by Mark Taylor
The kayak is stored in the crawl space under a house in Baker Lake NWT [now Nunavut]. I found out about it from a chance conversation with Fred Ford, a young man who lives in Baker and who has taken a great interest in Inuit history. His father bought the kayak from the builder, William Anautalik, who died three or four years ago and was the last person who knew how to build them in Baker. Apparently the skills needed to build kayaks have not been passed on to the next generation, and nowadays the Inuit prefer to go quickly in modern boats. The idea of paddling for several days up a river to go hunting when you can do it in one day in a power boat is ridiculously romantic and foreign to their practical attitudes.
To get to the kayak we literally crawled in among all sorts of junk and half finished soapstone carvings. The boat is truly the last of a long line. As you can see in the photographs, it is about 17 feet long and sleek, with a small cockpit. The (probably willow) ribs are lashed to the stringers (about one inch square in cross-section) about every nine inches or so. The caribou skins that cover the frame were prepared by immersing them in water over the winter, and in spring scraping off the hair. There were still patches of hair on the deck, but the skins were beautifully stitched together and the whole craft looked very seaworthy. The seams are normally sealed with fat or grease, but this kayak had not been used recently and obviously needed a good sealing. I had hoped to be able to try the kayak out, but the wind was particularly vigorous the day we visited, and the preparation needed to make the kayak waterproof precluded a jaunt. I probably could not have fit in anyway because of the small size of the cockpit. There was no seat or backrest of any sort, and I was surprised at the lack of a coaming which one sees illustrated on many Inuit kayaks.
Kayaks were an important tool in the fall caribou hunt which provided the major food supply for the Keewatin Inuit, not to mention the value or skins, bones and antlers. Across the major rivers and lakes are routes the caribou use, though they are not predictable and the caribou say use a particular crossing only every few years. Caribou detour around the largest lakes and are therefore funneled through certain areas which become preferred hunting spots. The Inuit would paddle up the Thelon or Kazan Rivers in the late summer to well known caribou crossing places and wait. Usually many caribou would be killed, far more than could be carried back in one trip, and so the animals would be butchered and the meat stored in country caches. These caches were built of large stones and would each hold several butchered caribou. We came across one old settlement area at the east end of Aberdeen Lake with numerous caches, and when we lifted the lids on some of them were surprised to find large numbers of caribou bones; obviously the hunters who had stored the meat never returned to pick it up.
Not far away from the food caches was an old grave, complete with a wooden cross as a grim reminder that often the hunts did not turn out well. In fact, it was back in the 1950s that many Inuit in the Keewatin died from starvation because the caribou never came to the crossings where the hunters waited. It was after this event that the federal government relocated family bands into a number of settlements like Baker Lake and Chesterfield Inlet, so that at least the basic necessities of life could be provided for by the government.
We came across evidence of old camps by several lakes in the interior, but the encampment at the end of Aberdeen Lake was particularly large. In addition to the food caches there are the ruins of many summer homes and inukshuks. The summer homes were tents weighed down with large stones in a ring with an opening looking out across the lake. The inukshuks, the tallest at Aberdeen over two and a half metres tall, are visible from a considerable distance and served as sign posts to the people.
The Inuit also used their kayaks for traveling considerable distances for trading, and on long trips the skins would become water logged and have to be dried out. During one of my walks near Judge Sissons Lake I was shown by Alex, my Inuit guide, three large stones standing upright. He told me that they were used for resting a kayak on so that it could dry out. Alex also explained that they had special places to store the kayaks through the winter. I had not thought about it, but obviously a kayak would not fit into an igloo and one does not want someone inadvertently stepping through the snow onto one’s kayak. So they built rock shelters into which they placed their boats, covering the top with big flat rocks.
Looking at the kayak in Baker Lake I was surprised when Fred told me that they used to put people up inside the kayak, and in this way ferry a family across a river. It sort of makes sense, but I think one would have to have a lot of confidence in the paddler to wriggle one’s way into the bow or stern; there were no bulkheads. I can imagine that one would need not to suffer too much from claustrophobia for that sort of traveling, but maybe the kids thought it was fun.
Today the Inuit still hunt caribou, but utilize high powered rifles, snowmobiles and power boats. As a result, the traditional kayak is a thing of the past, a relic of previous generations. I felt very privileged to be able to look a little bit into the past and see how they traveled. I hope very much for their future as they adapt to a modern world, and I just hope that the caribou, musk-ox and grizzlies make it into the next century as well.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 1992 (Vol. 4, No. 1) issue of Qayaq. It is another in a series of articles from our first quarter century that we are reprinting as GLSKA marks its 25th anniversary.