Abraham Ulrikab
Norwegian Johan Adrian Jacobsen, who had recruited them on behalf of Carl Hagenbeck, had omitted to have them vaccinated against smallpox, even though it was required by German law.
In Hebron, Moravian missionary Carl Gottlieb Kretschmer, who had tried to dissuade the Inuit from going to Europe, translated Abraham's diary to German.
In 1980, Abraham's diary resurfaced when Canadian ethnologist Dr. James Garth Taylor discovered a copy of Kretschmer's German translation in the archives of the Moravian Church located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Over the next 25 years, a few individuals looked into this tragedy, including German ethnologist Hilke Thode-Arora[5] and Professor Hartmut Lutz assisted by his students at the University of Greifswald, Germany.
In 2005, the University of Ottawa Press published the work of Hartmut Lutz, and of his students, under the title The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab: Text and Context.
At last, Abraham's diary was in book form ensuring that his words and story would find their way to today's Labrador Inuit.
Abraham's diary is significant because it is the only extant account of one of Carl Hagenbeck's European ethnological exhibition (human zoo) by one of the ethnic participants.
Her reading of the book The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab: Text and Context left her wondering what had happened to the Inuit in Paris, and what had become of their remains.
About a year into her research, she uncovered documents about anthropologists in Paris having studied Paingu's skullcap, as well as plaster casts of the brains of Abraham, Ulrike, and Tobias.
Soon a reply arrived from the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle: Mrs. Rivet we have the regret to inform you that we do not have the brain casts, but we do have the skullcap as well as the fully-mounted skeletons of the five Labrador Inuit who died in Paris in January 1881.
[6] This totally unexpected news triggered a four-year research to fully document the Inuit's story as well as discussions with authorities in Nunatsiavut, Canada, and France in order to prepare the remains' eventual coming home.
The skeletons of Abraham, of his wife Ulrike, of their daughter Maria, of young Tobias and of Tigianniak were located in the biological anthropology collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle managed by the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
