INGNIRYUAT
Smoking cliff at the bottom of Franklin Bay. Photo from ‘Frozen Ships’ by Johann Miertsching, 1967
The ‘Smoking Hills’ of Franklin Bay WORDS BY CHARLES ARNOLD
“Spirits known as Ingniryuat Inuit inhabit the Smoking Mountains, and it is the smoke of their fires we see.” -Mamie Mamayauq, as told to Viljhalmur Stefansson in 1912
Since far back in recorded memory, people have offered explanations for sulphursmelling fumes rising from high hills along the west coast of Franklin Bay, about 100 kilometres west of Paulatuk. Ingniryuat, Smokey Mountains, Smoking Hills… whatever name they go by, this long stretch of hills stands out as one of the most intriguing landmarks in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. The earliest written record of the Smoking Hills is an account by Dr. John Richardson, who served as surgeon and naturalist with two of British Navy Lieutenant (later Captain) John Franklin’s expeditions in the Arctic. In 1826, during the second of these expeditions, Richardson observed that eroding cliffs bordering Franklin Bay “were on fire, giving out smoke,” and that they contained “burnt clays variously coloured yellow, white and deep red.”
Drawing on his training in the European tradition of science, he offered an explanation for the Smoking Hills that is judged by earth scientists today to be reasonably accurate, given the state of knowledge at the time. The Western science explanation is that veins of organic materials, including low-grade coal known as lignite mixed with iron sulphide and other minerals, ignite spontaneously when they are exposed to the air as the hills erode, giving off sulphur-smelling smoke, and the heat generated through this process bakes the minerals, transforming them into the coloured clay-like rocks described by Richardson.
reported that he thought he also saw tents and men in white jackets, so a small boat was launched to determine if they were survivors of the missing Franklin expedition.
The earliest known illustration of the Smoking Hills also has a connection to John Franklin. It appears in a published account of the expedition of the ship HMS Investigator under the command of Captain Robert McClure, who was searching for survivors of John Franklin’s quest for a sea passage through the Arctic that commenced in 1845 and, as we now know, ended in tragedy a few years later.
Miertsching said that the whole place was like a “huge chemical factory,” and that water in nearby ponds was contaminated by the smoke and had a sour taste. Like Richardson had done before him, Miertsching commented on the colours of the baked clay-like rocks and brought samples back to the ship, where they were still hot enough to burn holes in the captain’s mahogany table.
In the summer of 1850, the Investigator was cruising along the shore of Franklin Bay when pillars of smoke were seen coming from the sea cliffs. One of the crew, looking through a telescope from the masthead,
No fires, tents or people were found. Instead, Johann Miertsching, a Moravian missionary on board as a translator and who was among the shore party, wrote that they found “… a thick smoke emerging from various vents in the ground, and a smell of sulphur so strong that we could not approach the smokepillar nearer than 10 or 15 feet. Flame there was none, but the ground was so hot that it scorched the soles of our feet.”
Inuvialuit oral traditions that long predate the arrival of Europeans provide other explanations for Ingniryuat, which in English means “big fire.” Like much of Inuvialuit folklore, these explanations are embedded in stories and draw on beliefs in
