Page 9 - Moravian Messenger Jan 2021

Off to Kauk!!
Continuation of Br Hopcroft's memories of his call to Labrador in 1971
Mary White and Rutie Barbour and family
The earliest recorded attempt to take the gospel to the Labrador coast tells of Jan Christian Erhardt, who was a German sailor who became a Moravian after meeting them on the Island of St Thomas in the West Indies. He set sail on the Moravian sailing ship 'Hope' from London on 18th May 1752 accompanied by three merchants planning to trade whalebone and seal skins with the Inuit. Erhardt and five missionaries left the ship at Davis Inlet with a boat load of goods to trade and was never seen again. The crew waited for their return but eventually, after
leaving supplies,
had to give up
and return to
London. The
following year
the 'Hope'
returned, and
the bodies of
the missionaries
were found.
Trading
between the
Inuit and
Europeans, at that time, was fraught with danger.
Jens Haven was born in 1724 in Jammerbugt, Denmark and his family were Lutheran but, after being apprenticed to a Moravian carpenter, he joined the Moravian Church in Herrnhut. He had a burning desire to take the gospel to the Inuit of Labrador, having heard of the fateful trip made by Erhardt in 1752. It took some time for the arrangements to be made but after spending four years at a Moravian Mission Station in Greenland, at Lichtenfels, where he learned the Inuit language, Jens Haven set off for Labrador in 1763-4 where he began to make contact with the local Inuit communities. He travelled across the Atlantic several times before eventually choosing land in the Nuneingoak region of Labrador, where he purchased land on behalf of the Moravian Church from the local Inuit.
In 1771 Haven proceeded to build a Mission House on the land and they called it Nain, and finally the Mission was established.
Wendy and I arrived in 1971 blissfully unaware at the time, that Labrador, and Nain in particular, was preparing a big celebration for the whole community as they remembered the 200th anniversary of the arrival and establishment of the Moravian Mission Work in 1771 by Jens Haven, after whom the school there is named. The preparations had been going
on for weeks and we were in for a treat.
As the weekend of celebration drew near, I answered a knock at the door to be greeted by two members of the Provincial Board and British Mission Board,
from London, who had arrived by boat for the celebrations. There stood Br Geoffrey Birtill and Br Ted Wilson whom I had never met before but whom Wendy knew. We invited them in for tea and Br Wilson unexpectedly presented us with a wedding gift of four dessert spoons, which have survived many removals and are still in use!
It was planned to hold the celebrations in Kauk bay, close to Nain Bay but where there were no houses and so still looked untouched and in its natural state. On the weekend of the pageant a flotilla of small boats carried the participants and observers around the bay to Kauk where the shoreline was dotted with caribou hide tents erected to replicate what it must have looked like in Nain 200 years previously when a boat carried Jens Haven and colleagues to the shore, and he was greeted by the local Inuit who were all dressed in traditional costume.
It was a wonderful sight! With adults and children all exhibiting their finest seal skin coats and boots and caribou parkas and mitts. Gathered together in family groups with caribou meat and salmon hanging to dry in the sun as it would have done 200 years previously. We learned something of how sealskin boots (mukluks) were made, of how Grenfell cloth and duffel silopaks replaced seal and caribou hides to make coats. It helped us to put into context the history of the community we were settling into as we began to learn of how the Inuit people had adapted and survived in such a harsh climate.
The weekend also included special services in the Church where the brass band played, and the choir sang. Most of the music played and sung were from the old German chorales which had changed little over the years and, as I discovered, were very old handwritten manuscripts.
Food was prepared in the Church hall and it was our first taste of seal, caribou, duck, goose and ptarmigan as well as salmon and arctic char. The seal meat was, to my English palette, chewy and fishy (not surprising given a seal's diet), whilst the caribou was far more appealing. We discovered the wonderful fresh taste of arctic char . but perhaps more of food and recipes later!
Of all the times for us to arrive in Nain, what a truly memorable weekend to experience, right at the beginning of our time there, and perhaps the beginning of the realisation that we had much more to learn about life in Labrador than anything we would be able to teach in the classrooms there.
After all the celebrations, it was back to focussing on classroom activities and planning for the year that lay ahead of us.
Br Robert Hopcroft
Hulda Lidd with her grandchildren
9
© Br Robert Hopcroft
© Br Robert Hopcroft