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Kitigaaryuit

The Inuvialuit Social Development Program (ISDP) and Elisa Hart, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories undertook a survey and inventory of cultural features at Kitigaaryuit (Kittigazuit). Kitigaaryuit was an important ceremonial and whaling centre until the turn of the century. Its significance as a place important to both Inuvialuit and Canadian history was recognized by archaeologist Robert McGhee who was responsible for its being declared a National Historic Site.

Elder Laura Raymond (centre) stands in the foundation of the old HBC store at Kitigaaryuit and explains to Cathy Cockney what the store used to look like.

A detailed inventory of cultural features has never been done, and the result of this project was the recording of approximately 190 graves, 17 sod house ruins, and the foundation of a Hudson's Bay Company Store and related buildings. The project was fortunate in having the services of a professional survey team from the federal Department of Public Works and Services in Winnipeg. They will produce a site map with all features and scale drawings of some of the features. Elders from Tuktoyaktuk who had lived at Kitigaaryuit or who had visited it when it was inhabited year round were brought to the site to talk about its history and to help identify features.

Angik Archaeological Field Project

The continuation of the archaeological field programme with the school children of Paulatuk was done with the support of Angik School and the Community Education Council of Paulatuk with funding and in-kind support provided by Parks Canada-Inuvik and the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. The programme was delivered by Margaret Bertulli and Barbara Cameron of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre and Sharon Kirby of Angik School to students from Grades 7-9. The students spent mornings and afternoons on site in clement weather, learning the basic methods of artifact recovery and recording, and one day in the classroom learning how to make rubber moulds and plaster casts of objects. They were also responsible for recording their daily activities in a journal.

The site is located on a spit projecting into Darnley Bay just north of the community of Paulatuk. It consists of at least two sod house remains and several pits and was occupied in the 1930s by Inuvialuit families, members of whom still live in the Settlement Region. The family of Asisauna Lester, whose sons were Alec Lester and Fred Lester, occupied the house which the students excavated (Rose Marie Kirby: personal communication).

The ruins present in the form of a sub-rectangular mound with two wooden posts protruding above ground level; these may have been structural support posts. Sod has been removed from the pits surrounding the features and banked along the walls in a stepped effect. A nearby pit has two wooden posts at its southern extremes and is probably the remains of an ice house or cold pit.

We excavated only to a maximum depth of 25 centimetres or less. Some structural information was revealed through excavation. The remains of boards, 8" thick appeared in three units and may be parts of fallen walls, flooring or benches. The sod house had at least one glass window as evidenced by several small fragments of window glass.

Last summer, three legs of a woodburning stove were recovered; this year, we found the fourth. Other artifacts recovered include buttons, a reworked handle made from an early form of plastic, cut caribou antler, a chewing tobacco can and lid, a vertebral disc of a bowhead whale, and a medal commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1920.

Students receiving a lesson in gridding a sod house ruin before excavation at Paulatuk.

Cache Point, Mackenzie Delta

The Cache Point site, located on the East Channel of the Mackenzie River, is the earliest Inuvialuit beluga whale hunting site known from the Mackenzie Delta region. Max Friesen (University of Toronto) surveyed and mapped the site as part of the Qilalugaq Archaeology Project, recording a total of 22 driftwood-and-sod houses. The Cache Point houses are much smaller than the complex multi-roomed recent Inuvialuit houses such as those which were built at Kittigazuit. Approximately ten of these houses are located on the edge of an actively eroding bluff, and substantial deposits full of tools and beluga whale bones can be seen eroding down the bank. Following this fieldwork, Max Friesen spent eight days in Yellowknife, analyzing earlier collections from the Cache Point site housed at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

These collections confirm the early date of the site, and include Thule forms of harpoon and arrow heads. The information gleaned from this project will be used to plan future fieldwork at the site, which will be designed to understand how early Inuvialuit in the Mackenzie Delta lived, and what methods were used to hunt beluga whales in the distant past.

Eroding beluga bones and house timbers at the Cache Point site, Richards Island, Mackenzie Delta.