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MIKLÓS VASSÁNYI
However, our attention will focus on their respective accounts of Captain
Hall’s violent and mysterious death. This is better described by Baffin, who
was actually present and an eyewitness, while Gatonbe’s account is of second
hand. Baffin words his story as follows:
Wednesday, the two and twentieth day <of July 1612,> about nine or ten of the clocke,
the Sauages came to barter with vs, being about fortie of them, and continued about
an houre and an halfe; at which time, our master, James Hall, being in the boat,
a sauage with his dart strooke him a deadly wound vpon the right side, which our
surgean did thinke did pierce his liver. We all mused that he should strike and offer
no harme to any of the rest, vnlesse it were that they knew him since he was there
with the Danes; for, out of that riuer, they carried away fiue of the people, whereof
neuer any returned againe; and, in the next riuer, they killed a great number. And it
should seeme that he which killed him was either brother or some neere kinsman,
to some of them that were carried away; for he did it very resolutely, and came
within four yards of him. And, for ought we could see, the people are very kind one
to another, and ready to reuenge any wrong offred to them.”
It appears from Gatonbe’s account that the Kalaallit showed up in very large
numbers, clearly outnumbering the English, who were also unprepared for
defending themselves — but no general attack ensued, albeit the unarmed
Europeans in the ship’s two boats could have been overwhelmed easily.”
Yet the murder was the personal affair of one indidivual with no accessories,
though perhaps not unbeknownst beforehand to the rest of the Aboriginals,
and potentially with their general consent. On the other hand, Baffin’s text
makes us believe that perhaps all participants in the bartering transaction
preceding the murder stayed afloat in their respective boats, possibly out of
precaution, without anybody going ashore (communicating from a boat, with
the other party remaining ashore, or also seated in a boat, was not unusual
practice on such journeys — see for instance Davis’s or Jolliet’s respective
voyages). However this may have been, such circumstances could not prevent
the Kalaallik from inflicting a deadly wound to the Captain. The perceptive
Baffin then suggests that the perpetrator had had a premeditated plan
61 Tbid., 124.
62 “,.Captain James Hall being in the ship’s boat, and his man William Huntriff, and two more,
one of the salvages offer’d to sell him a dart, he taking up a piece of iron, in the mean time
he threw his dart at him, and struck him through his clothes into his body, 4 inches upon
his right side, which gave his death’s wound. Mr. Barker and 20 more men were in the great
pinnace, on the other side of the ship; the which, if the salvages would, they might have killed
all of them in the pinnace, there being about them more than a 150 boats of them, our men
having no muskets ready, nor any other provision to prevent them from hurting them; for
our men did think they had come in a friendly manner to bargain with them; yet it proved
otherwise, to the danger of them all and the loss of our general.” (Ibid., 107.)
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