Voyage with the Labrador Eskimos, 1880-1881

Description

The story of Abraham Ulrikab is one of the saddest and most moving stories in Nunatsiavut (Labrador), Inuit and Canadian history. Having departed for Europe in August 1880, Abraham, his wife Ulrike, their two daughters Sara and Maria, a young single man Tobias and the pagan family of Terrianiak, Paingo, and Noggasak, had hopes of earning revenues that would allow them to improve their living conditions when they returned the following year. In exchange, they had to show their way of life and their culture to the European crowds who came to observe them in the ethnographic show organized by Carl Hagenbeck. From Hamburg to Berlin, Prague, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Krefeld and Paris, for four months, the group was exhibited in various zoos. They enabled entrepreneurs to pocket profits and were studied by anthropologists who were most happy to have at their disposal ‘savages’ originating from such faraway lands. Literate, Abraham kept a personal diary. So did Johan Adrian Jacobsen, the person who recruited the Inuit and accompanied them during their tour. Jacobsen’s diary being an essential source for understanding the events that occurred over 133 years ago, we are presenting, in this book, Professor Hartmut Lutz’s English translation of his diary. Discover the moods, thoughts and qualms of this 27 year old man; from his unsuccessful attempt to recruit ‘Eskimos’ in Greenland, his despair to see that Moravian missionaries in Labrador also opposed his project, his jubilation when Abraham agreed to accompany him with his family, his astonishment to witness Terrianiak and Paingo using their shamanic powers to calm a storm during the Atlantic crossing, to his shock of facing the first two deaths after doctors had told him there was no reason to be alarmed, the heartbreaking moment when Abraham had to hand over his three year old daughter to a hospital in Germany and finally, the horror of being admitted to the smallpox unit of a Paris hospital where the ‘Eskimos’ as well as Europeans suffered and died around him. “Voyage with the Labrador Eskimos, 1880-1881” is published within the context of a research project dedicated to unraveling the mysteries surrounding the European stay and the death of the eight Labrador Inuit. It is seen as a complement to the book entitled “In the Footsteps of Abraham Ulrikab.”