STRANGE ARCTIC TRAGEDY.

Otaki Mail, 7 September 1923, Page 4

STRANGE ARCTIC TRAGEDY.

CANADIAN JUDGE’S INQUIRY. I Lust and passion, hatred and revenge, cruelty and selfishness, duty which leads unto death —these are human attributes common alike to the diverse elements of a New York or a London, and to the barren wastes which fringe the Arctic ’s rim.

It is to unravel such a tangled skein as this, with elemental passions playing out their tragedy on a stage whose area is the barren lands of the Canadian Arctic, and whose lighting is the brilliant glow of the midnight sun, or the emerald and sapphire fires of the aurora borealis, that .Judge Lueicn Dubue, of the Alberta Courts, has just left civilisation, to hold court this summer, in the log outpost of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Hcrsehcl Island, in the depths of the grim Arctic itself.

Eight lives—a corporal of the Mouuted Police, a white trader, four Eskimo men, one Eskimo women, and a four-year-old Eskimo girl—were lost in this grim play of lust and passion, enacted amid the “white silence” of the frozen north, All of them were sacrificed because of the passion of the white trader for the wife of a native Eskimo, The trader and the woman are dead, victims of their own earthly faults. The four Eskimo men and the one woman were killed as the tragedy, developing its f-tquel of revenge and hatred, hastened toward its inevitable end. The little child was strangled to

death by members of its own tribe. The Mounted Police corporal died in the execution of his duty, which was to deliver to the police post at Ile-rschel Island, one of the men wanted in connection with I lie murders. Full 2,000 miles north of the Ameri-can-Cauadian boundary lies the white circle of the Canadian Arctic. Fifteen hundred miles of navigable rivers and inland seas lie between the Mounted Police post Hersehel Island, and .Edmonton, capital city of the Province of Alberta, which is the divisional post of the Mounted Police in the north-west

territories. The white trader, Otta Binder, took the Eskimo wife of one Ikialgaguina, . to live with him. The latter’s father, i Ikpukuwak, and his cousin, Hannah, were anxious to get another wife to replace the one taken from Ikialgaguina by Binder. Bo they shot a fellow tribes-man, Armigviak, seriously wounding him, and wanted Ikialgaguina to tage Anaigviak’s wife. Hannalc returned to his tent, and Tatamagnaua, partner of the wounded Anaigviak, took his rifle and shot I-lannak dead. Pugnana, a cousin of Hannak, seeing Ikialgaguina run for his rifle, shot him dead. Ikpukuwak, father of Ikialgagninn, seeing his son dead, lived several shots at Pugunana, without hitting him, whereupon Pugunana retaliated, killing Ikpukuwak, and also shooting Hannak’s wife. As the father, Eannak. and the mother, Hannah’s wife, were now both dead, th'e people of the tribe not wisht ing 1o be burdened with Okolitana, f> four- year-old daughter of the two, strangled her to death. Pugnana, Tatamagnana, and the wounded man, Anaigviak, disappeared, and for a year the Mounted Police sought in vain for them. Tiivn Corporal Doak heard of Pugnana, as living with another tribe of Eskimo, near to J. the Tree River police post. Before he I could reach the wanted man, however, Alikomiak, a relative of several of , the slain men, aided by Tatamagnana, • had revenged himself on Pugnana. and !so the hunt turned from the dead Pugnana to Alikomiak and Tatamagnana. the lotted of whom was arrested. Alikomiak, the latest entry into the circle of murderers, was later taken by Corporal Doak and placed in the Tree River post, pending weather suitable to undertake the SUO-dog sledge trip along the rim of the Arctic to the Herschcl Island post. By some means Alikomiak contrived to secure the corporal’s rifle, anti to the murder of Pugnana he added the death of Doak. Then, making his j way to the dwelling of the white trader, | Binder, Alikomiak wreaked his final I revenge on the man who had been the I cause of ail this long trail of violence, bloodshed and murder. A police patrol later took Alikomiak, and after surmounting almost superhuman difficulties and dangers, delivered their man safely to Hersehel Island.