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Capt. Cleveland Anthology: When the Whalers Were Up North
From the book:
Eber, Dorothy Harley. When the Whalers Were Up North: Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 1989. ISBN: 0773507027
pp. 123-127 (Personalities of the Bay):
IV. SUQUORTARONIK THE HARPOONER
"Near Igloolik," an interpreter told me, "there's a beach covered with caps and liquor bottles; they say that's where Suquortaronik had his last party."* [*Marie Patterson, Iqaluit]
George Grover Washington of Beetlebung Corner, Martha's Vineyard, also known as Suquortaronik - the harpooner - is a name that crops up all along the whaling route. An elderly Cape Dorset woman remarked, "I certainly know of Suquortaronik, the harpooner. He went off the ships to hunt musk-ox and left many children in the camps."* Suquoronik became known for the number of his progeny, twins included. [*Silaki, Cape Dorset]
His somewhat chequered career attracted attention in the south when Peter Freuchen - Big Pete in the Keewatin - who met him about 1922, painted him as larger than life in his stories of the Fifth Thule Expedition. He wrote of him, 'Cleveland was a great character. When we asked him, during our first meal together, whether he would object to our bringing out a bottle of our famous Dutch schnapps, he assured us that we could make ourselves at home in his house as long as we desired. 'In fact,' he assured us, 'liquor is my favourite drink - any kind and any brand.'* [*Quoted in "The Arctic Socialite from Beetlebung Road," Bulletin, (Summer 1963): 1-40.]
Joe Curley elaborated on his career: 'Oh, I knew George. He was one of the Americans, but because he was such a thief, he was just left behind among the Inuit people. He was fired. Eventually he was adopted by Harry and his family. They were concerned for him and looked after him.
"He had stolen quite a bit of equipment, mainly perhaps liquor. He stole from the ship and the crew. So they just left him here. The Inuit looked after him, fed him, and gave him clothing. They treated him as one of themselves. They didn't want him starving.
"While he was stranded, he adopted the Inuit lifestyle. He ate among us and lived with us in the camps. In winter he stayed in the igloos and in summer he went out camping in the tents. He did everything the Inuit did. I don't know if he had his own dog-team, but he went out hunting. He learned all the techniques, all the things Inuit used to do, and finally he could keep himself alive. After a while he got taken up by the Scottish whalers. But they weren't satisfied either, and it ended up that he was given back to the Inuit people. He kept being handed back and forth.
"When the HBC started up in the North, he began working for the company. Finally he got his own building and ran a store."
Cleveland seems to have first appeared in the Bay on the bark A. R. Tucker in 1895 and sailed again on the schooner Francis Allyn in 1897 and 1899. In 1900 he was put ashore at the Wager River to run a whaling and trading station for Thomas Luce & Co., the owners of Comer's vessel, the Era. He built a twenty-four by twelve-foot wooden shack and for two winters had with him there a white companion, Charles Clemmons of Torrington, Connecticut. Then, when relations with Thomas Luce & Co. were apparently severed - Comer is said to have sent the crew of the Era to burn his station down - Cleveland decided it 'was a case of getting among the Eskimos or starve, and I made for the Iwillick tribe. I found the tribe and was taken among them as one of their own brethren.
"I was with a tribe of about 300 persons, and took part in all their wanderings ..."* [*Ibid., and New Bedford Standard, 12 Nov 1905.]
He found employment again with the Scottish firm of Robert Kinnes of Dundee, which had the ketch Ernest William in the Repulse Bay area. After the Hudson's Bay Company arrived to pursue the fox-fur trade, he worked for many years for the company.
At one point early in Suquortaronik's career he pursued a rather bizarre sideline. Besides plaster casts, Franz Boas also desired examples of Inuit skeletons and skulls for the American Museum of Natural History. "The more you bring of these the better," Boas wrote to Comer just prior to his 1900 expedition to the Bay. But Comer went about the task reluctantly, according to Arctic historian W. Gillies Ross. He asked for and received permission from the Inuit to collect skeletons as long as he left a gift in each grave for the dead person. Eventually he collected eleven or twelve skulls from ancient graves or the unoccupied houses of the extinct Sadlimiut, but none, Ross says, from the graves of the Avilik or Qaernermiut who customarily worked for the vessel. "The small number and limited selection suggest that, despite the assurance of this ship's natives, he was reluctant to disturb their graves. Perhaps he suspected that at heart they were not pleased to have him expropriate the bones of their ancestors."* [*Ross, W. Gillies. (1984). George Comer, Franz Boas, and the American Museum of Natural History, Études/Inuit/Studies 8:1. p. 160.]
Comer's instincts appear to have been right. Joan Attuat of Rankin Inlet related the story, which she heard from her mother and stepfather, of how while whaling with Uvinik (the adopted son of Harry, Comer's Inuit mate) and Tugaak (Shoofly's husband), Suquortaronik suffered a curious upset.
"I've heard that the whalers used to gather up Inuit skulls. Is there anything written about this? Has anybody heard?
"My mother Maani and her husband Anguti used to tell stories about the whalers and about the shamans, and they often told about how Suquortaronik collected Inuit bones from all over, starting from Repulse Bay. Any kinds of bones. When people died in those days they were not buried in caskets or in boxes; they just buried them with stones. That's why the skulls could be collected."
"We think the reason he knew where the bones were was because the children told him. We suspect the children were collecting the bones and skulls from the graves because they knew the white people wanted them. They had seen them packing them away.
"Suquortaronik used to gather the skulls and put them in a box. One time he had all his bones, collected from different places, in the whaleboat while he and two other white men were chasing the whale. His Inuit helpers knew the boat was carrying a load of Inuit skulls, but they didn't know why, or what the skulls were to be used for. Probably he just had them along and meant to put them away with his collection when he got to shore. But he had an accident. While he was following the whale, his boat got hit by the whale's tail and turned over. he had been warned by Uvinik and Tugaak, expert whalers and members of his whaling crew. He really had no choice but to follow their advice because they knew more about whaling than he did. The whale was harpooned and wounded and surfacing here and there. 'You better stay away from that whale,' one of them said. 'He's going to whip you with the tail or with the flipper when he surfaces and the boat is going to capsize.' But Suquortaronik paid no attention and that is exactly what happened.
"He didn't drown because Uvinik and Tugaak were nearby in their boat and rescued him. But he lost all his bones."
Suquortaronik stayed in the Bay for more than a quarter of a century and is remembered favourably: "He could be bitchy, but really he was all right; "On the whole the white people seemed to like him fairly well." He left the north for the final time in the middle 1920s, when illness forced his evacuation. Joan Attuat says, "We have a watch from him. When he was old and got sick it was decided to take him to Churchill. My husband led the dogs. They travelled by dog team to Churchill, and my husband ran in front of the dogs all day. When they arrived, Suquortaronik gave my husband a watch with chimes.
"Because he had run in front of the dogs all day. And because Suquortaronik knew he was going to die."