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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 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.) * 224 +
