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³Everything goeth, everything returneth . . .

for every here rolleth the ball turning there . . .
crooked is the path of eternity.´ i
F. Nietzsche

The Mackenzie Inuit¶s 1909ii conversion seemed remarkably quick and brought competing
explanations. Ethnologist and religious cynic Vilhjalmur Stefansson ascribed it to fashion, like a new
style of hats, spreading east along the coast; missionaries, to the flowering of seeds gently tended. iii But
the road to baptism was in fact quite slow, and took fifty years of contact between Inuit and clerics. This
article describes their first meeting at far-away Fort Simpson, the events (local and remote) that brought it
about, the link between trade and missioniv, and the fate of some of the players. As held true at other
mission and fur-trade settings, the staging in 1859 was that of theatre-in-the-round, with actors addressing
both each other and the distant audiences that prescribed their lines. v

Ê   





 



 
 

The Hudson¶s Bay Company in the mid-1850s entered a worrisome era, as an ending loomed to
its monopoly in two immense terrains: the Rupert¶s Land charter would expire in 1870 and the Northwest
Territory licence, very soon. The latter, issued in 1821, and valid for under twenty years, had once been
renewed, but free trade was in vogue when the Company asked to have it renewed again. Signalling
doubt, parliament in 1857 subjected the HBC to hearings by a special committee in London.
Strong critique at that venue came from residents of the Red River Settlementvi (later Winnipeg),
part of Rupert¶s Land and strictly controlled by the HBC. Here its staff lived out retirement, many
families had farms, and Anglicans and Catholics each had a bishop. As private business grew, people
chafed under HBC rule, and demanded repeal of its charter.
To reach that goal the Company¶s enemiesvii claimed it had failed its obligations by blocking
missions and refusing to spread the Word of God, and that therefore the charter was null. They also, in
somewhat of a contradiction, accused it of helping the Catholic cause more than the Anglican, and could
back that charge by pointing to the Territory. In 1857 It held no Anglican cleric, while Roman priests,
Oblates of Mary Immaculate, had been present six years and had visited as far north as Great Slave Lake.
ë
 It was there the next year, at Fort Resolution, that Father Henri Grollier arrived to build a
permanent mission. viii A driven man, nasty even to Oblates, he had already asked permission from HBC
Governor Sir George Simpson to descend the Mackenzie River, but a late response almost let an Anglican
cleric do it first.

Ê   
  


About the time that Father Grollier reached Fort Resolution, the Rev. James Hunter, a fervent
evangelical, took a sixteen-month leave from his parish in the Red River Settlement. Hi reasons were
several and some he could not state, but it was a time of social turmoil and one gets a sense he needed
escape²a period of rejuvenation.
During his early career at an isolated fur-trade postix Hunter had formed warm ties with HBC staff
and married a daughter of Chief Factor Donald Ross and his wife Maria, one of the most senior couples in
the fur trade.x So he felt the stress as the Company¶s charter was challenged and its licence put at risk. To
complicate matters, rebellion against it was preached by the Rev. Griffith Corbett, a prickly local
colleague and member of the high branch of the Anglican church. So strong was the latter¶s hatred of the
HBC he had testified against it the previous year at the parliamentary hearings. xi
Ambition, too, nudged Hunter¶s break. Already an archdeacon,xii he was a likely candidate for the
post of his ageing bishopxiii, and one way to raise the chance was to blaze a new path for missions. The
rationale he gave in public, however, and in which he fiercely believed, was to battle Rome, whose priests
had gone far north and were about to enter the Mackenzie. His plan to ³push right through them´ meant
long absence from home (a fourth child was just born), but he yearned to plant the cross among the Inuit.
(1857, 1858a-c)
Hunter¶s intended route played into whites¶ fascination with the Arcticxiv, as he would follow the
steps of naval officer Sir John Franklin, who had in 1826 explored the coast via the Mackenzie. His
ventures were widely known, and even more so at midcentury were those of parties trying to find him
after he and his ships disappeared while looking for the Northwest Passage. All the world wondered what
had been his fate, and new reports from the searches had recently appeared.
What also brought prestige was the Arctic¶s meaning to Christians, for to them the last phrase of
Jesus¶ Great Commission, ³unto the end of the world,´ was an order to tell of God at the globe¶s most
distant sites. xv An Old Testament text, ³He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river
until the ends of the earth,´ was thought to presage it.xvi
That Hunter¶s prospects were good was shown by a converted Inuk from east of Hudson¶s Bay,
who had recently come to the Settlement and whose gentle ways confirmed his people as the ³easiest´ of

X
tribes to make Christian. xvii Having him along might have helped evangelize the Inuit of the Mackenzie,
but he passed away, supposedly because of the climate. (Hunter 1858a)
The death did not blunt Hunter¶s drive, for he also hoped to convert the Dene, the Mackenzie¶s
Indians, who lived along the river south of the Delta, and who were said to be ³well disposed toward the
gospel.´ Hence his rush to get to Fort Simpson, HBC headquarters for the Mackenzie District, where the
officer in charge, Chief Trader Bernard Rogan Ross, had felt the Oblate threat and invited him to come.
(Hunter 1858b) They were friends from years both had spent at posts further south and besides, they were
kin²their partners were sisters.
In June Hunter left for the ³blessed work´ (1858d) on an HBC brigade (a flotilla of oar-driven
scows, each with a crew of twelve) and months later while passing through Fort Resolution met Father
Grollier. The Oblate had been doing well²in addition to making headway among the Indians, he had
recently sealed the marriage of a mixed-blood womanxviii and an HBC employee, Charles Gaudet.
(Payment) As it pained the priest to see the ³enemy´ advance, he dropped his work and joined Hunter on
the boats to Fort Simpson. (Grollier)
Hunter silently watched as all along the route the ³half-breed´ crews (descendents from fur-trade
men from Quebec, and strongly in favour of the Catholic faith) encouraged Dene to pray with Father
Grollier, accept his blessings, and pin on their clothes the religious medals he handed out. At Fort
Simpson, however, another dynamic took hold. When Dene there embraced the priest, Chief Trader Ross
at once sent him back to Great Slave Lake. (Grollier; Hunter 1858e)
Though Hunter now had the Mackenzie to himself, it brought no advantage, as natives showed no
interest in his teaching, and the mother in law of Charles Gaudet opposed his work. A forceful Métisse,
she spread word that a minister was ³À
  
´ a man linked to a wife, while priests
belonged to God. (Grollier) Her tone that winter may have been extra harsh because Gaudet had left the
Roman Church and joined the Church of England.xix
Career concern likely underlay the young man¶s shift. Recently promoted from labourer status,xx
he was the only Catholic officer in the district, while Chief Trader Ross, an Orangistxxi from Ireland, hated
all that had to do with the pope. The switch was the minister¶s only success,xxii and in July, as Father
Grollier gleefully put it, Hunter left in shame to rejoin his ³dear other half.´
Hunter¶s view of Inuit, still based on hearsay, had by now greatly changed: rather than peaceful
and eager to learn, they thirsted for blood and were deceitful. (1859) Their urge to kill was likely to come
into play, as a Gwich¶in, a member of the Dene tribe adjacent to the Delta, had killed his Inuit wife, and
they had vowed revenge. The minister, as a result, had not gone north beyond the Arctic Circle to Fort
McPherson, where Inuit had only recently begun to trade. But the threat was overblown, if it existed at all,

’
and may have been fed to the minister by Gwich¶in. Indeed, an HBC clerkxxiii from the fort had just
visited the Inuit and found them ³anxious´ for more contact with whites.


  

Though a fur trade post, Fort Good Hope, had been present on the Lower Mackenzie since 1804,
Inuit had never paid it a visit. What kept them away was fear of the Gwich¶in, who acted as
intermediaries in trade between them and whites, and who killed when that position was threatened.
Though the two tribes pent time together each spring at the southern edge of the Delta, peace was sure to
end if Inuit spoke of wanting to meet the Good Hope clerk or themselves to go to the post. [citations]
While in 1840 HBC boats were on their way to found Fort McPherson, much closer to the Delta
than Good Hope, Gwich¶in massacred many Inuit men, women, and children. (H. Mackenzie) The
message to stay away could not have been more harsh, and was most effective: though the Company had
brought an Inuk from Hudson¶s Bay to help with translation, he had nothing to do. Removed to Fort
Simpson, his services were again offered to the clerk at McPherson in 1843, who refused them: ³I shall
not have want of Oulibuck the Esquimaux¶s future services as we have no intercourse whatever with that
nation.´ (Bell 1843). The man was then sent homexxiv ±quite an irony, given what happened after.
The Inuit had no firearms, and when one or more were shot whenever they approached the post, it
made them think the HBC gave guns to the Gwich¶in kill them [reference?]. It took a series of indirect
contacts via gift-bearing natives (hunters for the fort) to show that whites bore them no ill will and had no
intention of doing them harm. It may have helped whites involved in the Franklin searches traversed the
Delta²the 1848 party of John Richardson and his assistant John Rae, for example, traded with the Inuit
and did not fire when natives swarmed the boats.
Whatever the cause, the Inuit lost their fear of whites, and wished so much to have direct access
to trade goods, they put fear of the Gwich¶in aside. Despite the 1850 treachery of one of the Company¶s
Gwich¶in emissaries and a massacre led by him, xxv several Inuit three years later entered Fort
McPherson, and each spring thereafter a few more appeared.
Those visits, however, were not enough to boost the post¶s profit, which had lagged since the
1847 opening of Fort Yukon across the mountains. xxvi To return to prior levels of business, the clerk
would have to take in large quantities of fur from the coast. Problem was, if Inuit came to Fort McPherson
in number, war with the Gwich¶in was likely to occur. One solution was to place a post deep in the Delta,
but that Chief Trader Ross (1858) would not do without access to good translation.
That interpreters were hard to find seems strange, for (as decades of HBC records show) peace
between Inuit and Gwich¶in lasted longer than conflict, a Gwich¶in chief made an annual trading journey

å
to Inuit terrain, and the tribes lived side by side in spring not only in the Delta but sometimes at locations
further east. xxvii Intermarriage also occurred, so for years they had heard each other speak.
Similarly, some Gwich¶in had long dealt with fur-trade staff (first at Fort Good Hope and then at
Fort McPherson) and knew English well enough to translate between it and the Inuit¶s language. But that
skill, it appears, was lost at strategic times: during meetings of HBC clerks with Inuit in the Delta,
translation could be frustratingly poor.xxviii

U   

To address the issues outlined above, Charles Gaudet, now in charge at Fort McPherson, visited
the Inuit in late 1858. His presence showed that the Company wanted friendly relations, and while he
³enjoyed their hospitality´ he got many pelts. But when he asked for a boy to take south to train as an
interpreter (Ross 1859), the Inuit needed time to reflect.
Inuit families consisted on average of a mother, a father, and two children who by age ten helped
with chores and hunts. Giving one up meant loss of labour now and of security in the future, and besides,
bonds of love were tight (except for orphans and youngsters taken in beyond the infant stage, who might
be worked hard and treated as slaves). xxix So for Inuit to agree to the HBC request, benefits had to be
major.
The following likely happened in winter and spring. The tribe chose to let two children go, but in
return wanted a fur-trade post for themselves, away from the Gwich¶in. Then Gaudet told them their
request would carry more weight if discussed directly with Chief Trader Ross, and arranged for Inuit
leaders to go with him in July to Fort Simpson²an upstream journey of three to four weeks.
Gaudet did not know it, but his scheme nicely fit a command just written by Governor Simpson
(1859), who wanted a fort on the coast built at once. And since there was no interpreter to send in from
Hudson¶s Bay, he instructed that the Inuit receive ³sufficient inducement´ to let some children be raised
among whites. Cost for this and the fort had no limit.
It was a surprising commitment for a man renowned for being tight-fisted, and to understand it
one must look at the difficult spot the HBC was in, and what had brought that about.

Ê  dÊ 
  

When in the 1830s the first expiry of the Territories licence approached, the Company had
banned the sale of alcohol to natives, installed missionaries on the trade route south-west of Hudson¶s
Bay, and sent two officers to explore the Arctic. xxx Large parts of the coast had been defined and new
terrain, later found to be an enormous island, had been named after just-installed Queen Victoria. As a


result the Company¶s governors (George Simpson in North America and another in England) were
knighted and renewal of the licence was smoothed. xxxi
Given that success, exploration of the coast by HBC men had seemed a good tactic prior to asking
for a second renewal in the 1850s, and the search for Franklin made for serendipitous timing. Where
naval ships with large crews and supplies had failed to find him or determine how he died, small parties
living off the land might succeed and boost the Company¶s image. The initiative, however, brought the
opposite of its intent. A first effort, by the officer in charge of the Mackenzie District,xxxii produced
nothing useful and a second, by Chief Factor John Rae, who had been in charge there just before him
(1849-50), brought a public relations disaster.
Travelling alone except for Inuit helpers, Rae learned that the last survivors from Franklin¶s ships
had eaten the flesh of deceased fellow sailors before dying themselves. Rushing to England, he expected
praise for his work, but instead faced anger and disbelief. A campaign to discredit him and the Company
was pushed by Franklin¶s widow and supported by Charles Dickens, who wrote a play, Ê
 ,
to show that British seamen were a heroic lot and could not have done such dreadful acts. Queen Victoria
came to see it and was deeply touched. (McGoogan; Brannan).
The play was on stage in one part of London (with Dickens performing the most dramatic role
and evoking many tears), while in another the parliamentary committee concerning the HBC heard of
high prices for trifles, blindness to native needs, failure to back missions, and payment of ³sops´ to clerics
to stifle complaint. Sir George Simpson, who testified two days and parried eighteen hundred questions,
looked deceitful when he denied cannibalism had ever occurred among starving tribes and a letter was
produced describing that very act by Gwich¶in outside the gates at Fort McPherson. xxxiii Rae made matters
worse by botching his explanation of Company profit, admitting he had never understood its tariff, and
telling that while in charge of the Mackenzie he had ignored an order to lower what was charged for
certain goods.xxxiv
Adding to the damage were recent jeremiads against the HBC, pamphlets from the Aborigines
Protection Society, complaints by naval figures involved in the Franklin search (one of whom blamed the
1850 massacre of Inuit on the HBC), and campaigns against the company by former employees. And
since much of this alluded to the Mackenzie,xxxv it became a focus of committee questions. In the end,
Parliament did not renew the Territories licence, and that did not bode well for the Rupert¶s Land charter,
set to expire eleven years later.

 
  


 To have any hope of extension, the HBC had to regain public favour and raise its repute among
churches. And given what had happened in London, that required exemplary behaviour in the Mackenzie
District, even though it was not part of Rupert¶s Land. The Company had to be seen trading vigorously
with the Inuit (whom outsiders accused it of ignoring), and helping to Christianize both them and other
far-off tribes. So the governor wrote to Chief Trader Ross, ordering him to aid missions as much as he
could.xxxvi
In the same letter, the governor advised that that the Territories licence had not been renewed, so
the Company¶s role was no longer as ruling body, but as ³private individuals.´ Clerics would now be
charged for travel and freight, but that did not mean less assistance²quite the contrary. A new minister,
William Kirkby was on his way north, and was to have free board at Fort Simpson until his house had
been built. And Father Grollier, too, would also be going there: he was to join Ross¶s brigade during its
return journey north, and stay at the fort until a boat left for the lower Mackenzie.
Chief Trader Ross received the letter in July when his brigade reached the Methey Portagexxxvii,
far to the South, to exchange the year¶s furs for supplies and new goods. xxxviii Debarking here was
Archdeacon Hunter, who was going home, and coming aboard was Kirkby, whose role it was to stay in
the Mackenzie district and set up missions.xxxix

  !
Ê 
 
 " 

In 1859, as happened each summer at posts in the Mackenzie District, the clerk¶s departure was
timed so as to reach Fort Simpson just as the Chief Trader with his brigade returned from the Methye
Portage. Ross with the Reverend Kirkby and Father Grollier aboard arrived on August 14, and Gaudet
from Fort McPherson the next day. What made for excitement was the presence on the latter¶s boat of
Tiktik (a chief) and four other Inuit: a man, a woman, their boy, and Attingarek, variously referred to as
being nine or ten years old, who had come without her parents.xl
The crowd ashorexli was thrilled by the Inuit¶s height, intelligence, good nature, exotic dress, and
³remarkably fine´ looks. (Kirkby, 1859a) The children could easily pass for Europeans. xlii Kirkby
marvelled at so quickly seeing people from the coast. ³Here,´ he wrote in his journal, ³is a new tribe to
the Redeemer. May his glorious Kingdom be speedily established among them.´
The Mackenzie Inuit could not be gathered on farms (then a mainstay of mission tactics among
southern natives), but spent large parts of the year in permanent driftwood villages, which were ³all so
many facilities to the progress of the Gospel.´ (1859i) Already Chief Trader Ross had invited him to the
fort to be built near those sites. Father Grollier, who had asked to go, would not be allowed.

Î
 Shortly after, Ross met the Inuit in the mess room, packed with observers, and told them he
would place a fort wherever they wished. But he needed an interpreter and asked that the boy and girl be
left with the minister for training. When the men agreed, Kirkby ³lept with joy.´
At the session¶s end the chief trader was about to hand out gifts when he had Kirkby do it instead,
as that would forge a link between cleric and future converts. (Kirkby 1859b) Next morning, a Sunday,
the Inuit came to worship in the same crowded space, standing and kneelingxliii as if they had been doing
it for years (one wonders who coached them). Never had Kirkby so strongly felt ³the gracious assistance´
of God.xliv
On Monday in Kirkby¶s room the visitors left nothing untouched. A clock and umbrella intrigued
them most, but they were not content just to look. Wanting goods to take home, they made signs for
knives, scissors, and needles, and Kirkby took them to the store and purchased it all. Then, with the aid of
a translator, a Gwich¶in who had come on the boat from Fort McPherson, he spoke at length of salvation,
intent on making them ³fully understand it and feel it, so as to carry it back to their countrymen.´( 1859c)
That shows either that the Gwich¶in could translate very well, or that the minister had no idea how few of
his words were getting through ²a common feature of nascent missions.
By Tuesday the men and the boy wore European suits, the girl a dress and bonnet newly made by
the tailor. But Kirkby (1859d) was aghast, for Father Grollier had hung a crucifix from the neck of each,
explained it was ³the child of the sun ´ and promised that if worn constantly (like the amulets on their
own clothes) it would protect them. Gaudet threw the crosses to the ground while raising a hand ³as if in
horror and disgust,´ later explaining this would prevent such items from ever again being accepted.
Not until Friday, when the Inuit boarded Gaudet¶s boat, did the boy realize he was to stay. Then
he wailed so loudly and clung to his mother so tightly that, to Kirkby¶s distress (1859e), she relented and
took him along. Only Attingarek, without parents to appeal to, was left behind.
At Fort McPherson weeks later a large group of Inuit met the boat, and when the delegates told of
their excellent treatment, many offered to go the next year. Yet matters related to Attingarek caused
conflict, for Chief Trader Ross had sent her father a present, which another Inuk wanted as well. At some
point, it turned out, the girl had been given away by her family, and the adoptive father thought the gift
should go to him, as he was taking the greater loss. When a fight was about to erupt, Gaudet (1860)
wisely proposed the item be shared, to which the men agreed.

·


Meanwhile Attingarek, ³the poor little Eskimo girl,´ stayed dull and withdrawn for weeks.
(Kirkby 1859f). The only one to comfort her was a Gwich¶in boyxlv, an orphan from Fort McPherson who

º
spoke her language. Also acquainted with her tongue was a Gwich¶in womanxlvi at the fort, and it was
with her that Attingarek stayed. Each day she and others went to the Rev. Kirkby¶s school, and as they
gained skill in saying letters and body parts, she cheered up. Smart as the rest, she turned out ³perfectly
happy and anxious to learn.´ (Kirkby 1859g-h)
Sometime that winter, when the wife of Chief Trader Ross had a baby, she took Attingarek in as a
nurse and found her a ³good, intelligent, and obedient girl´ who learned with ease and exactly followed
instructions. The only problem was her new helper¶s ³unmanageable´ name, so she replaced it with that
of her own mother, Maria Ross. (Healy 1923)xlvii
The change was formalized in March 1860 when the chief trader ordered a start on a post for the
Inuit. It was not, however, in the Delta near Tiktik¶s people, but to the east on the Anderson River, on a
site he thought would serve both the tribe at its mouth and the one at the Mackenzie Delta. Not realizing
how far from her people that would be, Kirkby quickly baptized Attingarek so HBC staff at the new post
could tell her young friends.xlviii Baptizing the Loucheux boy as well, he turned rapturous in his wish for a
good outcome: ³Oh, that they may prove as first fruits of an abundant harvest that shall yet be gathered
into the heavenly garrison from their respective tribes.´ Kirkby (1860j-k) The wording was sure to please
the Church Mission Society in London, the agency that had sent him.
In addition to this break with her culture, Attingarek was denied the chance to meet again with
one of her fathers, an Inuit chief, who in 1861 at Fort McPherson told Gaudet he wanted to see her. But
permission for him to go by Company boat was several times delayed (Gaudet 1861, 1862; Ross 1861b)
and in the end no reunion took place. xlix
Despite the hope raised by Tiktik¶s stay at Fort Simpson, the Rev. Kirkby did not contact the
Inuit, and it was by chance that three years later he met a group near the Delta.l Writing up the encounter
for the Smithsonian Institute, he claimed their good looks reflected high intellect, and backed it up by
telling of Attingarek. From knowing no English when she came under his wing, she now spoke and wrote
it well. (Kirkby 1865). That fine result, however, brought no help in evangelizing her people.
Youngsters in the North became sexually active when still children by today¶s standard, and
whites took very young brides. As Franklin noted in the 1820s, ³The girls at the forts . . . are frequently
wives at 12 years of age, and mothers at 14,´ (Van Kirk, 101) and that is what happened to Attingarek.
Mrs. Ross had come to depend on her so much and got along with her so well, she had hoped to take her
along with the family on a journey to England, but her husband refused because thirty-three-year-old
William Brass, one of his traders, wanted her for a wife. (Healey, 1923). The marriage occurred when she
was thirteen and carrying Brass¶s child, and was likely performed ƒÀ  during Kirkby¶s
absence
i.e. viaa signed HBC contract.

c
 The missionary¶s report of Maria¶s new status ( ³as far as earthly things go she has a comfortable
home for her future life´) failed to hide his dismay. What made it hard to take was that the newlyweds
had been sent to a post far south of the treeline. li Yet something good might still happen, for if plans came
through to transfer Brass to Fort McPherson, his new partner could ³tell her poor countrymen something
of Jesus.´(Kirkby, 1862) None of that came about.

#

Governor Simpson did not live to see the outcome of his policy toward missions. He had long
suffered a form of spells (Hargrave), and at the parliamentary hearings his memory failed badly on
several occasions. lii In 1859 he declared he would soon resign, and early the next year passed away
(Galbraith) while paralyzed from a stroke or multiple seizures.
Next to leave this world was Father Grollier. Shortly after meeting Tiktik and his group he
founded a mission far downstream at Fort Good Hopeliii, and from there made journeys to Fort
McPherson to meet the Inuit. Shortness of breath felled him in 1864 at age thirty-eight. (Carrière) He had
never entered the Delta, yet Catholic histories tell how he realized his ideal, which was ³to take the cross
all the way to the Pole.´(Champagne 121) The line paraphrases his last words, inscribed on his grave:
³Jesus, I die content, for your standard has been raised unto the ends of the earth.´liv
Similar words marked Canada¶s founding three years later. When plans emerged to name it a
kingdom and the United States balked, the solution (a dominion) was found in a Bible text that, as we
saw, served as basis for missions: ³He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river until
the ends of the earth.´ lv Given that heady mix of national pride with Christian triumphalism, as well as
colonists¶ pressure for soil,lvi the HBC recognized its charter would not be renewed, and after negotiating
gave up its rights in 1870.
Charles Gaudet was promoted from postmaster to clerk in 1863. That same year he moved to
Good Hope, where his only white companions were priests who spoke French, lvii the language of his
youth in Montreal. Soon he reverted to the Catholic faith,‘lviii and kept it a secret for a decade. (Payment 5)
The conversion did not stall his receiving, in 1878, the title of chief trader, but it came without change in
work, and he was never in charge of the district.lix He ran the Good Hope post nearly five decades.
Archdeacon Hunter¶s Mackenzie journey did not lead to his becoming the next bishop of the
Northwest. In 1862 at the Red River Settlement he had to deal with a scandal involving Rev. Corbett, the
missionarylx who had testified against the HBC at the 1857 hearings. Medically trained, he had repeatedly
tried to abort the foetus after making his servant girl pregnant. Much nastiness followed and contributed

cc
to Hunter being denied the episcopal post. Returning overseas, he became a renowned London preacher.
(Peel)
In 1881 Maria Ross Brass (i.e. Attingarek) and her husband lived at Fort Nelson lxiand had six
surviving children, the youngest age three. lxii At one point the couple had sought an Anglican minister to
provide schooling, but an Oblate priest at another postlxiii talked them into letting a Catholic one come
instead. [ref.?] When Brass retired to southern Manitoba, Maria went with him, and it was there, at St.
Andrews (the former parish of the Reverends Hunter and Kirkby in what used to be the Red River
Settlement), that she died on Jan. 20, 1897 and was buried beside the church. (Brownlee)
For decades nothing came of missions to the Mackenzie Inuit. Some years clerics met them in
spring at Fort McPherson, and on occasion stayed in their homes in the Delta, yet scandal, mental illness,
low funds, lack of drive, fear of violence, or some other issue always negated those efforts.lxiv That is not
to say this explains the failure to gain converts²it may be that no matter how strong the churches¶
efforts, the Inuit were not yet ready to change belief.
The same might be said of extraction, the process of taking ³heathens´ to an established white
site, teaching them Bible truths and the evangelizers¶ language, and then sending them home to spread
their new faith. After Attingarek other youths from the coast stayed at HBC forts from time to timelxv, but
as far as one can tell from surface events, exposure to divines and later contact with their own people
never helped the Christian cause.
Tiktik¶s people found little use for the fort on the Anderson River, which was too far away and
did not fit their annual spring migration south through the Mackenzie Delta. When it opened Chief Trader
Ross (1861a) wrote to Governor Simpson, not knowing he was dead, that it would bring ³an important
and lucrative trade, ´ but instead it took in few furs and led only to loss (Dallas 1863). Abandoned five
years after construction, it was burnt down by Inuit for the nails.lxvi
It would be understandable if Tiktik felt bitter about his journey far south on the Mackenzie, for
despite Attingarek¶s remaining with whites, no fort had been built where he had asked. In 1871, in
response to yet another promise that one would soon go up, his tribe withheld their furs in
anticipation.(Hardisty 1871a, b)
When that time, too, the HBC reneged, and chose instead to send Gaudet into the Delta with a
boat from Good Hope, the Inuit attacked it, seized the fur he had collected and threw it overboard. The
Company as a result abandoned what had been meant to be an annual affair. (Hardisty 1872a, b). Promise
of a fort for the Delta was again made from time to time, especially after American whalers in 1889
started trading nearby, but it all came to naught.

cë
 Nowhere is it recorded whether Tiktik was with those who those who assaulted Gaudet¶s boat,
but the next spring he was at Fort McPherson (PRJ 1873), where it seems he was well known and
probably visited each year. There may have been times, however, when danger kept him on the coast, as
he played a central part in a feud that brought many murders. (Stefansson 1916)
Also causing demise was epidemic illness. When it claimed Tiktik¶s wife in late 1885, she was
brought to Fort McPherson and lay frozen in the warehouse beside three Gwich¶in. (PRJ 1885) That she
was taken there for eventual burial, rather than left above ground, was perhaps a first a first sign of
willingness to adopt Christian rites. It did not, however, point to a receptive attitude to the teachings of
two young clerics, Father Camille Lefebvre and Anglican cleric Isaac Stringer, who began competing for
their allegiance seven years later.
Details of the two men¶s faiths, let alone conflicts in dogma, eluded the Inuit, but they were much
aware of a difference in tone. The priest¶s hell-fire words soon led to his exclusion from the Inuit¶s homes
in the Delta, while Stringer¶s calm approach won friendship and respect. lxvii
Initially based at Fort McPherson, Stringer moved in 1897 to Herschel Island off the Yukon
coast, which the whalers had left for points further east. Living with wife and children in the Pacific
Steam Whaling Company¶s main building, lxviii he managed its depot for whaling ships and its trading post
for natives, and simultaneously conducted his Christian work. As during Tiktik¶s visit to Fort Simpson
forty years earlier, commerce and evangelization were closely tied. Yet neither that nor Stringer¶s
engaging persona brought converts. Only after another near-decade of mission, and that by a far less
popular clericlxix, did acceptance of Jesus took place.
We don¶t know when Tiktik died, but around the time he lost his wife he had a new daughter,
Sukayak (the fast one), perhaps the offspring of a junior woman in his household. lxx She worked for the
Stringers in 1901, sewing beautiful caribou coats in which they were photographed in the fall on
returning to the South, and in which years later they were received by the king and queen in Britain.lxxi
Just after the century¶s turn Sukayak and her husband survived an epidemic that killed eighty of
the two hundred in their tribe, and on a summer tour in 1909 Stringer (now a bishop based in the southern
Yukon)lxxii held ³a hearty service,´ with many present, in their tent.lxxiii During that trip a few adults were
baptized, and by 1912 most of the Inuit in the region, including several hundred who had moved there
from Alaska, had joined the Anglican Church.
The Christian path of each²confirmation, marriage, etc.²can easily be traced from Anglican
records, including that of a second Tiktik, who in 1914 was one of a group who volunteered to tell of
Jesus to people far east along on the coast. lxxiv In the same way that Europeans had taken the gospel to the
Delta, these new converts felt compelled to take it to the end of their world. It could not happen just yet,

cX
as foul weather stopped their advance and ruined the boat supplied by the mission, so it took other people
and efforts. But in time the Great Commission¶s final phrase was (in its geographic sense) fully effected.

c’
· 
"  
· 
 


American Museum of Natural History, New York
R. M. Anderson photos (Anderson-Stefansson Expedition)
Anglican Church of Canada.
General Synod Archives, Toronto (Stringer Papers)
Public Archives of Alberta (Register of Baptisms etc.)
Dartmouth College Library
Stefansson Papers.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online DCBO
Hudson¶s Bay Company HBC or Company
Hudson¶s Bay Company Archives HBCA
Fort Simpson correspondence books.
Fort Good Hope post journal.
Peel¶s River post (i.e. Fort McPherson) journal. PRJ
National Archives of Canada NAC
Church Mission Society Papers. CMS at NAC
R. M. Anderson 1910 photos.
Oblates of Mary Immaculate Archives, Rome
E. Petitot correspondence.
Old Dartmouth Historical Society
Whaling records.
Questions and answers by number at the parliamentary
committee hearings concerning the HBC, 1857. Q+A
Π  
 

 
All correspondence is cited by year-day-month. Fort McPherson on the Peel was for most of the
nineteenth century referred to as ³Peels River post,´ or simply ³Peels River,´ nearly always without the
apostrophe. For the sake of clarity, Fort McPherson is used in the body of this article.

 
Anglican Church of Canada. Dioceses of the Mackenzie and Yukon.

1909-26 Registers of Eskimo Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, and Death 1909±26. Public
Archives of Alberta 70.387.

cå
Aborigines Protection Society.

1856 Canada West and the Hudson's Bay Company: A Political and Humane Question of Vital
Importance to the Honour of Great Britain, to the Prosperity of Canada, and to the
Existence of the Native Tribes, being an Address to the Right Honorable Henry
Labouchère, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies.
London. Pamphlet. Web. Canadiana.org

Alunik, Ishmael, Eddie D. Kolausok, and David Morrison.

2003 · Ê
ÊÊ

À
 
· 
 Raincoast Books; U. of

Washington P.m Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Anderson, James

1852a to Governor, 1852, 01, 07. HBCA B200/b/29

1852b to Augustus Peers, 1852, 25, 08. HBCA B200/b/29

Anderson, R.M.

1910 Photo album. NAC. PA 187698.

1910 Amer. Mus. of Natural History, New York. Anderson-Stefannson Expedition. Anderson
Photos. Filing No. 57.2 (98). Photo 16997, June 16, 1910.

Armstrong, Alexander.

1857 A Personal Narrative of the Discovery of the Northwest Passage. London. 1857.

Ballantyne, Robert M.

1848 Hudson's Bay; or, Every-Day Life in the the Wilds of North-America. Edinburgh and
London,1848. Web. Canadiana.org.

Barr, William

2002 From Barrow to Boothia: The Arctic Journal of Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease, 1836-
1839. McGill-Queen¶s University Press.

Bell, John

c
 1826 to Edward Smith and Peter Dease, 1826, 21, 08. HBCA B200/b/3

1830 to Smith, 1830, 08, 08. HBCA B200/b/3

1831a to Smith, 1831, 31, 01. HBCA B200/b/6

1831b to Smith, 1831, 09, 08. HBCA B200/b/7

1832 to Smith, 1832, 31, 01. HBCA B200/b/7

1841 to Lewes, 1841, 04, 07. HBCA B200/b/14

1843 to Lewes, 1843, 03, 04. HBCA B200/6/16.

1850 to Governor (from Fort Simpson), 1850, n.d., fall. HBCA B200/b/25.

Bodfish, Capt. Hartson H.

1936 á



À. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1936. Entry for 1895, 04, 06.

Boreski, Thomas G.

2000 ³Griffith Owen Corbett.´ Web. á
. 2011/01/01.

Brannan, Robert Louis.

1966 Under the Management of Charles Dickens: His Production of ³The Frozen Deep.´ New
York: Cornell UP.

Breton, P. E.

1963 

 
· 
. Edmonton: Editions de L'Hermitage.

Brisebois, Charles

1825 to Edouard Smith, 1825, 07, 01. HBCA B200/b/1

Brownlee, John

2011 Personal Communication.

Burch, Ernest S.

c
 1994 ³The Inupiat and the christianization of Arctic Alaska.´ 0

 18.1-2: 81-
108.

Carrière, Gaston

1977 Pierre-Henri Grollier. Dictionnaire Biographique des Oblats de Marie Immaculée au

Canada, vol. 2, U. of Ottawa, 114-115.

2010 Pierre-Henri Grollier. Web. DCBO. 2010, 12, 10.

Coates, Ken S.

1991 Best Left As Indians: Native-White Relations in the Yukon Territory. McGill-Queen's
UP.

Coates, Kenneth.

1987 ³The Commerce of Discovery: The Hudson's Bay Company and the Simpson and Dease
Expedition.´
0À

 
· 

Ê

·À
á  
á·
À
À· Calgary, V 8-10. Quoted in Coates 1991.

Champagne , Joseph Etienne

1949 Les Missions Catholiques dans l¶Ouest Canadien, 1818-1875. Ottawa: L¶Institut de
Missiologie de l¶Université Pontificale d¶Ottawa. 

Choquette, Robert

1995 The Oblate Assault on Canada's Northwest. Ottawa: U. of Ottawa P.

Cooper, Barry.

1988 Alexander Kennedy Isbister: A Respectable Critic of the Honourable Company. Ottawa:
Carleton UP.

Dallas, A. G.

1861 to W.L Hardisty, 1863, 22, 05. HBCA 200/b/34

David, Robert G.

2000 The Arctic in the British Imagination 1818-1914. Manchester: Manchester UP.
cÎ
Duchaussois O.M.I., Pierre.

1937 
 Ê
·À 

. Buffalo: Missionary Oblates of Mary

Immaculate.

Fitzgerald, James Edward

1849 An Examination of the Charter and Proceedings of the Hudson's Bay Company, With
Reference to the Grant of Vancouver's Island. London. Web. Canadiana.org. [check]

Galbraith, John S.

2000 ³Sir George Simpson.´ DCBO. 2007, 11, 12.

Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on the Hudson¶s Bay Company.

1858 Report from the Select Committee together with the proceedings of the committee,
minutes of evidence, appendix, and index. London. Canadiana.org. 2008, 02, 10.

Gaudet, Charles

1860 to William Kirkby, 1860 n.d. (received at Fort Simpson 1860, 19, 03 when Kirkby
transcribed it into his journal, q.v.)

1861 to Bernard Rogan Ross, 1861, 02, 02. HBCA B200/b/34

1862 to Ross, 1862, 09, 02. HBCA B200/b/34.

Grollier, Révérend Père.

1858 ³Missions Etrangères: Vicariat du Mackenzie, Souvenirs: récit inédit d'un voyage du R.
P. Grollier au Fort Simpson en 1858.´ 

Àá





À
 À. March 1886, 409-19.

Hardisty

1871a to Andrew Flett at Peel¶s River, 1871, 10, 03. HBCA B200/39/vol. 1

1871b to governor, 1871, 30, 11. HBCA B200/39/vol. 1

1872a to Donald A. Smith, 1872, 28, 02. HBCA B200/39/vol. 1

cº
 1872b to Donald A. Smith, 1872, 02, 12. HBCA B200/39/vol. 1

Hargrave, Letitia

[Date?] to [I must fill in name and date], in McLeod, *

Healey, W.J.

1923 Women of Red River: Being a Book Written from the Recollections of Women from the
Red River Era. Winnipeg: Women¶s Canadian Club, 1923. Web.

Hooper, Lieut. W. H.

1853 Ten Months Among the The Tents of the Tuski, With Incidents of an Arctic Boat
Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, As Far As the Mackenzie River and Cape
Bathurst. London: John Murray (AMS Press, New York, 1976).

Hudson¶s Bay Company, Fort Good Hope journal.

1822-1834. HBCA, B/80/a/1-12.

Hudson¶s Bay Company, Peel¶s River [i.e. Fort McPherson] journal (PRJ). HBCA.

1873 1873, 05, 06.

1885 1885, 04, 11.

Hunter, James

1857 to CMS 1857, 04, 11. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858a to CMS, 1858, 11, 02. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858b to CMS, 1858, 09, 04. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858c to CMS, 1858, 11, 05. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858d Journal, 1858, 08, 06. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858e Journal, 1858, 11, 08. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.

1858f Journal, 1858, 16, 08. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A91.
ë
 1859 to CMS, 1858, 30, 11. NAC MG17-B2, CMS Reel A80

    

1846 A few Words on the Hudson's Bay Company; with a Statement of the Grievances of the
Native an Half-Caste Indians, Addressed to the British Government through their
Delegates now in London. London. Pamphlet. Web. Canadiana.org

Kirkby, William West

1859a Journal, 1859, 15, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859b Journal, 1859, 20, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859c Journal, 1859, 22, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859d Journal, 1859, 23, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859e Journal, 1859, 26, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859f Journal, 1859, 27, 08. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859g Journal, 1859, 08, 09. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859h Journal, 1859, 09, 09. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1859i Journal, 1859, 10, 11. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1860a Journal, 1860, 19, 03. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1860b Journal, 1860, 25, 03. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1862 to CMS, 1862, 29, 11. NAC MG17 B2, CMS Reel A93.

1865 ³A Journey to the Youcan Russian America.´ 




·À

19: 416-20.

Lewes, John

1842 to Governor Simpson, 1842, 07, 09. HBCA B200/b/16.

ëc
 1843 to Governor Simpson, 1843,30, 07. HBCA B200/b/19.

Levasseur, Donat

1995 Les Oblats de Marie-Immaculée dans le Grand Nord du Canada 1845-1967. Edmonton:
Western Canadian Publisher.

Lewes, John

1842 to Governor, 1842, 09, 07. HBCA B200/b/16.

Mackenzie, Alexander

1855 to Gntlm. in Charge, 1855, 10, 12. HBCA B200/b/32.

Mackenzie, Hector

1840 to R. McLeod, 1840, 28, 07. HBCA B200/b/17.

McCarthy, Martha

1995 


0 
0
. Edmonton: U. of Alberta P.

McGhee, Robert.

1988 Beluga Hunters: An archeologic reconstruction of the history and culture of the
Mackenzie Delta Kittegaryumiut. Hull: Can. Mus. of Civilization. (Original edition 1974:
U. of Newfoundland).

McGoogan, Ken.

2005 Lady Franklin¶s Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession, and the Remaking of
Arctic History. Toronto: Harper-Collins, 2005.

MacLeod, Margarett Arnett, ed.

1947 Ê
* *

 . Ed. Margaret Arnett MacLeod. Toronto: The Champlain
Society, 1947. [I must find the date of letter with comment about G. Simpson¶s spells]

McLean, John and W. Stewart Wallace

1932 John McLean's Notes of a Twenty-Five Year's Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory.
Toronto: Champlain Society (reproduction of the 1849 original).
ëë
McPherson, Murdo

1840 to J. Bell, 1840, 02, 06. HBCA B200/b/12.

Morton, Desmond

2001 ·

 á. Toronto: McLelland.

Nuligak, [Robert]

1966 
À
!. Maurice Métayer, transl. and ed. Toronto: Martin.

Owram, Doug

1992 "
 0Ê
á
0 


 


#$%&
#'(( Toronto: U of Toronto P (first issue in 1980; 1992 version has new introduction).

Palssen, Gisli

2001. Writing on Ice: The Ethnographic Notebooks of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Hanover:

New England UP.

Payment, Diane

2003 ³Marie Fisher Gaudet (1813-1914): µla Providence du fort Good Hope.¶" 0 À 
 2
:1-14. Web. 2009, 03, 12.

Peel, Bruce.

2000 ³James Hunter.´ á
. Web. 2007, 12, 04.

Peers, Augustus (Peel¶s River journal entries)

1849 1849, 04, 07. Peel¶s River House. Journals kept by Angus [sic] R. Peers. NAC MG19,
D12, Reel H2341.

1852 1852, 31, 08. NAC source as above.

Petitot, Emile

1865 to Oblate Director General L. Fabre in Rome, 1865, 21, 03. Oblate Archives, Rome.

Porter, Sophie E.

ëX
 1895 o À
1895, 04, 06. Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Roll 1010, frame
362-422. Catalog # 1080.

Porter, Andrew

1985 ³µCommerce and Christianity¶: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-Century

Missionary Slogan.´ Ê


ÀoÀ 28.3: 597-621.

Rae, John
1851 to Sir George Simpson, 1851, 04, 23. In Rich,  á , 174-175. Web.

Rasmussen. Knud
1924 Ê
 !
0!

 ) "
Ed. H. Osterman.
Copenhagen: Gyldenhalske Boghandel, 1942.

Rich, Edwin Ernest and A. M. Johnson.

1953 Rae's Correspndence with the Hudson's bay Company on Arctic Exploration 1844-1855.
Hudson's Bay Record Society. Web.

1828 "Dr. Richardson's Narrative of the Proceedings of the Eastern Detachment of the
Expedition."in Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the
Years 1825, 1826, and 1827. London: J. Murray, 1828. 193-202. 1971 reprint, ed. M. G.
Hurtig, Edmonton.

1851 Arctic Searching Expedition: A Journal of a Boat-Voyage Through Rupert's Land and the
Arctic Sea in Search of the Discovery Ships Under Command of Sir John Franklin.
London. Greenman Press, New York, 1969, Vol. 1, 214-15.

Ross, Bernard Rogan

1858 to HBC governor 1858, 29, 11. HBCA B200/b/33

1859 to HBC governor 1859, 26, 03. HBCA B200/b/33

1861a to HBC governor 1861, 20, 03. HBCA B200/b/33

1861b to Charles Gaudet, 1861, 26, 03. HBCA B200/b/33.

Simpson, George
ë’
 1854 to James Anderson, 1854, 10, 11. HBCA B200/c/1

1859 to Bernard R. Ross 1859, 15, 06. HBCA B200/b/34.

Simpson, Thomas

1845 Narrative of the Discoveries of the North Coast of America: Effected by the Officers of
the Hudson's Bay Company During the Years 1836-9. London: Richard Bentley, 102.

Smith, Edward

1826 to Governor, 1826, 29, 11. HBCA B200/b/3

1830a to John Bell, 1830, n.d., 10. HBCA B200/b/6

1830b to Governor, 1830, 28, 11. HBCA B200/b/6

1831 to Governor, 1831, 03, 06. HBCA B200/b/7.

Stanley, Brian

1983 ³µCommerce and Christianity¶: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the
Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842-1860." Ê


ÀoÀ 26.1: 71-94.

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur

1906 Diary, 1906, 17, 02. (Palssen 122).

1907 Diary, 1907, 05, 02. (Stefansson 1914, 180).

1912 Diary, 1912, 18, 04. (Stefansson, 1914, 380-1; missing from Palssen).

1914 Ê
 ·· 
0 

 
·
"À



 Anthropological Papers of the Amer. Mus. of Natural History, XIV, part 1.

1916 Diary, 1916, 29, 02. Typed transcript. Dartmouth College Library Stef. MSS 98 (5): V-9.

Stringer, Isaac.

[Date?] Journal. ACCT, M74-3, Stringer Family Fond,Series 1-B, Box 5.

Stringer, Sarah Ann

ëå
 [date?] Journal. ACCT, M74-3, Stringer family fonds, Series 2-C, Box 14.

Vanast, Walter

2006 ³ µ


¶: A Sexual History of Missions to the Mackenzie Inuit.´
Unpublished article.

2007 ³The Bad Side to The Good Story: Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Christian Conversion in
the Mackenzie Delta 1906-1925.´ À

Ê
À 26: 77-116.

2011 ³Oblate Defeat. Father Camille Lefebvre, Reverend Isaac Stringer and the Competition
for Mackenzie Inuit allegiance: 1892-1894 . Primary data from diaries and
correspondence.´ Web. [reference not yet entered in body of text]

Van Kirk, Sylvia

1983 ÊÊ
. University of Oklahoma Press.

i
These words open an address by Zarathustra¶s animals during his convalescence: ³Everything goeth,
everything returneth; eternity rolleth the wheel of existence. Everything dieth, everything blossometh
forth again; eternally runneth the wheel of existence. Everything breaketh, everything is integrated anew;
eternally buildeth itself the house of existence. All things separate, all things again greet one another;
eternally true to itself remaineth the ring of existence. Every moment beginneth existence, around every
ball Here rolleth the ball There. The middle is everywhere. Crooked is the path of eternity.´

ii
Until the late nineteenth century only Inuit from the Delta¶s eastern side came each spring to its southern
tip, and it is they who are the actors in this account. Whites in the 1890s sometimes refer to them as
Kukpugmiut, i.e. people of the large water, a name the tribe applied to itself. Some modern authors name
them as just one of several original Eastern Delta groups, which include the Kittegaryumiut (McGhee 9).
For an excellent, well illustrated history of the Inuvialuit see Alunik et al.¶s · Ê
Ê.

iii
For the debate see ³The Bad Side to the Good Story´ by W. Vanast, whose work came after Ernest S.
Burch¶s outstanding study of rapid conversion on the Alaska coast.

iv
For Britons¶ providential view of the conjuncture of Christianity and commerce see A. Porter. Stanley
tells why it was expected to reach complete ³consummation´ between 1857 and 1860 and why that failed.

v
I must add the references for the theater in the round concept
ë
vi
Settlement hereafter.

vii
Via their spokesman, Alexander Kennedy Isbister.

viii
For early Oblate work in the Territories see Levasseur ch. 5, ³Jusq¶au Grand Nord.´

ix
Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan.

x
For many years Donald Ross was in charge of Norway House, a major HBC transport hub and depot. He
died in xxxx, his wife Maria in xxxx.

xi
Griffith Owen Corbett, of the high wing of the Anglican Church.

xii
Archdeacon since 1853, Hunter was secretary of Northwest missions for the Church Mission Society.
In 1855 after study in England he gained A Lambert M.A. from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

xiii
Xxxx Anderson.

xiv
See David, Ê
· 
(an almost impenetrable academic tome) for details of Britons¶ obsession with
the Arctic.

xv
The Great Commission, KJV Matthew 28:18-20, ³All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you alway, even unto the end of the world.´ The New Century Version translates the last words as ³the
end of this age." For British fascination with the Arctic see the turgid volume by David.

xvi
Psalms 72:8, KJV. The idea for this line comes from Martha McCarthy¶s 



0 
0

a superbly researched, fluid account of Mackenzie Dene missions.

xvii
Hunter (1857) had years earlier heard these kind comments about Inuit of the Hudson¶s Bay region
from HBC surgeon Dr. John Rae and was unaware of his harsh view of Mackenzie Inuit, met during his
1848 Franklin search expedition with John Richardson.

xviii
Xxxx-Marie Fisher.

xix
³Mr. Gaudet was last year admitted into the Church of England by Archdn. Hunter.´ (Kirkby 1859b)

ë
xx
Gaudet was then postmaster, the lowest officer rank. The next levels are clerk, chief trader, and chief
factor. In this article, unless stated otherwise, chief trader designates both the title and the responsibility
for the district.

xxi
An Orangist: a member of the Orange Order, or Orange Lodge, founded in 1796 by Irish Protestants at
a time of intense sectarian strife. The name refers to William of Orange, the Dutch prince who became
King of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and who two years later
defeated Catholic James II in Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne. (Wikipedia).

xxii
A few Dene joined the Anglican faith, but only briefly.

xxiii
James Lockhart, whose report was not transcribed into the Fort Simpson correspondence book, but
paraphrased in a letter by Ross (1858).

xxiv
Oulibuck . He had been with Dease and Simpson during their late-1830s explorations along the coast,
starting in from the Mackenzie. He spent the 1840-41 trade year at McPherson (McPherson 1840) , where
his wife and two children joined him. In 1841 he was sent to Fort Simpson (Bell 1841), where he stayed
the next two years (Lewes 1842). When in 1843 the chief trader offered to send him back to McPherson,
the clerk there did not accept: ³I shall not have want of Oulibuck the Esquimaux¶s future services as we
have no intercourse whatever with that nation.´ (Bell 1843) In July 1843 the family left the Mackenzie
with the annual brigade and were sent on to Norway House, from which they made their way home.
(Lewes 1843).

xxv
At Point Separation in 1850.

xxvi
Fort Yukon.

xxvii
Early in the century, when Fort Good Hope belonged to the Northwest Company, Gwich¶in profited
from war with Inuit, for then, as in 1817 and 1819 when Peter Dease was in charge, they received gifts
from the post to end it.(Simpson 102) For conflict and contact between the tribes after 1821 see the Good
Hope Journal (1822, 16, 10, HBCA B80/a/1; 1826, 22, 06 and 1826, 08, 09, B80/a/5; 1828, 20, 09,
B80/a/7; 1829, 20, 06 and 1829, 21, 07, B80/a/8; 1830, 22, 06, B80/a/9; 1834, 23, 06 and 1834, 23, 08
and 1834, 14, 09, B80/a/12) and the Fort Simpson correspondence books: Brisebois 1825, Bell 1826,
1829, 1830, 1831a and b; Smith 1826, 1830a and b, 1831, 1832. In general, conflict emerged if Inuit
wished to meet whites or were about to do so. In 1840 Gwich¶in massacred a dozen Inuit men, as well as
women and children when the Peel¶s River post, near the Delta, was about to open (H. Mackenzie). A few
ëÎ
years later they shot Inuit entering the Peel (Richardson 214-15), and Inuit as a result thought whites gave
Gwich¶in guns to kill them (Peers 1849). In 1850, when Inuit met an HBC boat near the Peel, Gwich¶in
ensured they would not get invited to Fort McPherson: ³The Indians first traded all the bows and arrows
of their foes then crept into the surrounding bushes and deli1berately shot them´ (Bell 1850).

xxviii
For translation problems see J. Anderson 1852a and b; A. Mackenzie 1855; Ross 1858 and 1859.

xxix
See Nuligak¶s tale (13, 30, 32, 54, 58, 120, 127) of his 1890-1910 youth as ³a poor orphan. ´

xxx
Peter Dease and Thomas Simpson. William Barr gives an exquisite introduction to his edition of
Dease¶s diary during the 1836-9 explorations.

xxxi
See Fitzgerald for sarcastic 1849 comments (119-120) on the HBC¶s tactics prior to the licence
renewal. Coates has discussed the self-serving aspects of the HBC¶s 1836-39 Dease and Simpson
explorations.

xxxii
James Anderson, to whom Gov. Simpson¶s instructions ended with the line ³I rely on you sparing no
effort to distinguish yourselves by success and so to secure for the Honourable Company and their [sic]
officers the approbation of Her Majesty¶s Government and the English public´ (1854)

xxxiii
On being read an account by William Kennedy of cannibalism in Labrador, Simpson had insisted
(Q+A 1558-1564) that famine was ³never´ severe enough to bring such ends. The letter read to him (Q+A
1606-7) re Peel¶s River was from John Ballantyne¶s 1848 adventure book   . A former HBC
clerk, Ballantyne had not been to the Mackenzie, but had a friend in the district. Besides, when he left the
Northwest he traveled to Montreal with HBC foe John MacLean, author of a work highly critical of the
HBC.

xxxiv
All Rae¶s testimony: Q+A 365-696; not understanding the tariff: 482-484; not lowering prices: 532.

xxxv
The Company¶s sins were painted as bad treatment of natives and failure to aid missions. The latter
charge related to its enemies¶ claims that the Mackenzie could support agriculture²which meant natives
could change from a nomadic life to farming, thought essential to conversion. James E. Fitzgerald¶s 1849
jeremiad against the HBC commented (119-20) on the Mackenzie¶s fine weather and soil, even at Peel¶s
River. General Sir John Lefroy, an expert on magnetic force, who had passed 1843-44 in the Mackenzie
District, denied at the hearings (Q+A 158-364) that farming there could support colonists, yet on a final
note (Q+A 361) mentioned he had shared the HBC boats with domestic cattle, which were kept at several

ëº
posts. John McLean, who denigrated the HBC in his 1849 book, had assisted the trader-in-charge at Fort
Simpson in 1843-44, and was in command at Fort Resolution in 1844-45 (the first year it was part of the
Mackenzie District), after which, faced with lack of promotion, he quit the HBC and became its opponent.
Endless charges came from Alexander Isbister, former HBC apprentice at Fort Simpson in 1839-40 and at
Peel¶s River in 1840-41, who spoke in London for disgruntled citizens of the Red River Settlement,
spearheaded a written assault on the company¶s rights, concocted an 1856 tract against it (Aborigines
Protection Society), and testified at length at the 1857 hearings. ( Q+A 2392-2598 and 6072-6098). See
Cooper for an irritating, ostentatious, theory-soaked hagiography of him. Thomas Kennedy, Isbister¶s
young uncle, after leaving the HBC led searches for Franklin sponsored by the latter¶s widow, whipped
up opposition in Upper Canada to the Company¶s monopoly, and spoke to Toronto businessmen about the
Mackenzie¶s wasted riches (Aborigines Protection Society). Like Fitzgerald, he had not been in that
district and likely got his information from McLean and Isbister. Naval Lieutenant W. H. Hooper told in
1853 (366-74) of an HBC man¶s part in a massacre of Inuit by Gwich¶in. Naval Surgeon Armstrong 1857
(155, 167, 198) praised the Inuit and pointed out that clergy had done good work among them on the
Labrador coast, yet none could be found on the Arctic Coast.

xxxvi
By aiding Rome, it is true, the HBC might offend evangelicals, but it had other power groups
(including Catholics in Lower Canada) to consider. To show an even hand, the Company fostered comity
by helping Anglicans set up at certain posts, Catholics, at others. It was not a policy that could last.

xxxvii
Also known as Portage La Loche, or the Grand Portage, twelve miles long, in what is now northern
Saskatchewan.

xxxviii
The Mackenzie¶s trade year went from late June one year to late June the next.

xxxix
Kirkby had with him John Hope, a young mixed-blood teacher from the Settlement, where he was a
recent graduate of the St. John¶s Academy, which had Anglican staff.

xl
Kirkby journal, CMS reel A93, NAC. The girl¶s age: 1859, 08, 09; the rest of the paragraph, 1859, 15,
08. Tiktik¶s name, 1860, 19, 03.

xli
Over a hundred people were present, including crews of boats from most district posts to pick up
goods, and those of the chief trader¶s brigade (who spent winter at the Mackenzie¶s Big Island).

xlii
One might postulate this had something to do with sailors¶ contact with Inuit during the searches for
Franklin). Sir John Richardson had passed through the Delta¶s Eastern Channel in 1848 and had close
X
contact with its people, and overt descriptions of sex between sailors and native women by other parties
off the coast (though further west) were put to paper in subsequent years . In 1849 an orgy on the ice by
the Alaska Coast (while Lieutenant Pullen, the officer in charge was briefly absent) was indulged in by
his subordinate and nearly all the men, and was halted when a sudden break in the ice ³caused a number
of very ludicrous exposes.´ And when the ship "À wintered near the Behring Strait that year, the
captain ³kept an Esquimaux girl in his cabin for purposes that were but too evident.´ Officers and crew
followed the example. (Rae, 1851) Numerous others undoubtedly occurred, but were not recorded. That
young Mackenzie Inuit girls were beautiful and sexually desirable, however, was not something recent.
Richardson had also come through the Eastern Delta in 1826, when he was Franklin¶s second-in-
command, and reported in euphemistic terms how the ³females´ had given his party ³glances that could
scarcely be misconstrued,´ and that ³young girls had a considerable share of beauty.´ (Richardson, 1828).
In the 1850s the beauty of Inuit women had not escaped HBC men who had gone far north on the
Mackenzie and Anderson Rivers. They in turn mentioned it to missionaries Hunter and Kirkby, who
repeated it almost with longing in their journals (they were both at the time far away from their wives)
[citation]

xliii
The evangelical or ³lower´ branch of the Anglican Church included kneeling in its liturgy.

xliv
At the service¶s end, Kirkby thanked HBC staff for their ³noble efforts´ to erect a church.

xlv
³William Flett²8 years old, speaks Loucheux and Eskimo. He is from Peel¶s River, a pure Indian, and
unbaptized though called by the above name.´ (Kirkby 1859g)

xlvi
She was the wife of James Flett, who had been at La Pierre¶s House, a subsidiary to Peel¶s River west
of the Mackenzie Mountains. The couple and their children had come south on the same boat as the Inuit.
The husband had no relationship to the orphan boy.

xlvii
Maria was also the name of the young daughter of her own sister, the wife of Archdeacon Hunter.
The girl had passed away just before he returned home from the North in the summer of 1859Mrs. Ross
did not know it, but she was engaging in a practice distantly similar to that of the Mackenzie Inuit, who
gave the name-spirit of a recently deceased relative to a newborn.

xlviii
Baptism of natives in that era involved assigning a European name, often one from the Bible, and
only rarely did ministers choose one of liking to the Catholic Church, such as the name of Jesus¶ mother,
to whom Rome gave what Protestants thought idolatrous praise. That was all the more so since the pope

Xc
had recently proclaimed the doctrine of Mary¶s immaculate conception. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate
had pushed for the doctrine in Rome.

xlix
Perhaps it was feared that since no fort had been built in the Delta, the man would insist on taking
Attingarek home, or that he wanted more gain. But it may have been a matter of true affection.

l
Kirkby was en route from Fort Simpson to the Yukon.

li
Fort Halkett, on the Liard.

lii
For Simpson¶s testimony see Q+A 702-2125, Feb. 26 and 27, 1857.

liii
The first Fort Good Hope, opened in 1805, was located on the Mackenzie a few days¶ travel from the
Delta; in the late 1820s it was moved a week¶s travel upstream to just south of the Arctic Circle.

liv
The inscription is from Grollier¶s grave at Fort Good Hope: ³o 

o

À*+   
À´ (Choquette photograph, 58). The same quotation appears on
the title page of a 1937 history of northern missions, 
 , by French Oblate Pierre
Duchaussois, who held a doctorate in literature. Its original version, · À "À
, published in
Paris, won him membership in the Académie Française. The wording in the English volume: ³Oh my
Jesus, I die happy, since I have seen the Sacred Standard of Thy Cross lifted up at the very ends of the
earth.´

lv
Leonard Tilley, government leader in New Brunswick, suggested the text. (Morton 97-98)

lvi
See Owram¶s informative "
 0 about the West¶s appeal to farmers and politicians.

lvii
Father Grollier until his death in 1864, Father Jean Séguin starting in 1861, and Father Emile Petitot,
from 1864 on. Also present was Oblate religious brother J. P. Kearney, for whom Grollier¶s imperious
ways were a cross to bear. Séguin and Kearney stayed half a century, as did Gaudet. Breton¶s 1963
hagiography of Kearney shows a photo of a nasty-looking Grollier (opp. p. 16) and one of Charles Gaudet
and his family with the comment ³staunch friends of the missionaries ´ (opp. p. 80). The book softens
Grollier¶s deathbed words (p. 53) so as not to imply he reached the pole: ³I die happy now that your
standard is raised here at the ends of the world.´

lviii
Petitot to Oblate Director General Joseph Fabre in Rome, Mar. 21, 1865, Oblate Archives, Rome

lix
HBCA personnel sheet. HBCA. Web. http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/biographical
Xë
lx
Griffin Owen Corbett belonged to the high Anglican Church (another reason for his not getting along
with Hunter). In addition to stoking Red River¶s populace against the HBC, he testified to its anti-mission
stance at the 1857 hearings (Q+A 2656-2888, p. 150-169 ). A fine précis of his twisted personality and
bizarre ecclesiastic path tells that the local bishop called him ³a most dangerous man.´ (Boreski).

lxi
On the Liard west of Fort Simpson,in what is now British Columbia, the fort was part of the Mackenzie
District.

lxii
The 1881 Canadian census lists  cÎ
 c  c’
  c  Î  X
Maria¶s ethnic origin was given as ³Esquimaux,´ but in later years in other documents as Indian and
Métis (the former is not unusual given that some whites until early the next century referred to Inuit as
Esquimaux Indians). Maria¶s daughter Margaret was the great-grandmother of John Brownlee, now living
in Edmonton, who saw early drafts of this article on the web, and realized that Attingarek (known to him
only as Maria Ross) provided a last link in a story he had chased for decades. In return, he kindly offered
details he had found of her time at Fort Simpson (such as her employ as servant by the chief trader¶s wife)
and of her later life. In his youth Brownlee¶s nearest relatives denied they carried native blood, then
considered a shame²but he followed a hunch and doggedly traced through the decades. He and his
family proudly bear their Métis status.

lxiii
Fort Liard.

lxiv
A conclusion based on my transcription of Oblate and Anglican correspondence related to the
Mackenzie Inuit from 1860 through 1890 and written up in as yet unpublished articles such as ³µ
 

 : a sexual history of missions to the Mackenzie Inuit.´ The  was the Oblates¶
way of referring to Rev. Robert McDonald¶s fathering in the 1860s of a child by the Peel¶s River HBC
trader¶s wife²which required him to stay away for several years in the Yukon. Later Anglican
missionaries include McDonald¶s brother Kenneth, who left because of his own sexual scandal, Wm.
Carpenter Bompas, who stopped his Inuit work when made bishop, and Thomas H. Canham, who disliked
McDonald and feared Inuit violence and so arranged in the 1880s to get moved from Ft. McPherson west
across the mountains. The Catholic clerics were Jean Séguin, superior at Good Hope, and one his priests,
Emile Petitot. Séguin made a long visit to the Delta Inuit¶s homes and wished to return, but was not
allowed by the Oblate hierarchy. Petitot was never able to control his homosexual appetites and suffered
with paranoid schizophrenia that quickly cut short all four of his stays with the Delta Inuit; his experience

XX
of them may be far less than his writings tell. He did the same with Yukon Gwich¶in²after visiting them
he told stories that required his knowing the language when in fact (as Séguin pointed out) he did not.

lxv
The main examples are three males: George Greenland (Arveuna), David Copperfield, and Kalukotok.

lxvi
³I visited the Kogmollit [at sandspit between Baillie I. and Cape Bathurst]... Long talk in my tent with
Naoyniak, Taligoak, and Izyatooagzyook... They used to visit Fort Anderson. They tell how some of the
natives burnt the buildings after they were deserted to get at the nails´ I. Stringer journal, 1900, 08, 08.

lxvii
These comments are based on my transcription of the diaries and correspondence by and about the
two men in church and HBC archives.

lxviii
Formerly a pool hall for sailors and quarters for the Pacific Whaling Company¶s on-shore captain.

lxix
Charles E. Whittaker.

lxx
For Sukayak and her husband Ivitkoona (and a prior one accidentally shot by a whaler) see Sophie
Porter, 1895, 04, 06. Bodfish 124. Isaac Stringer 1895, 14-15, 08; 1897, 13, 05; 1898, 01 and 09, 01;
1898, 26, 11; 1900, 05, 03; 1900, 20, 07; 1901, 08-18, 04; 1909, 27, 07. Sadie Stringer 1901, 08-18, 04.
Stefansson 1906, 1907, 1912. R. M. Anderson June 1910, photos #162, 176, and 180. Anglican church
registers 1910, 05, 08; 1921, 01, 01; 1925, 13, 07. Nuligak 86. Rasmussen 44 (in 1924 at Igdluk).

lxxi
The fame the royal visit brought, as well as stories about his time in the Arctic, helped make Stringer
Archbishop of Rupert¶s Land, one of the Anglican Church in Canada¶s most senior positions.

lxxii
Though bishop of the Yukon (then called the Diocese of Selkirk) Stringer acted as commissary for the
Diocese of the Mackenzie, which often had either no bishop or a weak one who preferred to leave visits to
the coast to Stringer.,

lxxiii
At Nalugogiak

lxxiv
For this second Tiktik, or Tyiktik, as whites also spelled it, see Isaac Stringer diary, 1898, 20, 11;
1899, 31, 01; 1899, 01 and 02, 02; 1900, 20, 07; 1909, 30, 07; 1912, 12, 07 (when the offer to go east to
the Copper Inuit occurred), and 1927, 25 and 26, 07; Stefansson, 1907, 1916; Nuligak, 91; Anglican
Church registers, baptism #64-5, 1910; marriage #32, 1910, 06, 08; baptism #219 of Tiktik¶s daughter,
1912, 10, 07; her marriage, 1912, 12, 07; baptism #270, of Tiktik¶s son Mark, 1913, 11, 01; Tiktik
married again, 1922, 01, 01; Tiktik confirmed, 1925, 29. 06.

X’