An Act of Kindness: Part 1.5

I’m sure you’re all wondering what’s happened to the blog, I promised a Part 2 for the story of Tullauhiu’s leg and I have yet to deliver!

Truthfully, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of research. Although I’ve discovered some interesting tidbits, I want to wait until I’ve uncovered the full story before I present it to you here.

I had some great feedback from Part 1 of this blog post, from a variety of different sources, all of which lead me in different directions. As someone who loves a good mystery I embraced these leads like any research detective would, and this has only led me further and further down the rabbit hole. The further I went, the less I felt I could blog about it until I had the facts straight.

This story entwines archaeology, oral history, and the broken trails of early record-keeping. I think it will be a fascinating tale, and I hope I will find out how we came to acquire this artifact.

In the meantime, I try to maintain my focus on what this prosthetic leg meant for Tullauhiu. The loss of a limb would be a devastating experience, and within Inuit culture this was felt even deeper. One of my colleagues mentioned that a person with a severed limb was no longer considered whole. She sent me a chapter from her MA thesis which discussed this:

“A person with a severed limb or organ is considered of a lesser kind then other human beings. Only an angakkuq, a shaman, could survive a “disarticulation”.  In fact, going through such an experience was part of the shamanic rite of passage. Angakkut stood at the articulation of the terrestrial and cosmological worlds (Saladin d’Anglure 1983, 2006a; Trott 2006).” (Cloutier-Gelinas 2010:62).

Imagine then what the gift of a prosthetic leg would have meant for Tullauhiu!

After consulting with some folks, I decided that while I sort through the details of this mystery I’d leave something for Tullahuhiu to let him know I understand the importance of this artifact. Although food was suggested, I knew our conservators would not be pleased with me if I left some jerky in the storage areas. Instead I chose something else that could be of some use, a small iron file.

Image © Manitoba Museum

References:

Cloutier-Gelinas, M.

2010  Through Space, Time, and Otherness: A Spatial Analysis of 15th to 20th century Labrador Inuit Settlement Patterns.  Unpublished MA thesis, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL.

Saladin d’Anglure, B.

1983 Ijiqqat: voyage au pays de l’invisible inuit. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 7(1): 67-83.

2006a Reflexions anthropologiques a propos d’un 3e sexe social chez les Inuit.  Conjonctures, 41 (42): 177-205.

Trott, C.J.
2006 “The Gender of the Bear”. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 30(1): 89-110

When I first started at the museum I spent a lot of time opening cabinets and drawers to check out this remarkable collection that is now under my care. There are many impressive artefacts, but this one really struck a chord with me.

I opened a drawer to find what appears to be a simple box (carefully constructed by skilled conservators!). A closer look at the photo label revealed someone’s leg! I was a bit shocked, I did not expect to find a prosthesis in the HBC collection. I immediately went to our database to find out more.

As it turns out, Tullauhiu was an Inuit hunter who lost his leg to a polar bear. John Ross (yes, THE John Ross who went in search of the Northwest Passage) ordered the Victory‘s carpenter to fit Tullauhiu with a wooden leg. The carpenter apparently worked with the ship’s surgeon and Tullauhiu was fitted with a prosthetic leg on January 15, 1830.

Constructed from wood, leather, iron nails, sheet copper, and copper nails (hence the green-ish tinge) Tullauhiu was given a new lease on life.  What prompted John Ross, on his second Arctic voyage, to do this?

Ross briefly mentions this event in his 1835 Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a NorthWest Passage (this excerpt is from page 5). Apparently the event is also discussed in Farley Mowat’s Ordeal By Ice (1993: pg 228-236) but I have yet to snag a copy to see for myself.

Perhaps it really was just a simple act of kindness, or maybe there was more to the story (page 52 of Ross’s narrative alluded to something). Either way, looking at this prosthetic leg in a box gets me thinking about what this leg meant for Tullauhiu.

That’s what I love about my job, it’s not just the material ‘things’ in the collection, but the stories behind them and thinking about what these items meant for the people who made and used them.

*UPDATE: The plot thickens on this interesting artifact, stayed tuned for part 2!*