Abraham Ulrikab

 ( 1881 Deaths ) 

• The Christian family
• Abraham, 35,
• Ulrike, 24, his wife
• Sara, 3, daughter
• Maria, infant daughter, 10 months
• Tobias, 20, a young unmarried man.
• The non-Christian family
• Tigianniak, about 45, father
• Paingu, as old as 50, wife
• Nuggasak, their teenage daughter about 15.

Abraham was literate, an accomplished violin player and a devout Christianity. He became the natural leader of the eight and, despite the Moravian missionaries's opposition, Abraham agreed to go to Europe. The money he was to earn would enable him to repay his, and his late father's, debt to the Moravian Church mission store in Hebron. He was also curious about visiting Europe and was looking forward to seeing some of the Moravian missionaries he had befriended in Labrador. But soon after their arrival in Europe, the Inuit realized they had made a mistake in coming and they longed to return to Labrador.

On August 26, 1880, all eight Inuit boarded the schooner Eisbär (which means "polar bear" in German) and headed to Europe. They arrived in Hamburg on September 24, 1880. Their show at the Tierpark Hagenbeck opened on October 2, 1880. On October 15, the group was moved to Berlin, where they were exhibited at the Berlin zoo until November 14. They then traveled to Prague followed by Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Here, Nuggasak died suddenly on December 14. The group moved on to Krefeld, where Paingu died on December 27. It wasn't until little Sara showed symptoms that the doctors were finally able to diagnose the sickness that was affecting the Inuit: smallpox. It was with a broken heart that Abraham and Ulrike had to entrust Sara to the hospital in Krefeld, as the group had to depart for their next destination, Paris. Sara died on December 31, 1880, as her parents arrived in Paris.

The five survivors were vaccinated against smallpox on January 1, 1881, but it was too late. The group was exhibited at the Jardin d'Acclimation in the Bois de Boulogne for about a week. Then, on January 9, 1881, they were admitted to Hôpital Saint-Louis, where they all died within the next week. Maria died on January 10, 1881. Tigianniak on January 11. Tobias and Abraham died on January 13, and Ulrike, the last to live, died January 16, 1881.

Norwegian Johan Adrian Jacobsen, who had recruited them on behalf of Carl Hagenbeck, had omitted to have them vaccinated against smallpox, even though it was required by German law. In his diary, Jacobsen admitted that he had forgotten about it.

In Hebron, Moravian missionary Carl Gottlieb Kretschmer, who had tried to dissuade the Inuit from going to Europe, translated Abraham's diary to German. English and French translations were also published in the 19th century Moravian Church publications. Then, the story fell into oblivion for a century.

In 1980, Abraham's diary resurfaced when Canadian ethnologist Dr. James Garth Taylor discovered a copy of Kretschmer's German translation in the archives of the Moravian Church located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Through the article Dr. Taylor published in 1981 in Canadian Geographic, the story of the eight Labrador Inuit was unveiled to the 20th century public.

Over the next 25 years, a few individuals looked into this tragedy, including German ethnologist Hilke Thode-Arora and Professor Hartmut Lutz assisted by his students at the University of Greifswald, Germany. They contextualized Abraham's diary with data gathered from the Moravian archives, from 19th century newspapers as well as from the archives of Carl Hagenbeck and Johan Adrian Jacobsen.

In 2005, the University of Ottawa Press published the work of Hartmut Lutz, and of his students, under the title The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab: Text and Context. At last, Abraham's diary was in book form ensuring that his words and story would find their way to today's Labrador Inuit.

Abraham's diary is significant because it is the only extant account of one of Carl Hagenbeck's European ethnological exhibition (human zoo) by one of the ethnic participants. It is also one of the first autobiographies by an Inuk; Greenlander Hans Hendrik having preceded him by 2 years. Unfortunately, Abraham's original diary in Inuktitut has yet to be located.

Madame Rivet we regret to inform you that we do not have the brain casts, but we do have the skullcap as well as the fully-mounted skeletons of the five Labrador Inuit who died in Paris in January 1881.

This totally unexpected news triggered a four-year research to fully document the Inuit's story as well as discussions with authorities in Nunatsiavut, Canada, and France in order to prepare the remains' eventual coming home.