C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

Notes to Page 58 261The accused had shot a neighbour's dogThe book's description of the murder case omits the informationin Vyvyan's field note for 23 June-that the accused hadstolen the victim's wife; the book states only what the field notefor IJune records-that he had shot the victim's dog. Anotherversion of the circumstances of the crime is provided by RCMPhistorian Harwood Steele. It too makes no mention of the theftofawife:Uluksak, the story went, had been bullying lkayena. Thenlkayena shot one ofUluksak's dogs, "because it was old." Hewas said to have replaced the animal. but, in the Arctic, theaction seemed "highly unfriendly." Some days later, whileIkayena and a friend were at cards "Uluksak hung around infront of the tent, playing around with some cartridges butsaying nothing." The friend decamped, "the two principalsremained eyeing each other." Suddenly two shots rang outlkayenahad fired both, killing his enemy. He swore thatUluksak made the first hostile move and that the secondshot was necessary, as Uluksak tried to reach his rifle,though witnesses disagreed and the first wound was verysevere.So [Sgt F.A. Barnes] arrested lkayena; and on February23rd, after an 850-mile patrol, was back in Tree River.(254)Quite properly, Vyvyan does not identify this man as one of thetwo men, named Uluksuk and Sinnisiak, who killed RomanCatholic priestsJean-Baptiste Rouviere and Guillaume LeRoux at Bloody Fall in 1913, and who faced trial-"the firstinvolving Canadian Eskimos on a capital charge" (Steele 191)­in Edmonton and Calgary in August 1917. Death sentenceswere commuted to life imprisonment, but both Uluksuk andSinnisiak were found to be model prisoners and werepardoned on IS May 1919 (Moyles 85). This Uluksuk died ofspinal tuberculosis in Coppermine 23 September 1929.they are apt to kill off their old folk and their feIIlale babiesin hard tiIIlesIt is interesting that Vyvyan proceeds to qualify this assertion byO'Connor, the defense attorney. Another statement, againfrom a Euro-Canadian perspective, in support of it occurs inthe Grey Nuns' history of their mission at Aklavik: "It was atthis time, too, 1926, that the sisters at Aklavik begged theirSuperior and the Canadian government to open a 'creche' fornew-born babies. Their reason was that baby girls were eithercrushed to death or left in the wilds to be devoured by bears orwolves. Their cause was well received" (Champagne). Differentperspectives are offered by both the biographer and the wife ofthe then governor general of Canada. Julian HedworthGeorge, Viscount Byng of Vi my travelled down the Mackenziein 1925 and, thanks to arrangements made at the last minute byCanon Edward Hester, met Inuvialuit at Kittigazuit: "One of[their] more endearing qualities," thought Byng, "was theirobvious fondness for children-their name for them was'noogiduks''' (Williams 299). Although she had travelled withhim to the Yukon on an earlier trip, Lady Byngwas advisedagainst the Mackenzie River trip, "which was supposed to be toorough for me, though I shall always regret I didn't insist ongOing." She records her husband's impression of the Inuit viewthus: "So long as a baby was a helpless piece of humanity it waseverybody's job to help it, but the moment it was old enough totwist a rope, or do any work, it took its place in the scheme ofthings" (Byng 159). It is impossible to know if, without theopportunity of making her own observations, she might havedetected a discrepancy in the treatment of boys and girls.A somewhat more conclusive view of Inuit treatment of theelderly, nearly contemporary (1928) with the view heard byVyvyan, is that of Anglican Archdeacon Archibald Fleming,who worked extensively with Inuit in both the eastern andwestern Arctic:From time immemorial the Eskimo had from sheereconomic necessity but one solution to the problem of theaged and helpless: to wall them off during the cold of thewinter into an igloo where death came quietly and alone.To us this seems cruel and terrible but in a land whereconstant traveling is essential and where hunger stalks eachliving thing, the burden of the handicapped makes animpossible demand. During the last thirty years [presumably,thirty years prior to 1956, the date of publication ofFleming's book] conditions in the Arctic have so changedthat this problem, the pity of which lay on my heart likelead, has been largely solved. I think it is safe to say that noEskimo or Indian now needs to feel the death knell tollingwhen he has had an accident or exceeds the normal span oflife. (294)