Abraham Ulrikab
Canadian Inuit attraction (1845-1881)

Abraham Ulrikab (January 29, 1845 – January 13, 1881) was an Inuk from Hebron, Labrador, in the present-day province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, who – along with his family and four other Inuit – agreed to become the latest attraction in the ethnographical shows organized by Carl Hagenbeck, owner of the Tierpark Hagenbeck, a zoo in Hamburg, Germany.
Name origin
Before 1893, the Inuit of northern Labrador did not use patrilineal surnames. Instead, the surnames of married couples would usually be their spouse's given name followed by the suffix "-b" or "-ib", if the name did not end with a vowel. It is possible that Ulrikab's surname was actually "Ulrikeb", as "Ulrike" was his wife's name. His wife's full name was therefore likely "Ulrike Abrahamib". Children used the surname of the parent of the opposite gender before marriage, so their children were likely named "Sara Ulrikeb" and "Maria Ulrikeb".
The Inuit are exhibited in Europe (September 1880–January 1881)
The eight Inuit were from two families. Their approximate ages upon arrival in Europe were as follows:
The Christian family
Abraham, 35,
Ulrike, 24, his wife
Sara, 31⁄2, daughter
Maria, infant daughter, 10 months
Tobias, 20, a young unmarried man.
The non-Christian family
Tigianniak, about 45, father
Paingu, as old as 50, wife
Nuggasak, their teenage daughter about 15.
Abraham was literate, an accomplished violin player and a devout Christian.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Abraham Ulrikab” is canadian Inuit attraction (1845-1881). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Abraham, Ulrikab and Canadian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4669210. VIAF identifies the subject as 67605492. The Library of Congress control number is no2005107439. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1845, 1881, 1893 and 1880.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abraham Ulrikab” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.