The Age of Arctic Discovery
On June 7, 1576, Martin Frobisher, sets sail with three ships, searching for the Northwest passage. Two of the ships are lost in a storm, but on July 28, Frobisher has reached the coast of Labrador. Sailing along the coasts, he finds nothing but abandoned villages, occasional sights of wary natives watching from the shore.
Sailing north, he misses or ignores the Hudson Strait altogether. Less than fifty miles separates Baffin Island from the Labrador coast. Hudson, unknowing, sails up from Labrador to the Baffin Island coast, coming to Frobisher Bay. Unable to go further north because of ice and winds, he sails up the Bay, thinking it is a strait, hoping to pass through to open sea on the other side. It is forbidding country, cold and dry, on either side of Frobisher Bay, sheer cliffs rise up a thousand or two thousand feet. The bay acts as a funnel for tides, at the farthest point inland the tides range across thirty five feet. The landscape is cold and dry.
Along small bays and inlets punctuating the cliffs the Frobisher ship is observed by Thule herdsmen with their caribou. Messages are passed, the news spreads, Shamans and Tribemen begin to mark the progress of this strange craft, and begin to travel west across the Baffin landscape, and south or north by Umiak. Several times, Frobisher’s men sight natives along the shores, but they avoid attempts at direct contact. Despite this, Frobisher sends landing parties out at several of the inlets. One of the men returns with a "piece of black stone."
On August 21, 1576, Frobisher makes contact with a small village. A local shaman goes to the ship to meet Frobisher, and through signs and charades appears to agree to guide them through the region. Frobisher sends five of his men in a ship’s boat to return that native to shore, instructing them not to get too close to any of the other natives. They are taken captive anyway. After days of searching, Frobisher is unable to recover them, and takes the Shaman hostage, hoping to negotiate a trade. He is unsuccessful. The natives along the shore grow increasingly hostile. Eventually, as the season wears on, he turns home, arriving in London in early October.
On the return to London, the black stone is assayed. Most of the assessors are unimpressed, but one reports the stone as gold bearing. On this basis, a prospective gold strike, a second, larger expedition is fitted out.
On May 27, 1577, Frobisher sets out with a much larger mission, three ships, with an aggregate of 150 miners, refiners gentlemen and soliders set out. By July 17, 1577, they reach the mouth of Frobisher bay. The mission this time is to prospect for gold, and they spend several weeks sailing up and down the coast of Frobisher Bay collecting ore samples. As recorded by Frobisher, there is much parlaying and skirmishing with the natives, but the size of Frobisher’s force acts as a deterrent. He is unable to recover the men captured the previous year. Eventually local hostility forces Frobisher out of Hudson Bay and south around the Peninsula where he enters Hudson Strait, on August 12.
Sailing along the Baffin Island coast on Hudson Strait, he makes contact with farming villages, including some prepared to receive him peacefully. The expedition is allowed to replenish its water and stores. There is an exchange of gifts, which includes Qviat weaving, Roseroot and Labrador Tea, and fur garments on the one side, receiving pots, knives, surplus equipment, and wooden tools on the other. An offer of a crucifix causes great consternation.
On August 26, just ahead of the winter season, Frobisher returned to England, arriving on September 27. The ‘gold’ was off loaded for assay, several of Frobisher’s ‘gifts’ were passed on to the Queen or to directors and backers of the Muscovy Company, although no particular attention was paid to these items at the time. It was immediately resolved to send out a larger expedition and establish a colony of 100 men.
Meanwhile, the faith of the queen and others remained strong in the productiveness of the newly discovered territory, which she herself named Meta Incognita, and it was resolved to send out a larger expedition than ever, with all necessaries for the establishment of a colony of 100 men. Frobisher was again received by the queen, and her Majesty threw a fine chain of gold around his neck.
The new expedition, leaving June 3, 1578, with fifteen vessels under his command, Frobisher reached Frobisher Bay on July 2. Stormy weather and dangerous ice conditions forced the expedition south once again, much to Frobisher’s frustration, as to his mind, the proven goal deposits were located within the bay. To the south, there was little to recommend it, except slightly friendlier natives.
Eventually, after some further reprovisioning and exchanges of gifts, he sailed back to Frobisher Bay and attempted to found a settlement. Frobisher by this time was able to negotiate some degree of peace with the locals of the bay, with formalized gifts. However, dissension and discontent, as well as local hostility forced abandonment. Some attempt was made at founding a settlement, and approximatly 1300 tons of ore was shipped. At the end of August, the expedition left for England, reaching home at the beginning of October.
Unfortunately, the ore was proven to be worthless pyrite. The expeditions were ultimately a financial disaster Frobisher and everyone involved, including the Crown which had backed the expeditions.
However, in the years following, some of the gifts exchanged with the natives and passed on to the English crown got a second look. Notably, samples of labrador tea, woven qviat and thule ivory received a great deal of attention.
The qviat, of finer quality than any sheep was seen as comparable to silk, and likely originating in China, which was also the likely source of tea. Despite the knowledge that walrus produced ivory, thule ivory was also attributed to the orient. These items, together with the presence of crude iron and bronze suggested that the natives were in indirect contact with China, and validated the theory of a northwest passage.
During the debates that followed, it was also observed that the small quantities medicinal roseroot provided as gifts seemed similar to the rare herbs cultivated in Iceland and Norway, monopolized by the Danish Royal Trading Company.
After almost a decade, the English Crown had recovered enough nerve to sponsor John Davis in an expedition to look for the Northwest Passage. Davis lead several expeditions, in 1585, up and down the coast of Greenland. In 1586, he sailed along Labrador coast, retracing Frobisher’s steps, into Frobisher Bay which he determined was not a strait. Backtracking, he followed the Labrador Coast, stopping at Davis Inlet and Hamilton Inlet, where he was attacked by the natives in both locations.
Davis took a far more outgoing approach to the natives, bringing musicians along with him, and having his crew dance for and play with the bemused Thule. Approaching Hudson strait, the expedition took a blow when local Thule stole one of the ship’s anchors. Relations soured. The Thule of the northern labrador coast were notably more hostile than those of the southern Baffin coast. After several attacks, Davis returned home, carrying nothing of particular value.
Nevertheless, belief in a Northwest Passage remained persistent. The Portugese controlled the southern sea route to India around Africa, the Spanish controlled the pacific route to China around South America. For the British, Dutch and French, opportunity lay in the hypothethetical Northwest Passage around America, or the Northeast Passage along Siberia.
The next expedition in search of the Northwest Passage came with Henry Hudson. Between 1608 and 1610, Hudson lead several expeditions, searching for both the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage, charting the coasts of Greenland, and encountering but not landing at Svalbard. His northern expedition reported numerous sightings of whales, which contributed to interest in whaling in the region. A North American expedition moved south, searching for a Northwest Passage through rivers into the interior, helping to establish both the Fur trade and the dutch claim in the region.
In 1610, funded by the British East India Company, Hudson set out to find the Northwest Passage. He sailed across the north, stopping at Iceland and recruiting a half breed Christianized Thule as a guide. He then sailed towards Greenland, without making landfall, the natives being described as ‘idolatrous devil worshippers.’ Unlike Davis, he did not sail north along the Greenland coast, the small sea between Greenland and Baffin Island by this time was known to be ringed with ice.
Instead, finding his way to the Baffin coast, he by-passed Frobisher Bay and entered Hudson Strait on June 25, 1610. Following the northern coast, of Baffin Island, he came to Foxe Basin, where he was forced to turn south, finally entering Hudson Bay on August 10, 1610. The ship sailed down the west coast of Hudson Bay, travelling thirty miles up Chesterfield Inlet, encountering a series of thriving communities, and attacting a great deal of attention. He made it as far south as the mouth of the Churchill River before being trapped in ice.
When ice cleared in the spring, Hudson sailed further south, reaching the northern tip of James Bay, before his crew forced him to abandon the quest for the Northwest passage, in July, 18, 1611.
Hudson’s expedition was a watershed event for both the Thule and the British East India Company. The presence of the Icelandic half-breed allowed communication, despite the pronounced differences in dialects between the Hudson Bay Thule and the Icelander, though there was substantial room for error. The Hudson Bay Thule were wrestling with a Greenland Thule dialect, mediated with Icelandic pidgin, translated through Norwegian into English.
As a result, Hudson was able to obtain a great deal of information about the people and cultures of the land, filtering much of it through a lens of British sensibility and prejudice. At times, Hudson allowed his preconceptions to rule. The locals, through his interpreter, informed him of a wealthy and powerful land to the west, laden with yellowed metals. The descriptions in hindsight are clearly of the McKenzie basin cultures, but Hudson identifies it as China, and reports clearly unrealistic expectations of how it might be reached. Local ivory and qviat, and local metalwork, all of which were acknowledged to have come through trade and exchange over large distances were taken as definitive proof of Chinese origina. Hudson speculated on various routes to China, through James Bay, the Churchill River, Chesterfield inlet and even Foxe basin.
Hudson was the first to link the peoples of Greenland, Labrador, Baffin and Hudson to the population of Iceland. At the time, only the Icelanders were known as the Thule, a name bequeathed by a priest with a classical education. Hudson applied the name Thule to the whole of the northern peoples, a convention that remained in place to modern times, and speculated as to a universal culture, customs and language.
This fairly cautious evaluation grew in the telling. Within a year of returning home, Hudson had transformed his speculation of a widespread northern race into a circumpolar state, the largest of the towns he had visited had become great cities, and the Chieftain who dominated the Chesterfield Inlet and the Hudson Bay western coast was transformed into the Emperor of the North Pole.
Most significantly, Hudson returned home with a full cargo, including Roseroot, tea, furs, ivory and qviat. For the first time, a cargo of Roseroot, and a particularly potent variety, had made it back to England.
exchange, he had provided linens, paper, fabric, china, tin and iron and brass, pots and pans, knives and blades and literally anything he and his crew had been able to pry up or let go of, motivated at least in part by the addictive qualities of both the roseroot and tea, and motivated on other occasions by the need to survive the overwinter with their hosts. Among the particular items obtained were gunpowder and muskets.
The Thule world was about to change...