CHAPTER XXII
WE MEET THE CHUKCHES
At dawn the next morning we left our igloo and went back over the trail we had made to the place where we had thrown off our supplies the afternoon before. Owing to the bad light and the drifting snow, we had a good deal of trouble in picking up our things and the trail itself was frequently obscured, but we managed to get our stuff together again and by nine o’clock were back at our igloo ready to begin our march eastward. We made some tea and at ten o’clock started on our way. On account of the overcast sky and the thick snow we could see little of the surrounding country and I had no way of telling just where we were. Later on, when I had a chance to go over the chart with Baron Kleist at East Cape, I figured out that we had landed near Cape Jakan, about sixty miles west of Cape North.
We found the travelling excellent along the tundra. The trail was plainly marked, for the wind had swept the land nearly bare of snow, and the tracks of the sledge that had passed that way before were defined enough to be easily followed. Afterour days of stumbling over the rough ice and crossing open leads it seemed as simple as walking along a country road. Our dogs were in bad shape and only one of the four was of any real use.
About two o’clock in the afternoon we could make out black objects some distance ahead of us; as we drew nearer we could see that they were moving. Kataktovick had been ahead, while I drove the dogs; now he stopped, came back and said, “Eskimo igloo.”
“Ardegar,” I replied, and told him to go on.
He set his face eastward again and I urged the dogs harder than ever. Ordinarily he was a good walker but now he seemed to be lagging a little and dropping back, nearer and nearer the dogs. I asked him what the matter was.
“Eskimo see me, they kill me,” he said. “My father my mother told me long time ago Eskimo from Point Barrow go to Siberia, never come back, Siberian Eskimo kill him.”
I told him that he was mistaken and repeated what I had said the day before about the hospitality of the Siberian Eskimo. Our troubles were at an end, I said; we should now have a place to dry our clothes and get them mended, or perhaps get new ones. “Maybe,” I added, “we get tobacco.”
Kataktovick was still reluctant, even though Itold him that perhaps we could get some dogs, or even persuade some of the Eskimo to travel along with us.
We could now make out that the objects ahead of us were human beings and that they were running about, apparently very much excited by our approach. Kataktovick hung back near the dogs. At length I said, “You drive the dogs now and I will go ahead.” He did so with evident relief and so we went on until I was within ten yards of the Eskimo. Then I put out my hand and walked towards them, saying in English, “How do you do?” They immediately rushed towards us and grasped us each warmly by the hand, jabbering away in great excitement. I could understand nothing of what they were saying, nor could Kataktovick. I tried to make them understand who we were and where we had come from but they were as ignorant of my language as I was of theirs.
There could be no doubt, however, that they were glad to see us and eager to show their hospitality, for the first thing we knew they had unharnessed our dogs and were feeding them, had taken our sledge into the outer part of their house and put it, with everything still on it, up on a kind of scaffold where it would be away from the dogs and sheltered from the weather. Then an old woman caught me by the arm and pushed me into theinner inclosure and on to a platform where three native lamps were going, one at each end and the other in the middle. The roof was so low that my head touched it, so I sat down. The woman brushed the snow off my clothes with a snow-beater shaped like a sickle and thinner than ours, placed a deerskin on the platform for me to sit on, pulled off my boots and stockings and hung them up to dry. Then she gave me a pair of deerskin stockings, not so long as ours, because, as I could see, the trousers that these Siberians wore were longer than ours. After that she took off my parka or fur jacket and hung it up to dry, while I pulled off my undershirt. Others were waiting upon Kataktovick in the same way and here we were, when we had hardly had time to say, “Thank you,” clad only in our bearskin trousers and seated comfortably about a large wooden dish, filled with frozen reindeer meat, eating sociably with twelve or fourteen perfect strangers to whom, it might be said, we had not been formally introduced. Never have I been entertained in a finer spirit of true hospitality and never have I been more thankful for the cordiality of my welcome. It was, as I was afterwards to learn, merely typical of the true humanity of these simple, kindly people.
When I had time to look about me, I found that I was seated in a large, square room, shaped somewhatlike a large snow igloo, though the Siberian Eskimo or Chukches, as these natives are called, know nothing of snow igloos or how to build them. Their house, as I was presently to learn, is called an aranga. There is a framework of heavy drift-wood, with a dome-shaped roof made of young saplings. Over all are stretched walrus skins, secured by ropes that pass over the roof and are fastened to heavy stones along the ground on opposite sides. The inner inclosure, which is the living apartment, is about ten feet by seven; it is separated by a curtain from the outer inclosure where sledges and equipment are kept. In the living apartment the Chukches eat and sleep on a raised platform of turf and hay, covered with tanned walrus skin. They light and heat their houses and do their cooking with a lamp which consists of a dish of walrus or seal oil, with a wick of moss in it. This is superior to wood for such a dwelling-place, for it makes no smoke; the lamp is lighted by a regulation safety match, though to be sure it is seldom allowed to go out. The three lamps in this aranga made the room pretty hot; the temperature, I should guess, was about a hundred.
Our hosts and hostesses, comprising three families who dwelt in three arangas at this place, were always drinking tea. They used copper kettles to melt the ice in and Russian tea, put up in compressedslabs a foot long, eight inches wide and three-fourths of an inch thick. In our honor the old woman brought out cups and saucers of the prettiest china I have ever seen; the cups were very small, holding about three sips. Each cup was wrapped in a dirty cloth, on which the old woman wiped it after carefully spitting on it to make it clean. When I saw her method of dish-washing, I was impolite enough to ask Kataktovick to go out and get my mug from the sledge; when he returned with it our hostess looked disappointed, though whether from the large size of the mug or because I did not apparently appreciate her kindness in using her best china for us, I cannot say.
When we had finished the wooden dish of reindeer meat, which though uncooked was good eating, they brought in another filled with walrus meat, evidently taken from a walrus killed the previous summer, which had a smell that I cannot describe. Out of politeness I tried to eat it, but found it was a little too much for me. Kataktovick enjoyed it. Later on I asked him why he wanted the same food we had aft while he was on the ship and yet was willing to eat this foul walrus meat; he said he liked it. Apparently although they live pretty much on white man’s food the Eskimo enjoy getting back once in a while to walrus meat and blubber that have seen better days.
After the walrus meat we had more tea. I had about a hundred saccharine tablets with me, so when the fresh tea was brought in I used them all up in it.
I could see that the Siberians were puzzled about Kataktovick. They talked about him and to him; at first, I am quite sure, they did not think that he was an Eskimo. They evidently took me for a trader, though they had not seen me go up the coast. The sledge was all bundled up, so that they could not see what I had, and rather lightly loaded, so that apparently I had sold my goods and was now working down the coast on my homeward journey. They were in evident doubt about Kataktovick, because he and they could not understand each other’s speech. He would talk to them in the language of the Alaskan Eskimo and they would put up their hands and touch their faces to show that they did not understand. Then they would talk to him and he, in turn, would throw up his hands and say, “Me no savvy.”
After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signs to show that they wanted to know where we came from. I took out my charts, showed them where we drifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and told them of the men there, showed them where the ship sank and where we had just landed. I first made a ship out of matches.When I saw that this did not convey any idea to them I drew pictures on the charts; to show where theKarluksank and what happened to make her sink, I drew a picture of a ship, surrounded it with lines intended to represent ice, clapped my hands and rubbed the whole thing out. This they understood well enough to know what I was driving at. They told me their names but I could neither pronounce them nor write them. We started our feast at two o’clock and continued through the afternoon and until late at night, having tea every five minutes.
We still had four or five of the little tin boxes of tabloid tea left; there were pictures of India on the box-covers which attracted the Chukches wonderfully. I had some Burberry cloth left and I had the old woman make a bag, into which I emptied the tea; then I gave the empty tins with their pretty covers to the children. The tea tablets interested the older folk so I contributed some to the “party.”