for me, I no longer fear Dartmouth Hall. My major 

concern is the dreaded failure of the powerpoint 

projection. But even then, a shout brings a tech student 

in minutes. The musty smell of the Baker reading room 

is gone. Now renamed, Baker-Berry Library is crawling 

with kids of all backgrounds and origins. The stacks 

are still open. The halls hum with chatter and reek of 

coffee. King Arthur Flour dispenses cappachinos and 

veggie-burgers next to the circulation desk. The reading 

room (‘shhhh’!) with its lurid Orozco murals is too 

quiet for most students’ study habits; they hang out 

where noise, news, and food abounds. Instead of being 

a repository and the home of geeks, Baker-Berry is the 

heart-beat of the college, a learning and social center. 

You go there to get charged up and hang out. Across 

campus at Hopkins Center, the Black Arts Center, and 

a rebuilt Dartmouth Museum a vibrant arts sector of 

the College is developing. And fraternities? Yes, they 

are still there (mostly.) Just last weekend, with a nod to 

Dartmouth’s pioneering John Ledyard who famously 

abandoned college and paddled down the Connecticut 

River into a life of exploration, the students convened a 

meeting of Dartmouth’s former student explorers who 

climbed mountains and run rivers all around the world. 

Dartmouth spirit lives on. I think my father would 

be proud—and surprised—that I came back to roost 

and pontificate for a few chilly months each year, 

infecting young minds with Arctic fever. Some students 

join me for Labrador fieldwork. Maybe one or two 

will carry Dartmouth’s northern legacy forward.

MEMORIES
72 ASC Newsletter

ELAINE ELIZABETH ABRAHAM, 

CHUU SHAA (1929-2016)

By Aron Crowell and Judith Ramos

Elaine Abraham

of Yakutat, Alaska, 

whose name in Tlingit 

was Chuu Shaa

(Little Grandmother 

Returns), died on May 

18, 2016 after a long 

life and distinguished 

career in professional 

nursing, academic 

teaching, student 

counseling, university 

administration, and 

collaborative research 

with anthropologists 

and linguists. 

Chuu Shaa was a 

revered elder of the 

Yéil Naa (Raven 

moiety), Kwaashk’i 

Kwáan (Copper 

River clan), and Tsisk’w Hit (Owl House), a child of 

the Teikweidí clan, and the mother of five children 

with her husband of many years, George Ramos of 

Yakutat. Her surviving children are George Ramos, 

Jr., Charmaine Ramos, David Ramos, and Judith 

Ramos. She was the daughter of Teikweidí clan leader 

Olaf Abraham and his wife Susie Bremner, who 

was the granddaughter of John Bremner, a Scottish 

prospector and guide who helped Lt. Henry Allen to 

explore the Copper River area for the U.S. government 

in the 1880s. Elaine grew up in her parents’ traditional 

household in Yakutat, immersed in the culture, 

languages, and lifeways of her people. She was a fluent 

speaker of Tlingit with considerable knowledge of 

Eyak, the “other Tlingit” as she called it in her youth.

During her varied and energetic life Elaine served as a 

registered nurse on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona; 

helped to found the Alaska Native Language Center at 

the University of Alaska Fairbanks; directed the Alaska 

Native Studies program at the University of Alaska 

Anchorage and taught there as an Associate Professor; 

chaired the Alaska Native Science Commission; served 

as Associate Dean of Students at Sheldon Jackson 

College in Sitka, Alaska; developed Alaska Native 

student orientation services at the University of Alaska 

Anchorage; and was Vice President of Rural Education 

Affairs for the University of Alaska’s statewide system, a 

role in which she helped to establish community colleges 

TRANSITIONS

in largely Alaska Native communities including Nome, 

Barrow, Tanana, Kotzebue, Sitka, and Ketchikan. She 

was a lifelong member of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, a 

delegate to the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Tribes 

of Alaska, a board member of the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe, 

and an elder of the Yakutat Presbyterian Church – and this 

is only a partial roll of her committed service to others.

Elaine Abraham excelled academically and earned 

numerous degrees including a Master of Arts in 

Multiethnic Education (Alaska Pacific University), a 

Bachelor of Arts in Human Resource Development 

(Alaska Pacific University), an Associate of Arts in 

Anthropology (Sheldon Jackson College), a Registered 

Nurse certification from the School of Nursing at Sage 

Memorial Hospital in Arizona, and certification in 

Psychiatric Nursing from the State of Arizona. Among 

her many honors and awards Elaine Abraham received 

the nationwide American Indian Achievement Award 

(1973), the title of “Distinguished Alaskan” from the 

Alaska State Legislature (1974), and the University of 

Alaska’s Meritorious Service Award (1996). In 2011 

she was inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of 

Fame. Her early life story was featured in American 

Indian Women, by Marion Eleanor Gridley (1974). 

Elaine worked with a number of anthropologists 

including Frederica de Laguna, Michael Krauss, 

Sergei Kan, and Thomas Thornton and her own 

publications included “This is Kuxaankutaan’s (Dr. 

Frederica de Laguna’s) Song” in Arctic Anthropology 

(with Judith Ramos, 2006), which was reprinted 

in Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their 

Coastal Neighbors, edited by Sergei Kan (2015). In 

1996 Frederica de Laguna returned by invitation of the 

Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood to Yakutat 

where she had conducted anthropological research 

almost fifty years earlier for her monumental Under 

Mount Saint Elias: the History and Culture of the 

Yakutat Tlingit, which includes extensive information 

provided by Elaine’s parents, Olaf and Susie 

Abraham. Elaine narrated an excellent film about this 

occasion by Laura Bliss Span entitled “Reunion under 

Mount Saint Elias: The Return of Frederica de Laguna 

to Yakutat Alaska” (1997). In 2001, Elaine, George, and 

the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe hosted a visit to Yakutat by 

scientists, artists, and writers who were participating in 

Harriman Expedition Retraced, a voyage organized by 

Smith College to follow the path of the 1899 Edward 

Harriman expedition. During the first expedition’s 

visit to Yakutat a century before photographer Edward 

Curtis recorded images of the Yakutat people’s 

communal seal hunting camps at the head of the bay, 

including a shot of Elaine’s aunt Jennie Abraham

engaged in cutting blubber from a seal skin.
 ASC Newsletter 73

Elaine was warm, wise, and droll, and an assiduous 

research colleague who made a tremendous 

contribution to oral historical and archaeological 

studies conducted by the Arctic Studies Center in 

Yakutat Bay from 2011 to 2014. She served as a 

Senior Researcher for the project’s National Science 

Foundation grant (Glacial Retreat and the Cultural 

Landscape of Ice Floe Sealing at Yakutat Bay, Alaska), 

advised on project design and tribal protocols, 

interviewed other elders in the community, and shared 

her own extensive knowledge of Yakutat’s complex 

cultural history. Her daughter Judith Ramos, also 

a Senior Researcher on the project, worked closely 

with her mother to record interviews and to facilitate 

community participation. Elaine was a principal source 

of information about Yakutat Bay place names in both 

Tlingit and Eyak for the Arctic Studies Center project 

and for Thomas Thornton’s encyclopedic regional 

compilation, Haa Léelk’w Hás Aaní Saax’ú: Our 

Grandparents’ Names on the Land (Sealaska Heritage 

Institute and the University of Washington Press, 2012). 

One of my (Aron’s) favorite moments from fieldwork 

in Yakutat was an impromptu celebration of Elaine’s 

83rd birthday as we bobbed about in small boats 

among ice floes near the towering face of Sit’ 

Tlein (“big glacier” or Hubbard Glacier). Judy 

brought surprise cupcakes on the trip and there was 

singing and laughter and awe amid the beauty of 

our surroundings. Elaine spoke often of the sacred 

connection between the people of Yakutat, their 

lands, and the spirit of the glacier, who taught her 

Ahtna ancestors how to hunt seals and make a living 

from the sea after they migrated from the Copper 

River valley to Yakutat about 500 years ago.

Elaine and George Ramos also made important 

contributions as cultural advisers to the Living Our 

Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples 

of Alaska exhibition in Anchorage. She generously 

praised the exhibition catalog, writing “Likoodzi 

(fantastic) yaa x’úx’ (this book). Tlingit is my first 

language, so these were the words in my mind. 

Haa Shaagoon ayah aa eet x’eiwatán – it is if our 

Ancestors have spoken to us.” We mark Elaine’s 

passing with grief and sadness, but remember and 

thank her for her giving spirit, kindness, and the 

cultural knowledge she so generously shared.

STANWYN SHETLER (1933-2017) 

By Larry Dorr

[Following are exerpts from Dorr’s obituary of 

Stan Shetler. Stan was one of the few NMNH 

natural scientists (along with Robert Hoffman) 

with a long-term interest and expertise in Arctic 

regions. Stan played a role in the establishment of 

the Arctic Studies Center (called a ‘program’ then) 

and participated in many ASC activities. He was a 

splendid example of a Smithsonian curator with strong 

record and commitment to science, collections, and 

outreach. He and Hoffman took great interest in our 

Crossroads of Continents exhibitions and facilitated 

our subsequent collaborations with Soviet/Russian 

scholars. He was a force of optimism and stability in 

the NMNH administration for many years.—ed.] 

Stan was born on 11 October 1933 in Johnstown, 

Pennsylvania. He grew up in nearby rural Hollsopple 

and attended Johnstown Christian School. Stan’s 

interest in natural history began with bird watching, 

and ornithology became a lifelong avocation.

Stan attended Eastern Mennonite College and earned 

his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1955 and 1958 

from Cornell University. He came to the NMNH 

Department of Botany in 1962 from graduate school 

at the University of Michigan where he was a student 

of Rogers McVaugh, earning his PhD in 1979. He 

had responsibility for temperate and arctic North 

American plants, including the flora of the Washington, 

D.C. region. Stan also served as Associate Director 

and then Deputy Director of the Museum. As an 

administrator, he was highly regarded for his fairness 

and calm demeanor. He retired 1995 and continued 

to work in the U.S. National Herbarium until 2010.

Stan published more than 100 scientific, technical, 

and popular titles, including three books. He also 

was one of several general scientific editors for the 

English translations of the last eight volumes of the 

30-volume Flora of the USSR that appeared between 

1997 and 2004. Stan served as executive secretary 

and then program director of the Flora North America 

Program, which pioneered the use of computers 

for taxonomic information. His research took him 

across North America and to parts of South and 

Central America, Europe, Asia (Caucasus, Siberia, 

Tuva,) and Australia. His visit to Tuva, a remote 

Russian republic in southern Siberia, resulted in a 

cameo appearance in Richard Leighton’s Tuva or 

Bust! Richard Feynman’s Last Journey (2000).

Stan received a number of awards and honors for his 

research and service. In 1995, he received the Paul 

Bartsch Award, which is the Audubon Naturalist 

Society’s top award for contributions to natural history 

and conservation. In 1994, he was elected as fellow 

of the American Association for the Advancement 

of Science for his “contributions to the formation of 

electronic data banks and the computer registry of 

botanical specimens” and in 2002, he was elected a 

fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 
74 ASC Newsletter

WILLIS WALUNGA (1924–2017) 

– YUPIK HISTORIAN

By Igor Krupnik

Sad news that arrived from Gambell, St. Lawrence 

Island, Alaska in October 2017 followed in the 

footsteps of an obituary in the last-year issue of the 

ASC Newsletter (No.24, p.66). Willis Walunga known 

to his fellow community members and many friends 

under his Yupik name, Kepelgu passed away at his 

home in Gambell at the age of 92. Kepelgu was the 

prime keeper of St. Lawrence Island and Siberian Yupik 

historical and genealogical knowledge, and a trusted 

partner in several research and publication ventures 

of the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (ASC.)

Willis (Kepelgu) had an unusual life story for someone 

prized as his community’s best historian. He was born 

in an immigrant family of John and Dorothy Walunga 

(Walanga) that around 1922 moved from the Russian 

Yupik village of Avan in Chukotka to the American St. 

Lawrence Island. Many people who made that same 

transition remained “newcomers” among their Yupik 

neighbors, albeit speaking the same language and being 

of the same culture. Perhaps Kepelgu’s acceptance is 

explained by his decision to follow a military career that 

started in 1942 when he joined the Alaska Territorial 

Guard at age 17 and served for 42 years, until his full 

retirement in 1984. Beginning as a young rifleman to 

defend his new homeland in case of the Japanese and, 

later, Russian invasion, he was eventually promoted 

to the rank of Sergeant General Major and received 

scores of military decorations. He also married Nancy 

Walunga (Aghnaghaghniq) and raised a large family 

that, by his old years, included ten grown-up children, 

36 grandchildren, and 28 great grandchildren.

Retired from the military at the age of 60, Willis 

started a new career, first in Yupik language and 

heritage education. In the 1980s, he joined and 

eventually led a team of local educators mostly of 

his age cohort, who produced the first set of Yupik 

cultural materials for local schools, including the 

‘St. Lawrence Island Curriculum Resource Manual,’ 

a 100-page compendium on Yupik culture and 

ecological knowledge, edited and compiled by 

Kepelgu. That same team also produced a threevolume bilingual (Yupik-English) heritage series, 

Sivuqam Nangaghnegha (Lore of St. Lawrence Island, 

1985,1987, 1989) and, under Kepelgu’s leadership, 

a typed set of Yupik family genealogies for all island 

clans going back often five-six generations. Kepelgu 

was meticulous in his genealogical work and he did 

numerous interviews with island elders, as well as 

with the Yupik visitors from Chukotka, who started 

frequent St. Lawrence Island after the so-called 

“Friendship Flight” from Nome to Provideniya in 1988, 

in which Kepelgu and his wife Nancy participated. 

I first met Kepelgu in 1987 in Moscow and then, 

again, in the summer of 1990 in the Siberian Yupik 

village of New Chaplino in Chukotka. Together 

with local Yupik activists, we organized a tour for 

our island guests to Kepelgu parents’ home village 

of Avan, near Provideniya Bay, that was abandoned 

in 1942. We lit the fire and said the prayers for the 

ancestors, and then I walked Kepelgu through the 

ruins of the village telling him stories I recorded 

from his tribespeople who used to live here.

Since the late 1990s, Kepelgu was the prime 

knowledge expert, a local team leader, and co-editor 

on three major scholarly knowledge documentation 

projects, Our Words Put to Paper/Akuzilleput 

Igaqulghet. Sourcebook on St. Lawrence Island Yupik 

Heritage and History (2002) that received American 

Book Award of the “Before Columbus Foundation’ 

in 2003; Faces We Remember/Neqamikegkaput. 

Leuman M. Waugh Photography from St. Lawrence 

Island, Alaska, 1929–1930 (2011), and St. Lawrence 

Island Yupik Walrus Dictionary/Ayveghem Yupigestun 

Aautqusluga. The first two were published as issues 

nos. 3 and 9 of the ASC Contributions to Circumpolar 

Anthropology series; the third remains unpublished 

and will now be dedicated to Kepelgu’s memory.

As a guardian of local history, Kepelgu held a 

special role in his native community and within 

the network of relations between the St. Lawrence 

Island and Chukotka Yupik. He was always 

seeking new knowledge: names of people who 

passed generations ago, old stories, and historical 

photographs that depicted people from years past. 

He worked through the lists of island residents 

of the U.S. censuses of 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 

1940, painstakingly reconstructing English and 
 ASC Newsletter 75

Yupik names of people listed there. On every trip 

to Gambell, I tried to bring him copies of some 

newly recovered historical photos or documents 

from St. Lawrence Island that he loved to explore. 

Once it was a list of Yupik parishioners in the 

Provideniay Bay in Chukotka, compiled by a Russian 

Orthodox priest in 1910 and preserved at the Library 

of Congress. On that list, we found a certain Petr 

Kepelge, 48, after whom Willis was named 15 years 

later, and his son ‘Vassilii, 23, who was obviously 

Willis’ father Walanga. That brought a special joy 

to someone who dedicated his life to preserving 

the history of his people. It will be very hard to fill 

Kepelgu’s big knowledge ‘shoes’; but his legacy will 

stay with us – in wisdom he shared generously within 

and beyond his community, in books we published 

that every island family now keeps in its possession; 

and in the many of today’s Yupik people who carry 

the ‘old names’ bestowed on them by Kepelgu to 

celebrate his Avatmiitt ancestors of the past. 

PAUL APANGALOOK (1951–2018)

By Igor Krupnik

Paul Apangalook a gentle and gifted man, a strong 

leader in his native community of Gambell, St. 

Lawrence Island, Alaska, and a partner in our effort to 

document the changing life of the Yupik people under 

the forces of modernization and global warming lost 

his battle with cancer in early March 2018. His Yupik 

name, Siluk, was given to him after his uncle Paul 

Silook (Siluk, ca. 1892–1948), a famous man and a 

pioneer in collaborative work with scores of visiting 

scientists. In 1912, 20-year old Paul Silook befriended 

doctor Riley Moore, who was sent to St. Lawrence 

Island by Smithsonian curator, Aleš Hrdlička to 

conduct physical observations and secure ethnological 

specimens. Silook introduced Moore to his father 

Uwetelen; that connection started partnership between 

the extended Uwetelen-Silook family and Smithsonian 

researchers that spanned over 100 years and six 

generations (see ASC NSL, 23, p. 41–42.) Silook later 

worked with Smithsonian archaeologist Henry Collins.

Estelle Oozevoseuk, Yupik knowledge elder and 

a partner to Aron Crowell, was a daughter of 

Silook, and Leonard Apangalook Sr., my late 

collaborator on the SIKU observation project during 

the International Polar Year, was a nephew of 

Silook and an elder brother to Paul Apangalook. 

Paul Apangalook, “the second Siluk,” was a highly 

respected figure in his community and a model to his 

people. He represented Gambell at the Alaskan Eskimo 

Whaling Commission and served numerous terms as the 

village IRA head and the Sivuqaq Corp., president. He 

was a deeply spiritual person, with a big heart, “a true 

Yupik,” as people called him. Yet his own collaboration 

with scientists, unlike that of his namesake, Siluk-1, 

came relatively late in his life. When his late brother, 

Leonard Apangalook became gravely sick and was 

unable to serve as a Gambell observer for the SIKU (Sea 

Ice Knowledge and Use) project, Paul stepped in for him 

and kept the daily observation logs running for three 

more years, 2008/2009–2010/2011 and then continued 

his observations under another effort supported by Hajo 

Eicken at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He later 

served as observer/contributor for the Sea Ice for Walrus 

Outlook (SIWO), a web-based initiative to document 

hunters’ observations of sea ice and walrus spring 

migration run by ARCUS since 2010. Diaries filled by 

Leonard and Paul are now part of the major database 

of Native Alaskans’ observations at the National Snow 

and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, CO, and 

Paul’s, as well as Leonard’s name have been featured 

proudly on several scholarly papers that came out of this 

decade-long partnership. Paul’s last effort, together with 

his wife, Charlene Apangalook, was to assist with the 

identification of almost 40 photographs taken in Gambell 

in summer 1939 by archaeologist J. Louis Giddings 

(ASC NSL 24, 49–51). This work remains unfinished.

Following the words of Vera Metcalf, another 

great Yupik leader and a partner on many ASC 

efforts, “the (St. Lawrence) island has lost so many 

lately, but we must continue on with their visions, 

hopes, and dreams. They continue to inspire us as 

we captured many of their words in some of our 

projects.” These words fully belong to the memory 

of Paul, who will forever remain our source of 

inspiration and a symbol of “going far” together.
76 ASC Newsletter

Krupnik, Igor

2017 Waldemar Bogoras and The Chukchee: 

A Maestro and a Classical Ethnography. Pp. 

9–45 In Waldemar Bogoras. The Chukchee. 

New edition, edited by Michael Dürr and Erich 

Kasten. Verlag der Kulturstiftung Sibirien.

2017 Living on a Changing Planet: Why Indigenous 

Voices Matter. Pp. 78-82 In Living in the Anthropocene: 

Earth in the Age of Humans. John Kress and Jeffrey 

Stine, eds. Washington DC: Smithsonian Books.

2017 Arctic/Siberian/Sakha Collections at the 

Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 404–421 In Siberian 

Collections in the U.S. Museums. Zinaida Ivanova, 

ed. Yakutsk (in English and in Russian). 

Krupnik, Igor and Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya

2017 “Our Ice, Snow and Winds”: from Knowledge 

Integration to Co-production in the Russian SIKU 

Project, 2007–2013. Pp. 65–82 In Oral History Meets 

Linguistics. Erich Kasten, Katja Roller and Joshua 

Wilbur, eds. Havel, Germany: Kulturstiftung Sibirien.

Bogoslovskaya, Lyudmila and Igor Krupnik

2017 The Changing Cultural Scapes of Sea 

Mammal Hunters of the Bering Strait Area: based 

on field data of the 1970s-2000s. Bogoslovskaya, 

Lyudmila and Igor Krupnik. Pp. 359–381 In V fokuse 

naslediia (In the Heritage Focus). M. Kuleshova, 

ed. Moscow: Institute of Geography (in Russian).

Loring, Stephen

2018 The Toad-Man’s Estate: an Archaeological 

Reconnaissance of the Shapeiau (Shapio) Lake 

Region, Nitassinan. (co-authored with Anthony 

Jenkinson). Provincial Archaeology Office 2017 

Annual Review. Government of Newfoundland 

and Labrador Department of Tourism, Culture 

and Recreation. Volume 16:168-183. 

2017 To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth...

Ramah Chert in Time and Space. In Ramah 

Chert: a Lithic Odyssey, edited by Jenneth E. 

Curtis and Pierre M. Desrosiers. Pp. 169-220. 

Nunavik Archaeological Monograph Series No.4. 

Avataq Cultural Institute: Inukjuak, Quebec. 

ARCTIC STUDIES ONLINE

The Arctic Studies Center is on Twitter @

ArcticStudies, and is also posting the latest ASC news 

and events via Facebook in order to connect with the 

Arctic community. Check out our blog, Magnetic North 

and website http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/for more 

detailed information and links to additional resources. 

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Helser, Thomas, Craig Kastelle, Aron 

Crowell, Takayuki Ushikubo, Ian J. Orland, 

Reinhard Kozdon, and John W. Valley

2017 A 200-Year Archaeozoological Record of 

Pacific Cod (Gadus macrocephalus) Life History as 

Revealed through Ion Microprobe Oxygen Isotope 

Ratios in Otoliths. Journal of Archaeological 

Science: Reports. Published online June 17, 2017.

Crowell, Aron L.

2017 Archaeology and Pacific Cod Otoliths Provide 

Clues to Climate Cycles in the Gulf of Alaska. Witness 

Community Highlights, Arctic Research Consortium 

of the United States. Published online Sept. 29, 2017.

Fitzhugh, William W. and Bernadette D. Engelstad

2017 Inuguat: Prehistoric Human Figurines of the 

North American Arctic. In The Oxford Handbook 

of Prehistoric Human Figurines, edited by Timothy 

Insoll, Pp. 367-390. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Fitzhugh, William W. and J. Brake, and P. Jolicoeur

2017 The Rigolet Project 2016: Groswater Bay, 

Narrows, and Eastern Lake Melville. Provincial 

Archaeology Office 2016 Annual Review, pp. 48-54.

Fitzhugh, William W. 

2017 Mongolian Deer Stones, European Menhirs, and 

Canadian Arctic Inuksuit: Collective Memory and the 

Function of Northern Monument Traditions. Journal 

of Archaeological Method and Theory 24(1):149-187. 

2017 The Gateways Project 2016: Surveys in 

Groswater Bay, Labrador, and St. Paul River, 

Quebec, and Excavations at Hart Chalet. 222 

pp. Edited by William Fitzhugh. Produced by 

Patrick Jolicoeur, Cara Reeves, Skye Litten, 

Chelsi Slotten, and Igor Chechushkov. Arctic 

Studies Center, Smithsonian Institution.

P. Jolicoeur and William W. Fitzhugh

2017 Excavation and survey along Quebec’s 

Lower North Shore. Provincial Archaeology 

Office 2016 Annual Review, pp. 123-135.

Fitzhugh, William W. and Martin T. Nweeia

2017 Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend. (The 

Companion Book to the Smithsonian Institution 

exhibition). Arctic Studies Center, Smithsonian 

Institution and IPI Press. 233pp. Distributed 

by University Press of New England.

Cole, Daniel and William W. Fitzhugh

2017 Exhibiting the Connections Between Inuit, 

Narwhal, and Climate Change. Cartouche 93/94: 29-33. 

2017 ASC STAFF PUBLICATIONS
 ASC Newsletter 77

AFTERWORD

By Stephen Loring

Sometimes, as is this case this year, the newsletter’s 

page count does not come out in even “signatures” 

and there is an extra blank page. Since this was, in 

many ways, the Year of Boats for the Arctic Studies 

Center, we thought to close this issue in a literary vein 

as a tribute for all the vessels—Kilaluak, Tunuyak, 

Pitsiulak, Becky-1, and unnamed zodiacs and canoes, 

among others—that have carried us safely through 

the course of nearly fifty years of northern research.

The following is from a letter I wrote to William 

Ritchie, an artist and sometimes crew-member, 

whom we befriended in Labrador in 1975:

18 November 1987

Bad Boats by Laura Jensen

They are like women because they sway.

They are like men because they swagger.

They are like lions because they are king here.

They walk on the sea. The drifting

logs are good: they are taking their punishment.

But the bad boats are ready to be bad,

to overturn in water, to demolish the swagger

and the sway. They are bad boats

because they cannot wind their own rope

or guide themselves neatly close to the wharf.

In their egomania they are glad

for the burden of the storm the men are shirking

when they go for their coffee and yawn.

They are bad boats and they hate their anchors.

Bad boats. I remember how I used to worry about you 

and your speedboat. Fitzhugh and I thought it was too 

sporty for the likes of the wild man you were then. And 

then you let me use it during the summer of 1982 when I 

was off by myself knocking about the bays between Nain 

and Davis Inlet. Oh, it proved to be such a sweet boat. 

So sweet. Late in August, pinned down by the storm in 

Voisey’s Bay, the same storm that plagued you farther 

north. Finally, in the face of a freshening gale, I decided 

to make a break from my exposed harbor. In a sudden 

pell-mell of activity I collapsed the Black’s tent with pads 

and sleeping bag inside and just rolled the whole affair up 

in a big ball. The surf had begun to build but there was a 

steep rock face I could bring the boat, moored on an offhaul, alongside. I just pitched the tent, the Duluth bags, 

and myself in and hauled off away from the wash until I 

had everything in order. Then out into Voisey’s Bay, my 

old nemesis. Was there ever such a place for contrary 

tides and winds? Tide comes in, the demon of a west wind 

blowing out and hell is to pay. And byjeezus, son, what 

a ride! Steep, short-pitched waves, taller than I care to 

remember. Up, up, up we would go—your sweet boat and 

I—then down: deep down, bottom down, til I felt that the 

bow was going to pitch into the mud of the ocean floor. 

And then up smart again. What a ride! Why sometimes 

we would get pitched right out of the top of the wave, the 

prop would start whirling madly and we would fly. We 

would fly until we fell, and then BAM! The bottom would 

fall out and we would slam into the underbelly of the next 

wave. I mean we would hit hard. Wouldn’t want to do that 

sort of thing too, too often. So slowly we crossed the Bay, 

your buddy Stephen and your boat...your sweet boat. 

And that night, the boat safely moored in a sheltered 

bay, kept company by a flock of mergansers, I had a 

wonderful dream. I dreamt that I was crossing the bay 

again, but this time when we were flung up on a wave 

we just kept going, higher and higher into the sky, up 

to the stars, with never a fear of falling, never a fear of 

the journey’s end. A boat to dare the seas of heaven.

Contact Information

Arctic Studies Center

Department of Anthropology

Natural History Building, MRC 112

Smithsonian Institution

P.O. Box 37012

10th and Constitution Ave. N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

(202) 633-1887 (phone) (202) 357-2684 (fax)

ASC Anchorage Office

Anchorage Museum

625 C Street Anchorage, AK 99501

(907) 929-9207

VISIT ASC’S WEBSITES, BLOG & PAGES

Labrador Research: http://www.mnh.si.edu/

arctic/html/Labrador/index.html

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typepad.com/arctic_studies/

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pages/Arctic-Studies-Center/133066950060693

This newsletter was edited by William Fitzhugh, 

Igor Krupnik, Stephen Loring, Aron Crowell, 

Dawn Biddison, Nancy Shorey and Mary 

Maisel. Designed and produced by Mary Maisel, 

Nancy Shorey and Igor Chechushkov
Penalty for Private Use $300

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