Iligliuk, female cartographer extraordinaire

In 1821, William Edward Parry, in command of the Fury, and George Francis Lyon, commanding the Hecla, set sail from England in search of a Northwest Passage through Foxe Basin, a northward arm of Hudson Bay.

In early February of the following year, Inuit visited them on board the ships which were wintering at the appropriately named Winter Island near Repulse Bay (now Naujaat).

Parry and party spent much of the rest of the winter studying the Inuktitut language and learning from Inuit about their land.

Iligliuk’s map, drawn for William Edward Parry in 1822. (Illustration from William Edward Parry, journal of a second voyage for their discovery of a North-West Passage, John Murray, 1824)

On Feb. 7, Parry met a remarkable woman, Iligliuk. She and her husband Okotook — whom Parry described as “a fine active manly fellow” — became regular visitors to the ships.

Iligliuk “favoured us with a song, struck us as having a remarkably soft voice, an excellent ear, and a great fondness for singing, for there was scarcely any stopping her when she had once begun,” he wrote.

Parry thought she was of superior intelligence, saying that “almost every day now she began to display some symptom of that superiority of understanding for which she was so remarkably distinguished.”

The women, especially Iligliuk, loved to hear the men of the ship entertain them with the music of their violins and flutes and, of course, singing.

For fun, the men added some of the Inuit names and their own names into the songs.

Parry observed, “I feared several of them, and especially Iligliuk, would have gone into fits with delight.”

Iligliuk was also in demand as a seamstress and performed her tasks with “superior neatness and cleanliness.”

In March, Parry began questioning the Inuit about the coastline to the north. He laid out a large sheet of paper and drew roughly the “conformation of the land in this neighbourhood.”

Then he asked Iligliuk to continue it northward.

“She readily understood our meaning,” he wrote, and drew several indentations on the coast and added several islands, including one called Amitioke, where she said she was born.

Iligliuk drew her chart in pencil, showing the land trending north-eastward, and she gave the names of places as she drew. The scale was large, so Parry had to tack on another piece of paper until “at length she had filled 10 or 12 sheets.”

The first attempts at map-making left much to be desired.

Parry said, “Our first inquiries did not produce any very satisfactory information… and… it was not till long after this time that we were enabled duly to appreciate the geographical knowledge which they possessed.”

Other Inuit also produced charts, but “no two charts much resembled each other, and … the greater number of them still less resembled the truth in those parts of the coast with which we were well acquainted. The only one deserving further notice… was drawn by Iligliuk for Capt. Lyon.”

Still, on inspecting the chart, it was found to be still wanting.

No doubt, the problem was one of relative scale. Iligliuk would have drawn the areas she was most familiar with in considerable detail and on a larger scale than areas further afield.

Parry had an idea: “It occurred to me to attempt the thing with Iligliuk on a smaller scale, such as might enable her to keep in view at the same time every part of the coast to be delineated.”

So Parry or a member of his crew “delineated the usual portion of the coast,” then asked Iligliuk to complete the rest “and to do it mikkee (small).”

Parry wrote that she did so “with a countenance of the most grave attention and peculiar intelligence.”

All eyes were upon her as she drew the coast beyond her own country to be lying nearly north of Winter Island, instead of east as her previous attempts had shown.

But, wrote Parry, “the most important part still remained … Never were the tracings of a pencil watched with more solicitude.”

Iligliuk “brought the continental coast short round to the westward, and afterwards to the S.S.W., so as to come within three or four days’ journey of Repulse Bay.”

This map proved, to Parry’s satisfaction, that Melville Peninsula was indeed a peninsula and not an island, and that the strait delineated by Iligliuk — which he named Fury and Hecla Strait, after his ships — might mark a passage westward, a possible northwest passage.

Iligliuk was rewarded well by Parry and Lyon, both of whom respected her greatly. She was always freely admitted to the ships and the quartermasters at the gangway referred to her as “the wise woman.”

She acted as a trusted intermediary between the Qallunaat and Inuit.

“Information was chiefly obtained through her,” wrote Parry, “and she thus found herself rising into a degree of consequence to which, but for us, she could never have attained.”

But it was too good to last.

Parry explained, “The consequence was that Iligliuk was soon spoiled; considered her admission into the ships and most of the cabins no longer as an indulgence but a right; ceased to return the slightest acknowledgment for any kindness or presents; became listless and inattentive in unravelling the meaning of our questions, and careless whether her answers conveyed the information we desired.”

George Lyon devoted less space in his published writings to Iligliuk, whose name he spelled Iligliak. He commented on her musical ability, saying she “appeared to have a very accurate ear.”

He summed up her cartographic skills thus: “In a chart of Iligliak’s… she connected the land, from our winter quarters to the N.W. sea, rounding and terminating the northern extremity of this part of America, by a large island, and a strait of sufficient magnitude to afford a safe passage for the ships. This little North-West Passage set us all castle-building, and we already fancied the worst part of our voyage over.”

As it turned out, though, Fury and Hecla Strait proved impractical as a northwest passage. Neither explorers’ ships passed through the strait.

Iligliuk’s fame reached England where John Barrow, the influential Second Secretary of the Admiralty, remarked on “the superior intellectual faculties of that extraordinary woman Iligliuk” and called her map-making abilities “astounding.”

Even the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge mentioned her in verse, although with yet another spelling of her name, alongside Barrow:

“Captain Parry! Captain Parry! /Thou hast had the Devil’s luck/Spite the gifted Secretary/And the charms of Eligluck.”

Eventually, Iligliuk’s name was commemorated on a point of land just south of Hall Beach.

In the 1990s, the Government of Northwest Territories wrote to the community councils in Igloolik and Hall Beach to verify certain place names — among them Iligliuk Point.

The councils responded that the name was meaningless to them and suggested it be renamed Tiriqquq (“corner”).

This is in keeping with Inuit place-naming practices which usually avoid naming geographical features after people. And there the name Tiriqquq remains today on Inuit Heritage Trust’s map 47A, the area of Amittuq.

That “extraordinary woman Iligliuk” is no longer remembered in her homeland.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for more than 50 years. He is the author of “Minik: The New York Eskimo” and “Thou Shalt Do No Murder,” among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.