THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY
All this superstition of which I have been speaking of course seems to us mere meaningless confusion, the extirpation of which must be an unmixed advantage. But if we place ourselves at their point of view, is it so much more meaningless for them than our Christian dogmas, which lead them into a world entirely foreign to them? In order to understand these dogmas, they had first to transpose them into their own key of thought, or, in other words, they had to make them more or less heathen before they could really grasp them at all. It is useless to imagine that a people can suddenly, at a word of command, begin to think in an entirely new manner. This transmutation has cost them much labour, and though they are still heathen at bottom and believe in their old legends, yet the new doctrine has introduced confusion into their ideas. This alone might tempt one to think that it would have been better tohave let them preserve their own faith undisturbed. It gave them, with their comparatively meagre capacity for ideas, the easiest explanation of their surroundings; it peopled nature with the supernatural powers which they needed for consolation when reality became too hard and complex for them. And how characteristic these myths are of the Eskimos—for example, the conception of the region beyond the grave! Here there is neither silver nor gold, neither gorgeous raiment nor shining palaces, as in our stories; earthly riches have no value for the Eskimo. Nor are there lovely women, flowery gardens, and so forth. No; at most there is a mud hut, a little larger than his own, and in it sit the happy spirits eating rotten seals’ heads, which lie in inexhaustible heaps under the benches; and around it there are splendid hunting-grounds, with quantities of game and much sunshine. In his eyes our Paradise of white-robed angels, where the blessed sit around upon chairs, seems a tedious and colourless existence which he does not understand, and which excites no longing in him. We can scarcely wonder at an angekok, who said to Niels Egede that he far preferred the tornarssuk’s or ‘Devil’s house,’ where he had often been; ‘For in heaven there is no food to be had, but in hell there are seals and fishes in plenty.’
One would expect that the missionaries’ victory[170]over heathendom would be a very easy one among so peaceful and good-humoured a people as the Greenlanders; but this can scarcely be said to have been the case. The natives had many objections to allege against the Christian assertions. For example, they could not understand that the sin which Adam and Eve committed ‘could be so great and involve such melancholy consequences’ as that the whole human race should be condemned on account of it. ‘Since God knew all things, why did he permit the first man and woman to sin?’ The idea of free-will seems to them, frankly speaking, mere rubbish, and, but for free-will, Adam’s offspring would never have been corrupted, and the Son of God need not have suffered.
One girl was not at all contented with the answershe received to these objections. ‘She wanted to have them so answered that she could inwardly assent and feel that the answer was true, and that she could silence those who had so much to say against this part of our doctrine.’ Similarly, they were of opinion that Adam and Eve must have been very foolish to think of chattering with a serpent, and ‘that they must have been very fond of fruit since they would rather die and suffer pain than forego a few big berries.’ Others thought that it was just like the kavdlunaks (Europeans); for ‘these greedy people never have enough; they have, and they want to have, more than they require.’ One angekok thought it was very unlucky that Christ, the great angekok, who could even bring the dead to life, was not born among the Eskimos; they would have loved him, and obeyed him, and not done like the foolish kavdlunaks. ‘What madmen! to kill the man who could bring the dead to life!’ When they saw that Christian Europeans quarrelled and fought, they had little faith in the Christian doctrines, and said: ‘Perhaps, if we knew as much as they, we, too, would become inhuman.’ And they thought that it was impossible to find well-behaved Europeans, ‘unless they had been several years in Greenland and had there learntmores.’
Some asked, since Christianity was so essential,why God had not instructed them in it sooner, for then their forefathers, too, could have gone to heaven. When Paul Egede answered that perhaps God had seen that they would not accept the Word, but rather despise it, and thereby become more guilty, an old man said that he had known many excellent people, and had himself had a pious father; and even if some of them might have despised the Word, ‘still there were the women and children, who are all credulous.’ When Paul Egede explained to them that worldly goods are ‘trumpery,’ altogether unworthy to go to heaven, someone answered: ‘I did not know that these things were not worth thinking about; if it is so nice there, why are we so unwilling to leave the earth?’
When the Scriptures came to be translated, considerable objections presented themselves. Many even of the Christian Greenlanders thought that it would not be advisable for their unbelieving countrymen to be told, for example, of ‘Jacob’s slyness and treachery towards his father and brother, of the patriarchs’ polygamy, and especially of Simeon’s and Levi’s matchless wickedness.’ ‘The story of Lot,’ too, they thought unfortunate. ‘A selection of what was most important would be best for this people.’[171]
The sacrament of the altar, of course, seemed in their eyes the most arrant witchcraft, and baptism likewise. One time, says Niels Egede, when they had seen some Europeans going through this ceremony, ‘an angekok asked me why I was always denouncing those who practised witchcraft, when here was one of our own priests performing sorceries over us?’ To which Egede found no better answer than that it was ‘in accordance with Christ’s command;’ he did not think ‘the dog had any right to know more.’ Once, when the missionaries told a man ‘that he should especially thank God who had given him many children,’ he became very angry and answered, ‘It is a great lie to say that God has given me children, for I made them myself. “Is it not so?” he said, turning to his wife.’
Their criticism of the doctrine and practice of the missionaries was sometimes so mordant that the intelligent and honest merchant Dalager has to admit that ‘even the stupidest natives from far beyond the colony have often confronted me with such objections on these points as have made me groan, while the perspiration stood on my brow.’
Divine service seems at first to have bored them very much; they preferred to hear about Europe, and would ask many naïve questions: ‘Whether the King was very big? Was he strong? Was hea great angekok? And had he caught many whales?’ Paul Egede records that when they thought his father’s sermons too long ‘they went up to him and asked him if he was not soon going to stop. Then he had to measure off upon his arm how much of his discourse was left, whereupon they went back to their places and sat moving their hands down their arms every moment. When the preacher paused at the end of a paragraph, they made haste to move the hand right out to the finger-tips; but when he began again they cried “Ama” (that is, “Still more”) and moved the hand back again half way up the arm. The singing was in my department, and when I began a new psalm, or sang for too long, they would often hold a wet seal-skin mitten over my mouth.’
The missionaries’ treatment of the natives was not always of the gentlest. I may cite a couple of examples chosen at random from their own statements: ‘I gave him to understand,’ says Niels Egede, ‘that if he would not let himself be persuaded by fair means, but despised the Word of God, he should receive the same treatment from me as other angekoks and liars had received (namely a thrashing).’ ‘When I had tried all I could by means of persuasion and exhortation, without avail, I had recourse to my usual method, flogged him soundly and turned him out ofthe house.’[172]A girl was beaten by her priest, ‘because she could not believe that God was so cruel as he represented Him to be; he had said that all her forefathers were with Tornarssuk, and were to be tortured to all eternity, because they did not know God.’ She tried to defend them by suggesting that they knew no better, whereupon he lost his temper; and when at last she said ‘that it was horrible for her to learn that God was so terribly angry with those who sinned that he could never forgive them, as even wicked men will sometimes do,’ he gave her a beating.[173]It cannot but jar upon us to hear of such conduct on the part of our countrymen and Christian missionaries towards so peaceable a people; and it would scarcely make a better impression upon the natives themselves. We can only admire the good humour which prevented them from driving the missionaries out of their houses. In excuse for the missionaries, we must remember that they were born in Europe, and in a much ruder age than our own.
The conversion of the natives at first went but slowly and with difficulty; but they gradually discovered that the missionaries were in reality great angekoks, and that their ceremonies, such as baptism, their doctrines and formulas, the Christian books,and so forth, were magical appliances, potent for curing disease, protecting against want, and ensuring good fishery and other advantages; not to mention that conversion and a little appearance of contrition often bore immediate fruits in the shape of small rewards from the eager missionaries. Accordingly they said of them: ‘They are good people, they gave us food when we believed and looked sorrowful.’ A father whose son was dangerously ill, after having had recourse to various angekoks, took counsel with an old and experienced one ‘as to whether he should not seek help from the priest at the Colony;’ whereupon the old man calmly answered: ‘You may do as you please; for I am of opinion that the Word of God and the words of skilful angekoks are equally powerful.’ This gradually became the general opinion; and as it fortunately chanced in several cases that the Word of God seemed more effectual than that of the angekoks, it was natural that some should let themselves be baptised. The example once given, there were plenty to follow it, especially when distinguished hunters led the way.
But if the Greenlanders nominally went over to Christianity, they held, and still hold in a greater or less degree, to their old faith as well. It was at first very difficult to convince them of the falsity of the grotesque inventions of their angekoks. Whenthey were reproached with their credulity they answered simply ‘that they were not in the habit of lying and therefore believed all that people said to them.’
That they were not absolutely simple-minded, however, in their acceptance of all that the Europeans told them, seems clear from this, amongst other things, that when some Greenlanders could not get Niels Egede to swallow their assertion that ‘they had killed a bear on Disco which was so big that it had ice on its back that never melted,’ they said: ‘We have believed what you tell us, but you will not believe what we tell you.’
To show what a little way below the surface Christianity has gone, and how some of them, at any rate, still understand baptism, I may mention that some years ago in North Greenland a catechist (a man who has received a theological education, and supplies the place of the clergyman in his absence) baptised not only his parishioners, but also his puppies in the name of the Father, the Son, &c. His wife was childless, and he took this means, as he thought, of setting matters right; and, sure enough, next year she bore a child.
The part of their old heathenism which now most haunts their fancy is, so far as my experience goes, the belief in the kivitut or mountain-men (see above,p.266). Of these they stand in great dread, and frequently think they see them. While we were at Godthaab several of them were seen. Whenever anything is stolen from one of their store-rooms it is of course the kivitut who have done it, and if a kaiak-man disappears, and his body is not found, he is at once supposed to have taken to the mountains, and become a kivitok. This belief seems of late years to have gained ground greatly. A catechist, in the ‘Atuagagdliutit,’ takes his countrymen to task on the subject, and exclaims: ‘No, let us believe of those who perish on the treacherous sea that they rest their limbs upon the great burying-ground at the bottom of the ocean, and that their souls live in the joys of eternity.’
I had once an unpleasant proof of the ingrained nature of this superstitious terror. At Godthaab, late one evening, I went over to one of the Greenlanders’ houses with a letter which was to be sent off early next morning with some kaiak-men from another place. When I entered, the whole house was in deep slumber; men and women side by side on the chief sleeping-bench like herrings on a thwart. Not to disturb them more than necessary, I wanted to awaken the only unmarried son of the house, Jacob, who lay alone on the window-bench. He and I were excellent friends, and saw each other daily. Ishook him, and shouted ‘Jacob’ into his ear. He slept as heavily as ever, and I had to shake him long and violently before he at last opened his eyes a little and grunted. But when he saw me bending over him, his eyes grew glassy with terror, and he sat up, uttered a frightful shriek, and kicked and struck out at me. He went on shrieking more and more wildly, and fought his way backwards on the bench. All of those upon the main bench now sat up too and stared in blank affright at me, while poor I stood there in speechless astonishment at the hubbub I had created. At last I recovered my powers of speech, approached Jacob, held out my hands towards him, and spoke some reassuring words. But that only made him worse than ever. When I saw that words were of no avail, I stopped speaking, and began to laugh, whereupon the yells ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and Jacob became as red in the face as he had formerly been white, and muttered something in a shamefaced way about having dreamt of a kivitok that wanted to carry him off to the mountains. I gave him my letter, and withdrew as quickly as I could. The next day it was known over all the Colony that I had been a kivitok; for the neighbours had heard the yells.
EUROPEANS AND NATIVES
The relation of the Europeans to the Greenlanders is in many respects unique, for the Eskimos have been treated more tenderly than any other primitive people which has been subjected to our experiments in civilisation. The Danish Government certainly deserves the highest respect for its action in this matter, and it were much to be desired that other States would follow the example here given them. Care for the true welfare of the natives has been largely operative in their policy, and there is scarcely another instance of a people of hunters which has come into such close contact with European civilisation and proselytism, and has held its own so well for so long a time.
We do not often meet with such enthusiasm as that which impelled our countryman Hans Egede and the first missionaries to seek out this at that time almost unknown land, and led them to endure so many hardships there. They did it with the best ofmotives, and thought that they were thereby advancing both the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Eskimo. If we compare this mission and the treatment of Greenland as a whole with the conduct of Europeans under similar circumstances in other parts of the world, we cannot but recognise the working of an unusually humane spirit; and as we examine the whole history of the government of Greenland down to our own day, we find ever new and gratifying examples of this spirit.
With all the good will in the world, however, civilised men cannot resist the tendency to look down upon a primitive people as essentially their inferiors. Even in the history of Greenland we find many proofs of this. We learn from his own writings that the devoted Hans Egede himself cherished no small contempt for the natives whom he held it his mission to christianise. He even relates how he often beat them, and had them flogged, or given the rope’s end. On one occasion, learning from a small boy that an angekok, named Elik, had said that it would be an easy matter to root out the foreigners who had come to their country, he set off with seven armed men, fell upon the angekok, took him prisoner, and brought him to the colony. There ‘he received some blows with the rope’s end, and was put in irons.’ In the evening the angekok’s sons came to inquireabout their father, and ‘were permitted, at their own request, to pitch their tents in the colony.’ After a few days the prisoner was set at liberty, and they went away. One might suppose that after such treatment the Greenlanders would bear ill-will to the foreigners; but their good-humour and hospitality are incomparable. As luck would have it, the following winter, Hans Egede’s son, Paul, who had taken part in this high-handed proceeding, was driven by stress of weather to a place where he was surprised to find the angekok Elik. It was not particularly pleasant, as he himself confesses; but to his astonishment he was invited to take up his quarters with the angekok, who spread a reindeer-skin for him upon his own sleeping-bench. There Paul Egede had to remain for three days, and was entertained with the best of everything.[174]This is indeed ‘To return good for evil’ and ‘To do good to them that hate you’; but Egede attributed it to the Greenlanders’ willingness ‘to put up with punishment when they feel they have deserved it.’
Hans Egede had also another habit, which does not show the greatest possible consideration towards the natives; he would now and then take children to his house, against their parents’ wishes, and keep them there to learn the language from them. In thisconnection they made a song about him: ‘There has come a strange man over the great sea from the West, who steals boys, and gives them thick soup with skin upon it (that is, porridge) to eat, and dried earth from his own land (that is, ship’s biscuits).’ When Paul Egede on one occasion offered a mother a present if she would let her son remain some time longer with him, she answered that children were not articles of commerce.
We can still find evidences in Greenland of how difficult it is for us to get rid of our ingrained contempt for all so-called aborigines. The motive of the Europeans for supporting colonies in the country is that they may be a blessing to it; it is, of course, exclusively for the sake of the mission and of the natives that trade is carried on. Nevertheless, the relation between the natives and the foreigners has come to rest on an entirely wrong basis. The foreigners are regarded both by themselves and by the Greenlanders as a higher race and the lords of the country, to whom all obedience is due; whereas, if they were really there for the sake of the natives, they ought rather to be their self-sacrificing servants. Half voluntarily, half involuntarily, the Europeans have themselves emphasised this relation, and have all along treated the natives as a subject race. We came to the country to preach Christianity; but howdoes this accord with our Christian doctrine of freedom and equality, and especially with the example of Christ himself?
As an instance of the extent to which this abuse has been carried I may mention that at several settlements in South Greenland the natives are forbidden to keep dogs, because the handful of European families who live there want to keep goats. This prohibition has, it is true, in many cases been determined upon in the local council (see p.321); but it has been proposed by the Europeans, and as the Greenlanders, as I have said, always follow their lead, it was not difficult to get them to consent to it, against their own real wishes. I have heard them regretting bitterly that they should have been so foolish as to agree to such a prohibition. The most glaring injustice, however, is to be seen in the villages where the German missionaries reside, and where, for no other reason but that his own goats may live in peace, the reverend gentleman issues an ukase forbidding his flock to keep dogs.
I have spoken of this to many otherwise intelligent and kind-hearted residents in Greenland, but found them all of the opinion that since the dogs chased and worried the goats, it followed as a matter of course that they must be prohibited. On my objecting that the Europeans were few and the Greenlandersmany, so that it was more reasonable that the latter should forbid the keeping of goats, they simply laughed in my face. It did not seem to occur to them that they themselves are the interlopers, and that the Eskimos have kept dogs from time immemorial. Nor did they see anything particularly wrong in the fact that the goats often tore the turf from the roof and walls of the Greenlanders’ houses, injured their fish when it was hung up to dry, and so forth.
Another result of the different manner in which the rights of the Europeans and of the natives are regarded is to be found in the regulations concerning the sale of brandy. While it is illegal, as stated in Chapter V., to sell brandy to the natives of the country, the European residents are free to have as much of it as they please. This is unfortunate: for it can scarcely fail to annoy the natives to have it perpetually brought home to them that they are not held good enough to be entrusted with that which the meanest European may have at will. But this ordinance becomes still more hurtful from the fact that the Greenlanders who enter into the service of Europeans are allowed brandy every day, while others can obtain it if they sell something to the Europeans. That this may easily lead to the gravest abuses is clear enough, and we may be sure that ithas actually done so. I pass over minor inconsistencies, such as the fact that certain individual natives of mixed descent and of social importance are allowed to order from Europe a stated quantity of brandy every year.
It was of course a clear necessity to forbid the sale of brandy in Greenland, on pain of greatly accelerating the extermination of the native race. But the only right and consistent thing to do would have been to make the prohibition apply to natives and Europeans alike. Many maintain, I am aware, that this would have been to inflict an unjust hardship upon the Europeans, who have all their lives been accustomed to this stimulant; and I know that this would have been specially the case with regard to people from Denmark, where brandy is drunk at almost every meal, even among the working classes, and where it is thus regarded as well-nigh a necessity of life. But notwithstanding this, I cannot but hold to my opinion that a general prohibition would have been the only right and advantageous thing for both parties. Such a demand cannot be called unjust; for if the prohibition is known beforehand, it is always open to any European to refrain from going to Greenland, and I have no fear but that, in any event, there would always be plenty of Europeans in the country.
But my demands would go still further. I hold that not only should the sale of brandy be prohibited, but also the sale of coffee, tobacco, and the other indubitably noxious, or at any rate valueless, products which we have introduced among the natives. It is certain that they had no desire for them; on the contrary, it took us a long time to make them acquire the taste for them. The East Greenlanders to this day do not like coffee. On the west coast, as before stated, we have been unhappily successful in begetting this taste, and coffee has contributed not a little to the decline of the race. But if the sale of coffee to the natives were forbidden, its importation for the use of Europeans should, of course, be forbidden as well. Many will call this fanaticism, but I cannot help it. My opinion is that if it be indeed for the sake of the natives that we have come to their country and undertaken to live there and teach them, we must prove this by our conduct, we must fulfil consistently the duties imposed upon us by such a responsible and difficult mission, and we must submit to the small deprivations it may involve. Such a work of self-sacrifice cannot be carried on without deprivations. The Apostles of the Lord have always regarded suffering as an essential part of their calling, and if we cannot endure it we are neither fitted for, nor worthy of, such a task, andought to refrain from it altogether. If, on the other hand, we have come to Greenland not for the natives’ sake but for our own, that is quite a different matter; but in that case let us call things by their right names, and not use big words such as civilisation and Christianity.
In order to remedy the state of lawlessness which arose from the disuse of the old customs through the influence of the missionaries, and from the fact that the meanest European felt himself entitled to look down upon and domineer over the natives, the enthusiastic energy of Dr. Kink has succeeded in introducing the so-called local councils (forstanderskaber), which consist partly of native members, chosen by the different villages or small districts. The intention was that in these councils all the internal affairs of the community should be regulated, the poor-rate should be determined, and, in general, law and order should be maintained. As the Greenlanders, however, did not themselves understand these matters, the pastor in every district was to act as chairman of the council, and the other European residents were to be members of it, and to advise and guide the native councillors. It now appears that the Europeans have gradually got into their hands the whole real authority, and that the others simply obey their wishes. It was a fine idea, andworthy of all recognition, that the natives should acquire the habit of self-government, and Dr. Rink’s innovation marks a turning-point for the better in the history of the Greenlander. It suffers, however, from the disadvantage inseparable from all measures which the Europeans can devise for the benefit of the natives—to wit, that it has not arisen from among the people themselves who are to profit by it. The introduction of new social customs is nowhere to be effected in a moment; changes cannot be brought about by a single act of will, but must be the result of a long process of development in the people themselves. An institution imposed from without by foreigners must at least need a very long time to take root in the national life. Many Greenlanders now regard it as a distinction to serve as a councillor; but I have also known others, and these the most capable among them, who do not appreciate the honour, holding it of more importance to look to their hunting and to the support of their families than to travel long distances in order to attend meetings where, after all, with their exaggerated deference towards the Europeans, they can do nothing but follow their lead and agree to what measures they propose.
From what I have just said, and from many other passages in this book, the reader may perhaps beinclined to conclude that the Greenlanders are a people of no natural independence, and born for subjection. This, however, is quite a mistake. On the contrary, the Greenlander’s love of freedom and independence has always been very marked. When the Europeans first came to the country, the natives held themselves at least their equals, and the idea of standing in a menial or subordinate position to another man, as they saw the Europeans do among themselves, seemed to them strange and degrading. It is true that the father of a family exercises a certain authority in his own household, and perhaps over all the families who live in the same house; but this authority is so mild and unobtrusive that it is scarcely felt. They have servants, too, in so far that women who have no parents or other relatives to provide for them are often received into the house of a hunter, to assist the mother, daughters, and daughters-in-law in the household work; but they stand on a footing of equality with them, and are thus servants in name rather than in reality. Male servants are entirely unknown. Consequently they could with difficulty reconcile themselves to the idea of going into service; and they still dislike above everything to be ordered about in a domineering fashion, even if their extreme peaceableness of disposition prevents them from protesting openly.
This love of freedom rendered it difficult at first for the Europeans to procure native servants. Gradually, however, European influence has demoralised the natives in this respect as well, so that even hunters now enter the service of the Company and sometimes feel a certain pride in so doing; for, among other things, they thus, as Danish ‘officials,’ are entitled to their snapsemik (dram) every morning.
Danish ladies can still bear witness to the fact that it is not so easy to avoid giving offence to the pride of their Greenland maid-servants. They are active and agreeable so long as they are well treated; but if a hard word is addressed to them, they will often disappear without ceremony and not come back again. If then the mistress is not prepared to eat the leek and beg pardon, she must look out for another handmaiden.
If the Greenlander sometimes impresses one as being of a servile disposition, I think the effect is due to his astounding patience and power of taking everything, even to the most open injustice, with imperturbable calmness. It must be this patience which Egede describes as ‘the Greenlanders’ inborn stupidity and cold-bloodedness, their lazy and brutish upbringing,’ and so forth. I believe it is the hardship of their life that has taught them this apparently phlegmatic calmness. The very uncertainty of theirhunting, for instance, often puts their patience to the severest tests; as, for example, when they strike a run of ill luck, and come home day after day with no booty to their hungry families. Egede least of all had any right to complain of this characteristic; since but for it, and their extreme peaceableness of disposition, they would certainly not have put up so amiably with the often violent proceedings of the first Europeans. I had many an opportunity of admiring their stoical patience—when, for example, I would see them in the morning standing by the hour in the passage of the Colonial Manager’s house, or waiting in the snow outside his door, to speak to him or his assistant, who happened to be otherwise engaged. They had probably some little business to transact with them before starting for their homes, often many miles from the colony, and it might be of the greatest importance to them to get away as soon as possible in order to reach their destination betimes. If the weather happened to look threatening, every minute would be more than precious; but there they would stand waiting, as immovable as ever, and to all appearance as indifferent. If I asked them if they were going to make a start, they only answered, ‘I don’t know,’ ‘Perhaps, if the weather doesn’t get worse,’ or something to that effect; but I never once heard the smallest murmur of impatience.
The following occurrence, for which my informant vouches, affords an excellent illustration of this side of their character. An inspector at Godthaab once sent a woman-boat with its crew into the Ameralik fiord to mow grass for his goats. They remained a long time away, and no one could understand what had become of them. At last they returned; and when the inspector asked why they had been so long, they answered that when they got to the place the grass was too short, so that they had to settle down and wait until it grew.
With just the same patience do the Greenlanders await the ripening of their own ruin. They are a patient people.
WHAT HAVE WE ACHIEVED?
The purpose of our mission and of our work of civilisation in Greenland was, in the first place, to win honour for ourselves before God and man, and secure our own salvation in the other world; and, in the second place, to benefit the natives. But what have we done?
Let us first look at the purely material side. It might seem at first sight as if we ought to have been able to bring to a people like this, living practically in the Stone Age, many things that would aid them in their hard fight for existence. As a matter of fact, this has been by no means the case. The things that were of most importance for them, their weapons and their hunting implements, were in no way susceptible of improvement at our hands. It is true that we brought them iron, which is useful for harpoon-points and knives; but the Greenlanders were not entirely ignorant of it before, and, can, besides, get on quite well without it. They fittedtheir harpoons with points of hard ivory or stone, they made their knives of the same material, and caught, in those days, a great many more seals than they do now.
But have not our firearms been of great advantage to them? Quite the reverse. The rifle, for example, has enabled them to perpetrate terrible slaughter among the reindeer, merely for the sake of a small and momentary gain. This went so far, that on the narrow strip of naked, broken country which stretches along the west coast, no fewer than 16,000 reindeer were killed every year, only the skin, as a rule, being taken and sold to the Europeans, while the flesh was left behind to rot. Of course, this presently led to the almost total extermination of the animals, and hunting almost entirely ceased because, as it was explained, ‘the reindeer had left the coast.’ In former days, when they hunted with bow and arrow, they could kill all that they required, but the slaughter was never so great as seriously to diminish the numbers of the reindeer.
A FIORD LANDSCAPE ON THE EAST COAST (AT TINGMIARMIUT)
A FIORD LANDSCAPE ON THE EAST COAST (AT TINGMIARMIUT)
For marine hunting, too, the rifle has been the reverse of an advantage. When there are many seals in the fiord, they are frightened by the shots and set off to sea, whereas harpoon-hunting is carried on in silence. Moreover, it is, of course, easier to kill seals with the rifle than to harpoon them, andtherefore the rifle has led to a decline in skill with the harpoon. And yet the harpoon remains of supreme importance; for while the rifle hunter must stop at home in rough weather, the harpoon hunter can go out in all weathers and support his family. Harpoon hunting, too, is the more rational method, the wounded animal being almost always secured; whereas of seals wounded by the rifle, at least as many escape and die to no purpose as are secured and brought home.
Nor has the shot-gun been of real service. In many districts it has tempted the inhabitants to devote themselves more to the easier bird-shooting than to seal-hunting, which is and must be the pursuit upon which depends the very existence of the Eskimo community; for the seal provides flesh, blubber, both for food and fuel, and skins for kaiaks, boats, tents, houses, clothes, boots, and so forth—nothing can replace it. Another evil is that, by help of the shot-gun, the Greenlanders are enabled to kill so many birds of certain species (for example, eider-ducks) that their numbers are yearly decreasing; and this will soon lead to great misery, for bird-hunting has now become the chief means of support of many families. At Godthaab, for example, the inhabitants live upon it during the greater part of the winter, there being few capable seal-hunters. Inearlier times, the Eskimo killed birds with his throwing-dart. It, too, was an effective weapon, and the birds he wounded he secured; when he now sends his small shot scattering in among a flock of eider-duck, who can reckon how many are destroyed without doing any good to anyone?
No, we certainly cannot flatter ourselves that we have perfected his methods of hunting; we have only introduced disturbance into them, the full extent of whose ruinous results we cannot even yet foresee.
But worst of all is the irreparable injury which all our European commodities have done to him. We have, as I have shown, been so immoral as to let him acquire a taste for coffee, tobacco, bread, European stuffs and finery; and he has bartered away to us his indispensable seal-skins and blubber, to procure all these things which give him only a moment’s doubtful enjoyment. In the meantime his woman-boat has gone to ruin for want of skins, his tent likewise, and even his kaiak, the essential condition of his existence, will often lie uncovered on the beach. The lamps in his house have often to be extinguished in the winter, because the autumn store of blubber has been sold to the Company. He himself must go on winter days clad in European rags instead of in the warm fur garments he used to have. He has grown poorerand poorer, the delightful summer journeys have for the most part had to be abandoned for want of woman-boats and tents, and all the year round he has now to live in confined houses where contagious diseases thrive and play worse havoc among the population than they ever did before. To show how great the decadence has been in certain districts, I may mention that at a place near Godthaab where a few years ago there were eleven woman-boats,[175]there was now only one, and that one belonged to the missionary.[176]
The statistics of population in Greenland during recent years may at first sight seem encouraging. For example, the number of natives on the west coast was, in 1855, 9,644, while in 1889 it was 10,177. But we must not lull our conscience to sleep with these figures; they are unfortunately deceptive, and the figures of the intervening years will show that the population fluctuates very greatly. In 1881 it was no more than 9,701, and in 1883 only 9,744 (thus showing an increase of only 100 since 1855). In 1885 it had risen to 9,914, and in 1888 to 10,221;but then it fell again in 1889 to 10,177. I have no later statistics. These figures, in which increase and decrease alternate, show that the state of things cannot be healthy. It ought not to be forgotten, too, that Hans Egede, a century and a half ago, estimated the population of the west coast at 30,000. This is probably a large over-estimate, but there is an enormous margin between 30,000 and 10,177. Assuredly this people is sailing with ‘a corpse in the cargo.’[177]
Disease has of late years increased alarmingly. It is especially the Greenlanders’ scourge, consumption, or more properly tuberculosis, which makes ever wider ravages. There can be few places in the world where so large a proportion of the population is attacked by it. It is not quite clear whether we imported this disease into Greenland, but most probably we did; and at any rate, as I have several times pointed out, our influence has in more ways than one tended strongly to promote the spread of this and other contagious diseases.[178]Tuberculosis is now so common that it is almost easier to number those who are not attacked by it than those who are. It is remarkable,however, what a power of resistance the natives show to this disease. They are sometimes so far gone in it while young as to spit blood copiously, and yet survive to a good age. I have even seen excellent hunters who had consumption, and who would one day lie abed spitting blood, and a few days later would be out at sea again. This power of resistance is probably due in part to the amount of fat they consume, and especially to the blubber which is admirably adapted to fortify them against the disease. It is proved, too, that people at the Colonies, who consequently live largely upon European fare, are most apt to succumb to it. As a rule, however, it reduces their strength all round, so that those attacked by it can do little for themselves; and it is clear that this must hamper the activities of so small a community. An epidemic disease such as smallpox, which we have of course also imported and thereby greatly thinned the population, is much to be preferred; for it kills its victims at once, and does not keep them lingering like this slow, sneaking poison.[179]
We see, then, that the result of our influence upon the Greenlanders’ material circumstances has been a continuous decline from their former well-being and prosperity towards an almost hopeless poverty and weakness.
Many will admit this, but object that it was really to raise the level of their spiritual life and culture that we went to Greenland, and that this cannot be done save at the expense of their temporal welfare. Let us, then, look a little at this side of our activity. Many people think that a highly developed and civilised community can be fashioned at one stroke out of so unpromising material as a primitive race. This is a great mistake; human nature is not to be transformed at the good pleasure of individuals. It is, indeed, capable of modification; but the development always occurs slowly, like development in nature as a whole. We must not imagine, therefore, that we have the right, as we have done in Greenland and in other places, to swoop down upon a primitive race with our civilisation and impose it upon them. ‘Try to fit a hand with five fingers into a glove with four,’ says Spencer, ‘and the difficulty is strikingly like the difficulty of implanting a complex or composite idea in a mind which has not a correspondingly composite faculty.’
The only change which can be brought aboutwith any sort of rapidity among a primitive race is the change towards degeneration and ruin. Such a change, in the spiritual sphere, sets in as soon as we attempt to impose ethical conceptions upon a people at a stage of cultivation different from our own. This is precisely what we have achieved among the Eskimos. When, for example, in contempt of their own laws and ordinances, we have sought to impose upon them our conceptions of property, which are undeniably fitted for a more developed but less neighbour-loving community than that of Greenland, how can we expect to bring about anything but confusion and ruin? Their whole social scheme was arranged to fit their primitive socialistic conceptions of property, and as their habits of life are irreconcilable with the new and foreign conception, degeneration is inevitable. And as with the idea of property, so is it with all the other ideas which we have sought to implant in them.
To take one more example: How baneful to them has been the introduction of money! Formerly they had no means of saving up work or accumulating riches; for the products of their labour did not last indefinitely, and therefore they gave away their superfluity. But then they learned the use of money; so that now, when they have more than they need for the moment, the temptation to sell theoverplus to the Europeans, instead of giving it to their needy neighbours, is often too great for them; for with the money they thus acquire they can supply themselves with the much-coveted European commodities. Thus we Christians help more and more to destroy instead of to develop their old self-sacrificing love of their neighbours. And money does still more to undermine the Greenland community. Their ideas of inheritance were formerly very vague, for, as before-mentioned, the clothes and weapons of a dead man were consigned with him to the grave. Now, on the other hand, the introduction of money has enabled the survivors to sell the effects of the deceased, and they are no longer ashamed to accept as an inheritance what they can obtain in this way. This may seem an advantage; but, here, too, their old habit of mind is upset. Greed and covetousness—vices which they formerly abhorred above everything—have taken possession of them. Their minds are warped and enthralled by money.
Let us, however, look at another aspect of the case. Our true aim, I suppose, was, after all, to make them a cultivated people, and open up to them a wider range of spiritual interests. But even if we could actually attain this end, must it not necessarily be perilous in the highest degree to give a people like the Eskimos new interests which maydivert them from the one thing needful—the duty of providing for themselves and their families. It is vaunted as a brilliant achievement that the majority of the natives of the west coast can now both read and write. Unfortunately for them, they can; for these arts are not to be learned for nothing, and they have indeed to pay dear for their acquirements. It is self-evident that an Eskimo cannot possibly devote his time to these branches of knowledge and nevertheless be as good a hunter as when he had only one interest in life, and learned nothing except hunting and the management of the kaiak.[180]We have direct evidence of the fact that skill with the kaiak has declined, in the many accidents which have happened of late years. Formerly, according to Rink, no more than fifteen or twenty deaths in kaiak-hunting occurred during the year; but in 1888 and 1889 there have been thirty-one fatal kaiak accidents each year.
The chief aim of all education must surely be to make the rising generation good and capable citizens of the community in which their lot is cast. But in what way does an Eskimo become a capable citizen of his little community? Since hunting and fishingare the sole means of supporting existence assigned by Nature to this community, it follows that he can become a capable citizen only by acquiring the greatest possible skill in these pursuits. Of what profit, then, to the Eskimo, is his ability to read and write? He assuredly does not learn hunting by help of these arts. It is true that by means of the few books he possesses he may gain information as to other and better countries, unattainable conditions and alleviations, of which he before knew nothing; and thus he becomes discontented with his own lot, which was formerly the happiest he could conceive. And then, too, he can read the Bible—but does he understand very much of it? And would it not do him just as much good if the matter of it were related to him, as his old legends used to be? There can be no doubt that the advantage is dearly bought. We must bear well in mind that the Eskimo community lives upon the very verge of possible human existence, and that a concentrated exertion of all its energies is necessary to enable it to carry on the fight with inhospitable nature. A little more ballast and it must sink. This is what is already happening, and all the wisdom in the world is of no avail.
The upshot, then, of European activity in Greenland has been degeneration and decadence in every respect. And the only compensation we have madeto the natives is the introduction of Christianity. In so far we have achieved a happy consummation, for, in name at least, all the Greenlanders of the west coast are now Christians. But the question seems to me to be forced upon us whether this Christianity, too, is not exceedingly dearly bought, and whether the most ardent believer ought not to have some doubts as to the blessings it has conferred upon this people, when he sees how it has cost them their whole worldly welfare?
What part of Christianity is most to be valued, its dogmas or its moral teaching? It seems to me that even the best Christian must admit that it is the latter which is of enduring value; for history can teach him how variable and uncertain the interpretation of the dogmas has always been. Of what value, then, have these dogmas, which he understands so imperfectly, been to the Eskimo? Can anyone seriously maintain that it is a matter of essential moment to a people what dogmas it professes to believe in? Must not the moral laws which it obeys always be the matter of primary concern? And the Eskimo morality was, as we have seen, in many respects at least as good as that of the Christian communities. So that the result of all our teaching has been that, in this respect too, the race has degenerated.
And lastly comes this question: Can an Eskimowho is nominally a Christian, but who cannot support his family, is in ill-health and is sinking into deeper and deeper misery, be held much more enviable than a heathen who lives in ‘spiritual darkness,’ but can support his family, is robust in body, and thoroughly contented with life? From the Eskimo standpoint at any rate, the answer cannot be doubtful. If he could see his true interest, the Eskimo would assuredly put up this fervent petition: God save me from my friends, my enemies I can deal with myself.
CONCLUSION
Let us cast a backward glance over the foregoing chapters, and mark what lesson they teach us.
They show us a people, highly gifted by nature, which used to live happily, and, in spite of its faults, stood at a high moral standpoint. But our civilisation, our missions, and our commercial products have reduced its material conditions, its morality, and its social order to a state of such melancholy decline that the whole race seems doomed to destruction.
And yet, as we have seen, it has been more kindly and considerately dealt with than any other people under similar conditions. Is not this a serious warning for us? And if we look around among other primitive peoples, do we not find that the result of their contact with European civilisation and Christianity has everywhere been the same?
What has become of the Indians? What of theonce so haughty Mexicans, or the highly gifted Incas of Peru? Where are the aborigines of Tasmania and the native races of Australia? Soon there will not be a single one of them left to raise an accusing voice against the race which has brought them to destruction. And Africa? Yes, it, too, is to be Christianised; we have already begun to plunder it, and if the negroes are not more tenacious of life than the other races, they will doubtless go the same way when once Christianity comes upon them with all its colours flying. Yet we are in no way deterred, and are ever ready with high-sounding phrases about bringing to the poor savages the blessings of Christianity and civilisation.
If we look at the missions of to-day, do we not almost everywhere learn the same lesson? Take for instance a people like the Chinese, standing on a high level of civilisation, and therefore, one would suppose, all the better fitted to receive the new doctrine. One of ‘the most enlightened mandarins in China, himself a Christian, and educated at European universities,’ writes in theNorth China Daily Newsan article about the missionaries and their influence, in which, among other things, he says: ‘Is it not an open secret that it is only the meanest, most helpless, most ignorant, necessitous, and disreputable among the Chinese who have been and are what the missionariescall “converted”?... I ask whether it cannot be proved that these converts—men who have thrown away the faith of their childhood, men who are forbidden by their teachers to show any sympathy, or indeed anything but contempt, for the memories and traditions of our ancient history—whether it cannot be proved that these men, as soon as they have had to relinquish the hope of worldly gain, have shown themselves to be worse than the worst of the common Chinese rabble? The missionaries are ready enough to tell their hearers that the mandarins are a parcel of idiots who believe in heavenly portents and all such nonsense, while the very next day they will probably be telling the same listeners that the sun and moon really stood still at the command of the Hebrew general, Joshua.’ As to the alleged beneficence of the mission towards the natives in the way of relieving poverty and misery, the writer asks: ‘Can it be shown that this assistance affords even the barest equivalent for the money which the Chinese Government has to pay for the protection of the missionaries? I believe that the interest alone of these immense sums would be sufficient to support a much larger staff of skilful European doctors and nurses.... Let it be shown what proportion of the millions which compassionate people in Europe and America subscribe for theChina missions really goes to the relief of misery. Let it be shown how much goes to the support of the missionaries and their wives and children, to the building of their fine houses and sanatoriums, to postage and paper for their voluminous rose-coloured reports, to the expenses of their congresses, and many other things.... Is it not an open secret that the whole mission is nothing but a charitable foundation for the benefit of unemployed persons in Europe and America?’ He further asks whether it is not notorious that the missionaries, ‘with their high opinion of their own infallibility, are often intrusive and arrogant, and apt to mix themselves up, with self-imposed authority, in matters that do not concern them? If anyone doubts that the missionaries, taken as a whole, are inclined to these vices, let him study and note the tone and spirit of their own writings.’
This account of matters forcibly reminds us, in many particulars, of what we have just seen in Greenland. The main difference is that when the Chinese offer resistance to the missionaries who have come among them uninvited, they are not simply cuffed and flogged. Recognising the evils that threaten them, they ‘beg the foreign powers, in the interests of China as well as of America and Europe, to recall the missionaries,’ and having begged in vain,they then try to expel them by force; whereupon these gentlemen, who have come to preach the Gospel of Peace, call upon their Governments for protection, and are supported by gunboats and troops who direct a destructive fire of shells and grape-shot upon the natives, and secure for the pious missionaries a sanguinary compensation for the harm done to their goods and gear, as though it had never been written: ‘Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses’ (Matthew x. 9).
In all this we recognise the race which, when China sought to protect itself against the ruinous opium-poison, forced it, by means of a bloody war, to open its harbours to the noxious traffic, in order that Europeans might grow rich while the Chinese social fabric was being undermined—from first to last a piece of such shameless scoundrelism that no language has words adequate to describe it. The Eskimos, unfortunately, do not seem to be so far wrong in thinking the Europeans a corrupt and dishonourable race, which ought to come to Greenland in order to learn morals.
But do not the missions elsewhere produce better results? Scarcely. Statistics have recently been published as to crime in India, which cast grave doubts upon the benefits resulting from missionary enterprise. As to Africa I can find no statistics, but from all Ican learn it appears that there, too, the results of the missions are nothing to boast of. African travellers are, I believe, unanimous in declaring that the native converts to Christianity are by no means those whom they prefer to take into their service or to rely upon in any way. And Norway, too, contributes its hundreds of thousands[181]yearly to the missions both in Africa and India! Have we so much superfluous wealth that we cannot employ this money to better advantage at home? The desire to help these poor savages whom we have never seen, and whose needs we do not know, is no doubt a noble aspiration; but I wonder whether it would not be nobler still to help the thousands of unfortunates whose necessities we have daily before our eyes? Since we are bent on doing good works, why not begin with those nearest to us? Then, when all at home were beyond the need of assistance, it would be time enough to look abroad and inquire whether there are not elsewhere others who need our help. ‘Charity begins at home.’
I am by no means arguing that all missionary enterprise must necessarily be hurtful; but I am of opinion that in order to be really beneficent it must fulfil conditions which, in our time, are almost beyond attainment. In the first place, it demandssuch a number of noble, self-sacrificing, and altogether remarkable men as we cannot hope to find all at one time. One may come to the front, perhaps two or three, but there can be no steady supply of them. And then we must remember that so many evil influences follow in the wake of a mission, that the most ideal missionaries can neither hold them aloof nor repair the damage they do to the natives. So the result is always the same in the end.
Are we never, then, to open our eyes to what we are really doing? Ought not all true friends of humanity, from pole to pole, to raise a unanimous and crushing protest against all these abuses, against this self-righteous and scandalous treatment of our fellow-creatures of another faith and at another stage of civilisation?
The time will come when posterity will sternly condemn us, and these abuses, which we now hold consistent with the fundamental principles of Christianity, will be branded as profoundly immoral. Morality will then have so far developed that men will no longer consider themselves justified in swooping down upon the first primitive people that comes in their way, in order to satisfy their own religious vanity and to do ‘good works’ which shall minister to their self-complacency, but which may or may not be beneficial to the race in question. Then onlycompetent and in every sense well-equipped people will take upon themselves to study the life and civilisation of another race in order to see whether it needs our assistance, and if so, in what way it can best be accorded; and if the result of the inquiry is to show that we can do them no good, they will be left alone. But before that time comes, most of such races, even of those which now survive, will have been swept away.
If we ask, in conclusion, whether there is no hope of salvation for the Eskimo community, everyone who knows the circumstances will be forced to admit that the only expedient would be for the Europeans gradually to withdraw from the country. Left to themselves, and freed from subversive foreign influences, the Eskimos might possibly recover their old habits of life, and the race might yet be saved. But this possibility must doubtless be regarded as merely Utopian, at any rate for many a long day to come. In the first place, it would be a severe blow to the vanity of a European state to have to give up an experiment in civilisation which it has once begun, and which it has recorded in large letters to the credit side of its account in the other world; and in the second place it would be useless for the Danish colonies to withdraw unless the ships of othernations could be restrained from trading with the natives and importing European commodities, especially brandy.