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Chesterfield recorded the effects of post life upon the Cree and Inuit, and showed how the white agents of the church and fur trade made us of native implements, clothing, and transportation. Recognizing the threat to native ways of life posed by the white man's advancing civilization, he photographed the native people's dress, their everyday activities, the details that define a culture. Much of what he recorded is now lost forever. The text by William C. James provides a detailed framework in which to understand the photographs. James describes Chesterfield's life, the region, the people he photographed, the role of the Hudson's Bay Company, the documentary significance of the activities depicted in the photographs, and the relationship between these and other extant photos of that region and era. The three-year period Chesterfield spent in the District of Ungava emerges as crucial in his own development and as a decisive turning point in the history of the region. Together with James's text, these pictures constitute an arresting chronicle of a place, its people, and their ways of life, now all irrevocably changed.

"[...]Innuit. North of Hebron to Cape Chidley there are but few families, some seven in all, embracing a population of less than 40 souls. On the west side of Cape Chidley, as far as the mouth of George's river, only about eight families live. These with the George's river Innuit comprise less than 50 individuals. There is a stretch of coast bordering Ungava bay, from George's river to the Koksoak river, which is uninhabited. The Koksoak river people include only four or five families and number less than 30 souls. The next people are those dwelling at the mouth of Leaf river, but they are more properly to be considered under the next[...]".

Originally published in 1894 as part of the Eleventh Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890. First thorough account of the Ungava district inhabitants, describing their traditional ways.