Taissumani: March 18, 1875 – The death of a daughter

KENN HARPER

A simple headstone guards the neglected grave. The dust and dirt of over a century have settled into its chiselled inscription, making decipherment difficult. Here, in a forgotten cemetery on the outskirts of the old whaling town of Groton, Connecticut, lie the remains of a remarkable girl, the most-travelled Inuit child of her time.

She was born in 1866 in or near Iglulik, the daughter of a man whose name has been recorded as Teeleekum, and his wife, Pukinning. They gave their daughter the name Isigaittuq.

Two years later strangers arrived on Melville Island — an eccentric white man named Charles Francis Hall, accompanied by an Inuit couple from far-off Cumberland Sound, whom Hall called Hannah (her Inuktitut name was Tookoolito) and Joe (whose name was Ipiirvik, which Hall wrote as Ebierbing).

Hall, a printer from Cincinnati, had become obsessed with discovering the fate of the missing British explorer, Sir John Franklin. In 1860, while exploring Frobisher Bay, Hall had met Hannah and Joe, who both spoke English — Hannah more than her husband — as a result of two years they had spent as teenagers living in England. Hall hired the couple as his interpreters and guides and took them back to America two years later. There they suffered their first grievous loss when their infant son, Tarralikitaq — the butterfly — died in New York.

In 1864 Hall embarked on his second expedition in search of the British sailors, this time to the central Canadian Arctic by way of north-western Hudson Bay. At Repulse Bay, Hannah gave birth to her second child, a boy whom Hall named King William, after the island that was the expedition’s destination. The unfortunately-named boy lived only eight months, dying during an arduous sled journey.

Hannah was inconsolable in her loss. So when they met Teeleekum and Pukinning, Hall suggested that Hannah adopt Isigaittuq, now two years old. The mother was willing to part with her daughter, but Teeleekum objected. Hall solved the impasse by buying the little girl, exchanging a sled for her.

Hall took a proprietary interest in this child and named her Sylvia Grinnell, after the daughter of his friend and benefactor, Henry Grinnell, a New York shipping magnate. But Hannah and Joe called her simply Panik — the Inuktitut word for daughter. Hall, whose renditions of Inuktitut words were almost always inaccurate, recorded the name as Punna.

In 1869 Hannah and Joe were happy to be back in Groton. They bought a roomy two-storey house near town for $300. To Panik, who had only lived in snowhouses and tents and the cramped quarters of the whaler, Ansell Gibbs, it seemed a castle. Joe worked as a carpenter, Hannah as a seamstress, making clothes and souvenirs for sale locally. Panik, three years old, made friends easily and went dutifully to Sunday School every week.
In 1871 the family left Groton again, accompanying Hall and a crew of seamen and scientists aboard the Polaris, bound for the North Pole. The expedition ended in tragedy. While the vessel wintered at Thank God Harbor on the Greenland coast, Captain Hall died after a short illness. It is generally believed that he was poisoned by the ship’s doctor. The forlorn little Inuit family walked beside the sled, Hannah and Panik sobbing at their loss, as sailors hauled the body from the ship to shore for its lonely burial.

The following year, after the ship was released from the ice, a terrible storm arose. Expecting the vessel to sink, nineteen people sought refuge on an ice floe. The ship didn’t sink but the party — Hannah, Joe and Panik, a Greenlander Suersak and his family, Captain George Tyson and a number of German sailors — were stranded on the large floe.

Their floating island, initially 450 feet across, was to be their home for the next six months. The Inuit men had their kayaks and hunting equipment with them, and it is a testament to their skill and loyalty that no-one died during their incredible drift.

Starvation was never far away. Tyson’s journal contains many references to Panik. One reads, “Panik, poor child, is often hungry, indeed, all the children often cry with hunger. We give them all that is safe to use. I can do no more, however sorry I may feel for them.” Once Panik sat staring at him and finally remarked, “You are nothing but bone!” Tyson added, “And, indeed, I am not much else.”

Finally, on the last day of April, the hapless party spotted a ship in the distance. Suersak took to his kayak and paddled to her. After a drift of 1,200 miles, they were rescued by a Newfoundland sealer, the Tigress.

Back in Groton, Panik attended classes at North Lane District School. She especially liked arithmetic and, appropriately, geography. But although she was a happy and contented child, she never regained the robust health she had known before the tragic drift on the ice floe and her repeated brushes with death by starvation. Early in 1875 she came down with pneumonia and died on March 18. She was buried in Starr Cemetery, beside Tarralikitaq, the brother she had never known.

The letters on the simply headstone tell, in abbreviated form, the adventurous life of this much-travelled Inuit girl who died before she was nine. If you pull the grass away from the base of the headstone, you can even make out its final words, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Taissumani: A Day in Arctic History recounts a specific event of historic interest, whose anniversary is in the coming week. Kenn Harper is a historian, writer and linguist who lives in Iqaluit. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.