In 1818, Sir John Ross's expedition made first contact with nomadic Inughuit in the area. James Saunders's expedition aboard HMS North Star was marooned in North Star Bay in 1849–50 and named landmarks. In 1910 explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post there. He called the site "Thule" after classical ultima Thule; the Inuit called it Umanaq or Uummannaq ("heart-shaped"), and the site is commonly called "Dundas" today. Whaling captain, explorer, and ethnologist George Comer discovered a midden, dubbed Comer's Midden, at Umanaq in 1916, and an archaeological excavation subsequently revealed a village of the proto-Inuit who came to be called the Thule people. The United States abandoned its territorial claims in the area in 1917 in connection with the purchase of the Virgin Islands. Denmark assumed control of the village in 1937. A cluster of huts known as Pituffik ("quay, dock") stood on the wide plain where the base was built in 1951; a main base street was named Pituffik Boulevard. The population was forcibly relocated to Thule. Later in 1953, the USAF planned to construct an air defense site near that village, and in order to limit contact with soldiers, the Danish government again relocated 130 inhabitants of "Old Thule", settling them 97 km (60 mi) north in a newly constructed village also named Thule (colloquially "New Thule", now Qaanaaq). In a Danish Supreme Court judgment of 28 November 2003, the move was considered an expropriative intervention. During the proceedings, the Danish government recognized that the movement was a serious interference and an unlawful act against the local population. The Thule tribe was awarded damages of 500,000 kroner, and the individual members of the tribe who had been exposed to the transfer were granted compensation of 15,000 or 25,000 kroner each. A Danish radio station continued to operate at Dundas, and the abandoned houses remained. The USAF used that site only for about a decade, and it has since returned to civilian use. Knud Rasmussen was the first to recognize the Pituffik Plain as ideal for an airport. USAAF Colonel Bernt Balchen, who built Sondrestrom Air Base, knew Rasmussen and his idea. Balchen led a flight of two Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats to Thule on 24 August 1942 and then sent a report advocating an air base to USAAF chief Henry "Hap" Arnold. However, the 1951 air base site is a few kilometers inland from the original 1946 airstrip and across the bay from the historical Thule settlement; an ice road connects it. The joint Danish-American defense area, designated by treaty, also occupies considerable inland territory in addition to the air base itself. After the German occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, Henrik Kauffmann, Danish Ambassador to the United States, agreed "In the name of the king" with the United States, authorizing the United States to defend the Danish colonies on Greenland from German aggression. This agreement faced Kauffmann with a charge of high treason by the protectorate Government. Beginning in the summer of 1941, the United States Coast Guard and the War Department established weather and radio stations at Narsarsuaq Airport (Bluie West-1), Sondrestrom Air Base (Bluie West-8), Ikateq (Bluie East Two), and Gronnedal (Bluie West-9). In 1943 the Army Air Forces set up weather stations Scoresbysund (Bluie East-3) on the east coast around the southern tip of Greenland, and Thule (Bluie West-6) to be operated by Danish personnel. Many other sites were set up, but BW-6, isolated in the far North, was then of very minor importance. After liberation, Denmark ratified the Kauffmann treaty but began efforts to take over US installations. Nonetheless, in the summer of 1946, the radio and weather station was enhanced with a gravel airstrip and an upper-air (balloon) observatory. This was part of an American-Canadian initiative to construct joint weather stations in the High Arctic.