Eskimo Murder Wave

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 118, 21 May 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

Eskimo Murder Wave

THE finest thing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ever did in the Arctic was to fight—and crush—an Eskimo murder wave. Years of effort, of heroism, of patience, were necessary to win that victory. Even the Force, though at home on the wildest frontier, and trained to face and defeat great odds, might well have shirked the battle. When they began it, only the fringes of that huge wilderness, rolling from the Circle through the Arctic Islands to the Pole, were known, and even these had been probed by only a few intrepid explorers and pioneer police patrols. The only means of travel available to the Force were canoe or steamer in the short summer, dog train in winter. There were no telegraphe, no telephones and, till tlie worst was over, no radio or wire.less. Prfore headquarters could get an answer to even an urgent dispatch addressed to a Far Northern detachment, it often had to wait at least a year. But "it • had to he done"—or where would be order and lawT. For the Eskimos, with high-powered rifles newly-acquired from traders—and no idea of what human life is worth —were killing whites or one another everywhere and murder was running wild in the North, with nothing whatever to stop it. So aa it had to be done, it was done—a truly wonderful achievement. Two Tales Come Out of the Mists

Two Minister stories drifting out of the Arctic mists on the wings of the Polar wind first stirred Canada to action, launched the Force's anti-murder campaign. Radford and Street, welllcnown northern adventurers, had squabbled with' their natives in Bathurst Inlet, the icy heart of the uncivilised Arctic, inhabited by many Eskimos who harl never Been a white man. And the natives, with some provocation, "nad speared them to death. That was first story. The other, from Corofiation Gulf, near the Inlet, was told to the Force on the Mackenzie by a frightened Dog Ri6 Indian. Fathers Rouvier and Leroux, missionaries in the Gulf area, had been murdered thereabouts, by Eskimos. The Dog Rib whispered grim details—of looted cabins and an Eskimo sporting a blood-stained cassock, with a hole over the heart. The first story reached the Mounted Police in 1913, the second in 1914. Stupendous plar.s were made by Colonel A. Bowen Perry, then commanding the Force, to meet the situation. Inspector Peter Beyts, a northern veteran, tall, strong and popular, was ordered, with three comrades, to take ship from Halifax to Chesterfield Inlet, push west to Baker Lake, thence march across the Barrens with dogs and sleds to Bathurst Inlet. Inspector C. D.*La Nauze, another northern veteran, still youthfully fond of travel, was given two constables nnd instructed to proceed from Fort Norman to Dease Bay by water, thence peek the missing priests even as far as the Polar Sea. Corporal W. V. Bruce at the same time was to pntrol from Fort MacPherson along the Arctic coast. One thousand dreary, desolate miles— as far as from London to Warsaw— divided Beyts' true base, Chesterfield Inlet, from La Nauze's Fort Norman. The law's gigantic hand was to 3pread Jljde its fingers—those little patrols— 'S®®, close them on its quarry across a wilderness as big as six Englands. fl<l^« a ( l l Ze n! ri, ! tered near oW Fort Con*nd Simpson wWI/o ex P'°. rer9 Dease comlhir'fa Q ueen Victoria was hitched up ncxt «P rin 2 Arctic Ocean to the , » ®et Bruce, who

had collected many clues, font not the murderers. Together, at this point, they began parleying with the natives in their gloomy, stinking igloos. And the end came swiftly. Ilvarnic, the interpreter, eried suddenly : "I have got on the track! These men who murdered the priests—" Sinnisiak and Uluksak— The law had never touched huge and lonely Victoria Land, wherein Sinnisiak was now lurking. But that made no difference. Corporal Bruce soon "dug him out of that," while the inspector himself "picked up" Uluksak. Sinnisiak was a sorcerer and rather objected to the whole upsetting business. I "I'll sink your ship," he blustered, "if you try to take me away." But he did not sink the ship—and they took him away. They took him away, with Uluksak, to Edmonton, a journey requiring 15 more strenuous months, and there the long-haired, open-mouthed prisoners— the strangest pair that ever faced a Canadian judge—were brought to trial. The verdict was "guilty of murder," the sentence "death." These simple Eskimos excited so much pity that this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and at last they were sent home to their wives and seal oil. Beyts all this time was fighting the Arctic at its worst. After wintering in misery, he drove his little schooner through titanic storms in a desperate attempt to advance his base to Bakor Lake—and was checked just short of tl»c goal. Indomitably he took to the boats and pushed on into a blustering head wind. Irresistible seas smashed the tiller of his motor boat, smashed two oars, washed the boathook overboard and almost sank the boat itself. But he laid down his depot—only 40 miles west of the new site of his detachment. Then winter swooped, catching the boats fast in the ice, miles from shore, and all that could be done was to abandon them and return to the detachment. What next? It might be a good thin<* to establish a cache on Tehlon River, for use on the march to Bathurst Inlet. So Beyt* plodded out once more, with Constable P. R. Conway, and three natives, on a heartbreaking 585-mile dog-sled J | patrol. The cold was appalling, storms

The Lan> grero 1000-mile fingers as the fearless "Mounties" ranged Canada's Polar Ivasles leaching the white mans crecd to armed and murderous Eskimos —putting doivn a veritable tidal wave of filling in the Arctic that kneTV no law save—Kill!

ByHarWood Steele

raged continuously, game proved scarce, the famished dogs gobbled tip their harness, six died. And, in the middle of it all the wife of a native helper gave birth to a girl. Yet the cache was placed. Poor Beyts soon afterwards found himself quite worn out. But the Force never dreamed of quitting. Inspector F. H. French, another Arctic veteran, set out, on March 21, 1917, with Sergeant-Major T. B. Caulkin and four Eskimos, to finish the work so well begun on the overland patrol. And eight weeks later, five years after Radford and Street fell spitted with spears, three years after Beyts left Halifax, he came to the frozen Arctic Ocean and the killers he sought. Investigation soon confirmed the stories of provocation, so French made no arrests, but merely gave the natives a good talking to, on white law, as he had been told to do. On October 10, his patrol began its return march across the dreaded Barrens. Supplies shrank. French killed some of his dog« to feed the rest and struggled on —killing more dogs and more dogs and more—leaving behind a trail of clean-picked little bones. For three terrible, haggard weeks he shared his blankets with starvation. Then, miraculously, the patrol met musk oxen and was saved —on Christmas Day—the merriest of their lives. French covered 51">3 miles on this "most hazardous and dangerous journey," as the commissioner called it -the Force's longest patrol—and one of the longest Polar journeys ever made. Canada sat back, smiling. Surely the law had been asserted, the Eskimos taught their lesson! But within two years, in that same old Coronation Gulf, Ahtak murdered his partner, Agluetuk. and, becoming dangerous, was murdered himself. The Force started all over again. A detachment now stood in the Gulf, at Tree River. Staff-Sergeant. S. G. Clay, and his men. in garrison, patrolled thence hundreds of miles in search of

Ahtak. At last, as the spring of 1921 brought back the snow-buntings. Constables E. H. Cornelius and Brockie talked the truth out of the natives of Prince Albert Sound. Then came the test, Olepsekak and Ekootuk, who had killed Ahtak, absolutely refused to surrender. The lives of the two whites —alone at World's End among all those excited, murderous Eskimos —were not worth the skin of a husky pup ; f a false move were made. But they had their teeth in. Smartly they set a killer to catch a killer, induced Uluksak, the reformed murderer of the missing priests, to win over the others. So two months later, Herschel Island, over 1000 miles from Tree River, welcomed the indomitable constables, ploughing in with their prisoners and witnesses. But still the blood-red flashes —fierce northern lights—leaped up devilishly, here, there and everywhere, along the Arctic's dark horizon. At Baker Lake, Ouangwak coveted his neighbour's wife and, to get her, shot her husband, Angalookyouak and Aleccumik, an inconvenient witness. Inspector A. E. O. Reames and Sergeant W. O. Douglas never let go till headquarters closed that file with a satisfied "Case concluded." One-Man Regiment More "woman trouble"—other breaches of the Ninth Commandment, the commonest source of Eskimo violence — called Inspector J. W. Phillips and StaffSergeant A. H. Joy to Belcher Islands to deal with the murder of Ketaushuk and Kookyouk. The killing of Kapolak —another "story of unfaithfulness and ungovernable rage"—was investigated by Cornelius and pronounced, eventually justifiable homicide." Then came a new flash—the killing of Robert Janes, white trader, from a new field, Baffin Inland—and its investigation by StaffSergeant Joy. / The commissioner made a regiment out of this one man —creating him at once a constable, a coroner and a J.P. Landing alone at Ponds Inlet, Joy marched out in December to search for —and find —the trader's grave. Digging up the body, he hauled it 200 miles, back to Ponds Inlet. There he held an inquest, with the entire white population (three traders) for a jury. These brought in verdicts of "murder" and of "aiding and abetting" against certain natives. Next Joy prepared the necessary documents, "as regular," said Commissioner Starnes, "as any taken in the Dominion." And finally, ranging far and wide through storm-hammered Baffin, as calmly as if it were his native Bedford, he gathered the prisoners an<J witnesses together for the trial.

Across these preparations, now. a new light flashed—the gory climax of this long campaign. To Inspector S. T. Wood (destined to command the contingent of the force attending the Coronation) Eskimo wireless brought word of a terrible "shooting affray at Kent Peninsula." Hanak had threatened to kill some of the married men and take their wives for himself. So l'ugnana and Tatamigana plotted to get rid of him. One day Hanak actually ran amok. "That was enougni "When the shivering Arctic silence crept back behind the siding uproar, Hanak and four others lay dead, and soon afterwards Tatamigana turned on Pugnana and persuaded another Eskimo to shoot him. With infinite hard work,' sturdy, bulldog Corporal Doak, of Tree " River, gathered the facts, brought in Tatamigana and Alikoniiak. Alikomiak had frozen his feet, so Doak kindly dressed them and allowed him his liberty. And Alikomiak? Dead to all gratitude, he crept into the room where Doak was sleeping one still white dawn and with one shot killed him. Incidentally lie iater ambushed and tilled the local tradcr*as well. Like a harpooned Polar bear, Canada rose in her roaring might as news of that final outrage reached her. Their lives in their frost-bitten hands, on hazaidous trails, a mere 100 men were sti ugtrliii" to crush murder in a wilderness TaWeT* than Western Europe. If they also were attacked how could anyone sleep safely; Judicial parties made the vast journeys to Aklavik and Ponds Inlet, opened court with every solemnity. The Ponds Inlet trials were the most northerly e\er held in Canada—probably in the world. Xookudlah, who killed Janes, got 10 years in the penitentiary (though when I saw him he was going home "to die of tuberculosis). Ekootook, Olipsckak, Amokuk, Alikomiak and Tatamigana were all charged with murder, and the last two were hanged—in a shed on Herschel Island under the northern stars. How Victory Came at Last

The murder wave was broken. A few more cases—the ghostly Home Bay murders, when a lonely settlement ""ot religion' and went m'ad with bloodlust. till -Neakuteuk, the headman ano chief lunatic, was shot; the killing of Uluksak. who had become unbearably bossy since his trial for the murder of the missiii" pi icsts one by one these and others were dealt with by Joy, Corporal McJnnes, Constable W. B. JLcGre-or and Sergeant F. A. Barnes. Then victory—

Nothing more gloriously symbolises that victory than "The Case of Ookpatowyuk,' first investigated bv StaffSergeant M. Munday and wound up hv Barnes himself. Etergoovnk murdered ns partner, Ookpatowyuk. near Baker 1-tke and fled to the Arctic coast. A year later Rasmussen. the exi.iover reported to Baillie Island detachment that the fugitive was hiding in Adelaide Peninsula, 1000 miles awav and 200 from Baker Lake. Months passed before travel conditions allowed pursuit. Then from points 1000 miles apart, patrols converged on Adelaide Peninsula. In vest i "-at in n- another murder by one Tekack as he°went, Barnes drove his dogs l;!.-» 0 miles to capture Ktcrgooyuk on King William Island and bring him back to Tree River, leaving word for Tekack that lie "would ! conic for liim next winter." Brit Tekack did not wait for Barnes o comcfor him." Instead he came to liarnes, voluntary surrender. The ons hard hght was won. The Eskimos had learned that neither time nor distance saved them when the force "ave chase—it took them in tb» end. ' ° Also Barnes had magnificently demonstrated mounted police supremacy I.n.s cna'f 1 fi V Ca ,' S - s ,' ad l ,as « ol ' since the red Kin e,,0f1 thu Pnows near Kin,. Villain and, only eight years before, the worst tragedy In Arctic hitetory- the, total loss of Franklin's oX had oc n__t T' <hipS and 129 ' !I]] haiKl « -had occurred nere. Now murder was conquered and all nlC n were safe! But that—as I shall show von—by no means meant the end of mounted police adventure!