ATD background: _Pomiuk: A Waif of Labrador_

[pynchonoid]

Thanks in large part to William Byron Forbush's book,
the tragic story of Pomiuk's experience at the Chicago
World's Fair became known and has been readily
available to people studying world's fairs and
expositions. Other hardships faced by the Inuit
recruited for the Eskimo Village at Chicago have been
forgotten. Pomiuk's broken hip was an accident; many
of the other hardships were not.

The Eskimo Village at the Chicago World's Fair was
part of the first major ethnological exhibit mounted
in the United States. In the summer of 1892, W. D.
Vincent and Ralph G. Taber of Spokane, Washington, who
were among the group that secured the Eskimo Village
concession at the World's Fair, commissioned the
Evelena(1) for an expedition up the Labrador coast to
recruit Inuit families to participate in the village.
Ten families were recruited from missionary and Hudson
Bay Company settlements. Nearly all of them were
Christians and could speak English. Two other
families, including Pomiuk's, were recruited from
farther north, near Cape Chidley and Ungava Bay.
Living in a remote region, they had had no contact
with missionaries and little contact with traders.
When they arrived in Boston in October 1892, the
Boston Globe classed these two families as "heathen
aborigines," and reported that devout Christians among
the Inuit hoped to convert them during their extended
stay at the World's Fair. Rev. Charles C. Carpenter, a
former missionary in Labrador then working as
children's editor for The Congregationalist, helped
Vincent and Taber plan their recruitment
expedition.(2) He seems to have developed the same
idea about converting the "heathens" and took a
special interest in Pomiuk after meeting him at the
World's Fair. ...

...continues:
http://www.inuitentertainers.com/texts/pomiuk_foreword.html






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