"So Fond of the Pleasure to Shoot": The Sale of Firearms to Inuit on Labrador's North Coast in the Late Eighteenth Century‪.‬

HISTORICAL CONTEXT 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.