Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory

Especially notable for Lucien Turner’s descriptions of 19th-century Native material culture, this book was originally published in 1894 as part of the Smithsonian’s Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology series. The book was written after Lucien Turner arrived at the present-day community of Kuujjuaq on the northern Quebec-Labrador peninsula in 1882. As with his earlier long-term appointments in Alaska, he primarily conducted meteorological, atmospheric and tidal observations for the US Army’s Signal Corps. However, he also developed a rapport with the Innu and Inuit, spending his free time studying and recording not only their material culture - including clothing, dwellings, weapons and tools - but also their lifeways, language and stories. His images of the peoples’ camps, as well as their formal portraits, are among the earliest examples of photography in the Arctic. This reissue aims to ensure that Turner’s work continues to be a classic introduction to the culture of the Innu and Inuit people of northern Quebec and Labrador.