Sallirmiut

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Sallirmiut hunter while whaling, drawing around 1830

As Sallirmiut (also Sadlermiut ), "People of Salliq", a group of people who lived on the south coast of Southampton Island ( called "Salliq" by the Inuit ) and the two offshore islands of Coats Island and Walrus Island up to At the beginning of the 20th century, they lived very isolated from the Inuit people ("Aivilingmiut") who settled on the mainland of the Kivalliq region and died out in 1903.

discovery

Although the English researcher Thomas Button came to the south coast of Southampton Island as early as 1604, it is not known whether he came into contact with the indigenous people who settled there. The first Europeans to come into contact with the Sallirmiut are therefore likely to have been Captain George Francis Lyon and his crew, who anchored in 1824 with HMS Griper at Cape Pembroke off Coats Island .

Way of life

We know about the Sallirmiut that they were of great strength, but still very shy and lived in stone and sod houses for most of the year . For their food they hunted seals , walruses , whales , polar bears , caribou and birds, looked for bird eggs and caught fish.

Origin and culture

Little is known with certainty about origin, cultural development, original number and the reason for their decline from around 200 at the time of their discovery to 58 before the final extinction.

There is still a lot of puzzles about the origin. As can be seen from excavations and other relics, as well as from the records of researchers and whalers, the Sallirmiut were certainly people who were not directly related to the Inuit of the Kivalliq region. Compared to these Inuit they showed clear differences in appearance, behavior, language and culture. Therefore, three hypotheses on origin are scientifically discussed:

  1. The Sallirmiut were the last members of the Dorset culture and as such survived the Thule culture . This hypothesis is supported by studies carried out by Henry B. Collins ( Smithsonian Institution ) in 1954 and 1955 with the result that the Sallirmiut belonged to the Dorset culture, a thesis that the results of molecular genetic studies probably also support.
  2. The ancestors of the Sallirmiut were members of the Thule culture , but isolated from the Thule Eskimos on the mainland, they experienced an independent development of their way of life and culture.
  3. The Sallirmiut are descendants of the Thule Eskimos who, isolated from the mainland, mixed with relatives of the Dorset Eskimos and thus developed from two roots. This third hypothesis is corroborated by the fact that archaeological relics of the Sallirmiut have equally Dorset and Thule characteristics.
Development of the distribution of cultures 900 - 1500 a. Z.

End of the sallirmiut

In the second half of the 19th century, whalers frequented the Southampton south coast . Although the Sallirmiut repeatedly came into contact with the whalers between 1860 and 1903, unlike the Inuit from the mainland, they did not participate in the whaling pursued by the Europeans. However, contact with crew members of the Scottish whaling ship Active led to disaster at the end of 1902: The Sallirmiut suffered virulent gastrointestinal infections against which they had no immune defense and from which almost all of them died in the winter of 1902/03. Since then the Sallirmiut have been considered extinct.

literature

  • Miriam Dewar (Ed.): The Nunavut Handbook: Traveling in Canada's Arctic . Ayaya Marketing & Communications, Iqaluit / Ottawa 2004, ISBN 0-9736754-0-3 (English).

Web links