Urio Etwango visits Dundee

Near the close of the whaling season of 1886, Capt. William Adams put into Durban Harbour, off the coast of Baffin Island, a popular meeting point for Inuit and whalers.

Inuit knew it by the name Kisarvik — the anchorage. It is near Padloping Island, south of present-day Qikiqtarjuaq. 

While there, a group of Inuit asked him to go “40 to 50 miles farther up the country,” where he came across a village of Inuit whom he had never encountered before.

This was probably near the head of Padle Fiord, which provides an overland route to Cumberland Sound.

There he met a young Inuk man of about 25 years, already married and with a baby daughter. He had been employed occasionally by whalers in Cumberland Sound.

The young man asked if he could accompany the captain back to Scotland. Adams, impressed by the Inuk’s intelligence, agreed. 

But Adams put some conditions on the offer: the young Inuk was not to taste intoxicating liquors and he was not to smoke tobacco. 

And so the Maud returned to Dundee with a young Inuk aboard. His “euphonious” name was Urio Etwango.

Whalers habitually mangled the spellings of Inuit names. What was this man’s real name?

Most Inuit only went by one name in those days, although most had many other names in reserve. Urio seems like an unusual first name. I will speculate: perhaps it was a poor spelling of the name Ulaajuq, a common-enough name today, which is similar in sound.

As to the other name, Etwango, I suggest that it was meant to be Etoangat (Ituangat), the name of an elderly man I knew in Pangnirtung, now used as a surname.

Was Urio Etwango an ancestor of the more recent Etuangat? I don’t know, but I see a similarity in their facial features that suggests that it is possible. I will refer to the subject of this story, in what follows, as Etwango.

Etwango was not the first Inuk to visit Dundee. In fact he was the third to be brought by Capt. Adams. And a number of others had preceded them. Still, in those days, it was considered unusual for an Inuk to leave his homeland and cross the Atlantic. The local newspapers made much of his arrival.

They noted that his shipmates said he was an expert hunter and a good sailor, and that he had come to Scotland to receive some education over the winter. 

In early November, a few weeks after his arrival, Etwango gave a demonstration of his kayaking abilities. It was a Saturday afternoon. He appeared at 2 o’clock wearing an outfit of bear and seal skins.

He paddled out from the tidal basin into the river. He wanted to show how he would kill a seal back home — there being no seals, he speared a box at a considerable distance.

He paddled his kayak as far as the Tay Bridge, a large crowd watching his every move. He relished the attention.

At 4 o’clock he went ashore and shook hands with well-wishers. Someone passed a hat and collected money for him to purchase gunpowder and bullets to take back to Baffin Island. Etwango had never seen money before but quickly learned to say “a shilling.” From then on, no matter the coin, he described it as a shilling. 

Etwango was overwhelmed by the sights of Dundee. He quickly learned a little English, and he delighted in speaking Inuktitut for an audience. He “laughed heartily” at “any little pleasantry that was indulged in.” 

His onlookers were interested in the religious beliefs of the Inuk. He mentioned a “Good Spirit” while pointing to the sky, and pointed downward to indicate the “Evil Spirit.”

Capt. Adams explained that “Auld Clootie” — a Scottish term for the Devil — had cloven feet and horns like a deer.

This was certainly a novel description of Sanna (or Sedna) as the all-powerful woman at the bottom of the sea would have been known to Etwango.

When a reporter showed up at the Maud to interview the Inuk, he first got an earful from Capt. Adams who never missed an opportunity to chastise the British government for its neglect of the Inuit:

“As a Briton, I am ashamed to say that the elements of civilization have not found their way to that quarter [Baffin Island]. The poor creatures are unchristianized. Something will have to be done.”  

Then Etwango entered the cabin — he had been out on an errand and returned complaining about the warmth, although it was a bitterly cold fall day.

Acting more like an anthropologist than a reporter, the visitor wrote down the following description of Etwango:

“Height, 4 feet 10 inches; face, yellowish, copper-colour, and flatly oval; hair, black, stiffish; forehead short…; eyes small glittering, and black as ebony; cheek bones high and variegated with red tints; moustache, ugly and not well pruned…; beard too timid for the chin, but will do; shoulders very broad, indicating his strength.”

If the reporter can be believed, and if Capt. Adams’s interpretation can be trusted, Urio Etwango told about missing his wife:

“O, my dear little wife in the far cold north. And she is all alone, and I am here learning the ways of the Scotch… It was sorrowful to say ‘taboutit’ (good-bye).

Etoangat, who died in 1996 in Pangnirtung, photographed as a young man in 1936. He bears a striking resemblance to Urio Etwango, whose name is similar. Were they related? (Photo courtesy of Library and Archives Canada)

Early in his stay in the city, Etwango was a guest at a public lecture in Dundee’s Kinnaird Hall attended by Capt. Adams and other well-known Dundee whaling captains. 

Etwango had exchanged his fur clothing for a tweed suit with a linen collar and cuffs. The chairman introduced Adams, who gave a talk about the lives of the Baffinland Inuit.

He contrasted what he saw as the “happiness and contentment and Christianity” of the Eastlanders — the Inuit of Greenland — with the Westlanders of Baffin Island who were “entirely uncivilized, and who knew nothing beyond shooting and eating raw what they caught.”

Their condition, he claimed, was “a standing disgrace to the British Crown.”

He went on to say, “We [the whalers] had received great benefits from the uncivilized Eskimo.”

By that, he was referring to the Inuit participation in the whaling industry. There were captains on the stage with him, he said, whose lives had been saved by Inuit. That remark drew loud applause from the audience.

The chairman then introduced Etwango, who had been sitting patiently on the stage. Having changed into his Inuit garb, he showed his bow and arrow, then demonstrated various hunting techniques by pantomime, and even mimed the construction of a snowhouse. He made a brief speech in English, a language he had not known at all when he first met Captain Adams.

He said, “My country far far away. My country plenty of snow, plenty of ice, dis country de best.”

He also sang “a chant or a prayer” in Inuktitut, which the reporter described as “a number of abrupt guttural sounds, followed by low monotonous chanting,” and closed with a dance to a tune that a young man played on the melodion.

In the next instalment, Etwango returns home.

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.