Some more contact history of the Kukpugmiut of the Eastern Branch of the Mackenzie Delta (they were one of the two tribes who along with the Nunatagmiut--who had come from Alaska--became the first-nation people now known as the Inuvialuit). The pictures were taken by James McDougall, an accountant with the Hudson's Bay Company, who came north on the Company's steamship (the Wrigley) on its annual July visit that year, and are from the Hudson's Bay Company Archives in the Provincial Archives of Manitoba. The archival numbers for these two photos and another (all at the same angle) are 1987/1/209,210, and 211.

Kukpugmiut showing whites a drum dance at Fort McPherson in the 1892 summer. Kokhlik (who will become chief the next year) is the tallest of them all and stands in the background drumming. His wife, proudly wearing her western-style dress, is dancing with two men, the one on the left may be Chief Toweachiuk--but that is conjecture from his various accoutrements (including a large copper eyeshield) he wears in several other pictures.

Picture of an Anglican service at Kitigazuit in the 1909 summer, taken by Bishop Isaac Stringer. He had come from the Yukon for a tour of inspection and to conduct the first baptisms. He himself had had no conversions during his work among the Kukpugmiut and Nunatagmiut between 1892 and 1901, when he lived near the Delta and spent time in the Eastern Branch's outer part almost each year.


To go with the pictures, herewith some of my ramblings on drum-dancing dances in the kajigi versus singing Christian hymns. I have posted on scribd.com one of my versions of Isaac Stringer's diary during his summer 1893 visit to Kitigazuit (the original is in the Anglican General Archives in Toronto) and in it you will find a magnificent description of a drum dance and how intensely Stringer felt the emotions it evoked. It was so real, he wondered if the devil had been present.
Throughout Stringer's 1892-1901 diary, each reference to a dance is a referral to the Kukpugmiut's heathen way of life. In 1893 he stayed in the home of the very person (Kokhlik) who is becoming the main leader of the community and is always one of the principal people partaking in the nightly performance in the kajigi.
I have not looked at this particular material for close to six years as I have been occupied looking at other angles of Stringer's work (time spent with Inuit from Alaska, with the Loucheux, whalers, Klondike miners, and the whites at Fort McPherson). None of it should go public, I thought, until I had a better sense of the whole picture. Now that I am at last going back to this earlier part of my work I am somewhat at a loss at my various versions etc. and what I had meant to do, but the one I've posted on scribd.com will give you some idea.
The more I think about all this, the more I am impressed how the singing of hymns etc. was from the start a crucial part of IO's campaign. He spoke very little of the language, but this was one way of communicating, and one the Inuit loved. So it is quite something to be asked to come late at night to the kajigi itself, where the dancing has just taken place, and to be asked there to speak and sing
The language Stringer uses is quite flat in a way, but the significance of what is happening is enormous. In the place where native chanting and contact with their own spirits has just occurred, Stringer gets to make contact with the spirits that are his; at least so natives would have interpreted it.
The first year IO was at Kit he was not attached to Kokhlik, and was not invited into the kajigi. That year Chief Toweachiuk was still in the most powerful position, and was an ally of Stringer's competitor Camille Lefebvre, the Catholic priest. Stringer's tent was then set a little apart from the village. In 1893, his (seemingly) triumphant year, he lives with Kokhlik in Kokhlik's house. Kokhlik even gives his own boy to go go south with Stringer to McPh for a year (the teenager turned out to be a dud)(I forgot to mention him in my "theater" article--must add that to the story).
The next year (early 1894) at McPherson just as the Kukpugmiut tell the priest not to come back to Kit, things fall apart for IOS as well. Kokhlik is offended by not being allowed into a dinner at Fort McPherson (despite having his boy live there for a year)and relations with him will never again be the same.
So one can show a progression from IO's witnessing the Kukpugmiut dance at McPherson outside (where it was put on for show for whites ) in 1892, to seeing it for real in the kajigi in 1893, to singing inside the kajigi that same year. Then he makes no progress the next seven years, so that in his 1899 late fall trip to the Eastern Delta he again stays with K (at Tuk) and again hears the late night dancing in the kajigi--and while that is going on holds a service with others. Then over the next decade people increasingly adopt Christan ways, hymns are written and shared by native people, and they make their way long distance from one point to another. Then the conversion in 1909-1912 is merely a small step in a long process--it looks abrupt because it is at last a public showing (through baptism) that one is now willing to take in the holy spirit, whatever way they conceived that, and leave old ways.
So there's a long phase in the middle years where people both sing hymns and listen to IO when he preaches but also follow native ways. Then gradually the Christian part becomes more dominant and all the community gets a consensus this is the right thing to do--and those who don't conform feel pressure to go along. Meanwhile there is the intellectual excitement of learning to read and write and communicate in this entirely new way.
All this means that in the 1909 picture of a Christian service in the shelter of an umiak (which breaks the wind coming in from the open ocean) two items are significant: 1)the abandoned kajigi in the background and 2) all those Anglican hymn books people have just bought, and which are in nearly every one's hands. This photo alone is worth a dissertation. Music everywhere and how important it turns out to be.
It was the ritual part of faith people related to above all--not the content but the form and sound. So singing a communal hymn (which people did as early as 1893) was a most significant experience.
In the kajigi (as told in Stringer's 1893 diary) the chanting led to a shaman's taking a turn in the center and entering another state until he could speak to spirits; here everyone was singing about Jesus. And how much more pleasant that would have been in small camps here and there if someone could play the tune on a harmonica etc. Of course, sites like Kitigazuit were sometimes abandoned for several years, which meant a kajigi did not get used either and would deteriorate during that time. But added to that process was the new concept that using it to communicate with spirits was incorrect. And though it is never said overtly, to evangelical Christians like Stringer dancing was itself a form of sin. Besides anything that smacked of old ways meant it had to do with a pagan way of life. Again, great fun when having the whole picture in hand helps to see individual happenings in a different light.