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DRUM DANCING AT IGLUQPAIT,1892 THE EARLIEST KNOWN PHOTOS OF INUVIALUIT DRUM DANCE
ON JULY 14, 1892, THE HUDSON’S BAY Company’s ship Wrigley arrived at Fort McPherson, the northernmost stop on its annual voyage down the Mackenzie River to resupply the HBC’s trading posts and pick up furs. Waiting on shore were Inuvialuit who had travelled there from the coast and, as was their usual practice, they held a drum dance to celebrate the arrival of the ship. What made this celebration of particular interest was that two of the passengers on the Wrigley took pictures, providing us with the earliest known photographs of an Inuvialuit drum dance.
The Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort McPherson on the lower Peel River, near the head of the Mackenzie River Delta, in 1840. This had long been traditional Gwich’in territory, and for the first few years only Gwich’in traded there. By the late 1840s, however, Inuvialuit also began to visit the post. Impressed by the size of the buildings, they called Fort McPherson Igluqpait (‘big houses’). The Inuvialuit who traded at Fort McPherson travelled there from their villages at the mouth of the Mackenzie River in large flotillas of qayaqs
// WORDS BY CHARLES ARNOLD
The Wrigley on its annual trip to resupply Hudson’s Bay Company’s Mackenzie District trading posts in 1906 (Vilhjalmur Stefansson/Dartmouth College Library).
An Inuvialuit camp at Fort McPherson in 1901. Umiaqs and qayaqs can be seen, and there is a drum rim to the right of the tent behind the boy in the photograph (C.W. Mathers/Provincial Archives of Alberta).
