Tape Transcripts on Elder Ronnie Sheshamush
Whapmagoostui First Nation Member
Transcriber: Mary Shem
March 15, 2006

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Part 4

The whaling expeditions of the Great Whale River were partly over as I recall when we used to live here. My grandfather (nymshoom) Mamianskum had seen the whaling events. What used to happen when the whales were caught both Cree and Inuit people were given some whale meat.

He told me that a great net was used to capture the whales, those were not beluga whales, I was told that it was the bowhead whales, those were huge in size and black, totally different looking from the beluga whales.

In those days, whale hunting took place at the mouth of the river, where the present marina is, is where another whaling activity took place. There the people used to work at night. If the whales were seen coming up the river a siren (myachikan) was heard to identify whereabouts of the whales. The net must have been very sturdy and strong because they say that the 10 gallon drums were used as floats and whale fat was put into 45 gallon drums for exportation.

The whale bins were very big, that is where they took care of the fat, it was an enormous job, and everything seemed big then, the big whales, big whale bins and large volumes of fat for heating. Everyone got their share of the whale, in some cases one whale was given to one household.

When whaling came to an end, the fur trading took its place. Sailing ships would come into the river and that was when some goods came in for the people to trade.

I recall one story of one captain not of good nature who was exiled by his men and he was not heard from ever again. I guess he was not a very good trader. At the time of trading, there were no houses except for the church and then they built the post, store and home of the trader. In all, I think they were eventually five houses. I saw some pictures in a magazine of what the community looked like before there were many houses here.

Then I heard another story whereby the post burnt down and it destroyed the store and most of its contents. They say that the trader had kept all of the good furs and did not give them away, those were destroyed in the fire as well.

I saw the graves of the family. There was a headstone and some elders said that the salesclerks died as well.

Why did they move to Whapmagoostui, I do not know exactly, I heard that the post at Little Whale River was deserted once the people went back to their trap lines and when some knew that the post at Great Whale existed, they stopped going to Little Whale River.

I also know before the post existed at Little Whale River and at Richmond Gulf, our people used to go as far as Eastmain to trade their furs in exchange for food supplies. That must have been a long way to travel if one was traveling from Clearwater Lake to Eastmain by foot.

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