A song about syllabics

Traditionally, Inuit often settled disputes through song contests, events in which one party would sometimes mercilessly deride in verse the shortcomings and vices of another.

These were verbal duels in which each tried to outdo the other. They were often accompanied by fisticuffs.

These songs were tersely sung, expressed almost in a kind of abbreviated form to a local audience familiar with the language and the speaking and singing styles of the participants.

Local geographic references were all understood by the audience, as were the names of family and village members and their relationships to each other.

The audience also would be quite familiar with the events described, including personal mistakes and shortcomings of the participants. To an outsider, if one were present at all, these details were often impenetrable, and some explanation was required before the meaning became clear.

Among the inland Inuit, the so-called Caribou Eskimos of the Kivalliq region, two men were famous song rivals almost a century ago.

Utahaania, who generally lived at Qamanerjuaq near the great lake Hikoligjuaq, was one participant. His rival Kanaihuaq lived nearby.

When Kanaihuaq exposed Utahaania’s sexual indiscretions with close relatives for all to hear, Utahaania retaliated by relating how Kanaihuaq and his wife had come to blows in a fight in which the wife thoroughly thrashed her husband.

Utahaania then went on to sing another song in which he made fun of Kanaihuaq’s ability to write in the new syllabic orthography.

Kanaihuaq had learned to write what his opponent described as the “sign alphabet of the missionaries.”

Perhaps he had been to Chesterfield Inlet, where Father Turquetil had established a mission some years before and taught the skill of writing to Inuit who visited his post.

Or perhaps he had visited the whalers who had frequented the coast in years past. Some coastal Inuit had learned writing from them, or from the Baffin Island Inuit whom the whalers periodically recruited to accompany them to the Kivalliq coast.

With syllabics being so easy to learn, it was passed on from one Inuk to another, so that one was able to learn the system without even meeting a white man.

By whatever means, Kanaihuaq had become proficient in writing. Utahaania didn’t like this. He thought that his rival was putting on airs, that he was “making up to the white man in a snobbish fashion.”

And that he now thought of himself as a great man, a chief, “One who thinks for others and can order his neighbours about.”

And so Utahaania decided to lampoon his rival in the traditional manner, through song. The song, sung of course in Inuktitut, is given here in English translation.

                Ivmaiya – ayai

                Is there any sort of reason

                Aya,

                Why the Lord of the White Men

                Should pay heed to your words?

                Ivmaiya,

                Is he to put any trust in your words

                Because you and you Tupialaaq

                Drove him up to those

                Who dwell to the east of us?

                And yet all the same he listened to you

                (and thought you were wise)

                Because you could write down speaking signs

                With “writing hand,”

                And make your speech

                Like that of a chieftain.

                And now I sing

                Just to be nasty,

                A song such as that a bird sings

                With its beak

                Here in the qaggje.

Kanaihuaq’s response, unfortunately, was not recorded.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder, among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.