Uloqsaq

Uloqsaq (also Uluksuk, and Uluksuk, alias Avingak ( – September 24, 1929) was a Copper Inuk hunter of the Coppermine River region.

Early life Although it is not known exactly where and when Uloqsaq was born, it is thought he was born around 1887, as he was about 30 during his murder trial in 1917.

The murders

In late 1913, Jean-Baptiste Rouvière and Guillaume Le Roux, two Missionary Oblates, were on a mission to convert the Copper Inuit in the Coppermine River region to Roman Catholicism while heading towards Coronation Gulf. They were doing this, they claimed, because they had heard rumours that Anglican missionaries were attempting to perform the same in that region, and wanted to convert the Inuit in the area to their denomination first. The priests enlisted the assistance of Uloqsaq as well as Sinnisiak, another hunter, and paid them in traps. However, Le Roux, who had a short temper, quickly got angry with the two Inuit men, who soon decided that Le Roux's anger meant that the priests wanted to kill them. Sinnisiak urged Uloqsaq to help him kill the two men, and the priests were shot, stabbed and axed to death. For ritualistic reasons, the two Inuit ate a portion of the two priests' livers.

Some Inuit later told the investigating policemen a different story. One man, an Inuk elder named Koeha, told the story quite differently. He claimed that at an Inuit camp, a man had stolen a rifle from one of the priests and gotten into a fight with Le Roux. Although the Inuit who had stolen the weapon wanted to kill Le Roux, the priests managed to escape. Sinnisiak and Uloqsaq began to follow the priests, and caught up with them at Bloody Falls, where Sinnisiak stabbed and shot the two men. Although Uloqsaq assisted on Sinnisiak's urging, he said that he did not want to kill the priest and did so only because he had been told to by Sinnisiak. and the two men surrendered themselves without incident in May 1916. Part of Uloqsaq's police statement read, "I wanted to speak; Ilogoak [Le Roux]