The Tunnit

According to the account given by an old Nachvak Eskimo, the Tunnit in ancient times had two villages in Nachvak bay. Their houses were built on an exposed shore (the present Eskimo always seek a sheltered beach for their villages, where they can land in their kayaks), showing that they had little knowledge of the use of boats. When they wanted boats, they stole them from the Eskimo. From this thieving of kayaks the original quarrel is said to have begun.

For all their bigness and strength, the Tunnit were a stupid slow-going race (according to the Eskimo version), and fell an easy prey to the Eskimo, who used to stalk them and hunt them down like game. They did not dare to attack them openly, so cut them off, one by one, by following them, and attacking and killing them when asleep. Their favourite method was to bore holes in the foreheads of the Tunnit with an awl (a drill in the Greenland story in Rink). Two brothers especially distinguished themselves in this warfare, and did not desist until the last of the Tunnit was exterminated. The Tunnit built their houses of heavy rocks, which no Eskimo could lift. They used the rocks for walls, and whale ribs and shoulder blades for the roof. At the entrance of the house two whale jaw-bones were placed. Ruins of these houses can still be seen, overgrown with grass, with the roof fallen in. They may be distinguished from old Eskimo iglus by the small, square space they occupy.

The Tunnit did not use the bow and arrow, but flint-headed lances and harpoons with bone or ivory heads. They were so strong that one of them could hold a walrus as easily as an Eskimo a seal.

They did not understand the dressing of sealskins, but left them in the sea, where the little sea-worms (?) cleaned off the fat in a short time. The Tunnit dressed in winter in untanned deerskins. They were accustomed to carry pieces of meat around with them, between their clothing and body, until it was putrid, when they ate it.

The Tunnit were very skilful with the lance, which they threw, sitting down and aiming at the object by resting the shaft on the boot. For throwing at a distance they used the throw-stick.

They did not hunt deer like the Eskimo, but erected long lines of stone “men” in a valley through which the deer passed. The deer would pass between the lines of stones, and the hunters hidden behind them would lance them. Remains of these lines of rocks may still be seen.

Their weapons were much larger, but not so well made as those of the Eskimo, as can be seen from the remains on their graves. The men used flint for the harpoon heads, and crystal for their drills. The women used a rounded piece of slate without a handle for a knife. They used a very small lamp for heating purposes, which they carried about them. For cooking they had a much larger lamp than the Eskimo. Until trouble arose between them, the Tunnit and the Eskimo used to intermarry, but after it was found that an alien wife would betray her husband to her people, no more were taken. A Tuneq woman, who betrayed the Eskimo of the village she lived in to the Tunnit, had her arms cut off. After that no women were taken on either side. (The story of this incident is given following in “An Adlit Tale.”)

The Tunnit were gradually exterminated by the Eskimo, until only a scattered one remained here and there in their villages. How these were overcome by stratagems is handed down in the tales of the giant at Hebron, said to be the last of the Tunnit, and Adlasuq and the Giant. The giant allows himself to be bound in a snow-house, and is slain by the Eskimo hunters. This story has attained a mythological character in Baffin island, but is ascribed by the Labrador Eskimo directly to the Tunnit. A story about the Tunnit, giving considerable circumstantial detail, was obtained from a Nachvak woman:

“At Nachvak the Tunnit were chasing a big whale (this was before the time of the present Eskimo). They were in two skin boats, about twenty men and women in each boat. They had the whale harpooned, and were being towed round and round the bay by him. Somehow the line got tangled in one of the boats and capsized. The other boat with the line still made fast to the whale, went to pick up the people in the water, and was capsized too. Another boat came off from the shore, and picked up some of the people in the water. Most of them were drowned.

“They were buried under a hill on a big bank near Nachvak. There are some thirty graves on this bank, with pots, harpoons, and knives buried by the graves. Even the remains of the boats are there. The knives and pots are of stone. The harpoon blades are of flint. The umiaks were much larger than the present boats.” My informant added that there were also remains of bows and arrows. “The bows were of whalebone and the arrows of flint.”

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