SNOWY OWL, CAPE SHERIDANSNOWY OWL, CAPE SHERIDAN
This little refuge is about a 3,000 mile sail from New York and about 2,000 miles as the bird flies. It is about 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle and about half way from that great latitudinal mark to the Pole itself. Here the great arctic night averages one hundred and ten days in winter, during which time no ray of light falls upon the sight, save that of the moon and the stars, while in summer the sun is visible every moment for an equal number of days. Within the limits of this little country is found the favorite haunt of the reindeer, which find sufficient pasturage. But we are interested for the present in this unique spot only in passing and for the reason that here we picked up the little denizens of the frigid zone who were to help us in our struggle farther north.
Before we reached this odd little oasis, but several hundred miles beyond the Arctic Circle, we came to a most significant point in our upward journey, marking as it did the grimness of the task before us. No civilized man can die in this savage Northland without his grave having a deep meaning for those who come afterwards; and constantly, as we sailed on, these voiceless reminders of heroic bones told their silent but powerful story.
At the southern limit of Melville Bay we passed the Duck Islands, where is the little graveyard of the Scotch whalers who were the pioneers in forcing the passage of Melville Bay and who died there, waiting for the ice to open. These graves date back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. From this point on, the arctic highway is marked by the graves of those who have fallen in the terrible fight with coldand hunger. These rude rock piles bring home to any thoughtful person the meaning of arctic exploration. The men who lie there were not less courageous, not less intelligent, than the members of my own party; they were simply less fortunate.
Let us look along that highway for a moment and consider these memorials. At North Star Bay are one or two graves of men from the British shipNorth Star, which wintered there in 1850. Out on the Cary Islands is the nameless grave of one of the ill-fated Kallistenius Expedition. Still farther north, at Etah, is the grave of Sontag, the astronomer of Hayes's Expedition; and a little above it, that of Ohlsen of Kane's party. On the opposite side are the unmarked places where sixteen of Greely's ill-fated party died. Still farther north, on the eastern or Greenland side, is the grave of Hall, the American commander of the Polaris Expedition. On the western, or Grant Land side, are the graves of two or three sailors of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876. And right on the shore of the central Polar Sea, near Cape Sheridan, is the grave of the Dane, Petersen, the interpreter of the British Arctic Expedition of 1876. These graves stand as mute records of former efforts to win the prize, and they give a slight indication of the number of brave but less fortunate men who have given the last possession of mortal life in their pursuit of the arctic goal.
The first time I saw the graves of the whalers on Duck Islands I sat there, in the arctic sunlight, looking at those headboards, sobered with a realization of what they meant. When I first saw Sontag's grave,at Etah, I carefully replaced the stones around it, as a tribute to a brave man. At Cape Sabine, where Greely's party died, I was the first man to step into the ruins of the stone hut after the seven survivors were taken away years before—the first man, and I stepped into those ruins in a blinding snowstorm late in August, and saw there the mementos of those unfortunates.
Passing the Duck Islands on the upward voyage, approaching Cape York in 1908, and thinking of the graves there, I little dreamed that a loved member of my own party, Professor Ross G. Marvin, who ate at my table and acted as my secretary, was fated to add his name to this long list of arctic victims, and that his grave, in uncounted fathoms of black water, was to be the most northerly grave on this earth.
We reached Cape York on the first day of August. Cape York is the bold, bluff headland which marks the southern point of the stretch of arctic coast inhabited by my Eskimos, the most northerly human beings in the world. It is the headland whose snowy cap I have seen so many times rising in the distance above the horizon line of Melville Bay as my ships have steamed north. At the base of the headland nestles the most southerly of all the Eskimo villages, and it has marked the point of meeting, year after year, between the members of this tribe and myself.
At Cape York we were on the threshold of the actual work. I had on board the ship when I arrived there all the equipment and assistance which the civilized world could yield. Beginning there, I was to take on the tools, the material, the personnel, that the arcticregions themselves were to furnish for their own conquest. Cape York, or Melville Bay, is the dividing line between the civilized world on the one side and the arctic world on the other—the arctic world with its equipment of Eskimos, dogs, walrus, seal, fur clothing, and aboriginal experience.
Behind me lay the civilized world, which was now absolutely useless, and which could give me nothing more. Ahead of me lay that trackless waste through which I must literally cut my way to the goal. Even the ship's journey from Cape York to winter quarters on the north coast of Grant Land is not "plain sailing"; in fact, it is not sailing at all during the later stages; it is jamming and butting and dodging and hammering the ice, with always the possibility that the antagonist will hit back a body blow. It is like the work of a skilled heavy-weight pugilist, or the work of an old Roman fighter with the cestus.
BRANT-GOOSEBRANT-GOOSESABINE'S GULLSABINE'S GULLRED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALERED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALEKING EIDER, DRAKEKING EIDER, DRAKE
BRANT-GOOSEBRANT-GOOSE
SABINE'S GULLSABINE'S GULL
RED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALERED-THROATED DIVER, MALE AND FEMALE
KING EIDER, DRAKEKING EIDER, DRAKE
Beyond Melville Bay the world, or what we know as the world, is left behind. On leaving Cape York, we had exchanged the multifarious purposes of civilization for the two purposes for which there is room in those wide wastes: food for man and dog, and the covering of miles of distance.
Behind me now lay everything that was mine, everything that a man personally loves, family, friends, home, and all those human associations which linked me with my kind. Ahead of me lay—my dream, the goal of that irresistible impulse which had driven me for twenty-three years to measure myself, time after time, against the frigidNoof the Great North.
Should I succeed? Should I return? Success in the attainment of 90° North would not inevitably carry with it the safe return. We had learnedthaton recrossing the "big lead" in 1906. In the Arctic the chances are always against the explorer. The inscrutable guardians of the secret appear to have a well-nigh inexhaustible reserve of trump cards to play against the intruder who insists upon dropping into the game. The life is a dog's life, but the work is a man's work.
As we steamed northward from Cape York, on the first day of August, 1908, I felt that I was now in truth face to face with the final struggle. Everything in my life appeared to have led up to this day. All my years of work and all my former expeditions were merely preparations for this last and supreme effort. It has been said that well-directed labor toward a given end is an excellent kind of prayer for its attainment. If that be so, then prayer has been my portion for many years. Through all the seasons of disappointment and defeat I had never ceased to believe that the great white mystery of the North must eventually succumb to the insistence of human experience and will, and, standing there with my back to the world and my face toward that mystery, I believed that I should win in spite of all the powers of darkness and of desolation.
As we approached Cape York, which is farther from the Pole in actual distance than New York is from Tampa, Florida, it was with a peculiar feeling of satisfaction that I saw the foremost of our Eskimo friends putting out to meet us in their tiny kayaks, or skin canoes. Here is the southernmost of the Eskimo villages, by which a permanent settlement is not meant, for these barbarians are nomads. One year there may be two families there; another year ten; and still another season none at all, for the Eskimos seldom live more than a year or two in one place.
As we neared the Cape, the headland was encircled and guarded by an enormous squadron of floating icebergs which made it difficult for theRooseveltto get near shore; but long before we reached these bergs the hunters of the settlement were seen putting out to greet us. The sight of them skimming the water so easily in their frail kayaks was the most welcome spectacle I had seen since we sailed from Sydney.
ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE ROOSEVELT IN KAYAKS
ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE ROOSEVELT IN KAYAKS
It seems fitting to give a good deal of attention at this point to the consideration of this interesting little race, the most northerly people in all the world, for their help is one of the elements without which it is possible that the North Pole might never have beenreached. Some years ago, in fact, I had occasion to write of these people a few sentences that, as it has turned out, were so prophetic that it seems appropriate to reproduce them here. Those sentences were:
"I have often been asked: Of what use are Eskimos to the world? They are too far removed to be of value for commercial enterprises and, furthermore, they lack ambition. They have no literature nor, properly speaking, any art. They value life only as does a fox, or a bear, purely by instinct. But let us not forget that these people, trustworthy and hardy, will yet prove their value to mankind. With their help, the world shall discover the Pole."
The hope that had been expressed in this language so long before was in my mind as I saw my old friends coming out to meet us in their tiny kayaks, for I realized that I was once more in contact with these faithful dwellers of the North, who had been my constant companions for so many years, through all the varying circumstances and fortunes of my arctic work, and from whom I was again to select the pick and flower of the hunters of the whole tribe, extending from Cape York to Etah, to assist in this last effort to win the prize.
ESKIMO IN KAYAK
ESKIMO IN KAYAK
Since 1891 I had been living and working with these people, gaining their absolute confidence, making them my debtors for things given them, earning their gratitude by saving, time after time, the lives of their wives and children by supplying them with food when they were on the verge of starvation. For eighteen years I had been training them in my methods; or, to put itanother way, teaching them how to modify and concentrate their wonderful ice technic and endurance, so as to make them useful for my purposes. I had studied their individual characters, as any man studies the human tools with which he expects to accomplish results, until I knew just which ones to select for a quick, courageous dash, and just which dogged, unswerving ones would, if necessary, walk straight through hell for the object I had placed before them.
I know every man, woman, and child in the tribe, from Cape York to Etah. Prior to 1891 they had never been farther north than their own habitat. Eighteen years ago I went to these people, and my first work was from their country as a base.
Much nonsense has been told by travelers in remote lands about the aborigines' regarding as gods the white men who come to them, but I have never placed much credence in these stories. My own experience has been that the average aborigine is just as content with his own way as we are with ours, just as convinced of his own superior knowledge, and that he adjusts himself with his knowledge in regard to things in the same way that we do. The Eskimos are not brutes; they are just as human as Caucasians. They know that I am their friend, and they have abundantly proved themselves my friends.
When I went ashore at Cape York I found there four or five families, living in their summer tupiks, or skin tents, From them I learned what had happened in the tribe in the last two years; who had died, in what families children had been born, where this family and that family were then living—that is, the distributionof the tribe for that particular summer. I thus learned where to find the other men I wanted.
It was about seven o'clock in the morning when we arrived at Cape York. I selected the few men needed from that place, told them that when the sun reached a certain point in the heavens that evening the ship would sail, and that they and their families and possessions must be aboard the ship. As hunting is the only industry in these Eskimo villages, and as their goods are of an easily portable character, consisting mainly of tents, dogs and sledges, a few skins, pots and pans, they were able to transport themselves to theRooseveltin our boats without much loss of time. As soon as they were on board we started north again.
There was no question of their willingness to follow me; they were only too glad to go. These men knew from past experience that, once enrolled as members of my expedition, there was no danger that their wives or children would suffer from hunger; and they knew also that at the end of the journey, when we brought them back to their homes, I would turn over to them the remaining supplies and equipment of the expedition, which would ensure living for another year in absolute plenty, that, in comparison with the other members of their tribe, they would indeed be multi-millionaires.
An intense and restless curiosity is one of the peculiar characteristics of these people. As an illustration, one winter, years ago, when Mrs. Peary was in Greenland with me, an old woman of the tribe walked a hundred miles from her village to our winter quarters in order that she might see a white woman.
It may perhaps be fairly said that it has been my fortune to utilize the Eskimos for the purpose of discovery to a degree equaled by no other explorer, and for that reason it may not seem amiss to suspend the general narrative long enough to give a little information regarding their characteristics, the more so as without some knowledge of these peculiar people it would be impossible for any one really to understand the workings of my expedition to the North Pole. It has been a fundamental principle of all my arctic work to utilize the Eskimos for the rank and file of my sledge parties. Without the skilful handiwork of the women we should lack the warm fur clothing which is absolutely essential to protect us from the winter cold, while the Eskimo dog is the only tractive force suitable for serious arctic sledge work.
The members of this little tribe or family, inhabiting the western coast of Greenland from Cape York to Etah, are in many ways quite different from the Eskimos of Danish Greenland, or those of any other arctic territory. There are now between two hundred and twenty and two hundred and thirty in the tribe. They are savages, but they are not savage; they are without government, but they are not lawless; they are utterly uneducated according to our standard, yet they exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence. In temperament like children, with all a child's delight in little things, they are nevertheless enduring as the most mature of civilized men and women, and the best of them are faithful unto death. Without religion and having no idea of God, they will share their last meal with any one who is hungry, while the aged and the helpless amongthem are taken care of as a matter of course. They are healthy and pure-blooded; they have no vices, no intoxicants, and no bad habits—not even gambling. Altogether, they are a people unique upon the face of the earth. A friend of mine well calls them the philosophic anarchists of the North.
I have been studying the Eskimos for eighteen years and no more effective instruments for arctic work could be imagined than these plump, bronze-skinned, keen-eyed and black-maned children of nature. Their very limitations are their most valuable endowments for the purposes of arctic work. I have a sincere interest in these people, aside from their usefulness to me; and my plan from the beginning has been to give them such aid and instruction as would fit them more effectively to cope with their own austere environment, and to refrain from teaching them anything which would tend to weaken their self-confidence or to make them discontented with their lot.
The suggestions of some well-meaning persons that they be transported to a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship; while to our complex environment they could not adjust themselves without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief virtues. To Christianize them would be quite impossible; but the cardinal graces of faith, hope, and charity they seem to have already, for without themthey could never survive the six-months' night and the many rigors of their home.
Their feeling for me is a blending of gratitude and confidence. To understand what my gifts have meant to them, imagine a philanthropic millionaire descending upon an American country town and offering every man there a brownstone mansion and an unlimited bank account. But even this comparison falls short of the reality, for in the United States even the poorest boy knows that there is a possibility of his attaining for himself those things on which he sets his heart, if he will labor and endure, while to the Eskimos the things which I have given them are absolutely out of their world, as far beyond their own unaided efforts as the moon and Mars are beyond the dwellers on this planet.
My various expeditions into that region have had the effect of raising the Eskimos from the most abject destitution, lacking every appliance and accessory of civilized life, to a position of relative affluence, with the best material for their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization. Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons; now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood, and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved the whole tribe from the formerly ever-present danger of starvation for a family, or even an entire village.
There is a theory, first advanced by Sir Clements Markham, ex-president of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that the Eskimos are the remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon; that the last members of this tribe were driven out on the Arctic Ocean by the fierce waves of Tartar invasion in the Middle Ages, and that they found their way to the New Siberian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet undiscovered to Grinnell Land and Greenland. I am inclined to believe in the truth of this theory for the following reasons:
Some of the Eskimos are of a distinctly Mongolian type, and they display many Oriental characteristics, such as mimicry, ingenuity, and patience in mechanical duplication. There is a strong resemblance between their stone houses and the ruins of the houses found in Siberia. The Eskimo girl brought home by Mrs. Peary, in 1894, was mistaken by Chinamen for one of their own people. It has also been suggested that their invocation of the spirits of their dead may be a survival of Asian ancestor worship.
As a general rule the Eskimos are short in stature, as are the Chinese and Japanese, though I could name several men who stand about five feet ten inches. The women are short and plump. They all have powerful torsos, but their legs are rather slender. The muscular development of the men is astonishing, though their fatty roundness hides the differentiation of the muscles.
These people have no written speech, and their language is agglutinative, with complicated prefixes andsuffixes, by which they extend a word to a considerable length from the original stem. The language is relatively easy to acquire, and during my first summer in Greenland I gained a fair knowledge of it. In addition to their ordinary speech, they have an esoteric language known only to the adults of the tribe. I cannot say wherein it differs from the other, having made no attempt to learn it, and I doubt if any white man has been fully taught this secret speech, as the knowledge is carefully guarded by its possessors.
The Eskimos of this region have not, as a rule, applied themselves to the study of English, for they were clever enough to see that we could learn their language more easily than they could learn ours. Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang or profanity.
On the whole, these people are much like children, and should be treated as such. They are easily elated, easily discouraged. They delight in playing tricks on each other and on the sailors, are usually good-natured, and when they are sulky there is no profit in being vexed with them. The methods which children characterize as "jollying" are best for such emergencies. Their mercurial temperament is Nature's provision for carrying them through the long dark night, for if they were morose like the North American Indians, the whole tribe would long ago have lain down and died of discouragement, so rigorous is their lot.
In managing the Eskimos it is necessary to make a psychological study of them, and to consider theirpeculiar temperament. They are keenly appreciative of kindness, but, like children, they will impose upon a weak or vacillating person. A blending of gentleness and firmness is the only effective method. The fundamental point in all my dealings with them has been always to mean just what I say and to have things done exactly as ordered. For instance, if I tell an Eskimo that if he does a certain thing properly he will get a certain reward, he always gets the reward if he obeys. On the other hand, if I tell him that a certain undesirable thing will happen if he follows a course I have forbidden, that thing invariably happens.
I have made it to their interest to do what I want done. For example, the best all-round man on a long sledge journey got more than the others. A record was always kept of the game secured by each Eskimo, and the best hunter got a special prize. Thus I kept them interested in their work. The man who killed the musk ox with the finest set of horns and the man who killed the deer with the most magnificent antlers were specially rewarded. I have made it a point to be firm with them, but to rule them by love and gratitude rather than by fear and threats. An Eskimo, like an Indian, never forgets a broken promise—nor a fulfilled one.
It would be misleading to infer that almost any man who went to the Eskimos with gifts could obtain from them the kind of service they have given me; for it must be remembered that they have known me personally for nearly twenty years. I have saved whole villages from starvation, and the children are taught by their parents that if they grow up andbecome good hunters or good seamstresses, as the case may be, "Pearyaksoah" will reward them sometime in the not too distant future. Old Ikwah, for example, who is the father of the girl for whose possession hot-hearted young Ooqueah of my North Pole party fought his way with me to the goal, was the first Eskimo I had, away back in 1891.
This young knight of the Northland is an illustration of the fact that sometimes an Eskimo man or woman may be as intense in his or her affairs of the heart as we are. As a rule, however, they are more like children in their affections, faithful to their mates from a sort of domestic habit, but easily consoled for the loss of them by death or otherwise.
DECK SCENE ON THE ROOSEVELT
DECK SCENE ON THE ROOSEVELT
In a little arctic oasis lives the meager and scattered handful of the Eskimo population—a little oasis along the frowning western coast of Northern Greenland between Melville Bay and Kane Basin. This region is three thousand miles north of New York City, as a steamer goes; it lies about half way between the Arctic Circle and the Pole, within the confines of the great night. Here, taking the mean latitude, for one hundred and ten days in summer the sun never sets; for one hundred and ten days in winter the sun never rises, and no ray of light save from the icy stars and the dead moon falls on the frozen landscape.
THE ICE CLIFFS OF HUBBARD GLACIERTHE ICE CLIFFS OF HUBBARD GLACIER
There is a savage grandeur in this coast, carved by eternal conflict with storms and glaciers, bergs and grinding ice-fields; but behind the frowning outer mask nestle in summer many grass-carpeted, flower-sprinkled, sun-kissed nooks. Millions of little auks breed along this shore. Between the towering cliffs are glaciers which launch at intervals their fleets of bergs upon the sea; before these cliffs lies the blue water dotted with masses of glistening ice of all shapes and sizes; behind the cliffs is the great Greenland ice cap, silent, eternal, immeasurable—the abode, say the Eskimos, of evil spirits and the souls of the unhappy dead.
In some places on this coast in summer, the grass is as thick and long as on a New England farm. Here bloom poppies, with dandelions, buttercups, and saxifrage, though to the best of my knowledge the flowers are all devoid of perfume. I have seen bumblebees even north of Whale Sound; there are flies and mosquitoes, and even a few spiders. Among the fauna of this country are the reindeer (the Greenland caribou), the fox—both blue and white—the arctic hare, the Polar bear, and perhaps once in a generation a stray wolf.
But in the long sunless winter this whole region—cliffs, ocean, glaciers—is covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ventures out he seems to be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague, unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the Eskimos believe that evil spirits walk upon the wind.
During the winter these patient and cheerful children of the North live in igloos, or huts, built of stones and earth. It is only when they are traveling, as sometimes during the moonlit period of the month, that they live in the snow igloos, which three good Eskimos can build in an hour or two, and which we built at the end of every day's march on our sledge journey to the Pole. In summer they live in the tupiks, or skin tents. The stone houses are permanent, and a good one will last perhaps a hundred years, with a little repairing of the roof in summer. Igloos arefound in groups, or villages, at intervals along the coast from Cape York Bay to Anoratok. As the people are nomadic, these permanent dwellings belong to the tribe, and not to individuals, constituting thus a crude sort of arctic socialism. One year all the houses in a settlement may be occupied; the next year none, or only one or two.
These houses are about six feet high by eight to ten feet wide by ten to twelve feet long, and one may be constructed in a month. An excavation is made in the earth, which forms the floor of the house; then the walls are built up solidly with stones chinked with moss; long, flat stones are laid across the top of the walls; this roof is covered with earth, and the whole house is banked in with snow. The construction of the arched roof is on the plan which engineers know as the cantilever, and not that of the Roman arch. The long, flat stones which form the roof are weighted and counter-weighted at the outer ends, and in all my arctic experience I have never known the stone roof of an igloo to fall upon the inmates. There are never any complaints made to the Building Department. There is no door in the side, but a hole in the floor at the entrance leads to a tunnel, sometimes ten, sometimes fifteen, or even twenty-five, feet in length, through which the tenants crawl into their home. There is always a small window in the front of the igloo. The window space is not glazed, of course, but is covered with the thin, intestinal membrane of seals, skilfully seamed together. To a traveler across the dark and snowy winter waste, the yellow light from the interior lamp is visible, sometimes, a long distance away.
At the farther end of the igloo is the bed platform, raised about a foot and a half above the earthen floor. Usually this platform is not built, but is the natural level of the earth, the standing space being dug before it. In some houses, however, the bed platform is made of long, flat stones raised upon stone supports. When the Eskimos are ready to move into the stone houses in the fall, they cover the bed platform first with grass, which they bring in by the sledge-load; the grass is then covered with sealskins; above these are spread deerskins, or musk-ox skins,—which form the mattress. Deerskins are used for blankets. Pajamas are not in fashion with the Eskimos. They simply remove all their clothes and crawl in between the deerskins.
The lamp, which stands on a large stone at the front of the bed platform on one side, is kept burning all the time, whether the family is asleep or awake. An imaginative person might liken this lamp to an ever-burning sacred flame upon the stone altar of the Eskimo home. It serves also as a stove for heating and cooking, and makes the igloo so warm that the inhabitants wear little clothing when indoors. They sleep with their heads toward the lamp, so the woman may reach out and tend it.
On the other side of the house food is generally stored. When two families occupy one igloo, there may be a second lamp on the other side; and in that case the food must be stored under the bed. The temperature of these houses varies from eighty or ninety degrees Fahrenheit, on the bed platform and near the roof, to something below freezing point at the floorlevel. There is a little air-hole in the center of the roof, but in the happy home of an Eskimo family, in winter, the atmosphere could almost be handled with a shovel.
Often, in winter traveling, I have been obliged to sleep in one of these hospitable igloos. On such occasions I have made the best of things, as a man would if compelled to sleep in a tenth-rate railroad hotel or a slum lodging-house, but I have tried to forget the experience as soon as possible. It is not well for an arctic explorer to be too fastidious. A night in one of these igloos, with the family at home, is an offense to every civilized sense, especially that of smell; but there are times when a man, after a long sledge journey in the terrible cold and wind, hungry and footsore, will welcome the dim light shining through the translucent window of an igloo as one welcomes the light of home. It means warmth and comfort, supper, and blessed sleep.
There is no blinking the fact that my Eskimo friends are very dirty. When I have them on the ship with me they make heroic efforts to wash themselves occasionally; but in their own homes they practically never do, and in winter they have no water except from melted snow. On rare occasions, when the dirt gets too thick for comfort, they may remove the outer layer with a little oil. I shall never forget the amazement with which they made acquaintance with the white man's use of the tooth-brush.
With the coming of the summer, the stone and earth houses become damp, dark holes, and the roofs are taken off to dry and ventilate the interior. Thefamily then moves outside and sets up the tupik, or skin tent, which is their home from about the first of June till some time in September. The tupik is made of sealskins, with the hair on the inside. Ten or twelve skins, sewed together in one large piece, make a tent. It is stretched on poles, high in front and sloping toward the back, thus offering the least possible resistance to the wind, the edges held down with stones. The earth floor of these tents is six or eight feet wide and eight or ten feet long, according to the size of the family.
In recent years my Eskimos have adopted an improvement upon the building customs of the west coast natives, and many of them have an entrance extension to their tents made of transparent tanned sealskins, thick enough to keep out the rain but not the light. This adds to the roominess and comfort of their summer dwellings. A usual practice among the better class of Eskimos is to use the old tupik of the previous summer for a rain or weather-guard to the new tent. In heavy winds or heavy summer rains, the old tupik is simply spread over the new one, thus giving a double thickness and protection to the owners.
The bed platform in the tupik is now generally made of lumber, which I have furnished, raised on stones, and in pleasant weather the cooking is done outside. Oil is the only fuel for heat, light, and cooking. The Eskimo women trim the lamps so well that there is no smoke from them, unless there is a draft in the tent or igloo. They cut small pieces of blubber, which they lay on moss and ignite, and theheat from the mossdriesout the oil, making a surprisingly hot flame. Until I gave them matches, they had only the primitive means of ignition by flint and steel, which they obtained from a vein of pyrites. When I first went up there, all their lamps and rectangular pots were made of soapstone, two or three veins of which are found in that country. Their ability to utilize the soapstone and pyrites is an illustration of their intelligence and ingenuity.
As a rule little clothing is worn in the tupiks in warm weather, as the normal summer temperature is around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and in the strong sunlight may go as high as eighty-five or even ninety-five.
The trial marriage is an ineradicable custom among the Eskimos. If a young man and woman are not suited with each other, they try again, and sometimes several times; but when they find mates to whom they are adapted, the arrangement is generally permanent. If two men want to marry the same woman, they settle the question by a trial of strength, and the better man has his way. These struggles are not fights, as the disputants are amiable; they are simply tests of wrestling, or sometimes of pounding each other on the arm to see which man can stand the pounding the longer.
Their fundamental acceptance of the proposition that might is right in such matters sometimes extends to a man saying to the husband of a woman: "I am the better man." In such case the husband has either to prove his superiority in strength, or yield the woman to the other. If a man grows tired of his wife, he simply tells her there is not room for her in his igloo.She may return to her parents, if they are living; she may go to a brother or a sister; or she may send word to some man in the tribe that she is now at liberty and is willing to start life again. In these cases of primitive divorce, the husband keeps one or all of the children if he wants them; if not, the woman takes them with her.
ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILDESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD
The Eskimos do not have many children, two or three being the usual number. The woman does not take her husband's name in any case. Akatingwah, for instance, will remain Akatingwah, whether she has had one husband or several. Children do not address their parents as father and mother, but call them by their names, though sometimes very small children use a diminutive which corresponds to our "mamma."
Among the Eskimos the woman is as much a part of the man's property as his dog or sledge—except in some rare cases. The cause of the suffragettes has as yet made little headway in this region. I remember one instance in which an Eskimo woman had a difference of opinion with her husband, and proved her right to independence by blackening the old man's eye; but I am afraid that the more conservative members of the tribe attributed this unfeminine behavior to the corrupting influence of contact with civilization.
As there are more men than women among the Eskimos, the girls marry very young, often about the age of twelve. In many cases the marriages are arranged between the parents when the children are quite young; but the boy and girl are not bound, andwhen they are old enough they are permitted to decide for themselves. In fact, they can make several such decisions without losing caste. On the last expedition, as on those of former years, I found that a number of matrimonial changes had taken place among my Northern friends since I was last among them.
ESKIMO CHILDRENESKIMO CHILDREN
It would be worse than useless to attempt to engraft our marriage customs upon these naive children of Nature. Should an arctic explorer consider it his duty to tell a young Eskimo that it was not right for him to exchange wives with his friend, it would be well for the explorer to have his supporting argument well prepared beforehand, for the censured one would probably open wide his eyes and inquire, "Why not?"
These people of the ice-land, like all intelligent savages, are remarkably curious. If confronted, say, with a package containing various supplies unknown to them, they will not rest until they have examined every article of the lot, touched it, turned it over, and even tasted it, chattering all the while like a flock of blackbirds. They exhibit, too, in marked degree, all the Oriental capacity for imitation. Out of walrus ivory, in some respects their substitute for steel,—and a surprisingly good substitute it is,—they will construct amazingly good models or copies of various objects, while it does not take them long to master the use of such tools of civilization as may be put into their hands. It will easily be seen how valuable and useful a quality this has proved for the purposes of the arctic explorer. If he could not rely on the Eskimo to do the white man's work with the whiteman's tools, the labors of the arctic traveler would be tremendously increased and the size of his expedition would have to be enlarged to limits that might be found unwieldy in the extreme.
KUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIESKUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIES
My own observations of this interesting people have taught me to repose no confidence whatever in the tales of barbaric craft and cruelty which I have heard of them. On the contrary, taking into consideration their uncivilized state, they must be ranked as a humane people. Moreover, they have always been quick to grasp the purposes that I have had in view and to bend their energies toward achieving the ends for which my expeditions have been striving.
Their humanity, as has been indicated, takes a form that would delight a socialist. They are generous and hospitable in a crude way, almost without exception. As a general rule, good and bad fortune are shared. The tribe shares in the proceeds of good luck on the part of the hunters and, as their existence depends on hunting, this accounts in large measure for the preservation of the tribe.
Hard as is the life of the Eskimo, his end is usually as rigorous. All his life he is engaged in constant warfare with the inhospitable elements of his country, and Death, when it arrives, usually comes in some violent form. Old age has few terrors for the Eskimo, for he seldom lives to reach it. He dies, as a rule, in harness, drowned by the capsizing of his skin canoe, caught by the overturning of an iceberg, or crushed by a snow-slide or a rock-slide. It is seldom that an Eskimo lives to be more than sixty years of age.
Strictly speaking, the Eskimos have no religion, in the sense in which we use the word. But they believe in the survival of the person after death, and they believe in spirits—especially evil spirits. It may be that their lack of any idea of a beneficent God, and their intense consciousness of evil influences, result from the terrible hardships of their lives. Having no special blessings for which to be grateful to a kind Creator, they have not evolved a conception of Him, while the constantly recurring menaces of the dark, the bitter cold, the savage wind and gnawing hunger, have led them to people the air with invisible enemies. The beneficent spirits are those of their ancestors (another Oriental touch), while they have a whole legionof malevolent spirits, led by Tornarsuk, the great devil himself.
They are constantly trying to propitiate Tornarsuk by incantations; and when they kill game, an offering is made to him. The devil is supposed to have a keenappreciationof these tidbits. On leaving a snow igloo the Eskimos are careful to kick the front out of it, that the evil spirits may not find shelter there, and when they throw away a worn-out garment it is never left intact, but is torn in such a way that the devil may not use it to warm himself. A comfortable devil is presumably more dangerous than a shivering one. Any sudden and unexplained barking or howling among the dogs indicates the invisible presence of Tornarsuk, and the men will run out and crack their whips or fire their rifles to scare away the invader. When, on board theRooseveltin winter quarters, I was suddenly aroused from sleep by the crack of rifles, I did not think there was a mutiny aboard—only that Tornarsuk had ridden by upon the wind.
When the ice presses hard against the ship, an Eskimo will call on his dead father to push it away; when the wind blows with special violence, ancestors are again appealed to. Passing along a cliff, on a sledge journey, a man will sometimes stop and listen and then say: "Did you hear what the devil said just then?" I have asked the Eskimo to repeat to me the words of Tornarsuk, up there on the cliff, and I would not dream of laughing at my faithful friends at such a time; the messages of Tornarsuk I receive with a respectful gravity.
There are no chiefs among these people, no men in authority; but there are medicine men who have some influence. The angakok is generally not loved—he knows too many unpleasant things that are going to happen, so he says. The business of the angakok is mainly singing incantations and going into trances, for he has no medicines. If a person is sick, he may prescribe abstinence from certain foods for a certain number of moons; for instance, the patient must not eat seal meat, or deer meat, but only the flesh of the walrus. Monotonous incantations take the place of the white man's drugs. The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive—if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the angakok—a combination of the gifts of the fortune teller, the mental healer, and the psalmodist, one might say.
Once, years ago, my little brown people got tired of an angakok, one Kyoahpahdo, who had predicted too many deaths; and they lured him out on a hunting expedition from which he never returned. But these executions for the peace of the community are rare.
Their burial customs are rather interesting. When an Eskimo dies, there is no delay about removing the body. Just as soon as possible it is wrapped, fully clothed, in the skins which formed the bed, and someextra garments are added to insure the comfort of the spirit. Then a strong line is tied round the body, and it is removed, always head first, from the tent or igloo, and dragged head first over the snow or ground to the nearest place where there are enough loose stones to cover it. The Eskimos do not like to touch a dead body, and it is therefore dragged as a sledge would be. Arrived at the place selected for the grave, they cover the corpse with loose stones, to protect it from the dogs, foxes, and ravens, and the burial is complete.
According to Eskimo ideas, the after-world is a distinctly material place. If the deceased is a hunter, his sledge and kayak, with his weapons and implements, are placed close by, and his favorite dogs, harnessed and attached to the sledge, are strangled so that they may accompany him on his journey into the unseen. If the deceased is a woman, her lamp and the little wooden frame on which she has dried the family boots and mittens are placed beside the grave. A little blubber is placed there, too, and a few matches, if they are available, so that the woman may light the lamp and do some cooking in transit; a cup or bowl is also provided, in which she may melt snow for water. Her needle, thimble, and other sewing things are placed with her in the grave.
In former years, if the woman had a small baby in the hood it was strangled to keep her company; but I have, of course, discouraged this practice, and during the last two expeditions I have not heard of any strangled babies. Among the members of my own party I have simply forbidden the practice, and have promised the relatives sufficient condensed milk andother foods to keep the infant alive. If they have reverted to the old custom during my absence, they have not mentioned the fact to me, knowing of my disapproval.
If a death occurs in a tent, the poles are removed, and the tent is left on the ground to rot or blow away. It is never used again. If the death occurs in an igloo, the structure is vacated and not used again for a long time. The relatives of the dead observe certain formalities in regard to food and clothing, and the name of the lost one is never mentioned. If any other members of the tribe have the same name, they must take another until an infant is born to which the proscribed name can be given. This appears to remove the ban.
Eskimos are children in their grief, as in their pleasure; they weep for a dead friend a few days, then they forget. Even a mother who has been inconsolable at the death of her baby soon laughs again and thinks of other things.
In a country where the stars are visible for so many weeks at a time it is not strange perhaps that they receive much attention from the natives. The Eskimos are, within barbaric limits, astronomers. The principal constellations visible in northern latitudes are well known to them and they have given them their own names and descriptions. In the Great Dipper they see a herd of celestial reindeer. The Pleiades are to the Eskimos a team of dogs pursuing a solitary polar bear. Gemini they describe as two stones in the entrance of an igloo. The moon and the sun represent to the Eskimo, as to some of our North American Indian tribes, a fleeing maiden and her pursuing admirer.
Time is, of course, of small value to the Eskimo, so far as he is himself personally concerned, yet after the Eskimo has been trained to the ways of the white man he seems to absorb an excellent notion of the value of punctuality and will carry out orders with a surprising degree of promptness and despatch.
The strength and capacity for enduring hardships exhibited by this people is extraordinary and is not, I believe, exceeded by that shown by any other aboriginal race now in existence. It is true that the average size of the Eskimo is, judged by our own standards, small; but I could give the names of several of them who stand five feet ten inches and weigh 185 pounds. The popular idea that they are clumsily fashioned is not correct. That notion is merely another case of judging a man by the clothes he wears, and an Eskimo's garments are not precisely what we should call of fashionable cut.
To my mind, the skin canoe of these Northern aborigines is, with its hunting implements, one of the most complete and ingenious manifestations of intelligence to be found in any aboriginal tribe. Over a light framework, an almost infinite number of small pieces of wood deftly lashed together with sealskin thongs, is stretched the tanned skin of seals, the seams being neatly sewed by the women, and then rendered water-tight by an application of seal oil and soot from the native lamps. The result is a craft of great buoyancy, some grace, and especial fitness and effectiveness for the purposes for which it is intended, that is, to enable the hunter to creep softly and noiselessly upon seal, walrus, or white whale. This canoe, while varyingsomewhat with the size of the owner and maker, will average between twenty and twenty-four inches in width by sixteen or eighteen feet in length. It carries one man only. I may have helped the Eskimos a little in perfecting it, by giving them more suitable material for the framework, but the canoe is original with them.
It will scarcely be considered strange that I have grown to love this childlike, simple people, as well as to value their many admirable and useful qualities. For it must be borne in mind that for nearly a quarter of a century they have been more thoroughly known to me than any other group of human beings in the world. The present generation of able-bodied Eskimos has practically grown up under my personal observation. Every individual member of the tribe—man, woman, and child—is known to me by name and sight as thoroughly as the patients of an old-fashioned family physician are known to him, and perhaps the feeling existing between us is not so very different. And the knowledge of individuals gained in this intimate way has been priceless in the work of reaching the Pole.
Take, for example, the quartet of young Eskimos who formed a portion of the sledge party that finally reached the long-courted "ninety North." The oldest of the four, Ootah, is about 34 years of age. This young man is one of the sturdiest of the tribe. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches and is a fine hunter. When I first saw him he was a young boy. Egingwah, another of the group, is about 26 years old, a big chap weighing about 175 pounds. Seegloo and Ooqueah are about 24 and 20 respectively. All four of them havebeen brought up to regard me as the patron, protector, and guide of their people. Their capacities, peculiarities, and individual characteristics were perfectly known to me, and they were chosen out of the whole tribe for the final great effort because I knew them to be most perfectly adapted to the work in hand.