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MIKLÓS VASSÁNYI
SETTING A SNARE FOR HENRY HUDSON’S MUTINOUS CREW
The narrative of Captain Hudson’s fourth journey (April 1610 — June 1611),
which cost him his life because of a mutiny of the crew, is historically well
known but an anthropological analysis of the Inuit attack the mutinous crew
eventually suffered may still be missing.** This, however, may be based only
on the one surviving document produced by an eyewitness, the self-justifying
diary of “a most mysterious individual [...], bearing the unlikely name of
Abacuck Prickett, who was the sponsors’ representative and who was also a
man of singular parts.””’ If we believe this diary, the crew went hungry, because
of the insufficiency of the provisions, already in November 1610, when their
ship froze in in Hudson Bay. At this point, as Prickett points out, “the only
hope they had to bring them home” was a return, come spring, “to the capes
where the fowl bred,” to resupply.*° When the ice began to break, they were
already eating up whatever was found edible in the bleak land and “had any
shew of substance in them,” including the moss of the ground and the frogs.
About this time an Inuk approached the ship and engaged in barter trade with
the Captain.*! The ease with which this happened indicates that this practice
was common in the Labrador Inuit culture. As the Inuk never returned, the
Captain now set out to reconnoitre and come into contact with “the people” in
order to barter for meat. However, as an ill omen, the Inuit whose presence was
conspicuous in the area backed off and eschewed trading.” In the wake of the
Captain’s foundered mission, tension was building up between opinion leaders
28 G.M. Asher (ed.), Henry Hudson the Navigator. The Original Documents in which his Career
is Recorded, Collected, Partly Translated, and Annotated, with an Introduction, London,
Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1809; Oswalt, Eskimos and Explorers, 52-54.
29 Farley Mowat, Ordeal by Ice: The Search for the Northwest Passage, Toronto, McClelland &
Stewart, 1973, 79. (Vol. 1 of the Top of the World trilogy.)
A Larger Discourse of the Same Voyage, Written by Abacuck Prickett, in Asher (ed.), Henry
Hudson, 110-111.
“About this time, when the Ice began to breake out of the Bayes, there came a Sauage to our
Ship, as it were to see and to bee seene, being the first that we had seene in all this time:
whom our Master intreated well, and made much of him... To this Sauage our Master gaue
a Knife, a Looking-glasse, and Buttons, who receiued them thankefully, and made signes
that after hee had slept hee would come againe, which hee did. When hee came, hee brought
with him a Sled, which hee drew after him, and vpon it two Deeres skinnes, and two Beauer
skinnes. Hee had a scrip vnder his arme, out of which hee drew those things which the
Master had giuen him. Hee tooke the Knife and laid it vpon one of the Beauer skinnes, and
his Glasses and Buttons vpon the other, and so gaue them to the Master, who receiued them;
and the Sauage tooke those things which the Master had giuen him, and put them vp into
his scrip againe. Then the Master shewed him an Hatchet, for which hee would haue giuen
the Master one of his Deere skinnes, but our Master would haue them both, and so hee had,
although not willingly. After many signes of people to the North, and to the South, and that
after so many sleepes he would come againe, he went his way, but neuer came more.” (Ibid.,
114-115.)
“For he could by no meanes meete with the people, although they were neere them, yet they
would set the woods on fire in his sight.” (Ibid., 115.)
* 216 +