Contemplating a village of perhaps fifty persons on Qeqertarsuaq, he sent Sakeouse ashore to inquire about trading. The young Inuk returned with seven men. Ross offered them a musket in exchange for a sledge and dogs. The men accepted, went ashore, and promptly returned with a sledge, a team of dogs and five women, two of whom were said to be daughters of a “Danish president” by an Inuit woman.
Ross treated the visitors to coffee and biscuits in his cabin. After leaving the cabin, we learn in The Last Voyage of Captain John Ross, “they danced Scotch reels on the deck with the sailors, during which the mirth and joy of Sakeouse knew no bounds.” Ross observed that one of the young women caught the eye of Sakeouse. One of the ship’s officers, seeing what was unfolding, gave him “a lady’s shawl, ornamented with spangles as an offering for her acceptance.” Sakeouse “presented it in a most respectful, and not ungraceful manner to the damsel, who bashfully took a pewter ring from her finger and gave it to him in return, rewarding him at the same time with an eloquent smile.”
After the festivities, Sakeouse escorted the visitors ashore. Next day, when he failed to return, a boat went to fetch him. The young Inuk had broken his collarbone while demonstrating how his gun worked. He had overloaded it to make an impression¾“plenty of powder, plenty of kill”—and had failed to anticipate the greater recoil. He took some weeks to heal.
Amidst heavy gales, the two navy ships beat north through enormous icebergs along the coast of Greenland. In Melville Bay on August 9, someone spotted a small group of men gesticulating from the shore. Ross sent a party to make contact, but the men fled on their dogsleds, disappearing among the hummocks. Ross had brought a great many items for trade, among them 2,000 needles, 200 mirrors, thirty pairs of scissors, 150 pounds of soap, forty umbrellas, and 129 gallons of gin.
He placed a cache of goods on shore. The following day, Inuit came charging hard, driving eight dogsleds. One mile from the ships, they halted and stood waiting. As a boy, Sakeouse had heard that northern Greenland was “inhabited by an exceedingly ferocious race of giants, who were great cannibals.” Even so, unarmed, alone, and carrying a white flag, he went out to meet the northerners. He halted on one side of a great crack or lead in the ice.
After some difficulty, Sakeouse found a dialect, Humooke, in which he could communicate with the strangers. They had never seen a sailing ship or, even from a distance, a white man. Sakeouse tossed the men a string of beads and a checkered shirt. Soon questions and answers were flying back and forth.
Ross gathered more presents and, with Edward Parry, his second in command, set out across the ice. They wore their naval uniforms, complete with cocked hats and tailcoats, and together with Sakeouse, they distributed gifts to a welcoming party that had now grown to eight local men and fifty howling dogs. Soon enough, all the ships’ officers had come ashore, while the crews of both ships stood laughing and shouting encouragement.
“The impression made by this scene upon [Sakeouse] was so strong,” according to the Penny Magazine, “that he afterwards executed a drawing of it from memory. That drawing, illustrating the first meeting of native northern Greenlanders and British sailors, turned up in John Ross’s book about his voyage. The Beinecke Library declared it “certainly the earliest representational work by a Native American artist to be so reproduced.”