In the Footsteps of Abraham Ulrikab: The Events of 1880–1881 and The Voyage with the Labrador Eskimos 1880–1881

A widespread interest in the science of “types of mankind” in late nineteenth-century Europe encouraged the often-lucrative business of importing human “specimens” from various parts of the world to be exhibited to curious crowds in zoos in cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Darmstadt, Prague, Paris, and others. In 1881 Norwegian ethnographer Johan Jacobsen, in the employ of Carl Hagenbeck, owner and operator of the Hamburg zoo, sailed to Greenland and Labrador, hoping to recruit a number of Inuit willing to make the journey and be thus exhibited in artificially contrived “natural” habitats for pay. Jacobsen was not successful in Greenland but achieved his purpose in Labrador where eight Inuit accepted his offer: three from the area of Nachvak Fjord, and five from Hebron, a Christian community founded by Moravian missionaries in 1831.The volunteers from Nachvak included Tigiannak, his wife, Paingu, and their daughter Nuggasak. The Hebron Inuit were Abraham and Ulrike, a married couple, their two small children, Sara and Maria, and a spirited youth named Tobias. Jacobsen was delighted to have both “wild” and “civilized” Labrador natives for display and hoped for a good return on his and his employer's investment. To his dismay, the enterprise ended in tragedy as all perished from smallpox within four months of stepping foot on European soil. None had been vaccinated against the deadly disease. This tragic event in Canadian history is generally not well known, a fact that France Rivet has remedied with her book. By means of lengthy excerpts from original documents written by people directly involved, as well as contemporary comments by outsiders and observers, Rivet gives the reader a firsthand account of much of this sorry tale. Manuscript documents include English translations of private journals kept by Jacobsen and Abraham, the latter's literacy reflecting his Moravian education. Rivet also offers German newspaper articles, letters by Moravian missionaries on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as quotations from the Periodical Accounts relating to the Foreign Missions of the Church of the United Brethren. Also included are findings by anthropologists engaged in comparison studies of “Eskimos” from various northern regions of the globe, as well as autopsy reports and medical research done on Inuit bodies after they had been exhumed.The two key documents, however, are Jacobsen's journal and Abraham's brief but telling diary. Jacobsen's journal, originally written in German, was translated into English by Harman Lutz. It was published as a companion volume to Rivet's work and Rivet quotes extensively from it. Jacobsen's journal speaks to the various navigational challenges of a voyage to Greenland and Labrador in the late nineteenth century; it tells of his chronic illness as well as the debilitating sea sickness his Inuit volunteers suffered crossing the Atlantic. It records early successes with the European exhibitions and gives detailed accounts of the Inuit's illness and death. Abraham's diary, written in Inuktitut, was translated into German by the Moravians, and into English by Hartman Lutz also. Abraham wrote of his reactions to European society, about his fears and regrets for having exposed his family to such a dangerous undertaking, and of his desperate longing for home. Newspaper articles, on the other hand, provide insight to how European society perceived and reacted to human novelties from North America. Moravian missionaries in Labrador, upset by the whole business, wrote of their concerns and lament their inability to stop the Inuit from going with Jacobsen. Medical and anthropological reports speak to the level of nineteenth-century science.Rivet's work is well researched and annotated. By putting document excerpts in chronological order and connecting them with brief historical narrative, she succeeds in shedding a good deal of light on the story. She concedes that her work is not the final word as there are yet more questions to be answered. The work is well illustrated with photographs, maps, and a number of graphs and tables, as well as several useful appendices, including a “Chronological Summary of Events” and all of Abraham's translated diary. An outraged response to exhibiting humans in zoos, written by the Vicomte De Challans of Paris, serves effectively as the foreword. There is no formal introduction. Rather, some historical context and the author's interest in the story, and the challenges in bringing it to light, are discussed in the preface. Here, the first-person singular is frequently used.What detracts from the overall effectiveness of the book is its curious and unconventional format. Lengthy manuscript excerpts are boxed in, as it were, with lines of various widths and numbers. For example, newspaper articles are encased with double lines, while excerpts from Abraham's diary are surrounded by a single line in boldface. Similarly, Jacobsen's diary excerpts are surrounded by a regular font single line. Shorter documents, like letters, are not encased. Here, a footnote number is given at the beginning of the citation rather than the end. While the formatting method is explained at the beginning of the work, the effects remain fractious and interfere with the flow of the story. Nevertheless, In the Footsteps of Abraham Ulrikab is a valuable contribution to ethnohistory, to Canadian history in general, and to the history of Labrador in particular.

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