WHILE THE INTRODUCTION of firearms on the Labrador coast in the late eighteenth century has been commented on in earlier studies, details remain unclear in the extant literature about the role Moravian missionaries played in first prohibiting and later encouraging the sale of firearms in their stores at Nain, Okak, and Hopedale.[1] The radical change of policy in 1786, which suddenly permitted the sale of firearms and related supplies to Inuit after a 15-year-long absolute refusal to do so, especially requires further clarification. As a hunting people, it is not surprising that Inuit desired guns for the more effective killing of seals, caribou, and other staples to their diet.[2] The accessibility of guns among southern traders in the 1770s and early 1780s and the continuous movement of Inuit to the south to obtain firearms, gunpowder, and lead forced a change in Moravian policy. The present paper details the context and process of change, as revealed in the Moravian records at the archives in Herrnhut, Saxony, Germany, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Muswell Hill (London), England, and thus addresses some of the unanswered questions in the literature.

After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, in which the King of France "cede[d] and guarantie[d] to his said Britannick Majesty, in full right, Canada, with all its dependencies, as well as the island of Cape Breton, and all the other islands and coasts in the gulph and river of St. Lawrence," Governor Hugh Palliser of Newfoundland sought to localize and contain Inuit as loyal subjects and trading partners in the north while the British ship fishery was being developed in the south of Labrador.[3] From 1771 on, Moravian missionaries established themselves among the Inuit on the Atlantic coast north of Cape Harrison to effect their conversion, as they had done since 1733 in Greenland. The Moravian effort to keep Inuit apart from European influences was supported for a while by Palliser’s successors, since such containment fit the British mercantile and strategic plans for Labrador.[4] Land grants in Nain, Okak, and Hopedale of 100,000 acres each secured a relatively large land base for Inuit habitation and subsistence near Moravian settlements.[5] From the beginning of the Moravian presence, trading stores were attached to the missions to encourage settlement and evangelization near the Moravian missionaries.

But a bounded Inuit settlement area in the north remained far from being the containment that was originally envisioned. Continued British and French mercantile attraction in southern Labrador and in the Strait of Belle Isle and a less restrained lifestyle in the south for Inuit who did not wish to comply with the Moravian religious and moral requirements shattered the dream of strictly localized communities. The attempt of missionaries to preserve Inuit subsistence and lifestyle, albeit in a Christianized way and with trading relations to the Moravian stores, required continued mobility for hunting and fishing by kayak, umiak, and European-style boat at sea and by dogsled during the winter. This mobility also facilitated continued access to the south, especially where southern traders offered a wider variety of goods than the Moravian stores as well as better means of hunting (firearms) and travelling (sailboats) desired by many Inuit in the north. The non-restrictive trade conditions imposed on Moravians by an Order-in-Council of 1769 permitted continued opportunities for Inuit middlemen employed or supplied by European traders from southern and central Labrador, who engaged in business relations with fellow Inuit in the north. Inuit were thus not required to trade only with Moravians.[6]

Hopedale and the southern Inuit were already involved in a Labrador trading network that had been established well before Moravians arrived there in the 1770s.[7] Jens Haven, writing about Arvertok [modern spelling: Agvituk], the pre-Christian Hopedale, describes it as a place that:

is very well known and famous among them [the Inuit], and whoever has lived a winter in Arvatok [a variation in spelling] boasts about it as if he had lived in London or Paris. In former times when they went every 2 years south to rob and murder, Arvatok was the gathering place, where they came together from more than 60 German miles (about 450 km) from all habitations in the north, and left from here for the south and did their best to return here in the fall.[8]

According to Jens Haven, southern traders received an abundant supply of whale bones and baleen from Nachvak and Saglek and had "continual engagements with the northern inhabitants." They "thus supply the people in the north with iron ware [Eisenwerk]," which, Haven writes, "sells well in the north." "Otherwise," he continues:

the Northlanders are well situated [artig eingerichtet]. In one place they make kettles of soft stone to sell, in yet another they build boats, in another they have walrus teeth, and farther on another one whale bones and baleen [Wallfisch Knochen u. Barten]. Iron ware is very scarce among them, but their housewares [hausgeschirr] are nicer and more abundant than among the Southlanders. One sees a whole collection of wooden bowls, water buckets made of whalebone, large and small lamps of soft stone and kettles.[9]

Because of the importance of this inter-Inuit trade, Hopedale had become a significant trading locale for Inuit middlemen and the Inuit within the Moravian sphere of influence during the first two decades of their establishment. Several areas in the south that attracted Inuit are mentioned in the Hopedale and other Moravian records. During the 1770s and 1780s, Chateau Bay remained a point of great attraction and an area for Inuit trade and habitation. This seems to continue a situation that already existed when Inuktitut-speaking Moravians explored Labrador in 1765 and became mediators between the British and the Inuit.[10] The settlement of British and French traders in southern and central Labrador in the second half of the eighteenth century continued and developed areas of previous Inuit presence, notably Sandwich Bay (Netsektok) and Hamilton Inlet (Aivektok), with a subsequent further outreach of British and French trading interests on Labrador’s north coast, notably in the Makkovik and Kaipokok Bay areas.[11]

Less than one year after Moravians settled at Nain in 1771, Governor Molyneux Shuldham was informed that "the Heathen have lately strolled from the said Settlement to the Southward with a View of Trading with the Shipping which touch upon that Coast." In order to prevent such southward movement, Shuldham "desire[d] and require[d] the said Unitas Fratrum to use every fair and gentle means in their power, to prevent the said Esquimaux Savages from going to the Southward without first obtaining their Permission in writing for so doing, and till such time as other Settlements shall be formed and extended down along the Coast."[12]

According to a later account, this movement south had tragic consequences in 1772 because "[t]hat very year a company of 200 that went to the South, perished either at sea in a storm, or those who reached the shore died of sickness or hunger."[13] The British leadership of the Moravian Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel (SFG), the missionary and trade organization supplying Labrador, contended later that the order of Governor Shuldham, repeated in May of the same year and communicated in Labrador by Lieutenant Roger Curtis in the Governor’s name, inhibited travel to the south for nearly a decade. Some Inuit travel continued, however, during the first decade of Moravian settlement in Labrador. According to a comment in the Hopedale diary of 1783, the missionaries who sought to dissuade Piugina from travelling south related that from seven boats that went south in 1775 none came back.[14]

Next to sailboats and metal traps, firearms, gunpowder, and lead were the most coveted goods secured by northern Inuit in the south. Traders knew well the desirability of guns and saw them as important merchandise, although at the same time fearing their violent potential. Archaeological evidence suggests that Inuit owned European guns in southern and central Labrador in the second half of the eighteenth century. Réginald Auger demonstrated a significant presence of flints and shot in an Inuit-occupied sod house at Seal Islands in the Strait of Belle Isle for the 1770s[15] while R.H. Jordan and S.A. Kaplan found a gun mechanism and musket balls and grape shot in houses dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at Eskimo Island, Hamilton Inlet.[16] Although some evidence indicates an occasional acquisition of guns by Inuit within the French sphere of influence in southern Labrador prior to the arrival of George Cartwright and Moravians in the 1770s, the gradual and increasingly massive acquisition of guns by Inuit from Labrador’s north coast appears to have begun in the early 1770s and coincides with the presence of Cartwright in southern Labrador. While Moravians observed European boats commanded by Inuit as early as Johann Christian Erhardt’s exploration journey of 1752, no firearms owned by Inuit are mentioned in any of the quite detailed Moravian exploration journals for 1752, 1764, 1765, and 1770.[17] In Marianne Stopp’s recently published The New Labrador Papers of Captain George Cartwright, we find two lists of goods exchanged by Europeans engaged in the Labrador trade with Aboriginals. One list can be found in Cartwright’s "Additions to the Labrador Companion," a manuscript never published and now lost, under the heading "Goods for the Eskimeau Trade." Here are itemized, among other things, "Guns with barrel 2 ft 8 in: 4½ lb weight, bore balls, pointed barrels, Patent locks & price from 5 to 5½ Guineas; Canaster Powder; Patent shot; Turn-screws, vices etc. for Guns; Flints" as well as "Whaling-guns, Harpoons for Guns, Balls for guns ... ; Powder flasks; Shot-balls."[18] The other list accompanied a letter to Cartwright’s factor in London, Robert Hunter, and enumerated items needed in "preparation for the Eskimeau trade," among them "12 small Furriers guns about 16/each, 1 [hundredweight?] Powder, 4 [hundredweight?] Shot, 500 Flints."[19]

Cartwright felt that guns in the hands of Inuit were beneficial and recommended that merchants make available to them "good Guns; the best Powder & Shot; Balls; Swan-shot; flints." He thought that his equipping Inuit with guns had helped in establishing more peaceful relations between Inuit and "Mountaineer Indians," the ancestors of today’s Innu. Where before, many Inuit had "lost their lives from hostile attacks by Mountaineer Indians," according to Cartwright, guns had "contributed much to strengthen the arguments which I made use of to the former [Mountaineers]." He also attributed to guns an improvement in Inuit subsistence, since they were now able more effectively to kill caribou, especially during periods when the hunt for whales and seals was poor. Cartwright also thought that guns made Inuit "better walkers and more active," a judgment based presumably on increased land-based hunting activities."[20]

The Moravian missionaries, seeing in trade a great opportunity for contact with Inuit and a means to keep them in close proximity to their settlements, offered a limited selection of trading goods in their stores.[21] For the first 15 years of their stay in Labrador, guns were not sold by Moravian traders in any of their stores. The first missionaries who settled in Nain were specifically instructed before their departure in 1771 "to introduce by no means among them [Inuit] the use of firearms, as happened among the Greenlanders, certainly not to their benefit." For that reason, the party was also asked not to let Inuit use guns owned by missionaries when hunting on their behalf as had happened occasionally in Greenland.[22] Moravian trade in Labrador, which lasted more than 150 years until it was relinquished to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1926, often became an activity beset with great difficulties and conflict. Trade was by no means a universal Moravian activity on the mission field, but an Order-in-Council of 1769 had authorized non-exclusive mercantile activities for the missionaries in Labrador.[23] This Labrador trade was defended early on by the chief theologian of the mission and successor of Count Zinzendorf, August Gottlieb Spangenberg. Spangenberg saw in the Labrador trade an asset for contact and evangelization that was not to be guided merely by the profit motive. In the eyes of Spangenberg, trade had the potential to exemplify to Inuit ethically honest commercial relations. Bishop Spangenberg wrote in a letter to the Labrador missionaries in 1792:

Other missionaries we have forbidden to engage in trade. But you cannot refrain from it; for if trade does not bring the Eskimos to you, you will not see them. But when they come to buy something from you or sell you something, then you will have an opportunity to speak with them about the Saviour. It is good that you labour by trading and that the supplies are taken care of elsewhere [by the Ship’s Company and SFG]. Do what you do with all fidelity and look thereby upon the Lord and his blessings.

May God grant also in your trade the necessary credit among the Eskimos. By this I mean that the Eskimos may see that among all the Europeans, there is after all no one more honest with us in wheeling and dealing than the Brethren. Their Yes is a Yes and their No is a No. They do not try to take advantage of us and mean it always well with us. Your conduct can contribute much to this credit.[24]

There is early evidence in George Cartwright’s Labrador journal as well as in the Moravian records that the British trader loaned or sold guns to Inuit in return for a share in what they caught and that firearms gradually became coveted trading goods between the Europeans and Inuit.[25] North-coast Inuit who were offered guns by southern traders, notably for the caribou hunt, could not understand the trade restrictions imposed by the Moravian stores and expressed their disappointment to the missionaries early on. In May 1773, for example, the Inuk Millik insisted to the Moravian trader at Nain that he wanted a gun and mentioned that "the Captain at Cape Charles had enough and ... gave or sold them to Esquimaux." Millik would go there if the missionaries refused to sell him one, to which the Moravian brother in charge of trade replied that they had only enough guns for their own use and had nothing to do with the captain in the south.[26] Captain Cartwright is specifically mentioned by Inuit in July 1773 as the one who was supplying them with guns.[27]

In the summer of 1773, the naval officer Lieutenant Roger Curtis, sent by Governor Shuldham to inquire into the conduct and success of the Moravians at Nain, agreed with the missionaries on keeping guns out of the hands of Inuit. The station diary for Nain of 30 July 1773 states that on "the point whether one should sell guns to Inuit, he [Curtis] said in brief: if one feared that the nation would multiply or become large in number, then, according to his opinion, one should sell guns to the nation, since they would certainly ruin themselves this way. If one wanted to preserve them, however, as is our intention, and to keep them from all that can be detrimental and harm them in their food and subsistence, then one should not supply them with guns."[28]

Southward movement by Inuit seems to have abated somewhat but never came to a total halt after the gubernatorial prohibition. It picked up again in the early 1780s. There is a remarkable conversation in 1778 between Jens Haven and the inhabitants of Okak about the refusal of the Moravian store brother Theobald Frech to sell guns to Inuit. Haven, drawing on his experience with firearms in Greenland, employs an argument that is in part ecological and in part conveys the missionaries’ desire to maintain, wherever possible, the lifestyle of the Inuit along with the new European values of thriftiness and preservation. When the Moravian Inuk Moses wondered why the mission was not selling any guns to hunters since this would secure more caribou, Haven told him that such a policy was in the interest of the Inuit. He then referred to his own experience with the introduction of guns in Greenland, where he had lived for four years. When the Inuit of Greenland acquired guns, Haven stated, they did nothing all summer but travel deep into the interior to hunt caribou. When they returned to the seashore during winter they had no dried meat or fish or other food, and they also lacked the necessary skins for their boats and kayaks. Haven alleges that many died of hunger. The missionary believed that even if the Okak hunters killed many caribou, they would not preserve the meat and in a few years would have decimated the caribou herd, just as the Greenlanders did. Then their situation would be as difficult as it was in Greenland, where, according to Haven, they even lacked now the necessary caribou skins for clothing. It is for these reasons, he argued, that Frech refused to sell guns to Inuit. Using bows and arrows, Inuit would have enough clothes for themselves and, later, also for their children. The missionaries would help them to get whales, seals, birds, and fish, and encouraged them to be industrious so that they and their children would not be hungry during the winter.[29]

In a letter of 25 May 1783 to settlers in Chateau Bay, the Nain missionary Christian Lister stated that "a great many Eskemaux are preparing to go to the Southward, amongst them are some of our baptized." Lister saw this movement as a direct response to an invitation by the southern merchants to north-coast Inuit, communicated in the north by fellow Inuit who had gone to Chateau Bay in 1782.[30] The movement south of Tuglavina, Mikak, and Abraham in two boats in 1782 had led to their acquiring firearms, gunpowder, and lead. The relatively friendly reception the Inuit were given by the British commander, a man called "William" in the Moravian records, encouraged them to return north and promote the south among the Inuit of Nain.[31] The departing Moravian Superintendent, Samuel Liebisch, mentions in a letter, penned in St. John’s on 20 September 1783 and discussed at a meeting of the SFG in London, that the south held an attraction for a significant number of Inuit and identifies Cartwright’s settlements as the location of particular interest, because "230 Esquimaux were gone from the North & about Nain & Arvertock [Hopedale] to Cartwrights Settlements in the South."[32] On 24 March 1783, the diarist of Nain lamented "that most Inuit will leave us and go to the Europeans in the south. Their hearts are already so filled with it that they have neither time nor desire to hear about the Saviour. Their most beloved subject is to speak about guns, which they can obtain in the south and how they will shoot with them sea animals, rabbits and grouses [Kipper]."[33] In 1783, Okak experienced a serious movement southward and a resultant influx of firearms to the community. The Moravian Inuk Abraham, who with Tuglavina acquired as much whale bones and baleen as they could get for resale in the south, returned with guns, which he sold at a considerable profit in the north. Abraham, in April 1783, received for a gun he sold at Okak 17 pieces of baleen and two fox traps.[34]

Some subsequent murders in the south among the Inuit, which were committed with guns, confirmed Moravian fears about the detrimental use of firearms among Inuit.[35] The murder of the Moravian Inuk Moses and his son Timothy in the south was particularly grievous. The two were allegedly killed by Tuglavina, Aglokak (a bilingual Inuit interpreter who had spent some time in England), Jonathan, and others. It is said to have taken place in the house of Europeans, who apparently were accessories to the murder. One European had shot Moses in the leg and Tuglavina and Aglokak finished him off with their guns. Also, some other Inuit were killed with firearms, according to the Nain diarist.[36] In the latter part of 1784, Serkoak shot Pualo after the young man had taken Serkoak’s wife, Mikak, from him. Serkoak had followed the two and "shot him with a gun so that he fell to the ground as if dead but later came to again. He took three little balls into his lower belly." One year later, Pualo was still suffering from a large wound but he and Mikak had remained together despite the assault.[37]

In the summer of the same year a large party of north-coast Inuit received in the south "guns, most on credit." Contemplating this situation, the missionaries feared for their own protection and the dwindling opportunities to evangelize these Inuit. "Many," the diarist of Hopedale wrote on 4 July 1785, "will often have no opportunity to always go there to buy powder etc. They do not always have the payment," but the Inuit knew well "that we are supplied with such things for our use." Even if they did not want to raid the Moravian supplies, the local Inuit would constantly be tempted to travel south, which, according to the missionaries, had consequences for their prosperity and conversion. One winter, they would be in the north to acquire the necessary goods for trade in the south, where they might stay for two years. Even those who had no opportunity or were too poor to go south for trade would be "restless people" who always would think that "if we were only in the south, there we might be fortunate enough to obtain a gun." "Guns," the diarist believed, would "never be advantageous to Eskimos, but they cannot see this and are so fond of the pleasure to shoot that they will go to any length."[38]

A draft of a letter from April 1784 by the SFG to Lord Sidney estimated that the number of Inuit who had gone to Chateau Bay upon the invitation of the traders and with "the prospect of obtaining firearms" was 250. The missionaries feared dire consequences through the introduction of firearms, even "the destruction & extirpation of the whole Esquimaux nation."[39] The representation of the SFG to Lord Sidney had the result that the Secretary of State conveyed to Newfoundland’s Governor John Campbell the Moravians’ fear about the fatal consequences of Inuit "Excursions to the Southward" as well as the King’s wishes to recommend the thoughts of the SFG "to your particular attention and consideration, and that you do so far as it may be in your power enforce compliance with their desire."[40] When the SFG met in June of 1784, they took note of the "attempts ... made to prevent the Esquimaux from going to the South," notably the proclamations issued by Governor Campbell in support of the missionaries’ wishes.[41] But at a November meeting of the society that year, attended also by veteran missionary Jens Haven and his wife, who had left Labrador after 13 years of service in Nain, Okak, and Hopedale, the SFG had little to cheer about "the grievous & deplorable Consequences of the migration to the European settlements in the South."[42]

A letter of 15 December 1785 to the SFG in London by the former Labrador Superintendent, Samuel Liebisch, now a member of the Unity Elders Conference in Saxony, signalled a change in policy as far as firearms were concerned. The elders now sought to permit Moravian stores in Labrador to carry firearms, gunpowder, and lead in the hope that this would prevent Inuit from going south to buy guns for their own use or trade in the north. The letter recognized that the prohibitions by the government had proven to be ineffective since the traders in the south ignored government and continued to sell guns to Inuit.[43] What had spurred the Unity Elders Conference to action was a letter of the Nain missionaries about the great desire of Inuit to obtain guns and the conflict arising from the Moravians’ continued refusal to sell firearms, as well as the ineffectiveness of governmental prohibitions. The elders at Nain had written to the Moravian leadership in Saxony on 12 August 1785 that the returning southern Inuit visitors had instilled among fellow Inuit in the north a "remarkable desire for guns." Guns, according to the Nain brethren, had become a matter of great prestige. Inuit unabashedly stated that "because they cannot get powder from us, they therefore go to Netsektok (Sandwich Bay), a settlement of Mr. Cartwright, where now there seems to be the main trading place for such." But for the present, the missionaries were still willing to hold on to the old policy of not selling guns to Inuit. In the eyes of the missionaries, firearms were "harmful and disadvantageous" for Inuit as well as being contrary to the gospel of peace that they had come to proclaim in Labrador.[44]

In the wake of this anguished letter by the missionaries, the Moravian elders had met on 3 December 1785 in Herrnhut, Saxony, to discuss the matter. They concluded that, in view of the ineffectiveness of governmental prohibitions and the danger of alienating Inuit further from the mission, it would be best to sell guns in Moravian stores. The elders then informed the SFG in London of their vote in favour of a change in policy, and if the British leaders and the owners of the mission ship Amity concurred, they could communicate this decision to the Newfoundland Governor, who had returned to London for the winter.[45] Before sending their letter to London, however, the elders, in a meeting held on 14 December, subjected the letter drawn up by Brother Samuel Liebisch, who personally still harboured some doubts about the advisability of selling guns to Inuit, to a typically Moravian decision-making process. Samuel Liebisch, the former Labrador Superintendent and now member of the Unity Elders Conference, had already felt in an earlier discussion with Bishop Spangenberg that the issue of the sale of firearms to Inuit should never be decided on pragmatic or commerical grounds.[46] By drawing lots, they sought approval or disapproval of their action by Christ himself. They posed the question "whether the Saviour approves that this letter should be sent as written" to be answered with "Yes" or "No." Having drawn lots, the answer was "Yes," and the secretary of the assembled elders noted that their "mind was totally set at ease regarding the matter."[47]

Two months later, at their February 1786 meeting, the SFG had to admit that the refusal to furnish firearms to the Inuit had led to poor relations between the missionaries and the Inuit and was ineffectual "as they find no difficulty of getting these Articles in the South." Also Governor Campbell had "declare[d] that he does not see how he can hinder their being furnished with these articles from the South, the Admirals Station being so far distant from the Labradore Coast." They were thus forced "to take this matter into serious consideration & come to some resolution," which they did by sending guns, powder, and lead to Labrador with the next mission ship.[48]

The change in policy that permitted the sale of guns in Moravian stores was therefore to a great extent driven by obvious needs in Labrador brought to the attention of the Moravian elders in Saxony. It is detailed in a memorandum of Samuel Liebisch for the Unity Elders Conference, penned on 15 May 1786 and sent to the missionaries in Labrador for their input and concurrence. This memorandum contained much text of the earlier and somewhat shorter letter, written in December 1785 to the Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel in England so that the British government could be informed about the change.[49] Since this crucial German memorandum is virtually unknown in Moravian and Labrador scholarship, I shall transcribe and translate in full the larger version of the document that was sent to Labrador. It is titled "Nota für unsre Brüder auf allen Misssions-Plätzen in Labrador, den Verkauf der Flinten betreffend" (Memorandum for our Brethren at all Mission Stations in Labrador Regarding the Sale of Guns) and was preserved in the archive of the Superintendent at Nain and is located today in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and published below in translation with the permission of the Archives."[50]

The memorandum was well received at all three stations in Labrador, as the responses of the local mission conferences indicate. The Brethren at Hopedale wrote that they were ready to follow gladly the advice of the elders and would help Inuit in repairing guns and instructing them in their careful use. They expressed the hope that such sale would indeed inhibit Inuit travel to the south.[55] Likewise, Nain supported the change, even if the new policy would not totally stop the southward travel. While welcoming the change, the Brethren regretted that Inuit ever adopted firearms and saw in several recent accidents the dangers of such hunting equipment. But like their Hopedale confreres, the Nain Moravians also were willing to teach Inuit the proper use of firearms and help them when repairs were needed.[56] The missionaries at Okak concurred and hoped for a stop of Inuit travel to the south. Missionary Johann Ludwig Beck, in a personal letter to Elder Samuel Liebisch, lauded the agreement and noted that the earlier refusal to sell guns had indeed caused disgruntled Inuit.[57]

While Inuit from Labrador’s north coast once more went to the south in 1786 to obtain guns and southward movement never ceased entirely, the Moravian stores quickly started carrying the much-coveted supplies.[58] In that year the trade brother at Hopedale received 12 guns for Inuit trade but hesitated first with the sale until a uniform price could be agreed upon by all three stations. Some missionaries thought eight pieces of baleen were an adequate payment for a gun and one piece for a half-pound of gunpowder as well as one piece for three pounds of lead. The missionaries at Hopedale felt they should keep the price for guns low and compensate by charging a little more for powder and lead. Brother Fraser, the captain of the mission ship, had charged 10 pieces of baleen for a gun, which was still considerably less than the 17 pieces and two fox traps paid to the Inuit middleman Abraham at Okak.[59] Some questions also arose over whether Inuit labour could be used in exchange for guns, powder, and lead, a proposal the missionaries declined, and whether a gun purchase needed to be paid in full or could be obtained for a down payment, even when there remained other store debts on the books.[60] Also, the propriety of the sale of older guns and some muskets given by the King to the mission was discussed.[61] Requests placed from Hopedale for store supplies to the J. Wheeler Co., the Moravian supplier in London, show for 1787 orders for Duck Shot, Shot No. 1, Swan Shot, Quick Shot, powder horns, guns, and yellow gun flints.[62]

The judgment of the Moravian elders in Saxony regarding the limited, regional nature of violence committed with guns in the south proved to be correct. The assumption of Lieutenant Curtis and the missionaries that the use of firearms would raise the stakes in internecine feuds among the Inuit and lead to their possible demise did not become a reality in Labrador, nor did violence towards the mission increase after the introduction of guns. Throughout the entire period of Moravian trade, murders and violence committed with guns were quite rare.

Trade among the Inuit of Labrador, however, remained one of the most troubled activities of the mission until it was relinquished to the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1926. The repeated tensions between Inuit hunters and fishers and the Moravian stores had ideological, organizational, and administrative reasons that are beyond our purview here. The wish of Bishop Spangenberg that the Labrador trade should become a model for amiable and peaceful mercantile relations and play a supportive role in mission was never realized — after all, economics and religion were governed by different values. Certainly, trade ensured continued contact between Inuit and the missionaries, but the profit motive and the missionary ideals of fraternal relations based on unconditional love often clashed irreconcilably. The traditional culture of sharing the fruits of the hunt among fellow Inuit added to the tension produced by the individualized quid pro quo of trade on Labrador’s north coast.

With governmental prohibitions being ineffective in curbing the sale of firearms to Inuit by southern traders, the mission was forced to change its policy and introduced firearms in its stores in an effort to reduce Inuit alienation from the mission and prevent journeys to the south in pursuit of what could not be purchased among the Moravians in the north. The adjustment of store inventory to consumer needs in the early years of the mission would be repeated many times over while the Moravian missionaries engaged in trade on the north coast of Labrador.

The relatively limited store inventory kept by Moravian traders and the initial reluctance to introduce certain technologies and goods that could alter the Inuit way of life beyond missionary control were based not only on pragmatic religious and protective strategies but also reflected strongly held beliefs by the missionaries throughout their stay in Labrador about the Inuit way of life. Moravian mission experience in the American colonies had alerted the Labrador planners and missionaries to how quickly Aboriginal groups could be displaced. This was a major reason why large land grants had been sought and secured by the mission in 1769 (Nain) and 1774 (Okak, Hopedale). Jens Haven and the missionaries sought to ensure an adequate land base for continued subsistence through traditional Inuit hunting and fishing, which could not be threatened by any future encroachments by Europeans.[63] Also, the initial reluctance of the Labrador missionaries in the nineteenth century towards greater vocational development and caution about the training and employment of Inuit as professional schoolteachers were motivated by a thinking that sought to preserve the lifestyle and activities of the traditional Inuit hunter.[64]

Given such a fixed and normative view of Inuit occupational choices and lifestyle and the priority of Christianization, hunting technologies ultimately became negotiable, especially where the lack of firearms provoked alienation from the missionaries and travel to southern traders threatened the raison d’être of the Moravian presence in Labrador, namely its mission. Thus the Moravian missionaries reluctantly changed their policy and started selling guns, powder, and lead to Inuit in their stores in 1786.