Hi Guys...

Welcome back! I just had to check the weather forecast when I saw where Iqaluit is (if that's where you spend your time, that is): at -16°C it seems rather nippy! And I'm feeling the cold here in Johannesburg this morning at +16°C ! Am considering some blessings counted...

Greetings from the sunny south....how's that global warming treating you up there ? Has it thawed out yet? The Florida beachgoer's skin turns white as snow this time of the year....

Greetings.

Yo, I'm still here, lurking in the bushes...
Del

Hello

Wasn't there a court order to stop you lurking?

. . . . waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey . . .

Good to hear from you.

Yes, retirement is great!

It's 7:00 p.m. here in Mindanao, Philippines and it's a cool 30°C according to my weather app.

Yup, retired as well. Spending my days making videos about my profession (former) and writing books (not about my former profession).

I don't post or visit as often as I did but I do step in for a peek every now and then.

regards,

Vulcan

Good to have you stop by. Don't be a stranger now, yah hear.

Iqualuit. Man, that is a long ways north! Recently restored to its aboriginal name, from Frobisher Bay. We all learned in school that it was named after Sir Martin Frobisher, a sixteenth century British explorer who first thought the bay might be the beginning of the north-west passage. He captured three Inuit and took them back to England (as zoo specimens I suppose). All three died shortly after landing. The furthest north I've been is Moosonee (end of the rail line of the Polar Bear Express), but that is still tropical compared to Iqaluit.

What was the cause of death of the three Inuit, is it known?

Probably the common cold. I'm just guessing but I don't think it existed amongst the Inuit then and so they had no resistance.

A man, woman, and child. Probably, as Randall says, just the common cold, progressing to pneumonia. No resistance to European diseases. If European explorers had not considered the Inuit sub-human, exploration of the polar regions would have gone much smoother. The Norwegian Roald Amundsen woke everyone up to their error. He lived among the Inuit for two years, learned how they lived and applied that knowledge to his successful expedition to the South Pole in 1911. He and his men wore animal skins after the Inuit pattern, and used sleds and dogs, moving fast and light. The rival British team led by Robert Scott used ponies, and wore heavy woollen clothes. When Scott finally arrived at the South Pole, he was greeted by the heartbreaking sight of the Norwegian flag, planted there by Amundsen just a month before. Scott and his men almost made it back but an Antarctic storm stopped their progress and they perished in their tents.

The adult male is said to have died from wounds suffered in his capture, the woman and child who also died unknown...The Inuit seem to have been kidnapped in retaliation for 5 of the explorers that were kidnapped....

..."In one skirmish, one Englishman was wounded and five or six Inuit killed, three by drowning after jumping off a cliff to avoid capture after being wounded. The older woman is captured, then released after having her shoes pulled off ‘to see if she were cloven footed’."...

hahaha...

https://mylearning.org/stories/exploring-postcolonial-history-sir-martin-frobisher/1306

Wait... is this where high heels come from, ostensibly cloven hoofs??? Beware the cloven hooved woman, the title of my next song...to the tune of "American Woman"...

Hey a new shoe brand...Excuse me, are those cloven hoofs you're wearing? Why yes, yes they are....

Re: "Wait... is this where high heels come from, ostensibly cloven hoofs??? Beware the cloven hooved woman, the title of my next song...to the tune of "American Woman"..."

Your 'witticism' is based on the historical account (related in your previous post) of European explorers removing an Inuit woman's footwear to see if she was cloven hoofed. You found this incident of extreme racial prejudice so humorous that you were confident it could be milked for another laugh.

Treat people with respect and you will get friendship and respect in return. Amundsen's experience with the Inuit was completely different than Frobisher's. Amundsen lived with the Inuit for two years during his successful North-west passage expedition. "Amundsen immediately made friends with the Inuit and an amicable relationship developed. The Norwegians learned their language and were able to communicate fully with them. The friendliness and generosity of the Inuit was repaid by the white man's goodwill and respect. The Inuit taught the Norwegians how to make igloos, to make their sledge runners slide at very low temperatures, the art of dressing warmly in loose furs, and how to drive dogs. In turn the Norwegians provided the Inuit with knives, needles, and matches, and other tools of wood and metal. They hunted together and frequently visited each other's camps ...etc." - from Canadian Geographic website

..."Treat people with respect and you will get friendship and respect in return."...

Not always true....

"made it their business to frequent the great highways of India and become friendly with travelers, with a view to setting upon them and strangling them."

Thuggee's...

Serial killers...

...but she was so nice....

https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/10/early-american-serial-killers/

Have you ever even been to a big city? People are beaten to death or near death every day for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time...

We are talking about the Canadian arctic here, at the time of first contact between the Inuit and Europeans. In that context, your distrust-everyone argument is gratuitous and irrelevant. Amundsen treated the native Inuit as fellow human beings. In return they were glad to share their arctic survival skills with him. He knew that he needed the Inuit friendship and help to succeed in his North-west passage expedition, and he knew that he needed what he had learned from them to succeed in his later expedition to the South Pole.

It's more likely that the Inuit valued the trade goods Amundsen was providing, as these were two different cultures that had totally different beliefs and laws...Frobisher had ordered his men to avoid the Inuit to avoid any problems, however 5 of his men deserted to live with the Inuit, and after a few years decided to leave and died in that attempt according to historical data...The fact that Amundsen's expedition was more successful than Frobisher's might just be a quirk of fate and nothing more...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#:~:text=The%20historic%20accounts%20of%20violence,cultures%20and%20with%20other%20cultures.

Re: "The fact that Amundsen's expedition was more successful than Frobisher's might just be a quirk of fate and nothing more..."

Apparently you want to diminish or eliminate any contribution the Inuit made to the success of Amundsen's expedition(s). You would prefer perhaps to celebrate his North-west passage and South Pole expeditions as unvarnished triumphs of white European prowess. Fortunately, Amundsen was free of racial prejudices. Unlike other European arctic explorers he recognised that the real experts in arctic survival were the people who actually lived there, and it would be wise to treat them as intelligent human beings who had a great deal to teach him. It was not a 'quirk of fate' that Amundsen remained in the arctic among the Inuit for a second year. He decided to stay there so to learn as much of the Inuit ways as possible - about clothing, shelter, travel, hunting... With that knowledge it was also not a 'quirk of fate' that Amundsen was the first man to reach the South Pole. His Inuit teachers share the credit.

Frobisher's hands off approach likely saved many lives, while Amundsen's intimate association, likely wiped out a good portion of the tribe...Your attempt to romanticize these expeditions is laughable...It's no secret these misguided expeditions were about finding gold, not establishing relationships with indigenous tribes...

It was sensible pragmatism, not romanticism, that compelled Amundsen to live with the Inuit for two years, and learn from them. It paid off. He was the leader of the first successful NW passage expedition and of the first successful South Pole expedition. He stated that any arctic expedition team that was not fitted with fur clothing following the Inuit pattern was ill-equipped. He knew what he was talking about.

Clearly, you do not want to acknowledge Amundsen's debt to the Inuit. If you were there in Antarctica in 1911, you would have scoffed at his team's animal furs and sleds and husky dogs. Ho, ho, ho. Look at those Norwegians! They look like dumb Eskimoes! You would have joined Scott's team with their woollen and rubberized canvas clothes, ponies, and motorized vehicles - the smart white European approach - and gone with them to their graves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McClure

..."Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to make the journey through the Passage entirely by ship, which he completed in 1905. He was escaping creditors who were seeking to stop the expedition.

Adopting a contrasting approach to the expeditions previously led by Franklin and McClure, who had adhered to the British tradition of exploration with expensive ships that were well-funded with supplies and modern technologies, Roald Amundsen set sail with a small crew of six on a shallow-draft vessel called the Gjøa.

As Amundsen’s expedition traveled past Baffin Island, they harbored off King William Island to take shelter from the winter. They spent two winters (1903-04 and 1904-05) in what is now a community called Gjøa Haven. They learned from the local Netsilik Inuit people how to survive in the Arctic."...

Gjoa Haven...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen

Here is the complete sentence from the article you referenced: "They spent two winters at King William Island, in the harbor of what is today Gjoa Haven. During this time, Amundsen and the crew learned from the local Netsilik Inuit about Arctic survival skills, which he found invaluable in his later expedition to the South Pole. For example, he learned to use sled dogs for transportation of goods and to wear animal skins in lieu of heavy, woolen parkas, which could not keep out the cold when wet." All this confirms what I have written. Earlier in this thread you state that Amundsen's arctic successes were probably just a 'quirk of fate', and that it is 'laughable romanticism' to suggest that he could have learned anything from the native Inuit that contributed to his success. You have another good laugh at the account of earlier Europeans forcing an Inuit woman to remove her footwear to see if she was cloven hoofed, and add your own 'witticism' to this account so we can all join you in the fun. You have revealed in this thread an aspect of your person that you may, upon reflection, wish that you hadn't.

Wow you seem to have some personal issues... I have no doubt that what Amundsen learned from the Inuit contributed to the success of his venture.. He was more or less penniless and had no funding for proper supplies...therefore he had to fabricate and procure the materials and skills necessary to live off the land and survive the harsh conditions...He was resourceful and tenacious in his drive to succeed...he took his time and learned the local weather patterns and the nature of the sea ice and formulated a plan to succeed...He had somehow backed himself into a corner that provided proper motivation, in other words he had to succeed, this is a man who gambled it all, and won...but his relationship with the local natives was completely self-serving, they were necessary for him to succeed and had no consideration beyond that...In other words desperate times call for desperate measures, and imo, Amundsen was certainly a desperate man....

Why you seem to be so offended at my amusement over the ignorance of these seamen in thinking a woman might have cloven hooves, is puzzling...unless of course you have such a deformity yourself, and if that's the case you have my sympathy...

Nice piece of face-saving revisionist history, SE. You take a truth - that Amundsen's expeditions were poorly funded - and use that to suggest that Amundsen only chose to equip his expedition teams with Inuit-made fur clothing, and Inuit sleds and dogs, because that is all he could afford, further suggesting that had he been better funded, like Englishman Robert Scott, he too would have purchased good European woollen clothing, ponies, and motorized sledges. This view, that finances forced Amundsen to use primitive and inferior Inuit equipment, allows you to continue to hold to your earlier expressed opinion that it is "laughable romanticism" to claim that Amundsen could have learned anything from the Inuit, and it must therefore have been just a "quirk of fate" that Amundsen's South Pole expedition was a success, and that the 'better equipped' Scott and his men perished.

The stated goal in these expeditions was to find a navigable route they called the Northwest passage, all they ended up proving is that the ice makes this dangerous if not impossible as a reliable route....

"Irish explorer Sir Robert McClure was the first to travel the entirety of the Northwest Passage. Some 50 years before Amundsen....However, much of his journey was completed by traveling over ice rather than water.

After his initial attempt to complete the Northwest Passage in 1853 resulted in his ship becoming icebound, McClure continued his journey by sled and became the first person to transit the entire Northwest Passage. "

"When McClure returned to England, he was first court-martialed — the penalty for a captain losing his ship. He was then given an honorable acquittal and was knighted and promoted. The British Admiralty awarded McClure and his men the prize for traversing the Northwest Passage."

These endeavors were mostly about finding gold or other valuable commodities, which didn't pan out in any of these attempts....Nowadays it's just a tourist destination...

My how things have changed....

Northwest Passage vacations...

Don't forget to suit-up....

https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/clothing_in_antarctica.php

I have been to Gjoa Haven many times... a nice community. The funny thing is... all of the communities basically look the same yet are different in many ways. Some of the more traditional ones are amongst the nicest. Here is a little trivia... in the community of Igloolik... TV was actually banned until some time in the early 80s (not sure of the exact dates).

Enjoy your retirement! Last year I told an upper manager that I was looking at retirement and the next thing I know I got a promotion, a nice raise and a second facility to manage. I probably shouldn't have told them.