Taissumani, March 5

KENN HARPER

When I moved north and learned Inuktitut, I began to hear elders speak of a legendary qallunaaq who had been an important figure in the whaling days on the east coast of Baffin Island.

Most whalers of the time were given Inuktitut names – like Sivutiksaq (William Duval), or Angakkuq, (George Comer.)

But this man’s name was Jiimi Maatsi, an obvious English name rendered into Inuktitut. Still it took me a while to realize that his real name was Jimmy (really James) Mutch. Everywhere I lived – Arctic Bay, Pangnirtung, Padloping Island, Qikiqtarjuaq and Iqaluit – older people remembered him. In Pond Inlet and Clyde River too, his memory was strong.

Over the years I determined to learn as much as I could about this mysterious man whose career in the Baffin had spanned so many years. It wasn’t easy and, to this day, I’ve never seen a picture of him.

James Shepherd Mutch was born in Boddam, near Peterhead, Scotland, on December 15, 1847. Coming from a poor family, he never had a chance to go to school.

Nevertheless he learned to read and write – he was a self-educated man. As luck would have it, he became a servant in the home of Crawford Noble of Aberdeen, owner of a whaling company that sent ships to the Arctic.

At the age of 18, James Mutch sailed to the High Arctic as third mate aboard the Queen, a vessel whose home port was Peterhead. This first voyage wintered off the coast of Devon Island, giving Mutch his first taste of an Arctic winter. On the way home the following September it put in at Naujaqtalik, a whaling centre in Cumberland Sound.

In 1867, Mutch returned to Cumberland Sound, working for Crawford Noble. Eventually he took over the management of the Kekerten whaling station.

In 1883 the young German anthropologist, Franz Boas, arrived in Cumberland Sound to spend a year studying Inuit culture. He had arranged through Noble that Mutch would assist him to the maximum extent possible.

Mutch was happy to oblige, and Boas could not have hoped for a better introduction to the Inuit of the sound. The winter that Boas spent living at Kekerten, often in Mutch’s house, was Mutch’s 17th winter in the Arctic and he knew the Inuit intimately and spoke their language fluently. (Despite this impressive number of winters, Mutch had visited Scotland occasionally. It was sometimes possible to travel home in the spring on a ship that wintered, and return to the Arctic in the fall to winter again.)

Boas acknowledged his indebtedness to Mutch. He wrote to his fiancée after he had been at Kekerten for only three months, “Mutch is in every way obliging towards me and helps me with his better knowledge of the Eskimo language wherever he can, so I am greatly indebted to him for increasing my knowledge in this regard. Also he has been lending me his dogs for excursions; in short I must be grateful to him in every way.”

Boas left the north in 1884, after only one year. James Mutch remained at Kekerten, but in 1885 he returned to Scotland for a year. While there he married. He and his wife Jessie would have only one child, a girl, Jeannie, born in December 1887.

But Mutch had at least one other child in the Arctic. On one of his sled trips in the sound, Boas met a girl whose name he wrote as Analukulu, who was Mutch’s daughter.

After his marriage Mutch continued to return to the Arctic. While there, he continued to maintain relationships with Inuit women. He returned to Peterhead more often but his career in the Arctic was far from over. Usually he was in Cumberland Sound, sometimes at Kekerten, sometimes at Blacklead Island on the other side of the sound.

By 1903, he had worked for Crawford Noble for almost four decades. But in that year he resigned his post and joined another company, based in Dundee. For his new employers he launched a new venture, a whaling voyage to northern Baffin Island, to Pond’s Bay as the region near present-day Pond Inlet was then known.

Next Week — James Mutch at Pond’s Bay

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.