Copper Inuit
Culture | Defunct
1540 CE to 2215 CE
Copper Inuit (or Kitlinermiut) are a Canadian Inuit group who live north of the tree line, in what is now Nunavut's Kitikmeot Region and the Northwest Territories's Inuvik Region.
Most historically live in the area around Coronation Gulf, on Victoria Island, and southern Banks Island.
Their western boundary is Wise Point, near Dolphin and Union Strait.
Their northwest territory is the southeast coast of Banks Island.
Their southern boundary is the eastern shore of Great Bear Lake, Contwoyto Lake and Lake Beechey on the Back River.
To the east, the Copper Inuit and the Netsilingmiut are separated by Perry River in Queen Maud Gulf.
While Copper Inuit travel throughout Victoria Island, to the west, they concentrate south of Walker Bay, while to the east, they are concentrated south of Denmark Bay.
As the people have no collective name for themselves, they have adopted the English term, "Copper Inuit".
It represents those westernmost Central Inuit who use and rely on native copper gathered along the lower Coppermine River and the Coronation Gulf.
According to Rasmussen (1932), other Inuit refer to Copper Inuit as Kitlinermiut, as Kitlineq is an Inuit language name for Victoria Island.
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Chipewyan Dene warriors led by Matonabbee, accompanying Hudson's Bay expedition led by Samuel Hearne, discover a group of local Copper Inuit camped by rapids approximately fifteen kilometers (nine point three miles) upstream from the mouth of the Coppermine.
Just after midnight on July 17, the Chipewyans set upon the unsuspecting Inuit camp and kill approximately twenty men, women and children.
Hearne is traumatized by the massacre, saying "...and I am confident that my features must have feelingly expressed how sincerely I was affected at the barbarous scene I then witnessed; even at this hour I cannot reflect on the transactions of that horrid day without shedding tears"; he names the waterfall Bloody Falls.
London-born, eleven when he entered the Royal Navy in 1758, Hearne had spent some time with Lord Hood; at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, he had taken service with the Hudson's Bay Company.
He had examined portions of the Hudson Bay coasts in 1768 with a view to improving the cod fishery, and from 1769 to 1772 has been employed in northwestern discovery, searching especially for certain copper mines described by natives.
His first attempt (from November 6, 1769) had failed through the desertion of his natives; his second (from February 23, 1770) through the breaking of his quadrant.
He has now embarked on his third expedition.
Towards the end of May 1771, Hearne had begun to notice that the Chipewyans accompanying him on his expedition had motives other than his planned survey of the Coppermine River.
On the party's arrival at Peshew Lake, Matonabbee, Hearne's guide and companion, and a number of the men accompanying Hearne began to make arrangements for their wives and children to be left behind.
Later on, when the party arrives at Clowey, each of the Chipewyan men crafts shields from thin boards, sixty centimeters (two feet) wide and ninety centimeters (three feet) long.
Hearne notes that his party is joined by a number of native who are solely interested in propagating a war against the Inuit.
In the travel narrative describing his journey, he claims that as the group advances north into Inuit territories, it becomes evident that his companions are gradually plotting an act of "savage", "shocking", and "brutish" violence.
On July 14, 1771, while on an Arctic overland journey, he, his followers, and a group of Yellowknives (Dene known as Copper Indians) who had joined them at Clowey, had massacred a group of over twenty unsuspecting Inuit (Eskimo); this has become known as the Bloody Falls massacre.
After the death of many Chipewyans during a smallpox epidemic of 1782 and the defeat of Fort Prince of Wales by the French, Matonabbee becomes depressed after the destruction of the Churchill Factory 1782, which had been the primary source of his fortune and fame.
He had been the main middleman between the various tribes of the Cree and the Hudson's Bay Company.
He now commits suicide by hanging himself, this being the earliest record of a northern native to kill himself.