Bastille Day in France (July 14)

Bastille Day is the national holiday in France equivalent to the American 4^th of July. Today is the 225^th anniversary of the mob’s attack on the Bastille prison, a medieval fortress in Paris converted to a prison by the 18^th century. The storming of the Bastille freed only a single, aged prisoner, but it launched what became the French revolution.

The Bastille was dismantled and a column erected where the prison once stood. It was a pleasant little plaza in 1878:

Today, it’s a fairly soulless expanse of concrete with lots of cars around it.

On Bastille Day the French Air Force flies over at low altitude. I know, because I was staying close-by when visiting Paris one Bastille Day and nearly got shaken out of bed by the flyover.

The French national anthem is the Marseillaise, itself a product of the French revolution when republican France was fighting the combined monarchical powers of Europe. It’s a bloodthirsty song, its final stanza saying “may their impure blood water the furrows of our fields.” Here is Mireille Mathieu singing all 18 verses (well, only 6 or 7) at the Eiffel Tower:

French football teams sing it after victories. Here’s the 2006 French team singing it (sort of…do you get the feeling that athletes often don’t know the words to their national anthems?) after the Word Cup final against Italy:

If you want it translated, here it is with English subtitles:

Finally, here is the iconic version of it in America, from the movie “Casablanca” where Viktor Lazlo leads the entire café in singing in respond to the German singing earlier on a commandeered piano.

I’ve included the wonderful scene of Captain Reneau telling Rick that he’s “shocked, shocked, to discover that there’s gambling here!” just before the croupier delivers the Captain’s winnings to him.

The song that the Germans are singing in this scene from “Casablanca” is not a Nazi marching song like “Horst Wessel,” but a 19^th-century patriotic song, “Wacht am Rhein” (Watch on the Rhine). I’ve discussed “Wacht am Rhein” at the end of another post, where you can listen to the whole song and see it in English translation.

 

German national anthem and the World Cup

The German football machine triumphed again, winning the World Cup in Brazil, 1-0 over Argentina, now having won 4 World Cups. As always, the German national anthem is sung, sort of, by the players:

Many people are confused when they hear the Germans sing their anthem, as they expect to hear “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.” What you hear is in fact the third stanza beginning with “Einignkeit und Recht und Freiheit/für das Deutsches Vaterland,” which is the hardly ignoble sentiment of “Equality, justice, and freedom for the German fatherland.”

If you want to hear all three verses and get an idea of what the lyrics are really about (a call to German unity in the days before unification in 1870), here’s a decent translation in the subtitles:

The tune itself is a hymn written by none other than Franz Josef Haydn, an Austrian, in the 18^th Cenutry. It still appears in the Episcopal hymnal.

Here’s a popular version of the first verse from “Pan Am” that I rather like, even though the singer does not exactly sound echt Deutsch, at least to my ear:

Finally, you should be aware that many songs in German that are assumed to be Nazi or fascist in origin are actually rather older, 19^th century patriotic songs, not unlike “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” (itself stolen from a Protestant, anti-Catholic tune celebrating King William of Orange’s victory over the forces of King James II in Ireland in 1691 called “The Banks of the Boyne {River]”). For example, the song that the Nazis are singing in “Casablanca” when Viktor Lazlo strides across the floor of Rick’s Café Americain and leads the band in the Marseillaise is “Wacht am Rhein,” one of these types of songs. Here’s the full version of it, with translations in English and Chinese. Ah, globalization!

 

Canada Day tomorrow, July 1

O Canada!

Tomorrow is Canada Day, celebrating the 1867 change of Canada from dominion status to Commonwealth Status. The monarch of England, presently Elizabeth II, remains as the head of State, just as she does in the United Kingdom, but the government is headed by the Prime Minister and, except for this archaic tie, the Canadians are effectively, if not literally and legally, independent. I believe that Australia and other former colonies have similar status, but the Internet is running so slowly tonight—probably because 9 or the 10 teachers of our group immediately hooked up their cell phones to the net upon arrival—that the information will have to await another day.

For ourselves, we are visiting Churchill in the morning to participate in what I understand to be something like the Polar Bear run you see during the winters in the eastern and Midwestern United States. It’s apparently a tradition here.

Churchill and the military, 1943 through the 1980’s

Churchill’s histories tell vague and somewhat different accounts of the military presence around Churchill. What seems clear is that the U.S. Army, which was then in charge of the Air Force (the US Air Force did not become a separate military service until 1947 or so), built a base called (what else?) Fort Churchill about 5 miles to the east of town. It built a long runway–9,200 feet, long enough to land a B-52 or a 747–and operated it off and on through the 1960’s. It’s now the Churchill airport that I’ll be flying into (and apparently out of). It’s a big operation and runway for such a small town, the airstrip being the inverted-L to the right of the picture:

Just what exactly was happening there is more than a bit vague, which leads me to conclude that the army (and then the air force) was looking for German submarines during World War II and then was engaged in building the D.E.W. line (acronym for Distant Early Warning, the radar facing the north pole which would be the shortest route from Russia to the United States for intercontinental ballistic missiles if a nuclear war between the US and Russia broke out). I’ve read the odd memoir here and there, and apparently there were as many as several thousand personnel stationed at the base. Concurrent pictures there support a large deployment of military persons.

In the 1950’s, the US (note how it’s always the US and not Canada doing the building) built a rocket testing facility even further to the east. That facility is where the Churchill Northern Studies Centre is now located. At least some Nike missiles were tested there, as you can see from the picture below. The Canadian military continued to use the facility after the US left it (it left several times, so I’m deliberately being a little vague on the details). I’m hopeful that I can work out some of the details when I get there and find somebody on the ground who knows the real history. (If anybody out there knows, please comment or email me and I’ll follow up on your information.) There was real atmospheric research done at the time, and the Black Brant sounding rocket was developed for use on the Churchill range (a sounding rockets only goes up about 100 kilometers or so and is useful mainly for atmospheric measurements.

This is a good time to get into the wetlands in the area. Below is a picture of the rocket launching area, which is where I’ll be working. As you can see….LOTS of water! I suspect they’re mainly bogs, i.e., areas of standing water without much inflow or outflow. I’ll be posting a vocabulary list (quiz on Friday, 10 points) in the next day or so.

It must have been incredibly expensive to build a 2-mile runway on top of bogs. An oblique picture of the landing strip gives you an idea of how difficult the terrain must be.

Aftermath of the 1782 Raid on Churchill—through 1929

After Le Pérouse (which, BTW, is the French name for the Italian city of Perugia) destroyed the battlements of Fort Prince of Wales (but not the walls of the fort itself), the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) suffered several bad years, and was not able to pay dividends until 1786. It’s not clear that Le Pérouse actually was responsible for this economic hard to the HBC—there was a serious smallpox epidemic which destroyed large parts of the First Nations, and Churchill and York were only two of the factories that HBC ran—but the damage to the fort, and the destruction of the wooden York Factory, were undeniable. Le Pérouse was praised in France, and then disappeared with all his men on an exploratory voyage in the South Pacific. Samuel Hearne returned to London, but apparently neither he nor the governor of the York Factory was blamed for Le Pérouse’s successful and devastating raid.

Fort Churchill, 1894

It’s unclear what happened to Churchill during the next 50 or so years. By 1850, beaver fur had gone out of style for hats, replaced by silk. It seems that Churchill slid into a slow decline. Although the HBC had for many years based its headquarters nearby at the York Factory, that site was abandoned by 1927. We have some pictures from “Fort Churchill” in the 1890’s, which obviously continued as a trading post with the First Nations, though it doesn’t look like it was based at the old stone Fort Prince of Wales.

It was only the establishment of the rail head to Churchill in 1929 that the area began to revive. Modern Churchill, located on the east side of the Churchill River across from the Fort on the west side, dates from that time.

All that remains to discuss is the coming of the American military to Churchill in 1943, and the continued use of the base that the Americans built by the Canadian military until the 1980’s. I’m still gathering information on this. Next time, on….oh, wait, this isn’t the Nova program!

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The smallpox epidemic reference in this post started in the American colonies in 1775 when European troops under British pay arrived in the colonies. The epidemic eventually spread throughout the colonies, worked its way south to Mexico, and then back up through western North America along trade routes, devastating the indigenous populations, including those First Nations who traded with HBC at Churchill.  Elizabeth E. Fenn has written an excellent history of what happen in Pox Americana (yes, it is a pun on Pax Americana)

 

The great battle of Fort Prince of Wales, 1782

Fort Prince of Wales Fort, 1780’s, drawn by Samuel Hearne

Hearn’s explorations

Not much in the history books seems to have happened to the little Fort Prince of Wales in Churchill since its founding in 1717. It became a supposedly more imposing stone fortress in the 1730’s, and its commander, Samuel Hearne, led several expeditions to look for a river route to the Pacific that are downright heroic in their efforts and the hardships he survived.

However, what do we love? War, and battles! And that’s the highpoint, in the histories, of Churchill in 1782, when a French fleet suddenly appeared before Fort Prince of Wales and captured it. How a French fleet got to Hudson’s Bay more than 20 years after the British seized French Canada during the Seven Years’ War is a complicated story.

To understand that story, we have to rewind for a moment to about 1700. France and England have started squaring off against each other, and fight a series of very expensive wars over the next century which effectively bankrupt France while establishing the brilliance of British finance through the Bank of England. In 1756, France and England go to war against each other for at least the fourth time since 1700 (first the War of the Spanish Succession, then the war of Polish Succession, and then the War of Austrian Succession [I’m not making this up!]), in the Seven Years’ War, known to US students (and maybe Canadian…if there actually are any Canadian readers of this blog, I’d love to hear how the Seven Years’ War is covered in Canadian history texts) as the French-and-Indian-Wars, because that’s who the British colonists were fighting against.

The result of the Seven Years’ War was a disaster for France and Spain, its ally. After a rocky start, Britain managed to seize French Canada, some of France’s sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean, and all her Indian colonies (as in India, i.e., on the Indian subcontinent). It was a world war as best one could have a world war with 18^th century technology, and Britain was the clear winner.

Clear winners in wars usually leave losers who are….well, annoyed (there’s another word you can use here, but this is a family-friendly blog). The French and Spanish were no exception, and were eager to torture Great Britain when the American Revolution started going badly for them. About 1778, the French and Spanish allied themselves with the American rebellion in the hopes not only of wounding Great Britain, but it possibly in regaining some of the territory they lost. This is what will lead to the Battle of Churchill. No joke; ramifications happen that are thousands of miles away.

In 1781, Lord Cornwallis was retreating toward the British stronghold in New York after a less than successful attempt to rouse loyalists in the southern colonies against the Continental Congress. George Washington chased him to Yorktown, and the French admiral the Comte de Grasse intercepted the British fleet at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and, after an inconclusive battle (called grandiloquently “The Battle of Capes,” chased the British fleet off and prevented the possibility that Cornwallis could escape from Yorktown. Washington besieged the British and got a surrender in short order (also with the help of French troops, officers, and engineers). Under standard American histories, that’s the end of the story. We won. Yay!!!!! (No question that the US would not have won its independence had the French not assisted, something worth remembering when current American politicians bash the French for whatever reason (usually for nothing more than the French being French, God love them.)

Battle of the Capes, 1781
French fleet on the left, British on the right

Life is usually more complex. While the Brits knew that they had to arrange independence for their American colonies, the French and the Spanish weren’t close to being done. The Comte de Grasse sailed his fleet off into the Caribbean and awaited the possibility of capturing one or more of the British sugar islands there. Instead, he met up with the fleet that he had chased off from Chesapeake Bay a few months before. This time, the British got the better of the French and Spanish naval forces, and Admiral Comte de Grasse was himself captured.

But not all the French fleet was captured. The comte de Lapérouse, a brilliant 40-year-old French naval officer, had conceived the idea of waging economic warfare on the British fur trade by invading Hudson’s Bay and destroying the outposts of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The French naval minister approved the move, and after Admiral de Grasse’s disaster in the Caribbean, his successor armed de Lapérouse and sent him north in 1782.

Samuel Hearne
(1745-1792)

Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse
1741-1788?

His raid was entirely successful. Fort Prince of Wales’ governor at that time was Samuel Hearne, who had made a name for himself by his explorations of northern and western Canada. He had 39 non-military personnel, and promptly surrendered the fort without a fight. de Lapérouse seized a significant number of furs, and his men tried to destroy the fort, largely without success. They then sailed south and seized the York Factor on the Nelson River, although the governor there was able to get most of his furs out of the reach of the French by loading them onto a ship commanded by a captain who knew the treacherous shallow waters of Hudson’s Bay better than the French did, and managed to escape.

Thus, the high point of Churchill history, as commonly presented in the history books. Tomorrow we’ll see the fallout from de Lapérouse’s raid on Hudson’s Bay. In the meantime, take a look at the following vignette prepared by the National Film Board of Canada about the battle of Fort Prince of Wales. Can you imagine an American film with such an ironic touch, acknowledging mistakes by those in command?

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NOTE: The Seven Years’ War is one of the more important developments in modern history. Fred Anderson, a professor of history at the University of Colorado, has written what I consider to be the definitive history of the war, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. It’s one of the finest histories I’ve ever read, and really explained the period from about 1720 through 1770 thoroughly. Yes, it’s 912 pages long, with lots of footnotes. It’s still a great read, and well worth your time.

The Hudson’s Bay Company establishes the Brits in Hudson’s Bay (and Churchill gets founded)

We finally arrive at the point in our story where the Brits leapfrog over the French and establish a permanent presence in Hudson’s Bay. And, BTW, will found what later will become modern Churchill.

James, Duke of York (later King James II, 1685-1688)

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682)

We left off last time with Grosvelliers returning in 1669 after a winter in Hudson’s Bay (actually, in James’ Bay) with a boatload full of furs. The Duke of York (James Stuart, the future James II) and his cousin, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, were ecstatic, and went to James’ brother, King Charles II, and in 1670 got a royal charter establishing “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay”, which quickly became known as the Hudson’s Bay Company, which still exists today.

The scope of the charter was breathtaking. It granted the company a royal monopoly on all trade from Hudson’s Bay and awarded it all lands draining into Hudson’s Bay. (Europeans have always been willing to ignore people who might already be considered owners of the land or having rights of possession like, say, oh, the First Nations?) The Hudson’s Bay Company eventually came to own about 15% of the entire North American continent. It operated much as the East India Company did, which essentially owned all of British India until the 1857 mutiny led the British government to assume responsibility for governing the Raj in India. (Hudson’s Bay Company

The company called its holdings “Rupert’s Land” after the prince, and established Rupert’s House as the first trading post. After the Seven Years’ War , here’s what it looked like:

The company grew by establishing trading posts that brought the First Nations people to the posts rather than sending voyageurs to go to the First Nations like the French did. After Ruport’s House was established, the company established trading posts (“factories”) in James Bay (Moose Factory in 1673 and Fort Albany, Ontario in 1679, and later branched out to the western shore of Hudson’s Bay with the York Factory in 1684 and Fort Severn in 1689. Churchill was originally established several miles upriver of its current location in the 1680’s, but was unsuccessful and had to be re-founded about 30 years later. By the time all six were established, the English trading in furs out of Hudson’s Bay looked like this:

The York Factory ultimately became the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company into the 19^th century. (“York” is from the same Duke of York who became King James II a year after the York Factory was established. James Bay is also named for the Duke, although Jamestown, Virginia was named for his grandfather, King James I [for whom the King James edition of the English bible is also named]). The reason why you had the York Factory and Churchill so close together is easy to understand when you see that they covered different watersheds, which meant that First Nations peoples coming down the Churchill River would have to travel much further to get to the York Factory. Here is a watershed map that makes that clear:

Churchill was refounded in 1717 and named after John Churchill, a past governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and, yes, a direct ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II. John Churchill is also considered to be one of the best English generals of all time, having performed brilliantly in many wars and rebellions, and is probably best noted for his victory of Blenheim in 1704 where Allied forces annihilated the French army in Germany.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722)

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Prime Minister of Great Britain, 1940-45, 1951-55

 

Fort Prince of Wales, Churchill, Manitoba

It’s not clear to me exactly where Fort Churchill was actually founded; that’s one of the things I hope to straighten out in Churchill. It appears to have been founded the Churchill River outpost several miles from current Churchill as a wood stockade. In 1731, as military rivalries between Great Britain and France continued (one can view the entire 18^thCentury as one continuous war between Great Britain and France, of which the American Revolution was one of the final acts, as we’ll see next time), Fort Churchill was abandoned and relocated to a fort at the mouth of the Churchill River, across the river from the current town of Churchill. Named Fort Prince of Wales, it was constructed of stone instead of wood, and was supposed to have 42 cannons, with 6 additional cannons to support it across the way at Cape Merry. Here’s what the layout looks like on a map:

Map showing location of Fort Prince of Wales relative to Churchill and Churchill River

The present town of Churchill was not there at this time.

The Fort was apparently quite successful. Next time we’ll see that it played a part in one of the final acts of the American Revolution, one that most Americans have never heard of.

History of Churchill—how the British came to Hudson’s Bay

The founding of Churchill by the British Hudson’s Bay Company  in the late 1600’s traces back nearly 200 years to European developments at the beginning of the 1500’s. Americans have at best a hazy idea of what other European powers were doing after Columbus’ voyages of European discovery after 1492 (i.e., discovering continents previously unknown to Europeans). In fact, many of the European powers were far more active than the British in the 1500’s. Before we get to the founding of Churchill, first temporarily in 1688-89, and permanently in 1717, we have to understand the background of European competition during the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

News of the results of Columbus’s voyages, which he hoped would reach China, made it clear that there was at least one continent separating Europe from China and the east. In 1834, looking for a “Northwest Passage” around the top of North America, Jacques Cartier made it to Newfoundland flying the French flag. It was not particularly appealing to the French, but they did bring back beaver pelts. In the meantime, France devolved into religious civil wars between Protestant and Catholic which were not resolved until close to 1600, and major wars on the European continent with the Hapsburgs (both the Spanish and the Austrians branches of the family).

At that time, there was a sudden change in the economic climate of fashion. Beavers had become very popular for making hats, and the Europeans responded as they usually did, which is to overtrap and overfish a resource. Beavers in Europe neared extinction, and someone remember that Cartier had returns a few generations before with beavers from North America, and the French returned to the St. Lawrence River valley to establish trading posts.

At this point, the French, British, and Spanish all had colonies in the New World. Their approaches to the new lands were quite different. The Spanish came to conquer and exploit. For the people already living in the Americas, like the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, among many others, they conquered and “saved” their souls for the Catholic church….and then treated them more or less as slaves. The English, mainly Protestant, were far less interesting in converting the heathen (i.e., the people already living in North America) and far more interested in recreating England-in-America. And what does England have a distinct lack of? Native Americans! So what happened to the Native Americans? It’s a sad part of our history as Americans.

The French were different from both of these models. I haven’t been able to track this down in the histories, but it seems that the French had problems getting families to emigrant to the North American bases, and the majority of the settlers were men oriented toward trade rather than farming, mining, or agricultural production, as were the English and Spanish. Traders sent out coureurs des bois (runners of the woods) by foot and in canoe to explore where the rivers led and establish contact with the First Nations already settled in the land. Unlike the Spanish, the French did not try to conquer the indigenous people. Unlike the English, they didn’t try to kill them off. Rather, they seem to have treated them pretty much as trading partners and did not treat them as agents of the devil. They also acquired information about the customs, history, and languages of the First Peoples, and it was not at all uncommon for French traders to have children with First Nation women (their offspring were called Métis, and now form a First Nation group of their own in Canada).

So, at this point—say, 1625—the Spanish are in Mexico and all points south to Tierra del Fuego except for Brazil (which the Portuguese had), the English are settling between what is now North Carolina and Massachusetts, and the French are along the St. Lawrence River valley and pushing westward to the Great Lakes. With this nice geographic division, how does the map a hundred years later show that the British have leapfrogged over the French and are established—exclusively—on Hudson’s Bay?

The answer concerns two coureurs des bois named Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers and a really, really bad decision by the French colonial officials. Although both Radisson and Groseilliers were born in France, they grew up in French America. Radisson, in fact, had been captured by the Mohawks and adopted into the tribe. In 1657 or so, he returned to the Quebec area and met Groseilliers, his brother-in-law. They decided to explore to the north of the Great Lakes in search for beaver pelts, which the local indigenous population had pretty much trapped out. They learned, either from the Sioux or the Cree nations, that that beavers were still plentiful to the north in what we now know as Hudson’s Bay. Two years later, about 1661, they returned to the Great Lakes and followed the route north from Lake Superior, reached Hudson’s Bay and returned in 1663 with an enormous number of high-quality beaver pelts that they had obtained along the shores of Hudson’s Bay.

Here’s where the French officials made a really bad mistake. In an attempt to regular the trade with the First Nations, the French were requiring licenses, and only authorized traders could legally trade. Our boys lacked the license, and were old-fashioned coureurs des bois, not the more modern voyaguers who worked for a licensed trader. Instead of greeting our heroes with a pat on the back and compliments for a job well done in opening a new and incredibly lucrative route, the French authorities instead prompted seized all their furs and fined them for unlicensed trading. Not exactly the way to win friends and influence people.

Groseilliers and Raddison drifted for several years between France, Boston, and, ultimately England. In 1668, they met the Duke of York (the future King James II, 1685-88) and his cousin, Prince Rupert. Together with their circle of friends, the Duke and Prince decided to fund an exploratory voyage. Groseilliers’ boat made it to Hudson’s Bay, wintered there,  and returned to England in October of 1669 with a ship full of furs. The Duke’s circle was impressed and excited at the prospect of how much money could be made.

And that’s where we’ll leave the story for today. Next time, we’ll look at the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and its expansion into Hudson’s Bay, and its eventual arrival at Churchill.

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NB: The Radisson Hotel chain grew from an old, elegant hotel in Minneapolis named for Radisson, as were towns in Minnesota and and Saskatchewan. I haven’t found much named for des Groseilliers. They both switched allegiance between France and England several times in the future and were not, unsurprisingly, trusted by either side. They never really profited from the lucrative new part of the fur trade that they pioneered.

Not surprising, there are no portraits of either Radisson or des Groseilliers. The Duke of York and Prince Rupert were famous, well-known, and portraited:

James, Duke of York (later James II of England)(1633-1701)

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682)

 

Addenda to the History of Churchill

In the first post on Churchill history, I failed to add a map of Jens Munk’s voyages into Hudson’s Bay. It is now included below. To have done the return trip of 3,500 miles to Norway with just two surviving crew members almost defies belief.

 

Route of voyages of Jens Munk

In searching for portraits of both Munk and Henry Hudson, I discovered that there are no verified ones that exist. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising, as sea captains were hardly wealthy (unless, like Sir Francis Drake, they were expert pirates against the Spanish treasure ships) or sufficiently high class or aristocratic to warrant someone painting their picture. I did discover the stamp of Hudson that appears on the left, and decided to track down the original picture, as Hudson should only have been 40 or so when his crew cut him loose with his son and loyal crew members to die among the ice floes. It turns out that it comes from a highly romantic painting by John Collier, a portraitist who lived between 1850 and 1934, and had the odd distinction of having married both daughters of Thomas Huxley, co-developer of the theory of evolution with Charles Darwin. Painted in 1901, I’ve rarely seen anything so hideously sentimental, even from the Victorians. A spotless lifeboat after a winter trapped in ice? An iceberg far south in Hudson’s Bay? And the son with a perfectly-pressed crushed-velvet suit at sea? Please. Makes you understand why the Cubists were such a success. Here it is, for your consideration.

“The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson,” by John Collier, 1901

 

History of Churchill, Manitoba: through 1620

I always like to know something about the history of any place I am going to visit. Churchill, it turns out, has a rather long history for so small a place, and has many connections to other historical themes and events you may have read about.

I’m going to break up the history of Churchill into several pieces so you don’t feel like you’re reading something out of the New York Times Magazine. There’s nothing at all wrong with the New York Times Magazine or its articles, but they’re longer than blog readers like to see. Today I’m going to cover the original First Nations settlement of the Churchill area up first contact in the area by a Danish explorer in 1619.

The Churchill area was settled originally by various First Nations peoples, first by the Thule (ancestors of today’s Inuit). The graph at the left shows the settlement of the Thule beginning about 900 CE through about 1500CE, and you can see that the Churchill area was no longer occupied by the Thule or their relatives in later years. (Note also the collapse of Danish settlements in Greenland, described extensively by Jared Diamond in his fascinating book Collapse on ecological disasters befalling different civilizations who do not pay attention to their effects on the local environment.) The withdrawal of the Thule led to settlement later by the Chipewyan and Cree. Thus far I haven’t figured out what the settlement patterns were, as the two peoples are ethnologically distinct and speak different languages (Chipewyans speak an Abathascan language and the Cree speak an Algonquin language). As I figure out the settlement patterns, I will update you.

The first European to reach Churchill was not poor old Henry Hudson, whose crew abandoned him on the ice in 1611 after he wanted to explore what we now call Hudson’s Bay after being trapped for an entire winter frozen in the ice (those who have lived through a northern winter and suffered cabin fever after being snowed in for months will understand exactly how the crew felt). Rather, it was a Dane, Jens Munk (1579-1628), who first reached the Churchill area in 1619.

 

Jens Munk Rose

I haven’t been able to find a portrait of Jens Munk, but he has had a rose named after him.  Go figure.

BTW, Hudson doesn’t have an acknowledged portrait, either.Here, however, is a replica of his ship, the Halve Maen, built by the Dutch and presented to the US in the early 1900’s, which should fill us with awe that these men were able to cross the Atlantic under nothing but wind power in something so tiny.

 

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Sidebar: Many people outside of Denmark today don’t think of Denmark as a major player in politics and history, although those who have studied the Thirty-Years War (1618-1648) will remember that both Denmark and Sweden played significant roles in that conflict. (Astronomers will also remember that Tycho Brahe, whose data provided the basis for Johann Kepler’s discovery that planetary orbits were elliptical which helped buttress the emerging heliocentric theory, was also Danish.) Denmark, besides being the home to many Norsemen (Vikings) also was heavily involved in early explorations outside of Europe, in particular, in searching for the Northeast and Northwest passages to Asia, which would avoid the long and difficult sea voyages around Africa or South America. . In particular, King Christian IV was a great promoter of exploration, and Munk served him with distinction, even though his explorations to locate either the Northeast Passage (sailing around what is now mainly Russia to reach China) or the Northwest Passage (sailing around Greenland, Canada and Alaska to reach China through the Bering Strait) were thwarted by the ice floes of the Little Ice Age (which began about 1275 CE and lasted to about 1850 CE or so).

At some point I will do a follow-up about the search for the Northwest Passage, as it has considerable implications many centuries later as the Arctic ice pack is shrinking. If we industrialize the Arctic Ocean through supertanker and supercargo shipping, we may well set in motion even more serious global warming than we’ve seen during the existence of our species (homo sapiens sapiens) on the earth.

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Munk reached the Churchill area in 1619 (for those fans of American history, that’s a year before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts and a dozen years after the establishment of the Jamestown colony in Virginia, and a hundred years after Hernán Cortez landed in Mexico to take on the Aztecs). He and his crew arrived too late in the year to get out, and were forced to winter there. Scurvy killed all but three of the original 64 members of the expedition. After the ice melted, Munk and the other two survivors managed to sail one of the two ships back to Europe beginning in June of 1620, landing in Bergen, Norway, then a part of Denmark. I have not yet been able to find information on how they accomplished that astonishing feat, nor an explanation of why Hollywood hasn’t turned it into a film epic (maybe scurvy lacks sex appeal….although I would pay money to see how Bollywood would handle it!)

Churchill’s harbor is apparently called Munk’s Harbor. In the 1960’s, Danish archeologists located the remains of one of the ships in the mud flats around Churchill. This is of considerable interest because, as we’ll explore sometime in the next couple of weeks, the area around Churchill is much like Scandinavia and is experiencing rebound (ground rising) after the melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in Canada and the Scandinavian Ice Sheet in (where else?) Scandinavia at the end of the last great ice age, about 15,000 years ago or so. That means that the ground is rising, and it’s rising particularly fast around Churchill, currently at about 12 millimeters (just under half (½) an inch) per year. At Churchill’s present altitude, it may well have been under water at some point within the past 1,000 years or so. I don’t have much information on what the Danes did, and will be looking for it to add on to this description. More to come.

Next time we’ll look at the semi-permanent settlement around Churchill by the Hudson’s Bay Company beginning about a century after Musk’s exploration, in 1722. This involves the North American fur trade as a driving force of settlement of this part of the North American continent