Walking back almost 100 years in time

Mary and I were wearing our waders, walking back and forth across the stream, bringing firewood to the campsite. Once we finished loading the wood, we decided to check out the old village of Ellikarrmiut. The village was wiped out around the turn of the century, then after that, everyone moved onto the other side of the stream which was then called Qimugglugpagmiut. Walking along the beach we found an easy way to climb up to where all the mud houses once were. We stopped at a mud house that seemed as if it had belonged to a big family. Walking a few steps at a time, we noticed more and more houses in different shapes and sizes. It has been said that these mud houses were built over one hundred years ago with a village population ranging from two to seven houses in a period of 30 years. It was quite amazing to see how the ancestors from the people of Mekoryuk once lived. It was almost as though I was walking back one hundred years in time. Mary and I were able to tell that some families were big, while some were small, just by the shape of the house. We even walked into the “Qasgi” house, which is known as the mens’ house. The mens’ house was where a lot of the meetings took place along with the village feasts and celebrations. It was the biggest house of all. We even pretended we were there, imagining the chief of the village in the back of the room facing the entry way, watching the people of the village dance and celebrate something big. For instance, celebrating a young boy turning into a man after his first catch of a bearded seal. We were dancing and singing, and later pretended to crawl out the entry way, just like they did back 100 years ago. It was a very fascinating adventure. I really did feel as though I walked almost one hundred years back in time.   –Yvonne

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Summer Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.