Eskimo

One of the first RCMP officers to make repeated visits to the trading posts and Inuit camps on Victoria Island was Corporal G. M. Wall. In February 1932, Wall left Coppermine with two guides and traveled to Rymer Point, Read Island, Prince Albert Sound, Minto Inlet, and Walker Bay. In his report, written upon his return to Coppermine, Wall made a number of interesting observations regarding the conditions of the Inuit groups he encountered. On islands off the north shore of Minto Inlet, Wall met a large group of Inuit and reported:

This was the largest encampment visited in the country patrolled through, comprising 21 families. Some of the houses were joined together and others had passages leading off a main one to their own igloo. One native here had put up a 10 x 12 foot tent and built a snowhouse over it (RCMP Patrol Report 1932:4).

Wall's observations indicate that the large snowhouse settlements that had always been a feature of traditional Copper Inuit life that were still in use even after traders had entered the region and encouraged people to take up trapping rather than seal hunting. Wall encountered the same group the following year, this time finding fourteen families camped on the ice in the middle of Minto Inlet (RCMP Patrol Report 1933:2).

Wall offers an interesting comparison between the Prince Albert Sound people and the Copper Inuit living around Read Island and Rymer Point:

The natives on the southwest coast of Victoria Land had all done well trapping and in all the camps there was ample evidence of this. They were all well supplied with tea, sugar, biscuits, jam, etc. These natives are also getting away from the use of the seal oil lamps and although they had them they would use the primus lamps they had bought this winter, this may only be for a year as long as they can buy coal oil from the traders. The continual use of primus stoves does not tend towards cleanliness, and the houses are very dirty as was the clothing which had been purchased from the traders. The calico artigues and the men's trousers have been covered in grease and are dirty…. There was a remarkable difference in the Prince Albert Sound natives. These peoples did not have the white man's food and clothing, depending on the country for food. The houses were all clean and tidy and they were all well clothed with deer skins, only using a very little white men's clothing. All the sleds, harpoons and equipment was all of the best and in good repair, also all the dogs were in fine condition. The people themselves were all a fine healthy looking bunch and there was only one case of sickness; this was a very old woman. These natives only go into Read Island once a [year] to trade, usually at the end of April and stay on the south coast of Victoria Land three or four weeks visiting the other relatives and then return again (RCMP Patrol Report 1933:7).

Wall's comments are echoed in later reports. By and large, those Copper Inuit who were in less direct contact with white traders seemed to be healthier and better clothed than those living closer to trading posts. Wall believed that the people of Minto Inlet ranked somewhere in between the people of Prince Albert Sound and the Inuit of southwest Victoria Island, possibly due to the influence of both the westerners and the two trading posts at Walker Bay.

"The influence of the missionaries is very noticeable and at all the camps visited the natives would show me their hymn books. The Minto Inlet natives held a service while I was there which consisted of singing six hymns. They observe Sunday very closely and will not do a thing, spending most of the day singing hymns even if the camp is out of meat" (RCMP Patrol Report 1933:7).

Another observation made by Wall during his 1932 patrol is fascinating. In assessing game conditions for the regions visited, Wall notes that caribou are very scarce, and that the people subsist primarily on seal, fish, and small game. To the north of Prince Albert Sound, he notes, "the natives hunt in the summertime and get a few caribou, but live chiefly on fish." Wall continues:

The Minto Inlet natives spend the summer around the post at Walker Bay and last summer they killed about 60 caribou roughly 20 miles north of the post.

In 1896 a man destined to become the territory's most famous doctor reached southwestern Alaska fresh from medical school; he was Kansas-born, Austrian-descended Joseph Herman Romig. His observations and views on cancer, in relation to Alaska natives, were soon to become well known locally. They do not appear to have reached international circulation until 1939, through the publication of the widely noticed Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price (New York and London). In regard to an interview between these two in 1933, I quote the cited book from the fourth American edition (1945), pages 90-91:

“Anchorage ... has an excellent government hospital which has been built around the life of one man who, many people told us, was the most beloved man in all Alaska. He is Dr. Josef [Joseph] Romig, a surgeon of great skill with experience among the Eskimos and Indians, both the primitive and the modernized ... He stated that in his thirty-six years of contact with these people he had never seen a case of malignant disease among the truly primitive Eskimos and Indians, although it frequently occurs when they become modernized.”

In 1906 I went to the Arctic with the food tastes and beliefs of the average American. By 1918, after eleven years living as an Eskimo among Eskimos, I had learned things which caused me to shed most of those beliefs. Ten years later I began to realize that what I had learned was going to influence decisively the sciences of medicine and dietetics. However, what finally impressed the scientists and converted many during the last two or three years, was a series of confirmatory experiments upon myself and a colleague performed at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, under the supervision of a committee representing several universities and other organizations.

Not so long ago, the following dietetic beliefs were common: To be healthy you need a varied diet, composed of elements from both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. You got tired of and eventually felt a revulsion against things if you had to eat them often. This latter belief was supported by stories of people who through force of circumstances had been compelled, for instance, to live for two weeks on sardines and crackers and who, according to the stories, had sworn that so long as they lived they never would touch sardines again. The Southerners had it that nobody can eat a quail a day for thirty days.

 A health survey made in 1935, with cancer as one of its focal points is described in an article by the senior investigator of the survey, Dr. I. N. Rabinowitch of Montreal, appearing in the May 1935 issue of The Canadian Medical Association Journal (Toronto).

“Two different interests prompted this investigation. The purpose of the Canadian Government was to determine the general health of the Eskimos; whether contact with civilization is causing their deterioration; and, if so, the causes. Quite frankly, this was not the writer's interest ... His interest was primarily in the alleged absence of diabetes, cancer, and arteriosclerosis, and the possible relationship between such absence and the peculiar dietary habits of the people.”

Dr. Rabinowitch found in 1935 that the Eskimos of the northern coastal section of the Canadian eastern Arctic were still living substantially on their native foods, although they were in some places eating enough carbohydrates to materially affect their previously good teeth. Of diabetes and arteriosclerosis he found only slight indication. Of cancer he says on page 493:

“In the western Arctic [from Alaska to Coronation Gulf] Dr. Urquhart has not yet met with a single case of cancer in the seven years of his practice. Cancer must be very rare in the eastern Arctic also. I saw one suspicious case ...” [Dr. Rabinowitch thought it was probably not cancer.]

Cancer among Labrador Europeans was, of course, well known to the Moravian mission, both from their own experience and that of the Grenfell mission to the south of them. In his letter of November 20, 1957, Superintendent Peacock says, “Previous to my coming to Labrador, Robert Ford [a Scot who may have had some Eskimo blood] ... died from a diagnosed cancer ...”

In the aforementioned letter of November 20, Superintendent Peacock reports what he believes to have been the first death of a Labrador Eskimo from a recognized cancer:

“When I first came to Labrador, in 1935, I was told [by the Reverend W. Perrett] that cancer never occurred among Eskimos. However, during the winter of 1935-36 an Eskimo, Michael Nochasak, became ill with abdominal trouble ... This man suffered intense pain and was removed to a hospital when navigation opened, and died of cancer.