Urpingalik: Poet of the Nattlingmiut

On March 11, 1923, Knud Rasmussen began the trip he had dreamed of for so long. He left Danish Island to head over the top of North America to Alaska, to visit as many Inuit groups as he could, including many with little experience of the Qallunaat culture that would so rapidly encroach on their ways of living. He would be accompanied on the journey by only two Inughuit, the young man Qaavigarsuaq and his female cousin Arnarulunnguaq.

They used two long sleds of the type used by the Aivilingmiut, fitted with peat and ice shoeing, and each drawn by twelve dogs. Each sled carried about 500 kilograms of supplies, two thirds of which was dog food; the rest was tea, coffee, flour, tobacco, goods to trade with Inuit, clothing, guns, and ammunition.

A day earlier, Anarqaaq and Aaqqiuq had left for Repulse Bay with a letter from Rasmussen for the Hudson’s Bay Company manager, George Cleveland, to try to sort out some difficulties between the two. Rasmussen headed first for Repulse Bay where he made peace with Cleveland, then left with his party on March 18, heading northwest across Rae Isthmus.

Helge Bangsted and Anarqaaq, along with Tapaqti, Aua’s son-in-law, would accompany Rasmussen’s party as far as Pelly Bay, transporting additional supplies. Both Anarqaaq and Tapaqti were immigrant Nattilingmiut who had relocated to Repulse Bay and could be expected to know the Nattlingmiut Rasmussen hoped to meet.

While crossing Rae Isthmus, Tapaqti told a story to explain the presence of fossilized sea animals on the land:

Here once lived the giant Inugpasugjuk who used to catch salmon down in a precipitous ravine at the head of Pelly Bay. The ravine is called Kitingujait. Sometimes Inugpasugjuk would go hunting seal by wading out into the sea and killing them with a stick. Once he waded out in Pelly Bay to catch seals, but before this he moved all the people living by the low shores up on to the highest islands in the world. Inugpasugjuk was very eager when hunting, and once he fell; as he slipped he shovelled the water aside with one hand so violently that a wave rose and washed in over the land. This big wave washed shoals of small fish on to the shore; there were sea scorpions, cod, flounders, sand-skippers, sticklebacks, in fact all the small animals of the sea, and when the wave dropped back again, all these fish remained on the land and in time turned to stone. These are the fossils lying about everywhere, and we call them taqqutit, because they are used as wick trimmers for our blubber lamps.

They reached Committee Bay on March 28. There, in a snowstorm, they encountered Inuit.