Moravians, members of the oldest Protestant church, established themselves on the north coast of Labrador in the second half of the eighteenth century. [1]They had a keenly developed missionary consciousness that viewed evangelization among the Inuit as guided by Christ himself. The men and women enlisted in this salvific and human drama saw themselves as continuing the work of the missionaries who had preceded them in Greenland and other locales throughout the world. In Labrador, they had explored the viability of a mission two decades earlier through the Wismar mariner Johann Christian Erhardt and four missionaries. The journey and the missionaries’ stay in Labrador ended prematurely with the violent deaths of Erhardt and six of the ship’s crew during a trade encounter with Inuit for whalebone. [2]After further exploration in 1764, 1765, and 1770, and upon securing a sizable land grant in 1769, a permanent Labrador mission became a reality in 1771 at Nain.

More so than any other religious group, the Moravian missionaries documented evangelistic progress in Labrador for the administration at home, in this case the Unity Elders Conference in Saxony, and for fellow Moravians elsewhere. For this purpose they established and maintained an archive in Nain. The meticulous documentation of their activities on the Labrador coast was conveyed annually to Europe through copies sent along with other communications by the missionary supply vessel. [3]These documents were collected in the central Moravian archive in Herrnhut, Saxony, which also contains a large map collection that goes back to the eighteenth century. The beginnings of their missionary work were thus well documented in diaries, minutes, and letters, but also in specific chronicles that detailed the purposeful planning and earliest establishment of the missionary settlements at Nain (1771), Okak (1776), Hopedale (1782), and Hebron (1830). The following paper explores the historical data in the rich archival materials to better understand the tenuous nature of early Moravian settlement and trade in light of Inuit mobility and competitive European traders in southern Labrador. The diaries and other documents are used as windows that permit glimpses of Inuit activities and interactions with missionaries on Labrador’s north coast and European mercantile and military personnel in southern Labrador.

Among the Moravian sources, the chronicles written by contemporary participants that document the establishment of a new settlement have largely been ignored in Labrador and Inuit studies. Included in an appendix to this paper is the Moravian chronicle, edited and translated, about the beginnings of Hopedale, penned at Hopedale in 1783 by the Labrador pioneer Jens Haven prior to his return to Europe. It is a remarkable first-hand account of the strategic, logistical, and ecological considerations that went into planning a missionary settlement. It is also a witness to the importance of Arvertok as gathering place and gateway for Inuit travelling to southern Labrador well before the Moravians settled nearby.

The missionary station at Hopedale (German: “Hoffenthal”) and the old Inuit whaling site of Arvertok (also called Arbatok and other variations; in the revised spelling: Agvituk) were important locales for Inuit travelling to and from central and southern Labrador. This paper begins with a discussion of the earliest, flawed, awareness of Arvertok among the missionaries as documented in the travel journals and maps from the 1765 and 1770 exploration journeys. Also presented is the historiography of Inuit from the Hopedale area who, once Moravians had established themselves there, continued to travel to the south to trade. Specific European merchants and firms, and the locations of Chateau Bay, Sandwich Bay, and Hamilton Inlet, figure in the Moravian diaries and correspondence, and these references are presented to add to the picture of trade contacts. The paper finishes with the annotated translation of Jens Haven’s chronicle of the founding of Hopedale. [4]

The Inuit toponym “Arbatok,” a site with 10 houses at the southern entrance to Hamilton Inlet, first appears in the Moravian records on the Haven-Schloezer map dated 1765 associated with a second Moravian exploration journey by Jens Haven, Larsen Christen Drachardt, John Hill, and Andreas Schloezer. [5]This and other toponyms were provided by Inuit who were interviewed further south at Chateau Bay. Although Arbatok may represent an authentic locale near Hamilton Inlet, it is very possible that an error was made, or that there were several localities with the same name since Arbatok, meaning place of whales, tends to be a generic toponym rather than a specific one. [6]In any event, as discussed below, Haven would later question his earlier notion on the correct location of Arvertok at the mouth of Hamilton Inlet. Awareness of a more northerly location for Arvertok came during the 1770 journey.

The 1765 Haven-Schloezer map (see Figure 1) is centrally focused on the major embayment of Hamilton Inlet and Lake Melville but depicts the outer coast of Labrador from approximately 53N latitude (the Seal Islands and Porcupine Bay area) in the south to 57N (the Voisey’s Bay area) in the north. Along this littoral are located 36 Inuit toponyms including Arbatok, which is “Walfisch platz” in German and “place of whales” in English. These place names are also listed alphabetically on the left side under the title “Die Namen übersetz[t],” in English “The Names translated,” and each is given a German translation and some are provided explanatory comments. The mapped coast is further subdivided into 13 zones from north to south, each indicated by red capital letters A-N, corresponding to regions discussed by Jens Haven in a companion text.

Figure 1: Haven-Schloezer map from 1765 (TS Mp.111.10; with permission of the Unity Archives, Herrnhut).

-> See the list of figures

The Haven-Schloezer map, catalogued as TS M.111.10 in the Herrnhut map collection, was the basis for two additional professionally drawn, black- and-white maps. One of these is TS Mp.114.11 (see Figure 2), which bears the Latin inscription: “Pars/Terrae Labrador/ex Gallico originali designata/per ipsos Nativos/qui Esquimaux audiunt/se ipsos vero Karalit vocant/correcta/& cum eorum nominibus adornata,/in hanc ordinem redacta/per quosdam/ Unitatis Fratrum/Anno Domini MDCCLXV,” which translates as, “Part of Labrador, from a French original, traced out by the natives themselves, corrected and adorned with their names, edited in this order by certain [members] of the Unitas Fratrum, who heard it from the Esquimaux, who, in fact, call themselves Karalit, in the Year of the Lord 1765.” [7]This map lacks the list of translated toponyms of TS M.111.10 and is limited to the coast between 53 and 56 degrees north latitude. The reference to “a French Original” refers to earlier charts created by Fornel and Pilote in 1743, on which the 1765 Haven-Schloezer maps rely for a template. [8]

Figure 2: Black-and-white map based on the Haven-Schloezer map from 1765 (TS Mp.114.11; with permission of the Unity Archives, Herrnhut).

-> See the list of figures

A commentary in Haven’s tortuous German, titled “Kortzer ercklerung über die beÿ folgende Carte so wohl als die Reisse nach labrador 1765,” [“Short Explanation about the enclosed Map as well as the Journey to Labrador 1765”], [9] describes the mapped areas north to south divided into 13 sections lettered in red capitals A-N. The entrance to Hamilton Inlet contains four sections, among them Arbatok. Haven described its location as follows: “2nd Arbatok (place of whales), these are all the islands on the south side of the fjord as well as the mainland to Puktuallik.” [10]

Thus we find that one of the earliest Moravian maps of Labrador placed Arvertok (“Arbatok”) in Hamilton Inlet rather than in today’s Hopedale region. The 1765 journal, map, and map commentary by Haven confirm that the toponym is an Inuit regional name indicating an abundance of whales. [11]

Moving from the maps, the sources of these toponyms are described in the Moravian journal, and are shown to derive from several occasions at which the missionaries interviewed Inuit about “Arvatok” or “Arbaktok.” The first communication was a part of the series of questions that Larsen Christen Drachardt asked Inuit on 27 August 1765 near Chateau Bay on behalf of Governor Palliser. To Palliser’s query, “Where do they [the Inuit] live, and what are the names and the places where they stay, and how many houses are there?”, “Arbaktok” is mentioned as having 10 houses. [12]After Jens Haven and Andreas Schloezer re- turned to Chateau Bay from their exploration journey north, another conversation with Inuit ensued about locations and names of Inuit settlements. In a journal entry for 12 September 1765, the process of obtaining the names and the location of Arbatok is described as follows:

We inquired again from them about their country and asked about fjords and passages. They said: north of them was a large passage, but it ran again into the sea in the east. There was a fjord to the north, in the mouth of which were many islands, which they all named by name. In this fjord they went to hunt for reindeer, carried their kayaks across land, and then went again into a large fresh water. On the north side of this fjord was Sekullia’s land, which he called Arbaktok. They described for us everything so clearly that we believe seriously that it is the fjord that the French call Kessessakiou or Esquimaux-Bay, and [which] lies in ca. 54 degrees N[orthern] L[atitude], south of Nisbet Harbour. [13]

Figure 3: Printed German map of Hopedale (Hoffenthal) and Hamilton Inlet with settler locations in 1873, sketched by Levin Theodor Reichel (courtesy Hans J. Rollmann).

-> See the list of figures

From this descriptive information, Arbaktok was, quite logically, identified as a region near the mouth of Hamilton Inlet in the 1765 map with other Inuit toponyms. [14]

The place name Arbatok occurs next in connection with an Inuk who had been taken to England. After Haven and Drachardt’s return from their exploration journey, Governor Hugh Palliser placed into their care in 1769 Karpik, a boy who was born approximately 1754 at Arbatok. The boy’s mother had died while he was still a little child, and his father was killed in 1767 during a melee between the British and Inuit in southern Labrador. Karpik, who lived with Drachardt at Fulneck, Yorkshire, where he attended school together with British boys, became the first baptized Inuk from Labrador. The missionaries held high hopes for Karpik’s future help in establishing Labrador missions, but he died of smallpox on 5 October 1769, only a day after his baptism. Karpik had remembered Drachardt’s presence and preaching in Chateau Bay in 1765. [15]

During the third exploration journey in 1770 (after the Moravians had obtained their land grant and Order-in-Council), leading to choosing Nain as the location for the first permanent settlement in 1771, the missionaries passed another place called Arbatok. They then perceived that the region with that name had a more northerly location than they previously assumed. Haven realized that the original location assigned to Arbatok on the basis of their Inuit in- formants in 1765 was “far to the south in front of Esquimaux Bay” and thus could not be correct. [16]When passing Cape Ailik, their Inuit pilot told them “that it was not yet Arbatok, namely the southern habitation of the Esquimaux.” [17] South of Nain and 15 German miles north of Arbatok, the Moravians encountered Inuit from all three major regions along Labrador’s north coast (Arbatok, Nuneinguak, and Kivertlok), who played games — apparently an annual affair — and traded with each other. People from the three locations promised the missionaries to visit them the following year in Nain. [18]

On this 1770 trip, Haven formed his first character judgment of the people from Arbatok. He wrote: “The people of Arbatok [German: “die Arbatoker”] are quite well dressed, but at the same time are proud, rough and look murderous [German: “mörderisch”].” [19]A similar assessment is found in the manuscript history of establishing Hopedale, translated below, where Haven mentions that “the people of Arvatok were greatly respected, and there were proud and rough murderers among them and [people from] all other areas were afraid of them and did their best to always please them.” The contrast between southern — in particular the people from Arbatok — and northern Inuit was later also made by Haven in a travel account about his journey to Nachvak in 1773, where he states, “They [the northerners] are simple, trusting; their joy is childlike. The Arbartokers, on the other hand, are conceited and proud.” [20]

The constant tensions accompanying Inuit-European interaction in the south, so well documented during Erhardt’s 1752 voyage and Haven’s first exploration trip of 1764, when he prevented the planned extermination of a sizable number of Inuit in northern Newfoundland by the English and French, may be reflected in these comparisons and character assessments. The Moravian Elder Paul Eugen Layritz, on a visitation journey to Nain in 1773, is somewhat surprised in having met rather peaceful people from Arbatok, thus contradicting the sterotype that had been formed about them. He mentions that they generally had a reputation for being “a murderous people.” [21]Layritz attributed their “corruption” (German: “verdorben”) to European influences [22] and considered it providential for Moravians to serve as peacemakers between the southern and northern Inuit, by easing the “bitter enmity” that supposedly existed between the two groups. [23]

As Jens Haven’s “Brief Account of Arvatok” below indicates, already prior to the Moravians’ settling there, the place had a great reputation and featured significantly in the Labrador-wide trading network. It was, in Haven’s words, “very well known and famous among them [the Inuit], and who has lived a winter in Arvatok boasts about it as if he had lived in London or Paris.” It also represented a strategic locale from which Inuit launched biennial raids to the south. The inhabitants of Arvertok were well positioned to benefit from the existing Inuit trade along the entire coast of Labrador. In a report of 1775-6, the missionaries summarized what they had found out about this trading network as follows:

Sedleck [Saglek] & Navok [Nachvak] are places where most Whale- fins are to be got, it is now certain that we have been the first Europeans who have visited them[.] They have hitherto carried on a trade with the Abortok [Arvertok] Tribe who truck with them European goods for their Whalefins, Weichstein [“Weichstein,” literally meaning soft stone, is the German word for soapstone] & the Whalebone they carry to the English settlers at Alexis River[,] Cape Charles & Chateau. The farther north from Nain the more Whalefins we have found & this in all probability will hold good with respect to Killineck Bay. So much is certain that all the southern Indians [Inuit] are supplied with sea cow teeth from there with which [they] arm [?] the end of their seal darts, no Esquimaux is without at least 2 of these darts headed with such teeth. [24]

Besides recommending Hopedale as a site for a mission settlement for geographical and ecological reasons, the close proximity — an estimated six minutes from the mission — to this “ancient place of habitation for the Esq[imaux]” was an important consideration for the Moravian missionaries in choosing it as a location. Haven described the population as living in “six inhabited houses and on occasion even more” as well as “five other places around here, with the farthest only two German miles from Arvatok.” According to an Inuit informant, “three to four hundred inhabitants have wintered in the area.” These 11 houses in and near Arvatok were close to the number given to Larsen Christen Drachardt in 1765 when he questioned Inuit near Chateau Bay for Governor Palliser and was told there were 10 in the region. [25] In 1773 Lieutenant Roger Curtis computed the population of Ogbuctoke — his spelling of Arvatok — as 270 persons on the basis of 30 persons per boat. [26]That same summer Elder Layritz and his party encountered five European shallops with Inuit from Arvertok south of Hamilton Inlet on their way to Cape Charles, each with an estimated 30 people on board. [27]Haven gives the total of boats encountered by Layritz as “nine boats, mainly with people from Arvatok.” In 1782, the year Moravians established their settlement at Hopedale, however, only about 70 people lived in three houses at Arvertok near the mission, a figure that fluctuated significantly after the settlement of Hopedale was established; but it usually stayed below this figure while the households at the mission station ranged from two to four houses with a somewhat smaller household average. According to J. Garth Taylor, the Inuit settlement of Arvertok had a household average of about 20 persons as compared to 16 at Hopedale. [28]

Governor Hugh Palliser’s attempt to confine or restrict Inuit to the north while the British ship fishery was being developed in the south of Labrador, and the Moravian missionaries’ desire to keep Inuit apart from European influences while promoting conversion among them, led to an alliance and containment policy that the governor’s immediate successors also supported, but which had only limited success. The Moravian encouragement to preserve Inuit subsistence and lifestyle, albeit in a Christianized way and with trading at Moravian stores, required continued mobility for hunting and fishing by kayak, umiak, and European-style shallops at sea and by dogsled during the winter. This mobility facilitated also continued access to the south, especially where southern traders offered a wider variety of goods than the Moravian stores, as well as better means for hunting (firearms) and travel (sail-powered shallops). Ownership of shallops had been noted already by seventeenth-century French explorers and the Moravian Johann Christian Erhardt on his fateful exploration journey in 1752. [30]Next to boats, firearms were the most coveted trade good for the Inuit. For the first 15 years of their presence in Labrador, Moravian stores did not sell guns, gunpowder, or lead to Inuit but were eventually forced to change their policy in 1786 to accommodate Inuit demand and discourage continued travel to the competition in the south. [31]The availability of guns and the large land grants of 100,000 acres each in Nain, Okak, and Hopedale, which secured a land base for continued Inuit habitation and subsistence near Moravian settlements, were not by themselves sufficient to keep the very mobile Inuit population of Labrador in the north. [32]British and Franco-Canadian mercantile attraction in Hamilton Inlet and southward along the coast, and a less restrained lifestyle in the south, posed serious challenges to the Moravian dream of having strictly localized Inuit communities in the north. In the case of Hopedale, this mobility and the slowness in gaining converts in the first three decades of the Moravian presence in Labrador at times called into question the very existence of the missionary settlement near Arvertok.

After a year of Moravian settlement at Nain, in 1772, Palliser’s successor, Governor Molyneux Shuldham, received news that Inuit had moved south for trade. To prevent such uncontrolled southward movement, the governor “desire[d] and require[d] the said Unitas Fratrum to use every fair and gentle means in their power, to prevent the said Esquimaux Savages from going to the Southward,” until additional settlements would be established along the coast or unless permission had been obtained. [33]The movement of Inuit to the south in 1772 had tragic consequences in that 200 died in a fierce storm or succumbed to sickness and hunger. [34]The Moravian Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel (SFG), the missionary and trade organization supplying Labrador, felt, in retrospect, that Governor Shuldham’s order, later communicated in Labrador by Lieutenant Roger Curtis, had indeed inhibited travel to the south for nearly a decade, although some Inuit travel to the south continued during the first decade of Moravian settlement in Labrador, as can be gleaned from entries in the Moravian records. The Hopedale diary of 1783, for example, speaks about the missionaries’ efforts to dissuade the Inuk Piugina from travelling south by reminding him that none of the seven boats that went south eight years before [in 1775] returned. [35]The travel account of Elder Layritz from 1773, referred to above, as well as other Moravian diaries and correspondence and the journal of George Cartwright, also indicate continued travel to the south during the decade. [36]In fact, Cartwright noted on 31 August 1773 that “about noon almost the whole of the three southernmost Tribes of Esquimaux, amounting to five hundred souls or thereabouts, arrived from Chateau in twenty-two old English and French boats (having heard of my arrival from some boats belonging to that port) . . . .” [37]

However effective the governor’s prohibition may have been in diminishing Inuit travel to the south in the latter part of the 1770s, southward movement picked up again in the early 1780s. The Nain missionary Christian Lister wrote in a letter of 25 May 1783 to settlers in Chateau Bay that “a great many Eskemaux are preparing to go to the Southward, amongst whom are some of our baptized.” Lister considered this movement as a direct response to invitations extended to north-coast Inuit by fellow Inuit who had gone to Chateau Bay in 1782. [38]That year, the famous Inuit woman Mikak, [39]who was feted in England in 1769 and later helped Moravians in locating Nain as a place for their first settlement, her husband Tuglavina, and the Christian Inuk Abraham had a friendly reception in Chateau Bay from a British Commander William (whether this was his Christian or surname is unknown), and at that time they acquired a boat and guns. In turn, they extended invitations to other Inuit, preferably baptized ones, to come south, where they would freely receive European food and guns, that is, “if they helped the English to fight against the Americans and French.” [40]The departing Moravian Superintendent, Samuel Liebisch, mentions in a letter, penned in St. John’s on 20 September 1783 and discussed at a meeting of the SFG in London, that southern Labrador held an attraction for a significant number of Inuit and identifies specifically Cartwright’s settlements as the location of particular interest, where 230 north-coast Inuit had gone. [41]A draft of a 1784 letter by the SFG to Lord Sidney estimated the number of Inuit who went to Chateau Bay upon the invitation of the settlers as being 250. Confirmed by violence and murders committed with guns in the south, the missionaries feared dire consequences of such trading trips, even “the destruction & extirpation of the whole Esquimaux nation,” if firearms were introduced. [42] In the meantime, the SFG’s representation to Lord Sidney had been passed on to the governor of Newfoundland, John Campbell, together with the King’s wishes to recommend the thoughts of the SFG “to your particular attention and consideration, and that you do so far as it may be in your power [to] enforce compliance with their desire.” [43]In June of 1784, the SFG noted these “attempts . . . made to prevent the Esquimaux from going to the South,” especially the proclamations issued by Governor Campbell. But in November of that year, at a meeting attended by Jens Haven and his wife, who had left Labrador after 13 years of service in Nain, Okak, and Hopedale, the Society still bemoaned “the grievous & deplorable Consequences of the migration to the European settlements in the South.” [44]

A letter of 15 December 1785 to the SFG in London from Liebisch, the former Labrador Superintendent and now a member of the highest Moravian governing body, the Unity Elders Conference in Saxony, signalled a change in policy regarding firearms. The elders now permitted Moravian stores in Labrador to carry guns and ammunition in the hope that this would prevent Inuit from travelling south to buy firearms for their own use or trade in the north. The letter acknowledged the alienation of Inuit as a consequence of the previous restricted trading policy and that the prohibitions by the government had been largely ineffective since the traders in the south ignored government and continued to sell guns to Inuit, an assessment the SFG came to share at their February 1786 meeting. [45]Also, Governor Campbell had “declare[d] that he does not see how he can hinder their being furnished with these articles from the South, the Admirals Station being so far distant from the Labradore Coast.” The SFG was thus forced to face the reality that firearms could no longer be excluded from the Moravian stores and in 1786 started selling guns, powder, and lead to Inuit. [46]

The lure of a larger store inventory by southern traders had thus been a factor in undermining the desired de facto monopoly of Moravian trade in the north and established what appears to be a lasting alternative in Inuit relations with Europeans. The enhanced store inventory and the more relaxed lifestyle for Inuit compared with that in the Moravian settlements made the south an attractive location for trade and habitation to the Inuit on the north coast. Although the missionaries would establish an extensive settlement that included a mission house, workshop, guest house, provisions house, blubber yard and store, boat houses, sawmill, and eventually a separate church for the Inuit congregation, southward travel continued. This and the concomitant failure to convert many Inuit in Hopedale and the ecology of the area were factors considered as early as April 1786 in possibly relocating the missionaries further to the south. [47]In March of 1792, the SFG seriously discussed the viability of Hopedale. Samuel Liebisch expressed the thought that Hopedale could be given up “without essential injury to the few baptized, who may remove to Nain.” The SFG, however, feared that if Hopedale closed, the church would forfeit the 100,000 acres granted by the British government in 1774. Several other reasons for and against maintaining Hopedale were entertained, notably the paucity of Inuit in Hopedale and lack of missionary success, but also—as a counter-argument—the historical fact that the mission in Greenland had first shown no promise but then flourished. The SFG eventually decided in typically Moravian fashion on the casting of lots, to ask Christ himself whether Hopedale was to be maintained. The missionaries resolved:

That we are unanimous, that no outward difficulties should have any weight in determining the giving up of Hopedale — but considering the small prospect of success as to the Conversion of the heathen and the increasing difficulties from the approach of the Europeans, we are willing to submit it to the decision of our Savior, whether Hopedale is to be given up or not & if He approves of its continuance, the Society will take new courage & support it to the utmost of their power.

The SFG let the Unity Elders Conference on the continent decide whether the Saviour affirmed the closure of Hopedale, which, however, was not to be. [48] Those who had pleaded for more patience in light of the initially slow Greenland experience must have felt vindicated when the revival of 1804-05 produced the hoped-for spiritual turnaround and the desired indigenization of the Moravian faith among the Inuit. [49]Conversions from the revival and a significantly larger congregation led to the opening of the first separate church at Hopedale in 1806. The revival also had consequences for Nain and Okak and was crucial in strengthening and sustaining the Moravian church in Labrador. Through its revival, the community of Hopedale breathed new life into the Labrador missionary efforts. Amid considerable contemporary challenges in remaining relevant in the twenty-first century, which it shares with other churches worldwide, the Moravian Church maintains regular religious services in Hopedale in Inuktitut and English.

While large-scale migrations to the south may have decreased by the mid- 1790s, economic links with some southern traders continued, especially as the Europeans moved north, closer to the Moravian settlements. Historic ties between Hopedale and Hamilton Inlet (Aivektok) continued into the nine- teenth century so that the Inuit communities of Snooks Cove and Karawalla near Rigolet preserved relations with fellow Inuit on the north coast and were visited not only by missionaries from Hopedale and Makkovik until the early years of the twentieth century but even saw in 1871-72 an indigenous evangelization effort by Inuit from Hopedale. [50]

While many of the references that document Inuit travel to the south in the Hopedale diaries remain without specific geographical location, even where a destination of trade with Europeans is indicated, three historic locations in the south are mentioned prominently in connection with Inuit travel and trade. Prior to the establishment of European traders in the Makkovik and Kaipokok areas, these locations were Chateau Bay, Sandwich Bay (Netsektok) and Hamilton Inlet (Aivektok).

Europeanization of Inuit in Labrador was not confined to trade and settlement in Moravian communities. The exposure of Inuit to traders in the south had an effect on Inuit hunting, fishing, and subsistence in general. Besides the acquisition of wooden boats and firearms already mentioned, Inuit also obtained large knives and fox traps and continued to catch seals, now also with nets, hunted caribou in the south, and engaged in the salmon and cod fisheries. [81] Another attraction of southern trade and association with Europeans in the south was their food, especially bread, [82]but also beef, pork, and peas. [83]That freshly baked bread remained a continued attraction is indicated by frequent references in the Moravian records about Inuit travel from Hopedale to Kaipokok, once Pierre Marcoux had established operations there and built a baker’s oven. [84]Alcoholic beverages, notably rum, also could be obtained from European settlers — to the great regret of the Moravian missionaries. [85]

The purchase of European clothing was part of what the missionaries in Hopedale considered to be the regrettable Europeanization of Labrador Inuit. Tuglavina, in particular, sported a European military uniform, perhaps to compete with Mikak’s famous European dress, given to her in England by Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, the Dowager Princess of Wales, a piece of clothing that achieved legendary proportions within the Palliser family. [86]More generally, European clothing was desired by many Inuit and could be obtained in the south. In 1787, for example, the child of Dorothea, an Inuit woman, was dressed in a European way with a “black head scarf and English gown,” obtained from Pierre Marcoux’s wife and another woman. [87]Pearls, wide bands or ribbons, jackets and socks as well as trousers, stockings, caps, scarves, hats, and other goods were traded. [88]

An indication of increased Europeanization was also the custom of chewing tobacco, which can be linked with the south. The Hopedale store was in particular frequented by Inuit who had adopted chewing tobacco when they needed new supplies. The missionaries observed in 1789: “The chewing of tobacco, which the Inuit have presumably learned from the sailors and Europeans in the south, is now very common among them and one now seldom sees them smoke. Most of them are already so spoiled that they can no longer live without tobacco, so that they often take tree leaves instead [of smoking] . . . .” [89]

Early in the nineteenth century, Inuit housing styles changed or were hybridized. European-style wooden houses in imitation of settler dwellings gradually replaced the traditional sod houses. “Whenever the Eskimo men have no subsistence activities on the sea shore in the winter,” the Hopedale missionaries observed in the winter of 1839-40, “they busy themselves with cutting boards and collecting building materials for their houses, which they now build increasingly in a European manner.” [90]It may very well be that the “Kannungek,” “a light straight [pine] wood without branches,” bought by Petrus from European traders in Makkovik during spring of 1791, was already used in the construction of such a European-style house. [91]

The settlement of Arvertok, once an Inuit whaling site on Labrador’s north coast, came into the Moravian missionary consciousness in 1765. While serving as interpreters and mediators for Governor Hugh Palliser, the European missionaries sought to explore a place for their mission station in Labrador, which was a continuation of their global missionary initiatives, including work among the Inuit of Greenland. The regional toponym “Arbatok” and the demographic information provided by Inuit were mentioned in the 1765 Moravian travel journal and mapped into earlier French coastal charts by Pilot and Fornel. The location of Arvertok near the mouth of Hamilton Inlet was corrected, during the exploration journey of 1770 that led to the establishment of Nain in 1771, as lying further north.

The Moravian diaries, chronicles, and other documents provide not only historical data for the reconstruction of the history of eighteenth-century European missions but also open up windows on Inuit mobility and trade, as well as the Europeanization Inuit underwent when acquiring European hunting and fishing technology, means of travel, foods, clothing, and housing styles. The picture that emerges for the Moravian presence in eighteenth-century Hopedale is one of a tenuous ecclesiastical institutional presence in view of the great mobility and abiding attraction the south had for Inuit habitation and middleman trade in Labrador. Here, Inuit could build on previous trading experience that predated the Moravians and had situated Arvertok as an important locale in the Aboriginal coastal trading network.

Historically, the naval and commercial centres for Inuit trade and habitation in the south that appear in the early Moravian records were Chateau Bay, Netsektok (Sandwich Bay), and Aivektok, where European and Inuit mercantile interests benefited from each other. The decided efforts of the British naval government and the Moravian Church to prohibit and discourage movement of Inuit to the south were of limited success. The continued relations with southern traders and a lack of religious conversions in the north had consequences for Moravian settlement and trade. At times it called in question the continued viability of Hopedale as a missionary settlement. Even a wider assortment of trading goods in Moravian stores that included guns and other supplies offered by southern traders did not entirely prevent migrations by Inuit. As the case of Hopedale demonstrates, only a thoroughgoing indigenization of the Moravian faith through a massive revival in 1804-05 led to a paradigm shift in the religious self-understanding of the Inuit and stabilized the Moravianpresence from Hopedale to Okak.