In the bones of the world

PART 1 (Published in February 2007)

If you hear enough Inuit stories, something will strike you as odd, perhaps even a bit eery. Ironically, you won't find peculiarity in the magical or otherwise imaginative happenings, such as animal transformations and shamanic feats. Instead, you're more likely to find yourself struck by the occurrence of things that really did exist in the world’s ancient past; things that have somehow wormed their way into myth and legend.

For me, the most haunting stories are those of the "Tunit", a people that those of Occidental descent might at first be tempted to label "faery folk" (specifically, "Dwarves"). But while pre-colonial Inuit did believe in a number of races that were completely imagined, the Tunit were not one of them. In fact, archaeologists call the Tunit the "Dorset Culture", and while Inuit have attributed supernatural powers to them, the remnants of this culture really are scattered about the eastern Arctic. In the days when Inuit were newcomers, they lived alongside of Tunit for a time, and oral tradition remembers them well.                                                          

Taitsumaniguuq:

A hunter was having the poorest sort of luck. He was paddling along in his kayak, despondent. He hadn’t sighted any prey, and had pretty much given up. He was half-heartedly swishing his paddle through the water, watching the ripples trail away from it, when he thought he heard a grunt.

He looked up to see a distant figure standing on an ice-pan, and wondered why he hadn’t spotted him earlier. It was obviously someone who had gotten stranded.

He paddled over. As he approached, he could see that it was a very short, heavy-set man. The stranded man looked quite dour, but even from this distance the hunter could see that his clothes were very finely made – perhaps the finest he had ever seen before. Saying nothing yet, the hunter brought his kayak up to the ice-pan, stepped out of it, and secured it firmly. While he did this, he periodically looked over his shoulder at the stranded man, and noted that the man seemed fascinated at the way in which the hunter secured his kayak. It was as though the stranded figure had never seen anyone secure a kayak along the ice edge before.

The hunter then stepped closer to the stranded man, hands up in greeting. The man simply glared sullenly, stepping back a pace. At this, the hunter stopped and asked,

"How come you’re out here with no kayak?"

The man squinted distrustfully, before answering,

"My kayak drifted away. That’s the third time this season, and it’s beginning to upset me."

The hunter was more than a bit taken aback by this confession, and unsure of what to say, when the stranded man asked,

"I noticed you had a way of keeping your kayak from drifting off. Do you mind showing me how you did that?"

The hunter silently agreed, and walked the stranded man over to his kayak, showing him within seconds how to secure it. While he did so, his eyes kept glancing over to the stranger’s bow, slung over his shoulder. The bow was so long (or perhaps it was simply that the man was so short) that its lower end trailed along the ground as he walked. But it wasn’t this fact that the hunter found so remarkable. Instead, it was the workmanship of the weapon. Unlike the bows the hunter was used to, the stranded man’s bow was constructed almost entirely from a single, elegantly carved piece, perhaps whalebone. The cordage was perfectly lashed and wound, such that the whole bow seemed as much a work of art as a tool. The hunter had never seen its like.

He drew out his explanation of how to secure the kayak, giving himself time to think. Now, he was more puzzled than ever. He couldn’t figure out how it was that this stranger possessed such fantastic clothes and tools, and at once was so incompetent that he could not secure a kayak, as a child might be able to do. For a brief instant, the hunter entertained the idea that perhaps the short man simply had a very competent wife. But he quickly dismissed this notion, since it could not explain the bow – which the man himself would have had to make.

Somewhat disturbed, he smiled nervously at the stranded man, who now smiled back.

"Thanks," he said, "I’ll try to remember that trick. Now, can you give me a lift back home?"

The hunter’s smile faded.

"I can’t," he said. "This is just a one-person kayak. You’ll be too heavy."

The stranded man began to laugh at this. For a moment, he was doubled up with laughter, and the hunter stepped away from him, wondering if he was crazy.

At the sight of the hunter’s alarm, the stranded man curbed his laughter a bit, but still couldn’t entirely quit chuckling. He beamed at the hunter and said,

"You Inuit . . . hilarious! I can make myself light or heavy at will!"

"Quit joking," the hunter said to the stranded dwarf, now more than a little spooked.

But the dwarf just kept on chuckling, saying,

"I’m not joking. All my people make themselves light or heavy at will. We do it all the time. It’s easy. I had forgotten that your kind can’t."

By the time the dwarf had finished this statement, the hunter had realized that this was not a human being he was speaking to. He had heard his father and uncles tell stories of these people, the "Tunit". They were a folk who possessed strange powers and knowledge, but lacked common sense. While they made many wondrous things, they were not as cunning as Inuit, and so remained few in number.

This explained why the stranded dwarf owned such a fabulous bow, why he wore such fine clothing, and yet seemed to lack the good sense to pull his kayak out of the water when he wasn’t using it. It explained why he was stranded; why, as the dwarf had stated, his kayak had drifted away for, "the third time this season."

PART 2 (Published in March 2007)

And now this Tuniq wanted a ride back home. The hunter was scared to oblige him, since he didn’t really understand what kind of creature he was dealing with here. Would the Tuniq kill him along the way? Once they arrived? If he simply refused the Tuniq’s request, would the creature become angered and attack him for that? The hunter couldn’t see any good coming out of this.

The dwarf was now glaring at him, and asked, "So, are you going to give me a ride or not?"

Seeing no alternative, the hunter agreed, and wriggled into his kayak. Once he was set, the dwarf took a flying leap, landing on the stern. The hunter winced, expecting to get doused with icy brine, but the kayak hardly even bobbed in the water. He looked directly behind him, and there sat the Tuniq, grinning fiercely, gripping the kayak with his legs. It was just as the Tuniq had said: he now weighed little more than a feather.

So the two of them set off toward the Tuniq’s home. The dwarf gave directions, insisting that it was only a couple of days away. They talked little along the way. The hunter was very frightened, and felt as though he were being kidnapped. The Tuniq seemed to sense this, and held his tongue, perhaps hoping that it would minimize the Inuk’s stress.

What the Tuniq did seem keen on was watching the hunter at all times. He seemed fascinated by the way the hunter did normal, everyday things; how he checked the ice and snow periodically; how he studied the weather patterns far off on the horizon. Even how he ate. It all made the hunter very edgy, so that he was actually relieved by the time they came to the Tunit camp.

How does one go about describing a Tunit camp? The trick is to do the place justice in few words, for it is utterly inhuman, and therefore can never make much sense to our kind. But the hunter found himself there, as one of those rarest of Inuit does, experiencing it with his human faculties. So we had best try to keep up with him, in terms that we can understand, if for no other reason than to facilitate the story. Let us just bear in mind that we look upon the Tunit through our own awkward little lens, as though trying to gaze through a window that is far, far away – and that the Tunit, in trying to comprehend us, might feel the same strangeness. We can never fully understand what that hunter experienced. After all, he is a guest of the Tunit, and we are not.

Here resided a scene of unrivaled wealth and beauty, where even the most common sorts of tools were of a craftsmanship that the hunter had never before imagined. He could see now that the bow his companion bore, that which he had so admired, was very ordinary in comparison to the way the Tunit routinely fashioned their items. Even the toys of the Tunit children were extravagant works of art. It was as though the Tunit would not tolerate that which was plain or ugly among them.

Despite the dread that the hunter had borne since realizing the dwarf was not human, his awe at witnessing the Tunit camp was such that his heart began to fill with joy, eventually giving way even to laughter. There were no dogs or sleds; but of items, never had the hunter beheld such perfection as existed among the Tunit. For it was not simply the items crafted by the Tunit that were so fine. The beauty of such objects paled before that of the Tunit women. One of the many, many things that made the Tunit so strange was the great difference between the appearances of their men and women. While the hunter noticed that all the men were, like his rescued companion, of dwarf-like stature, unsightly and dumpy-looking, the women were the complete opposite: Theirs was a radiant, timeless beauty that he had never before envisioned.

The Tuniq that had traveled with the hunter up till now quickly spoke in his odd dialect (almost understandable, but too fast to follow) to his fellow Tunit, gesturing at the hunter as he did so.

This is it, thought the hunter as he watched them, I’m as good as dead now.

But he was wrong. As quick as light flashes across water, smiles appeared upon the faces of the Tunit. They welcomed the hunter, bringing him sumptuous foods, and speaking of the feast hall that was to be built in his honour. They found him a luxurious place to rest, after which he awoke to find that all of his vulgar human belongings had been replaced with the finery that means Tunit craftsmanship. For a small eternity, he laughed to himself, pulling at the perfect string of the perfect bow they'd given him – a weapon superior even to the bow possessed by his Tuniq companion, that which he had at first so coveted upon meeting the dwarf.

So began the uncounted days of feasting, of dancing, of singing, of games and laughter that surrounded the hunter like a warm blanket does a child, dulling his memories of the world of men, so that it seemed he had always been one with the Tunit, counting himself among their number and ways. For the Tunit seemed not to treat him any differently than one of their own, except perhaps in that they never tired of his company; always questioning, wondering at his mind, thinking him the wisest of beings for his knowledge of the land, his skill at hunting upon it and surviving without the powers innate to Tunit nature.

But they could not know that there was one other way in which the hunter always felt like an outsider while among them, a feeling that waxed like a cancer within him. Always in secret, always to himself, he wondered why none of the Tunit women offered themselves to him. With every attempt that he made at romance, the women would simply laugh in their ticklish, butterfly way, brushing him off with the promise that they would meet up with him later. And later never came.

Time drew itself out. One day, the hunter snapped, muttering to himself, "So I am like a favoured dog, one who is allowed to sleep in the entrance to the home, but not among the masters."

PART 3 (Published in April 2007)

Firelight danced across his skin as he watched a Tunit female laughing next to him for the thousandth time, as the singing of others, in nearby tents, rang in his ears. But there was no return laughter this time. Yesterday, he had prepared his belongings, and he was ready to go. He intended to leave this place that had at last become empty for him. And he had arranged to be alone with this girl. And there was one last thing to do.

Leaping up, he seized the girl, who at first assumed that the whole thing was play, and so did not resist him. He pulled her outside, sharply commanding that she silence her giggling, as he gazed away, off across the horizon. As he'd guessed, the weather was perfect, and it was his intention to get away on foot.

"You like me, don’t you?" he whispered to her, low, hotly. "I like you. I want to be with you, and together we’ll leave this place."

She looked at him, stunned for a moment, as though unsure of what to say.

Then she screamed. It was the last thing the hunter had expected.

He shook her violently, hissing through bared teeth,

"Shut up! Be silent, will you?"

Her mouth snapped shut. She regarded him through baleful eyes, clouded with tears. He cast furtive glances left and right, expecting the dwarfish males to rouse themselves, but there were none of her Tunit relatives in sight. He turned back to her.

"Look, there’s no need for that. I want you as my wife. I’ve stayed here too long. I’m not a Tuniq. Don’t you want to meet my family?"

Her face was vacant, unreadable.

He took her by the wrist, moved from tent to tent, staying low, encouraging her to do likewise.

Eventually, they made their way out among the rocks, where there were places to hide. When the hunter at last could view the Tunit encampment from a distance, he straightened, quickening his pace. Then he turned to grin at the girl, pointing toward something in the distance and saying,

"Over there is the shore, where I placed my kayak. That’s where we’re going."

He was counting on what he knew of the Tunit ability to make themselves heavy or light at will, which was how he had originally rescued the stranded Tuniq man from the ice-pan, so long ago. Now, he would make away with the Tuniq girl in the same manner.

But at his words, the girl experienced a resurgence of panic. She wrenched herself from his grip, crying,

"Husband! Save me!"

"Husband?" the hunter gasped. He had never seen her with a husband, never in the entire time he had been among the Tunit.

For long moments, he watched her helplessly. Then a movement from the Tunit camp caught his attention. There was a distant figure making its way toward him. It was moving with terrific speed, despite its small stature. A Tuniq male.

And here he was, caught on foot.

The girl was still screaming when the hunter bolted. Still, he would not leave her. He seized her wrist anew.

"Come!" he snarled.

Now he was half-dragging her. Still, she cried aloud. But his lips pressed together in a grim line of determination. He doubled his pace, forcing her to keep up. He would not flee empty-handed from this place, like some bad dog with a stone at its heels. The kayak was near.

But the girl’s husband was almost upon them, and the hunter didn’t bother to look as he heard the pursuer draw near. Even a Tuniq could not catch him before he reached the kayak.

So he was surprised when he was suddenly seized by the shoulder and whirled around, and even further surprised when he looked into the face of the girl’s husband. For it was the very dwarf he had rescued upon the ice-pan.

The girl took the opportunity to tear herself away, while the dwarf himself shoved the hunter violently.

"Why did you do this?" cried the Tuniq, while his wife huddled behind him. "Was I unkind? Does your breed normally steal wives? What’s wrong with you?"

There was fragment of thought wherein the hunter truly thought of apologizing, of explaining his actions. But, by now, anxiety churned within him. Rage and fear wracked his face. He was the victim here, not the Tunit! It was he!

Blindly, he bolted one last time, but the Tuniq caught him by his wrists. Like a trapped animal, the hunter writhed in the grasp of the dwarf, whose fingers were like stone.

Such is the strength of the Tunit that it is many, many times that of men. So it was perhaps inevitable that there were the twin cracklings of bone giving way, the scream of the hunter’s mad agonies. The Tuniq, shocked at the hunter’s fragility, instantly released him in surprise.

There were no words as the hunter fled, leaving the Tunit forever behind him. As before, he fled to his kayak, barely managing to get himself into the water. His wrists had been crushed.

Unable to paddle effectively, he drifted away, and at last died alone. And thus did he fade from the memory of most living beings – all but those who listen to such tales as this one.

PART 4 (Published in May 2007)

The story that I have just related is actually a fusion of two Inuit folktales, told in various forms all over the Arctic. These tales number among the many Inuit traditional stories featuring the Tunit – a strange, ancient people, today represented within the framework of a peculiar mixture of paleoarchaeology and folklore.

In folklore, Tunit were the first people, those who were here before Inuit. As stated previously, the males were commonly thought to be short and stumpy, dwarf-like, while the females looked just like the most beautiful of normal, Inuit women.

The old stories agree on several points. Firstly, the Tunit were prodigiously strong, even to the point of accidentally causing harm to Inuit. Secondly, they were lacking in practical survival knowledge. Thirdly, they are now extinct.

Tales regarding their technology vary. Some state that the Tunit were technologically lacking, having no knowledge of how to make proper clothing, fire, or tools, and owning no sleds or dogs. Conversely, many state that the Tunit were master craftsmen, existing at a level of skill that has never been seen before or since, and that when Inuit first settled in Tunit lands, it was the Tunit who taught them how to make bows and other valuable tools. Like mysterious, folkloric beings the world over, they were often thought to possess magical powers. Some tales speak of their ability to make themselves light or heavy at will, while others mention an ability to make themselves invisible.

The magical powers attributed to the Tunit are suspiciously similar to those attributed to another race of folkloric beings from Inuit tales – those known as "Inugarulliit". The Inugarulliit are strikingly similar to some of the beings mentioned in the faery lore of Europe and the U.K., being tiny versions of Inuit, who can appear and disappear at will, and who sometimes exhibit various other magical abilities. But while Inugarulliit can choose the size they want to appear as, it is commonly said that they use lemmings as sled dogs, and this would seem to imply that they are "normally" very diminutive, making them quite different from the Tunit – the males of whom are simply short.

Also, the folklore seems to agree that Inugarulliit technology is identical to that of Inuit, with tools and weapons being so tiny as to resemble toys. This, too, is very different from the Tunit, for Tunit tales seem to go out of their way to point out how abnormal the Tunit technology is, whether better or worse than that of Inuit.

Tales vary from area to area, and many change over time. Consequently, some stories have gradually come to confuse Tunit and Inugarulliit, so that one sort of folkloric people takes on aspects of the other. This is only aggravated by the fact that many of the written records we can access on Inuit folklore – tales recorded by explorers and scholars – use the English term "dwarf" to alternately describe either Inugarulliit or Tunit. But whatever the reason, the nature of the Tunit has become more and more magical in Inuit folklore as the years have rolled by. Folklore has lent the Tunit something of the Inugarulliit nature over time, so that in many of the stories we know today, they exhibit magical abilities.

It might seem like nitpicking, discussing what supernatural powers have been attributed to the Tunit over time. But the importance of this becomes more clear when we remember that the Tunit were very real – a people known to archaeologists as the "Dorset". Basically, here is how Dorset (i.e., Tunit) relate to Inuit:

Imagine that you live in an orphanage, where your only friend is your cousin, of the same age as yourself. As very young children, you do everything together, and form the only family you know. But the years roll by, and you are eventually adopted. So is your cousin – but by a different family.

So you are separated. You each move to different areas, and you each grow up with unique ideals and lifestyles. In time, you have so lost contact as to forget that the other ever existed. Your years together are lost in the fog of infancy.

Suddenly, you are a grown adult. You are a professional, settled into your ways. You are highly educated, well-groomed, conservative. It’s time to put down roots, and you buy a home in a neighbourhood you like.

Your cousin was also growing – but in a completely different way. He dropped out of school and took up body-building. He’s a labourer now, just earning enough to support his non-stop, party-all-night lifestyle.

By chance, that new home you bought happens to be right next to your long-lost cousin’s house, and you are now neighbours. Cruel years have taken their toll on both of you, and you fail to recognize each other in the slightest. Even worse, your radically different lifestyles result in friction. You are not quite enemies, but you annoy one another intensely. You begin to refer to each other as, "that kind." He throws garbage onto your property to bother you, and you get him back by calling the police when he parties too loudly.

Eventually, your neighbour’s lack of means catch up with him. Mounting health problems sap his funds, he can’t make his house payments, and the bank forecloses on him. He moves on. The ramshackle house is torn down for use as a lot, and your neighbour fades from memory. In time, he is no more than an amusing story to relate to your friends.

Neither he, nor yourself, ever realized that you were cousins.

The story above describes the relationship between Inuit and Tunit. It is interesting that Inuit tradition has always referred to the Tunit as a separate people – to be completely honest, a separate species altogether, when in fact there is a great deal of archaeological evidence to demonstrate that Inuit and Tunit derive from the same root culture.

PART 5 (Published in June 2007)

As with the way most things end up going in the Arctic, the story of Inuit and Tunit is one of east versus west. If we go back in time about five millennia, we find a semi-Asiatic culture known as the "Arctic Small Tool tradition" (or ASTt) that had spread itself out over Alaska, Arctic Canada, and Greenland. These people are not well-known, and they are named for the tiny blades they used to make (which, if you look at photos of them, are remarkably well-crafted).

Due to the different environments found in east and west, the ASTt people began to develop along lines of west and east. Within two millennia, the westerners were developing into the so-called "Norton" culture. In the meantime, the easterners were developing into the "Dorset" culture.

About two thousand years ago, the westerners – the Norton culture – began to radically change once again. The Arctic, at the time, was undergoing nasty temperature shifts toward a cold extreme, and the westerners began to adapt to the change in their environment by mastering the ability to hunt sea mammals – that very ability that so marks much of Inuit skill today. The Norton-culture-changed-sea-mammal-hunters are known as the "Thule" culture. These were the ancestors of Inuit, so we'll simplify things by calling them "Inuit" from now on.

By any standard, the Inuit were an astoundingly resourceful people, and some of their innovations included: snow houses, drag floats, watercraft both large and small, toggling harpoons, and the use of dogs in pulling sleds. With no personal bias intended, they were to northern culture what Isaac Newton was to physics: a revolution in the Arctic way of life.

The success of the Inuit allowed them to spread themselves out, traveling great distances, by dog or boat, to bring in terrific hauls of sea mammal prey. By the time of the planet's last greatest warming period (between 800-1200 A.D.), they were racing eastward, settling into lands already occupied by the Dorset people – their forgotten cousins.

Unfortunately, by this time, the Dorset and Inuit peoples had developed in such completely different ways that each was barely recognizable as human by the other.

When the Inuit, successful sea-mammal hunters that they were, moved into the lands occupied by their Dorset cousins, they found that those people lived a very different existence. The Dorset culture was, by Inuit standards, quite primitive. We have no Dorset accounts, of course, but probably more than a few thought of the Inuit as invaders.

Over the centuries, the Inuit ancestors who settled in Dorset lands gradually developed the customs and dialects that we today know as pre-colonial Inuktitut. In essence, they became modern Inuit.

The Dorset people pretty much stayed Dorset, but Inuit called them "Tunit". The actual "Dorset" term was coined by the anthropologist Diamond Jenness. In 1925, Jenness received some odd artifacts from Kingait – odd because they seemed to derive from an especially ancient lifestyle, unlike that of Inuit. Because Kingait was called "Cape Dorset" at the time, Jenness called the mysterious people that produced the artifacts the "Dorset" culture, and the hunt to find more evidence of this people has been on ever since.

If you stop to think about it, you might notice a peculiar irony here. Inuit have fought so many political battles over that one word: "traditional". And yet, in the story of Inuit meeting Tunit, west meeting east, it is the Tunit who are most "traditional". It is the Thule – the Inuit – who are the younger, innovative culture here; the developers of cutting-edge ideas and technologies. It is they who pioneer a new homeland in another people’s traditional lands.

The Thule may have become Inuit, but the Dorset people – the Tunit – never became much of anything, because they went extinct. The reasons for the Tunit extinction is unclear. It has been suggested that the Tunit (I’m going to stick with the Inuktitut term hereafter) simply starved to death due to their own inefficiency, but this idea is absurd. The Tunit way of life was undoubtedly very harsh, since they seemed to have lacked dogs, toggles, boats, and other technologies that make life easier; but their culture nevertheless persisted for many, many centuries. They thrived.

It seems most likely that the Tunit, once they had lived among Inuit for a time, simply began to recognize a good thing. Inuit were able to demonstrate a great deal of success with their sea-mammal hunting lifestyle. Hunger is hunger, and meat is meat, and the Tunit probably began to recognize that they could subsist better by adopting some of the Inuit hunting strategies and technologies.

As technology changes, so does culture change with it. I recall a paper written by an anthropologist living among some islander tribesmen in Southeast Asia – he was lamenting that they were always trying to get mosquito netting from him. The tribesmen traditionally lived in elevated bungalows, above the height that most mosquitoes fly to, but these people recognized that netting would work better. They were beginning to feel the anthropologist was being stingy, and many were withholding anthropological information in order to lever the netting out of him. But the anthropologist had this problem: If he gave them their netting, they would no longer find it necessary to build their traditional, high bungalows. In other words, by giving them what they wanted, even such a trifle as mosquito netting, he would irreparably alter their culture. 

I find it likely that Tunit did indeed adopt some aspects of Inuit culture, causing them to change with time, to become more and more like Inuit. As they began to enjoy the benefits of "Thule" cultural innovations, they essentially became assimilated into Inuit culture.

A change in culture is rarely a rapid one. The Tunit would have had their own dialects and ways, those that they clung to even after the Inuit "revolution". This would have kept them culturally distinct from Inuit for some time, but the Dorset cultural distinctness was probably beginning to fade from the time that it met the Inuit. Probably, neither Tunit nor Inuit ever noticed this happening, not even up till and past the time that the process became impossible to reverse.

Would Inuit have even cared? It is possible that many of the Tunit themselves did not care, embracing the Inuit lifestyle until the end; until those last few Tunit wept when they could no longer remember the old songs sung by their great-grandparents.

In 1824, the HMS Griper, under Captain G.F. Lyon, anchored off Cape Pembroke. The Cape was part of Coats Island, which is situated in the northernmost portion of Hudson Bay. According to Lyon, the Griper was soon approached by a man riding a vessel composed of three inflated seal-skins, held together by intestines, with a piece of whalebone fashioned as a paddle. The strange man was at once fearful and curious. Dealings with him led Lyon to go ashore, intrigued by this peculiar people, of, " . . . mild manners, quiet speech, and as grateful for kindness, as they were anxious to return it."

The women, by his account, wore their hair twisted into a short club, hanging over each temple. They were tattooed. The men wore a huge ball of hair (" . . . as large as the head of a child . . . ") upon their forehead. They also wore murr-skin mitts, and polar-bear pants (the latter, as the northwest Greenlandic Inussuit people do, incidentally).

These people were known as the Sadlermiut, and they have left many of their stone cairns, houses, and graves upon Coats Island – having favoured angular shapes in their architecture. It seems that isolation upon their island had preserved their culture, an Arctic tradition far more ancient than any of those previously encountered by Occidentals.

Unfortunately, the Sadlermiut have to be spoken of in the past tense, because they died out in the earliest part of the 20th century.

Traffic between these mysterious people and sailors seems to have been friendly, and there even exist writings from late 19th century whalers, applauding the bravery and strength of Sadlermiut hunters. Disease, as is so often the case, is the true villain here. From the time of contact, it whittled away at the Sadlermiut population, until by 1896 it was noted that only seventy of them remained.

The ultimate fate of the Sadlermiut is well-known. In the fall of 1902, some of them visited a ship – the Active, a whaling vessel – that had made its stop at Southampton Island, a short distance to the northwest of Coats. They brought something back with them, something they had caught from a sick sailor aboard the Active: a disease that spread like a grease-fire, dealing its victims agony and death. Whether it was typhoid or typhus, by the time winter was upon Coats, the isle was silent and dead. As a people, the Sadlermiut were extinct.

The extinction of the Sadlermiut is a loss beyond the level of similar mass starvations or plague outbreaks, since it represents not only the death of a population, but of a people – an entire ethnicity. And the loss cuts even deeper with the realization that the Sadlermiut culture could have offered the rest of us a glimpse into the prehistoric past, into the Stone Age itself. It is a blow to the human race – to the very sciences based around its study.

For in 1954, Henry B. Collins was to speak of the, "largest aggregation of old Eskimo house ruins in the Canadian Arctic." These he found at Native Point on Southampton Island, while working with the Smithsonian Institution. He determined that these ruins were characteristic of Sadlermiut culture, an indication that the Sadlermiut had once been quite numerous, and had long ago dwelt in lands other than Coats Island.

Throughout 1954 and ‘55, Collins studied the house ruins upon both islands, leading him to a discovery both startling and tragic in nature. He finally stated that he had, "found evidence that the Sadlermiut descended from the Dorsets – that they were in fact the last survivors of the Dorset culture."

And if these had indeed been the last descendants of the Dorset culture, then they had also been the last of the Tunit.

To think, they had really been there – breathing the very air that my great-grandparents breathed – those people whose ancestors had seen the coming of the Thule, of those who would be the first to call themselves Inuit.

The death of these last Tunit truly leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, and yet it cannot dull my euphoria at the thought of this meeting of myth and fact. For such records of existent Tunit, living as recently as our last century, serves to bolster the credibility of Inuit folklore. It proves that Inuit (indeed, all aboriginal peoples) have always known their world well – and forget nothing.

Inuit, as with many Indian cultures, are extremely loyal to their oral traditions; always reticent to alter story details. This tendency becomes stronger as one looks further west, with Alaskan storytellers refusing to even tell a story if they cannot remember a minor character’s name.

Even in the east, it was normal for a storyteller who had forgotten part of a tale to end it prematurely, rather than substituting with his/her own imaginings. This explains the segmented feel of many Inuit stories – most tales are actually only chapters of much larger epics. For example, the beloved Kiviuq (the wayward shaman culture-hero) is spoken of in many short adventures, but all "Kiviuq stories" are actually part of a larger, overarching epic, having a distinct beginning and end.

Thanks to such fidelity, we can use Inuit folklore as a kind of murky, cultural lens, snatching glimpses of the very real past. Tales are always drawn from the real experiences of their inventors – consciously or not. Ideas are shape-shifters, tricksters, but they originate from somewhere.

In the case of the Tunit, the folklore would immediately seem to conflict. As already mentioned, some of the Tunit tales tell of their incompetence – others of their wisdom. Most stories portray them as a peculiar paradox: stupid in some ways, while clever in others.

So which version is true? I think that we can detect the truth by setting folklore side-by-side with archaeohistory. We know that Inuit are of the Thule culture, while Tunit are the Dorset. We also know that the Thule/Inuit, in order to take advantage of a temporarily warming Arctic, developed ingenious technologies that enabled them to hunt sea-mammals efficiently. The Thule then moved into Dorset lands.

Try to imagine, then, what these people must have experienced, and what they must have thought of each other. The Thule/Inuit would have had admirable tools and hunting methods; but as newcomers, they would not have known the land. The Dorset/Tunit would seem more primitive by comparison, having far less efficient hunting techniques and technologies – but they must have had the advantage of wisdom, of knowing the land and the seasons in their part of the world; of knowing when specific animals come and go; or of how to read the weather.

Many Inuit tales state things like, "The Tunit were incompetent, but they taught Inuit many things." This sounds almost insane, and yet it may actually be the honest truth. It seems likely to me that the reason for this Inuit folkloric perception (also note the lack of open warfare between Tunit and Inuit) results from the fact that there was an exchange of knowledge between the two peoples from the time that Inuit first arrived in Tunit lands. As newcomers, Inuit might have at first depended upon the Tunit – who knew the land as well, then, as Inuit know it today – to teach them about the geography, weather patterns, and animal migratory patterns. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed knowledgeable to Inuit. And yet Inuit would immediately have noticed that the Tunit didn’t think to use toggling harpoons, to build decent boats, to use soapstone lamps, to build to igluvigait (i.e., igloos), to have dogs pull their sleds, and so on. In this way, the Tunit would have seemed almost stupid to Inuit.

This, then, would make the folklore true: To Inuit, the Tunit were at once wise and inept.

Before I end, I should note that Inuit are far from unique in having such folklore – that of shy, short-yet-robust beings, odd in their nature, possessing ancient wisdom. Many cultures around the world mention such beings in their folklore, the most well-known perhaps being from Europe, and especially Scandinavia. And many archeologists and folklorists believe that these beings, like the Tunit, derive from older, primitive peoples that faded away in the face of migratory waves of technologically advanced cultures. As a land’s older occupants dwindle into obscurity, so do they take on folkloric status to its current occupants. They are the long-ago ones, those who dwell in the bones of the world.

So Inuit are fortunate, for the last of the Tunit did not live so long ago. Not so much of them has been lost as otherwise might have been, remaining preserved in that loyal, wonderful, oral tradition. It is not much of a monument to the Tunit culture, but it will have to do.

I challenge every reader thusly: In your own culture, who are your forgotten ones? Who is, or has already has, faded away? Who might dwell in the bones of your own world?

Pijariiqpunga.

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