Page 259 - The Secret Museum

and laughed at the babble of their own voices. But they were always good-natured,

and genuinely interested in helping me in my work.’

The translations weren’t perfect. Angivranna’s song seems to be about trying to
remember the right words to the song, while running around hitting a seal, a bear, and
then spearing a fish. But to Angivranna and his tribe, its meaning would have been
crystal clear as they leapt around the dance-house singing stories in time to the drum.

Much as Jenness loved collecting the songs for the museum, he didn’t always have
fun in the dance-house: he describes how one night 30 people banged his frying pans,
while snow melted from the ceiling and dripped ice on to his head. ‘The din and
odour were terrific, more than flesh and blood could endure,’ so he went outside and

‘gradually regained my senses’.
In his book, Jenness describes how even the children at play would create dance-

houses and pretend to be people inside singing and dancing. They also played at
catching caribou and shot arrows for fun. The Inuit taught him how they fish, hunt,
sew clothes, sing and dance. In return, they learnt about things he could do, like
swim, which was something they never imagined was possible.

When, a year into the expedition, Jenness and his team first heard about the war
that had been raging far away from the Arctic, he explained it to his family: ‘Ikpuck
would not believe our western natives when they told him that the white men were
killing each other like caribou, and my own explanation mystified him deeply.’ He

thought about it for days and wondered whether the ancient story was true, for using
their knowledge in such a way was really ‘unnatural and inhuman’. Perhaps white
men had become monsters, just as the legend foretold.

News of the war didn’t interrupt the expedition. Jenness carried on trying to find
out about the Inuit and, at night, ‘they gathered around my phonograph and filled the
house with song’. There were no love songs, for relationships were practical; there
were no war songs, for they avoided the Indians far to the south who were the only
ones who could cause trouble. Their songs were prayers, and the dance-song was

their form of storytelling. Jenness writes, ‘However harsh their voices, their
melodies revealed a deep sense of musical beauty.’

In July 1916, having woven themselves into the fabric of Inuit daily life, it was
time for Jenness and his companions to leave. He gave his family useful things: a
frying pan, needles, thread, scissors, a fishing rod, a tent, a canoe and,
controversially, a gun for hunting in winter. Then he packed his songs and other
‘specimens’ into bags and loaded them on to the ship. His mother asked him to
‘Harken to our call’, should she ever call to his spirit in need. His father and Jenny

came to the beach to see the boat off. ‘I am going,’ he said. ‘You are going,’ they
replied in unison.

Five years later, a missionary who had been working with the Inuit knocked on
Jenness’s office door, back in Canada. His Inuit mother had sent him a message. She