Who was Albert One-Eye?

The lives of Inuit who served on Arctic expeditions are poorly recorded. Often a name is noted, but the amount of detail that follows is maddeningly meager. One such man was Albert One-Eye, an Inuk born about 1824 on the east coast of James Bay, the so-called Eastmain of the Hudson's Bay Company.

One of the small mysteries that surrounds Albert's short but eventful life is his very name. It was unusual, in those far-off days, for an Inuk to use a surname. And this was an evocative surname, conveying an image of a one-eyed man in the service of explorers.

Yet, in anything written about him by the men he served, there is no reference to any physical handicap. One suspects that he had none, and that "One-Eye" was indeed a quasi-surname – he was probably the son of a man who had lost an eye.

Of Albert's early life, nothing is known. In the summer of 1842, when he was about 18, he was at Rupert House. We know this because Chief Trader Thomas Corcoran of the Hudson's Bay Company arrived there that summer en route to Moose Factory. He took notice of the boy, and thought that the "Esquimaux Boy" as he called him, should see Moose Factory. This would indicate that young Albert had some abilities and that Corcoran thought he could be of use to the company. So on Aug. 2, Albert sailed in the sloop, Speedwell, for the company's main post in the region.

At Moose Factory, Albert entered into a contract with the Hudson's Bay Company to work for them for seven years as an apprentice labourer. His salary would be eight pounds a year for the first two years, rising every two years, to 10 pounds, 12 pounds and finally 15 pounds.

But his duties would not keep him at Moose Factory. The same year he was hired he traveled back to Rupert House with an Indian from the Eastmain – which would indicate that relations between Inuit and Indians were good on that coast at the time – and from there he traveled on to the company's post at Fort George where he and another Inuk named Moses acted as interpreters. This shows that it was the young man's abilities in English which had brought him to the notice of the company's chief trader.

Albert worked in the Rupert River District until early 1848. By then his apprenticeship period was not quite ended, but he was needed elsewhere. The previous year the British Admiralty had sent an expedition, led by Sir John Richardson, to search the Arctic coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers for the missing Franklin expedition. The Admiralty had requested that Albert join the expedition as interpreter and assistant. Albert's abilities as an interpreter must have been widely-known by then, but it was probably through the expedition's second in command, John Rae, that he was brought to the Admiralty's attention.

John Rae was a surgeon and fur trader with the Hudson's Bay Company as well as being an explorer in his own right. He had served the company at Moose Factory for 10 years, starting in 1834, and must have met young Albert when the Inuk was recruited in 1842.

Albert had been a valuable and popular employee of the company at Fort George. John Spencer, the company's trader there, was "exceedingly sorry to part with him." He wrote that Albert was "a nice steady lad, and a favourite with his Tribe."

On March 12, 1848 Albert reached Moose Factory and left shortly thereafter for the far north-west, travelling by way of Michipicoten and Cumberland House. He would never see his homeland again.

From Cumberland House, John Rae wrote a letter on June 13, 1848 to the company's governor, Sir George Simpson. In it he stated that they were taking no hunters with them to the Arctic coast, and would depend on Rae's own hunting ability "and the exertions of our Esquimaux Interpreter," whom he described as "a fine active lad," who would "no doubt prove to be a good deer hunter." The lad he was referring to was Albert One-Eye.

(To be continued next week)

Taissumani recounts a specific event of historic interest. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.