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Ifr&vdftC'&Vft By Hartmut Lutz with Renate Jutting and Ruth Bradley-St-Cyr ON AUGUST STH 1880, the schooner Eisbar (polar bear) sailed into the port of Hebron, the Moravian mission station on the coast of Northern Labrador. The vessel's owner was Adrian Jacobsen (1853-?), a Norwegian seafarer , collector, and trader of ethnographic artefacts and human specimens, who was traveling for Carl Hagenbeck, the founder and proprietor of "Hagenbeck's Thierpark," the Hamburg zoo named after him. This was not Jacobsen's first voyage across the North Atlantic. Three years earlier he had visited Greenland and, with the consent of the Danish authorities, had hired, vaccinated, and then transported a group of Inuit and their belongings to Hamburg, where they were exhibited and performed seal hunts and sleigh rides for thousands of visitors at Hagenbeck's Zoo. In May the following year, after "Hagenbeck's Eskimos" and their artefacts had been on display in Paris, Brussels, Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, and Copenhagen, they had returned to their Greenland homes, all sound and wealthy, having earned a total of 600 crowns. By contrast, Jacobsen's 1880 voyage had begun with drawbacksand disappointments. In the North Sea ferocious headwinds had impeded his progress. Then the ship had encountered an unusual calm in the North Atlantic. In Greenland, Danish authorities had resolutely refused to allow any Inuit to travel with Jacobsen, not even for his scientific ethnographic purposes. The woman who had travelled with him to Europe in 1877 "cried every day" because "she was not allowed to come along," according to Jacobsen, and he privately cursed the Danes for keeping the Inuit at home for their own purposes, to keep them hunting. "It is a shame that one tyrannizes the Eskimos in this manner," he complained . The best Jacobsen could manage to get was some supplies, two kayaks, and some sickly dogs in the hopes of finding Inuit from elsewhere to travel back to Germany with him. After Greenland, the EisbarJ s attempts to reach Cumberland failed because of heavy ice and day after day of fog. Time was running out. By the time the ship reached Hebron, Jacobsen was desperate. His journal relates THE DIARY OFABRAHAM ULRIKAB [xvii] on these worries: "From the first day I boarded this ship I have had worries as never before... now nearly all my courage is gone, my expectations diminished, and my heart yearns to return... I can expect only ruin on my return." Upon reaching Hebron, Jacobsen must have been frustrated and all the more eager to finally meet with success. But even here the German speaking Moravian missionaries, who were friendly and hospitable enough, were absolutely opposed to letting any of their Christian flock travel with Jacobsen to be exhibited like zoo animals or to be exposed to the lurking moral and spiritual dangers "outside " the mission in Europe. "To undertake such a journey to Europe is seen to be synonymous with leading them to their doom," complained Jacobsen. "It is sad that a people are so suppressed, and still more so that Europeans demonstrate such power." Jacobsen did manage, however, to hire asa pilot and translator a 35-year-old Inuit man, Abraham, the husband of 24-year-old Ulrike, father of four-year-old Sara and baby Maria. Abraham Ulrikab (his last name being derived from his wife's name) accompanied Jacobsen to the Northern Hudson Bay Company post at Nakvak, just north of Ramah.Their guidewas a very accomplished man, well liked by the missionaries for his eager intelligence, his contribution as a violinist in church, his penmanship , his language and drawing skills, and his work ethic. Abraham was in debt to the missionaries to the tune of £10 but had refused to rely on their alms box. So, he needed money. In Nakvak there was a small settlement of "wild Eskimos" (Inuit traditionalists who had refused to be Christianized). When the Eisbar arrived on August 19th most able-bodied Inuit had left Nachvak to hunt caribou further inland, and only a few people had stayed behind, mostly elders and children. But with the help of Abraham's powers of persuasion, Jacobsen managed to hire the shaman Terrianiak, who was about 40, and his wife and fellow shaman Paingo, whose age was given in a range between 30 and 50 years, as well as their teenage daughter Noggasak. After this initial success, Abraham also let himself be persuaded by the local Hudson Bay trader, Mr. Ford, to disobey the missionaries...

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