7 minute read
Ingniryuat
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
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.
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.
-Mamie Mamayauq, as told toViljhalmur Stefansson in 1912
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, 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.
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.”
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.
Photo by Elisa Hart/NWT Archives/G-2004-004: 2203
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 spirits to account for mysteries in nature. Aunaraitsaiq, a resident of the Cape Bathurst area, told the following story about the Smoking Mountains to Knud Rasmussen, a Danish researcher who recorded Inuit traditions while travelling along the coast from Greenland to Alaska, in 1924:
“In the early infancy of man, people were neveralone, whether they lived in a settlement or weretravelling on long journeys. They were surroundedby a spirit people […] who lived as human beingsand were in fact human beings – except that theywere invisible. Their bodies were not for our eyes, ortheir voices for our ears. And when people travelledand pitched camp and began to build their snowhuts, one might see round about the snowdriftsthat the snow blocks began to move, being lifted outof the drifts…and piled together into a snow housewhich seemed to grow of itself. Occasionally onemight see the glitter of a copper knife – that was all!
They [..] did not mind people coming into theirhouses, which were arranged just like those ofhuman beings. All their belongings were visible,and people could trade with them very profitably.If one wished to buy something, all that wasnecessary was to point to it and at the same timeshow what one was prepared to give for it. If thespirit people agreed, the object required lifted itselfup and moved towards the man who wanted it. But if they declined the bargain, the object remainedwhere it was.
So people were never alone; they always had smallsilent and invisible spirits around them! But oneday it happened that during a halt a man seizedhis knife and cried: ‘What do we want with thesepeople who are always right on our heels!’ Sayingthis he flourished his knife in the air and thrust itin the direction of the snow huts that had madethemselves. Not a sound was heard, but the knifewas covered with blood!
The Smoking Hills.
Photo by Charles Arnold
From that moment the spirits went away. Neveragain did anyone see the wondrous sight ofsnowdrifts forming themselves into snow hutswhen one made camp, and forever the people losttheir silent, invisible guardian spirits. It was saidthat they had gone to live inside the mountainsin order to hide from man, who had mocked andwounded their feelings. That is why to this day onecan see the mountains smoking from the enormouscooking fires flaming inside them.”
Other stories about the spirits, powers and dangers of the Smoking Hills are included in ‘Nuna Aliannaittuq – Beautiful Land,’ a book about the origins and meanings of traditional place names in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
Joe Nasogaluak said: “We have heard about these people that lived beneath there (Smoking Hills). There have been stories told about them. They were so dangerous that people detoured around them when passing.”
Cora Kimiksana was told that the smoke at Ingniryuat comes from the cooking pots of little people who lived in the cliffs.
Fred Wolki also had heard that they were little people: “[They are as] big as a fork that you eat with. They use a caribou’s ear for a parka. They turn it inside out and they just have to put it on… Just take the inside off, skin it – a ready made parka.”
Edgar Kotokak talked about special properties of the coloured minerals that people drew upon at a time when many of their dogs were dying, perhaps due to distemper: “Sam Anaqiin (Anikina) and I went by Ingniryuat and we rubbed red soot on our dogs so they wouldn’t get sick… Our dogs didn’t get sick at all.”
Low-grade lignite coal also occurs in other parts of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, but only at Ingniryuat is the land smoking, whether due to the properties of minerals mixed with lignite or due to the cooking fires of spirits.
In fact, Paulatuuq – the traditional name of Paulatuk – has a connection to coal. Paulatuuq means “place of soot” in English, and the name was given to the area many years ago by Jessie Green, whose canvas tent was blackened by soot when she burned local coal in a stove.
Ingniryuat and Paulatuuq are just two examples of many place names in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region that show how Inuvialuit history is written on the land.
The following sources were consulted in writing this essay: Arctic Searching Expedition, Volume 1. John Richardson, 1851. Frozen Ships. Johann Miertsching, 1967. Memories of the Arctic. The memoirs of Father Robert Le Meur, OMI. Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, 2018. Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1825, 1826 an 1827. John Franklin, 1828. Nuna Aliannaittuq – Beautiful Land. Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, 2011. The Stefansson-Anderson Expedition of the American Museum. Viljhalmur Stefansson, 1914.
