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Labrador in Germany
- by Stephen Loring
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| | Volkerundemuseum, Herrnhut, Germany. |
For three weeks in July Stephen Loring visited German museums in Stuttgart, Munich, Herrnhut, and Berlin to study and photograph 19th century ethnographic collections from Labrador and Alaska. Accompanying him was his wife Dr. Joan Gero (University of South Carolina) who had received a research grant from her university to study collections of Recuay culture ceramic vessels from ancient Peru.
The highlight of the trip for Loring was a week spent in the small village of Herrnhut very near the former East German-Polish border about 70 kilometers east of Dresden. Herrnhut is the center of the Evangelical Community of Brothers (the Moravian Church), which had been established by religious refugees from Bohemia and Moravia in 1722. A fundamental tenet of the Moravian Church has always been its commitment to bring the word of God to "unenlightened" people throughout the world. Beginning in 1732 the Moravians sent missionaries to the West Indies to preach their religion to plantation slaves and maroon communities. In 1733 they established a mission in Greenland and in 1770 in Labrador. The history of the Inuit people of Labrador is intimately linked to the history of the Moravian Church. In 1870 a Moravian mission was established in Bethel, Alaska-- a story brilliantly told in Ann Fienup-Riordan's book The Real People and the Children of Thunder (1991) and Harmonious to Dwell by James Henkelman anKurt Vitt (1985).
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| | Stephen Loring, Stephan and Renata Augustin in front of the
Volkerundemuseum, Herrnhut, Germany. |
During the summer of 1990 Loring co-directed an archeological excavation of the village midden in the Moravian Eskimo community of Nain in northern Labrador. The excavation was a joint initiative of Loring and Gary Baikie, Director of the Torngasoak Cultural Centre in Nain. The project was both a field school for students from the University of South Carolina and a training program to teach a group of Inuit students about archeology. Subsequently one of Loring's students, Melanie Cabak, prepared a Masters Thesis, "Inuit Women as Catalysts of Change: an Archaeological Study of 19th Century Northern Labrador" (U.S.C. 1991) on the analysis of the midden materials. Loring and Cabak are now in the process of preparing a monograph which will fold the results of this research into a larger discussion of the history of the community and the relationship between the Inuit people of Labrador and the Moravians. To this end Loring has been conducting research in the Moravian archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, andondon, England. An opportunity to visit the archival and administrative head of the Moravian Church was deemed essential in order to study 18th century documents and 19th-20th century photography pertaining to the Labrador missions.
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| | Exhibit of Labrador and Alaskan Eskimo material culture in the
Volkerundemuseum, Herrnhut, Germnay. The sled dogs were killed and
stuffed in the late 19th century after attacking a little girl at a mission
station in Labrador. |
Also in Herrnhut is the Museum of Ethnology with its fascinating collections derived from missionary activities around the world. The Moravian collections are for the most part objects sent back to Herrnhut as souvenirs but also, significantly, as instructional material to illustrate the lifestyles of the people with whom the missionaries worked. The museum contains a large collection of models, made by local artisans at mission stations across the arctic, in the Caribbean and South Africa. The Labrador collections feature clothing, domestic and household utensils, models, gorgeous ivory figurines, archeological specimens, and a complete komatik pulled by a team of stuffed dogs. Access to the Herrnhut collections were facilitated by our gracious host and museum director, Dr. Stephan Augustin, who proved extremely knowledgeable about all matters pertaining to the Moravians and their collections.
At the turn of the century several German museums acquired small collections of ethnographic materials from the Moravians in Labrador. Loring had the opportunity to examine these collections at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart and at the Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde in Munich. A brief visit was made to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin where Loring was shown the Alaskan and Labrador collections by Dr. Richard Haas. Berlin is home also to the Johan Adrian Jacobsen Collection from Alaska. Jacobsen's travels in Alaska between 1881-1883 (primarily along the Northwest Coast and in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region) resulted in one of the great ethnographic collections from the region. It was both surprising and delightful to see many companion pieces to objects that Edward Nelson had collected only a few years earlier (1877-81). |
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