THE INDIANS OF THE NORTH
Fort Chmio is situated upon the east bank of the Koksoak River and about twenty-five miles from its mouth, where the river is nearly a mile and a half wide. There are two trading posts here; one, that of the Hudson’s Bay Company, consisting of a dozen or so buildings, which include dwelling and storehouses and native cabins; the other that of Revellion Brothers, the great fur house of Paris, colloquially referred to as “the French Company,” which stands just above and ad-joining the station of the Hudson’s Bay Company. This latter Post was erected in the year 1903, and has nearly as many buildings as the older establishment. We used to refer to them respectively as “London” and “Paris.”
The history of Fort Chimo extends back to the year 1811, when Kmoch and Kohlmeister, two of the Moravian Brethren of the Okak Mission on the Atlantic coast, in the course of their efforts for the conversion of the Eskimos to Christianity cruised into Ungava Bay, discovered the George River, which they named in honor of King George the Third, and then proceeded to the Koksoak, which they ascended to the point of the present settlement. The natives received them well. They erected a beacon on a hill, tarried but a few days and then turned back to Okak. Upon their return they gave glowing accounts of their reception by the natives and the great possibilities for profitable trade, but they did not deem it advisable themselves to extend their labors to that field.
In the course of time this report drifted to England and to the ears of the officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who were attracted by it, and in 1827 Dr. Mendry, an officer of the Company at Moose Factory, with a party of white men and Indian guides crossed the peninsula from Richmond Gulf, through Clearwater Lake to the head waters of the Larch River, a tributary of the Koksoak, thence descended the Larch and Koksoak to the place where the Moravians had erected the beacon, and on a low terrace, just across the river from the beacon, established the original Fort Chimo. The difficulties of navigation and the consequent uncertainty and expense of keeping the Post supplied with provisions and articles of trade were such, however, that after a brief trial Ungava was abandoned.
The opportunities for lucrative trade here were not forgotten by the Company, and in the year 1837 Factor John McLean was detailed to re-establish Fort Chimo. This he did, and a year later built the first Post at George River. During the succeeding winter he crossed the interior with dogs to Northwest River. Upon their return journey McLean and his party ate their dogs and barely escaped perishing from starvation; one of his Indians, who was sent ahead, reaching Fort Chimo and bringing succor when McLean and the others, through extreme weakness, were unable to proceed farther. In the following summer McLean built the fort on Indian House Lake, and the other one that has been mentioned, on a large lake to the westward—Lake Eraldson he called it—presumably the source of Whale River. Later he succeeded in crossing to Northwest River by canoe, ascending the George River and descending the Atlantic slope of the plateau by way of the Grand River. His object was to establish a regular line of communication between Fort Chimo and Northwest River, with interior posts along the route. The natural obstacles which the country presented finally forced the abandonment of this plan as impracticable, and the two interior posts were closed after a brief trial. This was before the days of steam navigation, and with sailing vessels it was only possible to reach these isolated northern stations in Ungava Bay with supplies once every two years. Even these infrequent visits were so fraught with danger and uncertainty that finally, in 1855, Fort Chimo and George River were again abandoned as unprofitable. In 1866, however, the building of the Company’s steamship Labrador made yearly visits possible, and in that year another attack was made upon the Ungava district and Fort Chimo was rebuilt, George River Post re-established, and a little later the small station at Whale River was erected. With the improved facilities for transportation the trade with Indians and Eskimos, and the salmon and white whale fisheries carried on by the Posts, now proved most profitable, and the Company has since and is still reaping the reward of its persistence.
Dr. Milne, as has been stated, was not a permanent resident of the Post. Regularly stationed here, besides Mathewson, there is a young clerk, a cooper, a carpenter, and a handy man, all Scotchmen, and a comparatively new arrival, Rev. Samuel M. Stewart, a missionary of the Church Mission Society of England. Of Mr. Stewart, who did much to relieve the monotony of our several weeks’ sojourn at Fort Chimo, and his remarkable self-sacrifice and work, I shall have something to say later.
The day after our arrival we took occasion to pay our respects to Monsieur D. Thévenet, the officer in charge of the “French Post.” Our reception was most cordial. M. Thévenet is a gentleman by birth. He was at one time an officer in the French cavalry, but his love of adventure and active temperament rebelled against the inactivity of garrison duty and he resigned his commission in the army, came to Canada, and joined the Northwest mounted police in the hope of obtaining a detail in the Klondike. In this he was disappointed, and the outbreak of the South African war offering a new field of adventure he quit the police, enlisted in the Canadian Mounted Rifles, and served in the field throughout the war. After his return to Canada and discharge from the army, he took service with Revellion Brothers.
M. Thévenet invited us to dine with him that very evening, and we were not slow to accept his hospitality. His bright conversation, pleasing personality and unstinted hospitality offered a delightful evening and we were not disappointed. This and many other pleasant evenings spent in his society during our stay at Fort Chimo were some of the most enjoyable of our trip.
Here an agreeable surprise awaited me. When we sat down to dinner Thévenet called in his new half-breed French-Indian interpreter, and who should he prove to be but Belfleur, one of the dog drivers who in April, 1904, accompanied me from Northwest River to Rigolet, when I began that anxious journey over the ice with Hubbard’s body. He was apparently as well pleased at the meeting as I. Belfleur and a half-breed Scotch-Eskimo named Saunders are employed as Indian and Eskimo interpreters at the French Post, and are the only ones of M. Thévenet’s people with whom he can converse. Belfleur speaks French and broken English, and Saunders English, besides their native languages.
None of the people of Ungava, with the exception of two or three, speaks any but his mother tongue, and they have no ambition, apparently, to extend their linguistic acquirements. It is, indeed, a lonely life for the trader, who but once a year, when his ship arrives, has any communication with the great world which he has left behind him. No white woman is here with her softening influence, no physician or surgeon to treat the sick and injured, and never until the advent of Mr. Stewart any permanent missionary.
The natives that remain at Fort Chimo all the year are three or four families of Eskimos, a few old or crippled Indians, and some half-breed Indians and Eskimos, who do chores around the Posts and lead an uncertain existence. The half-breed Indian children are taken care of at the “Indian house,” a log structure presided over by the “Queen” of Ungava, a very corpulent old Nascaupee woman, who lives by the labor of others and draws tribute from trading Indians who make the Indian house their rendezvous when they visit the Post. She is and always has been very kind, and a sort of mother, to the little waifs that nearly every trader or white servant has left behind him, when the Company’s orders transferred him to some other Post and he abandoned his temporary wife forever.
The Indians of the Ungava district are chiefly Nascaupees, with occasionally a few Crees from the West. “Nenenot” they call themselves, which means perfect, true men. “Nascaupee” means false or untrue men and is a word of opprobrium applied to them by the Mountaineers in the early days, because of their failure to keep a compact to join forces with the latter at the time of the wars for supremacy between the Indians and Eskimos. Nascaupee is the name by which they are known now, outside of their own lodges, and the one which we shall use in referring to them. In like manner I have chosen to use the English Mountaineer, rather than the FrenchMontagnais, in speaking of the southern Indians. North of the Straits of Belle Isle the French word is never heard, and if you were to refer to these Indians as “Montagnais” to the Labrador natives it is doubtful whether you would be understood.
Both Mountaineers and Nascaupees are of Cree origin, and belong to the great Algonquin family. Their language is similar, with only the variation of dialect that might be expected with the different environments. The Nascaupees have one peculiarity of speech, however, which is decidedly their own. In conversation their voice is raised to a high pitch, or assumes a whining, petulant tone. An outsider might believe them to be quarreling and highly excited, when in fact they are on the best of terms and discussing some ordinary subject in a most matter of fact way.
In personal appearance the Nascaupees are taller and more angular than their southern brothers, but the high cheek bones, the color and general features are the same. They are capable of enduring the severest cold. In summer cloth clothing obtained in barter at the Posts is, worn, but in winter deerskin garments are usual. The coat has the hair inside, and the outside of the finely dressed, chamoislike skin is decorated with various designs in color, in startling combinations of blue, red and yellow, painted on with dyes obtained at the Post or manufactured by themselves from fish roe and mineral products. When the garment has a hood it is sometimes the skin of a wolf’s head, with the ears standing and hair outside, giving the wearer a startling and ferocious appearance. Tight-fitting deerskin or red cloth leggings decorated with beads, and deerskin moccasins complete the costume.
Some beadwork trimming is made by the women, but they do little in the way of needlework embroidery, and the results of their attempts in this direction are very indifferent. This applies to the full-blood Nascaupees. I have seen some fairly good specimens of moccasin embroidery done by the half-breed women at the Post, and by the Mountaineer women in the South.
The Nascaupees are not nearly so clean nor so prosperous as the Mountaineers, and, coming very little in contact with the whites, live now practically as their forefathers lived for untold generations before them—just as they lived, in fact, before the white men came. They are perhaps the most primitive Indians on the North American continent to-day.
The Mountaineers, on the other hand, see much more, particularly during the summer months, of the whites and half-breeds of the coast. Most of those who spend their summers on the St. Lawrence, west of St. Augustine, have more or less white blood in their veins through consorting with the traders and settlers. With but two or three exceptions the Mountaineers of the Atlantic coast, Groswater Bay, and at St. Augustine and the eastward, are pure, uncontaminated Indians.
The line of territorial division between the Nascaupee and Mountaineer Indians’ hunting grounds is pretty closely drawn. The divide north of Lake Michikamau is the southern and the George River the eastern boun-dary of the Nascaupee territory, and to the south and to the east of these boundaries, lie the hunting grounds of the Mountaineers.
These latter, south of the height of land, as has been stated, are practically all under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, and are most devout in the observance of their religious obligations. While it is true that their faith is leavened to some extent by the superstitions that their ancestors have handed down to them, yet even in the long months of the winter hunting season they never forget the teachings of their father confessor.
The Nascaupees are heathens. About the year 1877 or 1878 Father Père Lacasse crossed overland from Northwest River, apparently by the Grand River route, to Fort Chimo, in an attempt to carry the work of the mission into that field. The Nascaupees, however, did not take kindly to the new religion, and unfortunately during the priest’s stay among them, which was brief, the hunting was bad. This was attributed to the missionary’s presence, and the sachems were kept busy for a time dispelling the evil charm. No one was converted. Let us hope that Mr. Stewart, who is there to stay, and is an earnest, persistent worker, will reach the savage confidence and conscience, though his opportunity with the Indians is small, for these Nascaupees tarry but a very brief time each year within his reach. With open water in the summer they come to the Fort with the pelts of their winter catch. These are exchanged for arms, ammunition, knives, clothing, tea and tobacco, chiefly. Then, after a short rest they disappear again into the fastnesses of the wilderness above, to fish the interior lakes and hunt the forests, and no more is seen of them until the following summer, excepting only a few of the younger men who usually emerge from the silent, snow-bound land during Christmas week to barter skins for such necessaries as they are in urgent need of, and to get drunk on a sort of beer, a concoction of hops, molasses and unknown ingredients, that the Post dwellers make and the “Queen” dispenses during the holiday festivals.
Reindeer, together with ptarmigans (Arctic grouse) and fish, form their chief food supply, with tea always when they can get it. All of these northern Indiana are passionately fond of tea, and drink unbelievable quantities of it. Little flour is used. The deer are erratic in their movements and can never be depended upon with any degree of certainty, and should the Indians fail in their hunt they are placed face to face with starvation, as was the case in the winter of 1892 and 1893, when full half of the people perished from lack of food.
Formerly the migrating herds pretty regularly crossed the Koksoak very near and just above the Post in their passage to the eastward in the early autumn, but for several years now only small bands have been seen here, the Indians meeting the deer usually some forty or fifty miles farther up the river. When the animals swim the river they bunch close together; Indian canoe men head them off and turn them up-stream, others attacking the helpless animals with spears. An agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company told me that he had seen nearly four hundred animals slaughtered in this manner in a few hours. When bands of caribou are met in winter they are driven into deep snow banks, and, unable to help themselves, are speared at will.
Of course when the killing is a large one the flesh of all the animals cannot be preserved, and frequently only the tongues are used. Of late years, however, owing to the growing scarcity of reindeer, it is said the Indians have learned to be a little less wasteful than for-merly, and to restrict their kill more nearly to their needs, though during the winter I was there hundreds were slaughtered for tongues and sinew alone. Large quantities of the venison are dried and stored up against a season of paucity. Pemmican, which was formerly so largely used by our western Indians, is occasionally though not generally made by those of Labrador. When deer are killed some bone, usually a shoulder blade, is hung in a tree as an offering to the Manitou, that he may not interfere with future hunts, and drive the animals away.
The Indian religion is not one of worship, but one of fear and superstition. They are constanly in dread of imaginary spirits that haunt the wilderness and drive away the game or bring sickness or other disaster upon them. The conjurer is employed to work his charms to keep off the evil ones. They evidently have some sort of indefinite belief in a future existence, and hunting implements and other offerings are left with the dead, who, where the conditions will permit, are buried in the ground.
Sometimes the very old people are abandoned and left to die of starvation unattended. Be it said to the honor of the trading companies that they do their utmost to prevent this when it is possible, and offer the old and decrepit a haven at the Post, where they are fed and cared for.
The marriage relation is held very lightly and continence and chastity are not in their sight virtues. A child born to an unmarried woman is no impediment to her marriage. If it is a male child it is, in fact, an advantage. Love does not enter into the Indian’s marriage relationship. It is a mating for convenience. Gifts are made to the girl’s father or nearest male relative, and she is turned over, whether she will or no, to the would-be husband. There is no ceremony. A hunter has as many wives as he is physically able to control and take care of—one, two or even three. Sometimes it happens that they combine against him and he receives at their hands what is doubtless well-merited chastisement.
The men are the hunters, the women the slaves. No one finds fault with this, not even the women, for it is an Indian custom immemorial for the woman to do all the hard, physical work.
The Mountaineer Indians that we met on the George River, and one Indian who visited Fort Chimo while we were there, are the only ones of the Labrador that I have ever seen drive dogs. This Fort Chimo Indian, unlike the other hunters of his people, has spent much time at the Post, and mingled much with the white traders and the Eskimos, and, for an Indian, entertains very progressive and broad views. He was, with the exception of a humpbacked post attaché who had an Eskimo wife, the only Indian I met that would not be insulted when one addressed him in Eskimo, for the Indians and Eskimos carry on no social intercourse and the Indians rather despise the Eskimos. The Indian referred to, however, has learned something of the Eskimo language, and also a little English—English that you cannot always understand, but must take for granted. He informed me, “Me three man—Indian, husky (Eskimo), white man.” He was very proud of his accomplishments.
The Indian hauls his loads in winter on toboggans, which he manufactures himself with his ax and crooked knife—the only woodworking tools he possesses. The crooked knives he makes, too, from old files, shaping and tempering them.
The snowshoe frames are made by the men, the babiche is cut and netted by the women, who display wonderful skill in this work. The Mountaineers make much finer netted snowshoes than the Nascaupees, and have great pride in the really beautiful, light snowshoes that they make. No finer ones are to be found anywhere than those made by the Groswater Bay Mountaineers. Three shapes are in vogue—the beaver tail, the egg tail and the long tail. The beaver-tail snowshoes are much more difficult to make, and are seldom seen amongst the Nascaupees. With them the egg tail is the favorite.
The Ungava Indians never go to the open bay in their canoes. They have a superstition that it will bring them bad luck, for there they say the evil spirits dwell. Of all the Indians that visit Fort Chimo only two or three have ever ventured to look upon the waters of Ungava Bay, and these had their view from a hilltop at a safe distance.
It is safe to say that there is not a truthful Indian in Labrador. In fact it is considered an accomplishment to lie cheerfully and well. They are like the Crees of James Bay and the westward in this respect, and will lie most plausibly when it will serve their purpose better than truth, and I verily believe these Indians sometimes lie for the mere pleasure of it when it might be to their advantage to tell the truth.
One good and crowning characteristic these children of the Ungava wilderness possess—that of honesty. They will not steal. You may have absolute confidence in them in this respect. And I may say, too, that they are most hospitable to the traveler, as our own experience with them exemplified. For their faults they must not be condemned. They live according to their lights, and their lights are those of the untutored savage who has never heard the gospel of Christianity and knows nothing of the civilization of the great world outside. Their life is one of constant struggle for bare existence, and it is truly wonderful how they survive at all in the bleak wastes which they inhabit.
NOTE.—It must not be supposed that all of the statements made in this chapter with reference to the Indian, particularly the Nascaupees, are the result of my personal observations. During our brief stay at Ungava, much of this information was gleaned from the officers of the two trading companies, and from natives. In a number of instances they were verified by myself, but I have taken the liberty, when doubt or conflicting statements existed, of referring to the works of Mr. A. P. Low of the Canadian Geological Society and Mr. Lucien M. Turner of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, to set myself right.
THE ESKIMOS OF LABRADOR
Eskimo Photo Collage
During our stay in Ungava, and the succeeding weeks while we traveled down the ice-bound coast, we were brought into constant and intimate contact with the Eskimos. We saw them in almost every phase of their winter life, eating and sleeping with them in their tupeks and igloos, and meeting them in their hunting camps and at the Fort, when they came to barter and to enjoy the festivities of the Christmas holiday week.
The Cree Indians used to call these people “Ashkimai,” which means “raw meat eaters,” and it is from this appellation that our word Eskimo is derived. Here in Ungava and on the coast of Hudson’s Bay, they are pretty generally known as “Huskies,” a contraction of “Huskimos,” the pronunciation given to the wordEskimosby the English sailors of the trading vessels, with their well-known penchant for tacking on the “h” where it does not belong, and leaving it off when it should be pronounced.
The Eskimos call themselves “Innuit,” [Singular, Innuk; dual, Innuek] which means people—humans. The white visitor is a “Kablunak,” or outlander, while a breed born in the country is a “Kablunangayok,” or one partaking of the qualities of both the Innuk and the Kablunak. Those who live in the Koksoak district are called “Koksoagmiut,” * and those of the George River district are the “Kangerlualuksoagmiut.” **
The ethnologists, I believe, have never agreed upon the origin of the Eskimo, some claiming it is Mongolian, some otherwise. In passing I shall simply remark that in appearance they certainly resemble the Mongolian race. If some of the men that I saw in the North were dressed like Japanese or Chinese and placed side by side with them, the one could not be told from the other so long as the Eskimos kept their mouths closed.
In our old school geographies we used to see them pictured as stockily built little fellows. In real life they compare well in stature with the white man of the temperate zone. With a very few exceptions the Eskimos of Ungava average over five feet eight inches in height, with some six-footers.
*Kok, river;soak, big;miut, inhabitants;Koksoagmiut, inhabitants of the big river.
** Literally, inhabitants of the very big bay. The George River mouth widens into a bay which is known as the Very Big Bay.
Their legs are shorter and their bodies longer than the white man’s, and this probably is one reason why they have such wonderful capacity for physical endurance. In this respect they are the superior of the Indian. With plenty of food and a bush to lie under at night the Indian will doubtless travel farther in a given time than the Eskimo. But turn them both loose with only food enough for one meal a day for a month on the bare rocks or ice fields of the Arctic North, and your Indian will soon be dead, while your Eskimo will emerge from the test practically none the worse for his experience, for it is a usual experience with him and he has a wonderful amount of dogged perseverance. The Eskimo knows better how to husband his food than the Indian; and give him a snow bank and he can make himself comfortable anywhere. The most gluttonous Indian would turn green with envy to see the quantities of meat the Eskimo can stow away within his inner self at a single sitting; but on the other hand he can live, and work hard too, on a single scant meal a day, just as his dogs do.
The facial characteristics of the Eskimo are wide cheek bones and round, full face, with a flat, broad nose. I used to look at these flat, comfortable noses on very cold days and wish that for winter travel I might be able to exchange the longer face projection that my Scotch-Irish forbears have handed down to me for one of them, for they are not so easily frosted in a forty or fifty degrees below zero temperature. By the way, if you ever get your nose frozen do not rub snow on it. If you do you will rub all the skin off, and have a pretty sore member to nurse for some time afterward. Grasp it, instead, in your bare hand. That is the Eskimo’s way, and he knows. My advice is founded upon experience.
They are not so dark-hued as the Indians—in fact, many of them are no darker than the average white man under like conditions of exposure to wind and storm and sun would be. The hair is straight, black, coarse and abundant. The men usually wear it hanging below their ears, cut straight around, with a forehead bang reaching nearly to the eyebrows. The women wear it braided and looped up on the sides of the head.
What constitutes beauty is of course largely a question of individual taste. My own judgment of the Eskimos is that they are very ugly, although I have seen young women among them whom I thought actually handsome. This was when they first arrived at the Post with dogs and komatik and they were dressed in their native costume of deerskin trousers and Koolutuk, their cheeks red and glowing with the exercise of travel and the keen, frosty atmosphere. A half hour later I have seen the same women when stringy, dirty skirts had replaced the neat-fitting trousers, and Dr. Grenfell’s description of them when thus clad invariably came to my mind: “A bedraggled kind of mop, soaked in oil and filth.” This tendency to ape civilization by wearing civilized garments, is happily confined to their brief sojourns at the Post. When they are away at their camps and igloos their own costume is almost exclusively worn, and is the best possible costume for the climate and the country. The adikey, or koolutuk, of the women, has a long flap or tail, reaching nearly to the heels, and a sort of apron in front. The hood is so commodious in size that a baby can be tucked away into it, and that is the way the small children are carried. The men wear cloth trousers except in the very cold weather, when they don their deer or seal skins. Their adikey or koolutuk reaches half way to their knees, and is cut square around. The hood of course, in their case, is only large enough to cover the head. It might be of interest to explain that if this garment is made of cloth it is anadikey; if of deerskin, akoolutuk, and if made of sealskin, anetsek—all cut alike. If they wear two cloth garments at the same time, as is usually the case, the inner one only is an adikey, the outer one a silapak.
Their language is the same from Greenland to Alaska. Of course different localities have different dialects, but this is the natural result of a different environment. Missionary Bohlman, whom I met at Hebron, told me that before coming to Labrador he was attached to a Greenland mission. When he came to his new field he found the language so similar to that in Greenland that he had very little difficulty in making himself understood. When Missionary Stecker a few years ago went from Labrador to Alaska he was able to converse with the Alaskan Eskimos. It is held by some authorities that Greenland was peopled by Labrador Eskimos who crossed Hudson Strait to Baffin Land, and thence made their way to Greenland, having originally crossed from Siberia into Alaska, thence eastward, skirting Hudson Bay. This is entirely feasible. I heard of oneumiak(skin boat) only a few years ago having crossed to Cape Chidley from Baffin Land. Even in Labrador there are many different dialects. The “Northerners,” the people inhabiting the northwest arm of the peninsula, have many words that the Koksoagmiut do not understand. The intonation of the Ungava Eskimos, particularly the women, is like a plaint. At Okak they sing their words. Each settlement on the Atlantic coast has its own dialect. It is a difficult language to learn. Words are compounded until they reach a great and almost unpronounceable length.* Naturally the coming of the trader has introduced many new words, as tobaccomik, teamik,etc., “mik” being the accusative ending. The Eskimo in his language cannot count beyond ten. If he wishes to express twelve, for instance, he will say, “as many fingers as a man has and two more.” To express one hundred he would say, “five times as many fingers and toes as a man has,” and so on. It is not a written language, but the Moravians have adapted the English alphabet to it and are teaching the Eskimos to read and write. Mr. Stewart in his work has adapted the Cree syllabic characters to the Eskimo, and he is teaching the Ungava people to write by this method, which is largely phonetic. Both the Moravians and Mr. Stewart are instructing them in the mystery of counting in German.
The following will illustrate this; it is part of a sentence quoted from a Moravian missionary pamphlet: “Taimailinganiarpok, illagget Labradormiut namgminek akkilejungnalerkartinaget pijariakartamingnik tamainik, sakkertitsijungnalerkartinagillo ajokertnijunik.”
** The Eskimo numerals are as follows: 1, attansek; 2, magguk; 3, pingasut; 4, sittamat; 5, tellimat; 6, pingasoyortut; 7, aggartut; 8, sittamauyortut; 9, sittamartut; 10, tellimauyortut.
Cleanliness is not one of the Eskimos’ virtues, and they are frequently infested with vermin, which are wont to transfer their allegiance to visitors, as we learned in due course, to our discomfiture. For many months of the year the only water they have is obtained by melting snow or ice. In sections where there is no wood for fuel this must be done over stone lamps in which seal oil is burned, and it is so slow a process that the water thus procured is held too precious to be wasted in cleansing body or clothing. One of the missionaries remarked that “the children must be very clean little creatures, for the parents never find it necessary to wash them.”
They treat the children with the greatest kindness and consideration— not only their own, but all children, generally. I did not once see an Eskimo punish a child, nor hear a harsh word spoken to one, and they are the most obedient youngsters in the world. A missionary on the Atlantic coast told me that once when he punished his child an Eskimo standing near remarked: “You don’t love you child or you wouldn’t punish it.” And this is the sentiment they hold.
Love is not essential to a happy marriage among the Eskimos. When a man wants a woman he takes her. In fact they believe that an unwilling bride makes a good wife. Potokomik’s wife was most unwilling, and he took her, dragging her by the tail of her adikey from her father’s igloo across the river on the ice to his own, and they have “lived happily ever after,” which seems to prove the correctness of the Eskimo theory as to unwilling brides. Of course if Potokomik’s wife had not liked him after a fair trial, she could have left him, or if she had not come up to his expectations he could have sent her back home and tried another. It is all quite simple, for there is no marriage ceremony and resort to South Dakota courts for divorce is unnecessary. If a man wants two wives, why he has them, if there are women enough. That, too, is a very agreeable arrangement, for when he is away hunting the women keep each other company. Small families are the rule, and I did not hear of a case where twins had ever been born to the Eskimos.
Dancing and football are among their chief pastimes. The men enter into the dance with zest, but the women as though they were performing some awful penance. Both sexes play football. They have learned the use of cards and are reckless gamblers, sometimes staking even the garments on their backs in play.
The Eskimo is a close bargainer, and after he has agreed to do you a service for a consideration will as likely as not change his mind at the last moment and leave you in the lurch. At the same time he is in many respects a child.
The dwellings are of three kinds: Thetupek—skin tent;igloowiuk— snow house; and permanent igloo, built of driftwood, stones and turf— the larger ones areigloosoaks.
Flesh and fish, as is the case with the Indians, form the principal food, but while the Indians cook everything the Eskimos as often eat their meat and fish raw, and are not too particular as to its age or state of decay. They are very fond of venison and seal meat, and for variety’s sake welcome dog meat. A few years ago a disease carried off several of the dogs at Fort Chimo and every carcass was eaten. One old fellow, in fact, as Mathewson related to me, ate nothing else during that time, and when the epidemic was over bemoaned the fact that no more dog meat could be had.
On the Atlantic coast where the snow houses are not used and the Eskimos live more generally during the winter in the close, vile igloos, there is more or less tubercular trouble. Even farther south, where the natives have learned cleanliness, and live in comfortable log cabins that are fairly well aired, this is the prevailing disease. After leaving Ramah, the farther south you go the more general is the adoption of civilized customs, food and habits of life, and with the increase of civilization so also comes an increased death rate amongst the Eskimos. Formerly there was a considerable number of these people on the Straits of Belle Isle. Now there is not one there. South of Hamilton Inlet but two full-blood Eskimos remain. Below Ramah the deaths exceed the births, and at one settlement alone there are fifty less people to-day than three years ago.
Civilization is responsible for this. At the present time there remains on the Atlantic coast, between the Straits of Belle Isle and Cape Chidley, but eleven hundred and twenty-seven full-blood Eskimos. Five years hence there will not be a thousand. In Ungava district, where they have as yet accepted practically nothing of civilization, the births exceed the deaths, and I did not learn of a single well-authenticated case of tuberculosis while I was there. There were a few cases of rheumatism. Death comes early, however, owing to the life of constant hardship and exposure. Usually they do not exceed sixty or sixty-five years of age, though I saw one man that had rounded his three score years and ten.
Formerly they encased their dead in skins and lay them out upon the rocks with the clothing and things they had used in life. Now rough wooden boxes are provided by the traders. The dogs in time break the coffins open and pick the bones, which lie uncared for, to be bleached by the frosts of winter and suns of summer. Mr. Stewart has collected and buried many of these bones, and is endeavoring now to have all bodies buried.
Of all the missionaries that I met in this bleak northern land, devoted as every one of them is to his life work, none was more devoted and none was doing a more self-sacrificing work than the Rev. Samuel Milliken Stewart of Fort Chimo. His novitiate as a missionary was begun in one of the little out-port fishing villages of Newfoundland. Finally he was transferred to that fearfully barren stretch among the heathen Eskimos north of Nachvak. Here he and his Eskimo servant gathered together such loose driftwood as they could find, and with this and stones and turf erected a single-roomed igloo. It was a small affair, not over ten by twelve or fourteen feet in size, and an imaginary line separated the missionary’s quarters from his servant’s. On his knees, in an old resting place for the dead, with the bleaching bones of heathen Eskimos strewn over the rocks about him, he consecrated his life efforts to the conversion of this people to Christianity. Then he went to work to accomplish this purpose in a businesslike way. He set himself the infinite task of mastering the difficult language. He lived their life with them, visiting and sleeping with them in their filthy igloos—so filthy and so filled with stench from the putrid meat and fish scraps that they permit to lie about and decay that frequently at first, until he became accustomed to it, he was forced to seek the open air and relieve the resulting nausea. But Stewart is a man of iron will, and he never wavered. He studied his people, administered medicines to the sick, and taught the doctrines of Christianity—Love, Faith and Charity—at every opportunity. That first winter was a trying one. All his little stock of fuel was exhausted early. The few articles of furniture that he had brought with him he burned to help keep out the frost demon, and before spring suffered greatly with the cold. The winter before our arrival he transferred his efforts to the Fort Chimo district, where his field would be larger and he could reach a greater number of the heathens. During the journey to Fort Chimo, which was across the upper peninsula, with dogs, he was lost in storms that prevailed at the time, his provisions were exhausted, and one dog had been killed to feed the others, before he finally met Eskimos who guided him in safety to George River. At Fort Chimo the Hudson’s Bay Company set aside two small buildings to his use, one for a chapel, the other a little cabin in which he lives. Here we found him one day with a pot of high-smelling seal meat cooking for his dogs and a pan of dough cakes frying for himself. With Stewart in this cabin I spent many delightful hours. His constant flow of well-told stories, flavored with native Irish wit, was a sure panacea for despondency. I believe Stewart, with his sunny temperament, is really enjoying his life amongst the heathen, and he has made an obvious impression upon them, for every one of them turns out to his chapel meetings, where the services are conducted in Eskimo, and takes part with a will.
The Eskimo religion, like that of the Indian, is one of fear. Numerous are the spirits that people the land and depths of the sea, but the chief of them all is Torngak, the spirit of Death, who from his cavern dwelling in the heights of the mighty Torngaeks (the mountains north of the George River toward Cape Chidley) watches them always and rules their fortunes with an iron hand, dealing out misfortune, or withholding it, at his will. It is only through the medium of the Angakok, or conjurer, that the people can learn what to do to keep Torngak and the lesser spirits of evil, with their varying moods, in good humor. Stewart has led some of the Eskimos to at least outwardly renounce their heathenism and profess Christianity. In a few instances I believe they are sincere. If he remains upon the field, as I know he wishes to do, he will have them all professing Christianity within the next few years, for they like him. But he has no more regard for danger, when he believes duty calls him, than Dr. Grenfell has, and it is predicted on the coast that some day Dr. Grenfell will take one chance too many with the elements.
Of course, coming among the Eskimos as we did in winter, we did not see them using their kayaks or their umiaks,* but our experience with dogs and komatik was pretty complete. These dogs are big wolfish creatures, which resemble wolves so closely in fact that when the dogs and wolves are together the one can scarcely be told from the other. It sometimes happens that a stray wolf will hobnob with the dogs, and litters of half wolf, half dog have been born at the posts.
* A large open boat with wooden frame and sealskin covering. The women row the umiaks while the men sit idle. It is beneath the dignity of the latter to handle the oars when women are present to do it.
There are no better Eskimo dogs to be found anywhere in the far north than the husky dogs of Ungava. Wonderful tales are told of long distances covered by them in a single day, the record trip of which I heard being one hundred and twelve miles. But this was in the spring, when the days were long and the snow hard and firm. The farthest I ever traveled myself in a single day with dogs and komatik was sixty miles. When the snow is loose and the days are short, twenty to thirty miles constitute a day’s work.
From five to twelve dogs are usually driven in one team, though sometimes a man is seen plodding along with a two-dog team, and occasionally as many as sixteen or eighteen are harnessed to a komatik, but these very large teams are unwieldy.
The komatiks in the Ungava district vary from ten to eighteen feet in length. The runners are about two and one-half inches thick at the bottom, tapering slightly toward the top to reduce friction where they sink into the snow. They are usually placed sixteen inches apart, and crossbars extending about an inch over the outer runner on either side are lashed across the runners by means of thongs of sealskin or heavy twine, which is passed through holes bored into the crossbars and the runners. The use of lashings instead of nails or screws permits the komatik to yield readily in passing over rough places, where metal fastenings would be pulled out, or be snapped off by the frost. On either side of each end of the overlapping ends of the crossbars notches are cut, around which sealskin thongs are passed in lashing on the load. The bottoms of the komatik runners are “mudded.” During the summer the Eskimos store up turf for this purpose, testing bits of it by chewing it to be sure that it contains no grit. When the cold weather comes the turf is mixed with warm water until it reaches the consistency of mud. Then with the hands it is molded over the bottom of the runners. The mud quickly freezes, after which it is carefully planed smooth and round. Then it is iced by applying warm water with a bit of hairy deerskin. These mudded runners slip very smoothly over the soft snow, but are liable to chip off on rough ice or when they strike rocks, as frequently happens, for the frozen mud is as brittle as glass. On the Atlantic coast from Nachvak south, mud is never used, and there the komatiks are wider and shorter with runners of not much more than half the thickness, and as you go south the komatiks continue to grow wider and shorter. In the south, too, hoop iron or whalebone is used for runner shoeing.
A sealskin thong called a bridle, of a varying length of from twenty to forty feet, is attached to the front of the komatik, and to the end of this the dogs’ traces are fastened. Each dog has an individual trace which may be from eight to thirty feet in length, depending upon the size of the team, so arranged that not more than two dogs are abreast, the “leader” having, of course, the longest trace of the pack. This long bridle and the long traces are made necessary by the rough country. They permit the animals to swerve well to one side clear of the komatik when coasting down a hillside. In the length of bridle and trace there is also a wide variation in different sections, those used in the south being very much shorter than those in the north. The dog harness is made usually of polar bear or sealskin. There are no reins. The driver controls his team by shouting directions, and with a walrus hide whip, which is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet in length. An expert with this whip, running after the dogs, can hit any dog he chooses at will, and sometimes he is cruel to excess.
To start his team the driver calls “oo-isht,” (in the south this becomes “hoo-eet”) to turn to the right “ouk,” to the left “ra-der, ra-der” and to stop “aw-aw.” The leader responds to the shouted directions and the pack follow.
The Ungava Eskimo never upon any account travels with komatik and dogs without a snow knife. With this implement he can in a little while make himself a comfortable snow igloo, where he may spend the night or wait for a storm to pass.
In winter it is practically impossible to buy a dog in Ungava. The people have only enough for their own use, and will not part with them, and if they have plenty to eat it is difficult to employ them for any purpose. This I discovered very promptly when I endeavored to induce some of them to take us a stage on our journey homeward.