CHAPTER XII.

THE ESKIMO.

The Eskimo are a people in many points unique. They are, perhaps, the most widely-distributed race in the world, for they can be found over thousands of miles of ice-bound coast, maintaining themselves under the most rigorous conditions of climate in a manner no other breed on earth has equalled.

Their very environment, savagely inclement, has set them aloof from all other peoples; yet they have passed down through the centuries healthy and vigorous, inured to extraordinary hardships, and only failing when they come into touch with civilisation. All along the shores of the American continent they use the same language, possess the like customs, and hunt the same quarry with identical weapons, and have done so since before the memory of history. Yet, as the cold of those regions drives asunder the particles of ice, so has it driven asunder the Eskimo nation into small communities, forcing them into groups and families, scattered by the exigencies of finding a living in so bleak a land. Nevertheless, it has not defeated them; they hold their own strongly, and are, in fact, the only permanent conquerors of the Arctic.

My interest in them dates from a certain Christmas-time some twenty years ago. Fridtjof Nansen had just published his “First Crossing of Greenland,” a work which is furnished with a wealth of detail concerning the lives of this hunter people. I was at home from school for the holidays, and one morning, walking through the town near which we lived, I was attracted by a picture in a book laid open in the window of the leading bookseller. This picture, which has its place about the middle of the second volume, represents an Eskimo, in a skin _kayak_, throwing his harpoon at a whale. An iceberg in the background, the strange shape of the Eskimo, the seal, the _kayak_, and, more than all, the huge bladder-float, appealed with irresistible strength to my imagination. Were I writing fiction I would go on to describe how I hoarded my pocket-money and ultimately bought the book. As a matter of fact, I did nothing of the kind, but followed the easier and more ignoble course of having the name placed upon the library list. In due time it came, and I fell completely under the spell of one of the finest works of travel ever written. And I never forgot the Eskimo, and often dreamed of visiting them.

But the wish was not accomplished until an evening in 1903, when I at length found myself on board the _Virginia Lake_, steaming along the coast of Labrador, down a long _tickle_, or strait, shut in by cliffs. As the ship rounded a headland we perceived some dark figures squatting over a fire of wreckage built at the base of a huge cliff. They rose from their haunches, and uttered in unison a mournful cry, and fired off their guns; they generally greet the appearance of an alien vessel in this way. It was my first sight of the Eskimo, or Huskimaw, as the Newfoundland fisher calls him.

However kindly their present character, in former times, as has been said in the last chapter, the Eskimo were a fierce and treacherous people, who, by a show of much friendliness, would entice the men from the fishing vessels to come ashore, and, later, attack and massacre them with merciless ferocity. It is beyond question that the race in those days would have engaged in savage reprisals with white expeditions—to their own undoing, had not the Moravian Brethren stepped into the breach and saved them from themselves. The missionaries not only tamed them; but, having done so much, they further stood between their converts and another, and greater, menace than the weapons of the armed white invader, when the tide of immigration swept up the coast, bringing with it many of the evils of the outer world.

The missionaries recognised the danger, and endeavoured to keep the Eskimo to the mode of life and the food which had sufficed them for centuries—since the times, indeed, when the Skraelings or Skraelingers (the name that the old Norse voyagers gave to the Eskimo) first saw white faces in Greenland—and which they knew would give them the better chance of ultimate survival. But civilisation is insidious. Putting aside the question of strong drink, the Eskimo learned to love coffee, flour, tobacco; and none of these things are really good for his particular constitution, which seems to call for the blubber, the walrus head and seal that he loved to gorge upon in earlier days, when if he could obtain neither seal nor walrus he and his went hungry.

There were then no drones in any Eskimo hive. Hunger and the pressure of public opinion in an Arctic environment kills that side of Socialism which finds its sole issue in talk. Socialism there translates its doctrines into work and action. The true Socialist is the hunter who tows ashore a mighty walrus bull, and so by his labour enables the community to continue to exist.

[Illustration: A successful White Whale Hunt.]

[Illustration: Breakfast at a Summer Camp.]

In those days the Eskimo round of life was simple and healthy. They occasionally slew deer, but they depended upon the sea for the chief means of sustenance. Their lives held but one problem—how to obtain a sufficient supply of bear, walrus, seal and fish to enable them to keep on the hither side of starvation, to provide material for their clothes and their summer tents. Life was a struggle—hard and bitter, it is true; yet death presented himself to them under few forms. Hunger was one, accident—and accidents at sea in the _kayaks_ or boats of skin were common—was another. Sometimes, no doubt, death wore the face of disease, but the ailments known amongst them in their primitive state were few in number.

It is rather surprising to find that the Eskimo are far from looking up to the white man. In the early days of meeting with Europeans, he called them “_Kablunaet_,” “Sons of dogs”; if you contrast this with his name for his own folk, “Innuit,” which, being interpreted, means “Men,” you will comprehend that the Eskimo mind is far from flattering to Outlanders. They are apt as a people to value themselves on their own greater powers. One can imagine an Eskimo saying to himself “I am not as those white men are. I am glad of the shape of my body which can endure cold better than theirs, travel under harder conditions and for longer distances. Also I can handle a _kayak_ and slay a seal more skilfully than they, and I am able to gather in the harvest of the sea with at least as much success.” All of which is true; the Eskimo is exceedingly hard to beat on his own ground.

The tremendous forces of nature bearing upon him through so many generations have perhaps altered his physique to suit his surroundings; or it may be that he was always, as he is to-day, fitted to live the harsh life from the beginning: for he is said in his physical attributes to show a remarkable similarity to the cave man.

Some decades ago the Eskimo of the Labrador coast was of a tougher fibre than he is now. That was before certain of the people, against the advice and indeed the entreaties of the Moravian missionaries, permitted themselves to be taken as exhibits to the Chicago and other exhibitions. They brought back with them typhoid and diphtheria, besides other diseases all peculiarly fatal to wilderness organisations. Nature is confessedly cruel to the wild peoples, but civilisation is infinitely more so. Before her advance wild game and wild tribes vanish away as a lake mist vanishes under the coming of the sun.

If ever a policy in the world’s history has been proved correct, that of the Moravian Brethren in wishing to keep the Eskimo to their old customs has been justified by events, for as civilisation advances up the coast—outside the limit of Mission influence—the Eskimo race dies out and disappears. Formerly many of them were to be found on the southern shore of Labrador, but now there are few or none. Makkovik, the first Mission station going north, is chiefly inhabited by half-breeds and settlers; at the next, Hopedale, the numbers of Eskimo are dwindling. At Nain, 120 miles nearer the Pole, the death and birth rates balance each other. In the still more northerly posts of Okak and Hebron, a hardier breed face the struggle of life with success; and at Killinek, near Cape Chidley, the old methods and the old life hold their own as they do all over the vast snow-fields of the ultimate north.

In Killinek, where the people are just emerging from the wild state, they rarely wear other than skin garments. A tunic and trousers of sealskin and long sealskin boots comprise their protection against the coldest weather, and their babies are carried mostly quite naked in the long pointed hoods of their mothers’ fur _attijeks_, as the upper garments are called. And no special ill effects seem to result.

It is a well-proven fact that civilised foods are not only unsuitable to the Eskimo, but actually sow the seeds of weakness and disease. Nor are civilised clothes, the product of European looms, adapted to the climate; but in the southerly settlements, both store food and store clothes are gaining in popularity—partly because the skin tunic and trousers are regarded as old-fashioned, and, no doubt, because store garments are so much easier to obtain.

Now as to the introduction of the rifle, which has long been the recognised weapon of the coast. The Eskimo are good shots, and at first sight it would appear as if in this direction, at all events, they have received a benefit from civilisation’s clanging workshops. But on looking closer, such a conclusion is open to doubt.

Consider the facts. In the old days, when the sealer harpooned his quarry, he rarely, or comparatively rarely, lost a stricken beast. But with the rifle many more are killed and a good many lost, for the carcass sometimes sinks almost immediately, and the hunter often fails to reach his beast before the sea swallows it up. It will be seen, therefore, that for obvious reasons the supply is decreasing, and all game becoming wilder. Walrus are very seldom seen now, except in very northern waters, and the seals are far more wide-awake off the Labrador coast than off our own. Again and again when a seal had seen me, I found it difficult, sometimes impossible, to approach within 300 yards; whereas, off the Scottish and Irish coasts I have often got within ordinary camera range. Fifty years ago, this would have been easy enough in the channels of the Peninsula.

It is a familiar saying that the wealth of a people cannot be computed by their riches alone, but rather by the nature of their wants and their ability to supply them. Let us apply this test to the Eskimo. What does the Eskimo need? Very many things to-day—some good, some bad. But in the years gone by, his wants approached the irreducible minimum. Flesh to eat; skins for garments, tents and boat coverings; wood for paddles, for the framework of boats, for hafts of weapons; seal oil for light; and soapstone for cooking vessels. These composed the necessaries of existence, and he evolved them all from his environment.

And he still in the main supplies his needs from the products of the chase. The Eskimo year is passed thus: In the spring the hunters kill seal, and, in the north, white whale and walrus; in the summer they fish for cod and trout; in the autumn they once more turn their attention to the seal hunting. Throughout the winter they trap, and just before the advent of spring, while the snow is still sound, they make long journeys after the deer by _komatik_ or dog-sledge.

The Eskimo is a good hunter in a deliberate, methodical way of his own. He is also courageous. I will illustrate this with an account of an event which happened a couple of years ago north of Nain. An Eskimo hunter had gone out to shoot ptarmigan, guillemot and divers, when he came suddenly upon a large Polar bear. He had no ball cartridge, but he at once advanced to the attack with his shot-gun, and, approaching the bear, fired a charge of No. 6 full into its face. Now comes the extraordinary part of the incident. The gun was a muzzle loader, and though the Eskimo had of intention blinded the bear, the brute at once winded him and charged fiercely. The hunter tore off his outer garment and flung it to the infuriated animal, and while the bear was occupied in rending it to pieces, reloaded his gun and fired a second charge into the bear’s head, and so eventually succeeded in killing the most formidable of Arctic animals at close quarters.

The Eskimo is not only a good and persevering hunter, but he is also a man of no small intelligence. All those at the Moravian settlements are fairly educated, very few indeed being unable to read and write. In this they are far ahead of many of the white settlers of Southern Labrador, and even of a large proportion of the population in some of the Newfoundland outports. About the Moravian stations the settlers share in all the benefits of the Mission. During winter-time the boys and girls from distant bays and islands are sent to Nain or to Hopedale, where they are boarded out with responsible families and attend evening school under the superintendence of the missionaries and their wives. The good results of this teaching are not far to seek, and it is a pleasure to meet the kindly well-spoken men and women who come in to the stations from time to time from outlying fjords. In fact, most of the families have nice, neatly built “town-houses,” their quarter being on one side of the Mission house and church, while the Eskimo dwellings stand, as usual, a good deal too close together upon the other.

During the summer the settlements are almost deserted, as a large proportion of the able-bodied inhabitants are away at their fishing camps; but the Eskimo generally return to the neighbourhood of the Missions for the winter. They delight in the church services and are very regular in their attendance, a baptism specially seeming to appeal to all the Eskimo within reach. The organist is very often a native man or woman, and an Eskimo “chapel-servant” or elder frequently leads the service, and can invariably preach and pray with vigour and fluency. The settlers, most of whom have their homes at their fishing stations in the bays or on the islands, come in chiefly for the Church festivals.

The scene on a Sunday is interesting. The churches are very simple: a platform and desk is occupied by the minister, and the congregation sit, the men on the right, the women on the left, in the severe division I have already noted. Very small children are brought to the services, as the mothers cannot leave them at home; and they behave, as a rule, with quite extraordinary decorum. Everyone is as neat and as smart as circumstances permit. The men with snowy _sillipaks_—the cotton covering for the hooded blanket _attijek_—and the white square-flipper soles of their high sealskin boots carefully cleaned, while the boys mostly affect bright coloured jerseys. Many of the girls favour the demure three-cornered Moravian cap of net with a bow and strings of coloured ribbon.

[Illustration: Christian Eskimo Woman.]

[Illustration: Heathen Eskimo Woman.]

They are fond of music, and will, if they are given the smallest encouragement, indulge strenuously in Salvation Army or Moody and Sankey hymns, translated into their own language by the missionaries. At Nain there is a quite excellent brass band which played at the consecration of the church and added much to the general sense of rejoicing. A number of the people can play the harmonium, and they all delight in owning gramophones, for as many as can afford such a luxury purchase them.

They sing heartily at their church services, which open with a hymn, sung seated. At the end of each line there is a pause; at the beginning of the next, the organist strikes the note first, then he strikes it a second time, whereupon the people chime in. This pause and the double notes are repeated at every line: it is purely an Eskimo custom, but somehow suits the leisurely and rather Gregorian music which the Mission has brought with it from the place of its birth. One of my companions made a considerable impression by the beauty of his singing. Following the hymn, the congregation stand up for prayer and Bible reading, after which comes the sermon, hymn, and blessing. The services are short, lasting about half-an-hour, and while they are going on one can see through the church windows the dogs prowling like stealthy wolves about the hill-sides.

A burial at a station is a strange and impressive sight. I can remember one at Nain. After a brief service in the church—a hymn, a kind of liturgy and a prayer—we filed out to the little mortuary close by; for the dead are not taken into the church. From there we started in a procession towards the cemetery. The coffin went first, women helping to balance and carry it on a _komatik_. The Bishop and another Moravian Brother followed immediately behind, and after them the people.

Arrived at the cemetery by the bluff, the Bishop read the service, the people responding sonorously; then the coffin was lowered to the sound of soft staccato singing, while the evening shadows stretched slowly out across the grave-yard under its high green bluff, and far below the picket-fence the pale sea shone. Black headlands frowned at us across the Bay, but beyond them the heights of Paul’s Island burned ruby-red in the level sunlight. All was wonderfully still and beautiful and sad.

If an Eskimo dies while the family are away at their fishing grounds, the corpse is buried on the island or on the shore of the bay wherever the camp may be. A grave is dug and lined if possible with bark, and a cairn of stones is piled over it.

It would not appear that the Eskimo are a long-lived race, for, except in the case of quite youthful couples, one finds that one or other partner—and not infrequently both—in the older marriages has been married before.

Civilised ailments levy a very heavy tribute on the race. Moreover, in such a land accidents of flood or field must be taken into account; but although the Eskimo appear to die quite easily of imported diseases, they recover from frightful injuries: a fact which is true of all peoples outside the civilised area. Yet the relative rarity of the aged is a point which strikes the stranger; a really old person is seldom to be seen.

Widowers are readily consoled in these latitudes, and the men very reluctantly wait the six weeks insisted upon by the missionaries before they marry again. But they have this excuse, that their need for help in their homes is almost imperative. A wife takes her full share in the domestic economy; it is she who prepares the sealskins for use, and the toil of softening them and rubbing off the hair is far from being light. She also makes the long boots, which may be fairly regarded as the currency of the coast (a pair being equal to about $1.60), and is obliged to thoroughly chew the edges of the sealskin to prepare it for the needle. The teeth of most of the women are in consequence worn almost to the gum. It is further true that when these boots become hard and stiff with wear and salt water, or when they dry too quickly, it is then the wife’s horrid duty to chew them back into comfort for the husband’s feet.

[Illustration: An Eskimo Mother.]

[Illustration: Eskimo Woman in Winter Costume.]

In the Mission houses they use a cross piece of wood like an inverted ⊥ for this purpose. The arms are held down by the feet and the boots worked firmly by hand upon the upper end until they get supple again; but to the close of the chapter the Eskimo women will use their teeth, for, of the few I questioned, one actually expressed a liking for the taste of sealskin boots.

The round-about Eskimo children are treated with gentleness and affection: they hear few harsh words. The instinct of adoption is very strong among the people on the coast, settlers and Eskimo alike; even where there are children already, one or two extra who have been left orphan or belong to larger families and can presumably be spared, are taken into the household and treated with exactly the same kindness as if they had been born there. It must be said, however, that this desire to adopt is not entirely an unselfish instinct, for when a couple grow old or only one is left, the adopted children are expected to take the place of sons and daughters, and to care for the older people, which indeed they appear to do quite as often and as readily as those bound by ties of blood.

For playthings, the Eskimo children have balls made of the crops of willow-grouse blown out and tied up tightly; usually a few seeds found in the crop are left inside. Babies’ rattles are woven of bleached sea-grass with the seeds enclosed. All the boys use bows and arrows, and with them they soon learn to kill small birds and so become good shots later on with the gun. There seem to be no native games among the Eskimo at the present day, though Captain George Cartwright mentions in his book, published in 1792, that the Eskimo were fond of a game of ball, tossing it to one another, and also another game like thread-the-needle. Their only game nowadays is rounders, which was taught them by a missionary, whose name, not inappropriately, was Fry.

Most of the Eskimo return to the Mission settlements when the summer fishing closes, but a few of them remain away at their camps till near Christmas, when they can return with their dogs over the sea-ice, which is always thick and strong some weeks earlier.

It chanced that the winter of 1909 and 1910 was a very mild season, and the ice continued to be very thin right up to Christmas. It was consequently not easy for the people to return to Nain, but all managed to do so with the exception of one man, who with his wife and three children had spent the summer on an island some fifteen miles to the south. They waited on from day to day, hoping the ice would become strong enough to bear; their provisions were fast disappearing, and the man made several attempts in his flat to break through the thin ice, and so reach the mainland. But each time he could only succeed in going a part of the way. Finally the family were obliged to kill the three husky puppies they had taken with them to camp, and they lived on the meat as long as it lasted. At length only the head and heart of the last puppy remained, so the man made up his mind to set out and try to walk to Nain over the treacherous ice. He succeeded in making his way there, and arrived late on Christmas Day. The station was at once full of excitement, two _komatiks_ were made ready with provisions, and started forth to relieve the starving woman and children. All ended well, the rescued family being brought back to Nain safe and sound.

I am here tempted to tell another anecdote illustrative of the life of the Eskimo. A well-to-do man, who has a good house at one of the Mission stations, usually spends half the year, from March to the fall, at an island where he has his fishing camp. There he has built a second house, where he lives most comfortably, only coming into the settlement from time to time for stores of one kind or another. This man and his wife have but one child, a son, who, at the time of which I am writing, was about twenty years old. As I have said before, the work of the women on the Labrador is exceedingly hard, and the wife, who was getting on in years, felt she would like to have a younger woman with her to help in scraping and preparing the sealskins. The shortest and most certain way to secure this help lay in obtaining a wife for her son. She imparted her wishes to her husband, who fell in with them at once. As for the young man himself, it does not appear that he was in the least anxious for marriage; but that was a small matter, and he consented with casual good humour to the arrangement. Proposals were consequently made for the eldest daughter of a large family, who, though they were settlers, had some admixture of blood in their veins. As there were so many children the parents could not be called prosperous; yet the idea of the marriage, in spite of the prospective bridegroom being, in local estimation, a rich man, was not entertained for a moment; they would not give their daughter to an Eskimo. The father of the young man therefore turned his attention to one of his own race. In this case the lady chosen was away in a situation as nurse-girl down the coast, but her father, charmed with the offer, hurried off in his trap-boat to fetch her home. He brought her away with him, merely telling her she was about to be married, but refused to divulge the name she naturally desired to hear. Rumour has it that she wished to choose for herself, but married she was without more ado, and carried off to the fishing camp, where no doubt her mother-in-law felt the advantage of having someone to share her labours.

The Eskimo of the settlements are, on the whole, a light-hearted community ready with smiles, and when they are working together, unloading cargo for instance, the men and women laugh and joke the whole time—some of the women carrying their load and a small child in the hood of the _attijek_ at the same time.

The Mission do not allow intoxicants to be brought in or sold at the stations, but the Eskimo has discovered how to make a kind of beer with molasses and hard biscuit; and though it is not very strong stuff, the Eskimo brain is very inflammable, and the men become very wicked when drunk. For some years past the Mission have been greatly troubled by this manufacture of beer, for, thanks to it, wives are beaten, and various domestic disturbances arise.

Another unfortunate weakness of the Eskimo character is the love of gambling. At one time card-playing went on every night in the huts, though no effort was spared to put a stop to it. But both drink and gambling are now much less prevalent than they were.

A few of the Eskimo are very well off, but I never heard of one who owned a bank account. Yet a certain very industrious man was reported to have considerable riches laid up somewhere; certainly he possessed an extremely comfortable house with lace curtains in the windows. He had visited St. John’s, where he had ordered fine furniture, for his sitting-room was adorned with armchairs, rocking-chairs, a piano, and many gim-cracks. He was very good to the poor and to the widows.

But many of the people are exceedingly thriftless, and linger in the settlement long after they should be away at their summer fishing. They can manage to exist quite well at that season, for all of them but the very poorest have trout nets; besides which they are very generous to each other. The widows are well cared for by the Moravians, who make arrangements by which the older ones can earn a living. The younger women marry without exception. The widows who are widows indeed, become blubber women—that is, they are employed to cut up the seal blubber for the caldrons. Boiling out the oil takes place principally at Nain, where the seals bought by the Mission from the people for this purpose are gathered from the northerly stations. The smell of the boiling yard is strong; but the women probably enjoy it, for they frequently may be seen going home at the intervals for meals, chewing a lump of blubber with much appreciation as they walk.

For the widows also is reserved the task of cleaning the eiderdown, which comes chiefly from Killinek, near Cape Chidley. It is necessary that the room in which this is done should be very hot, and the women sit to the cleaning frames in the lightest clothing. The frames themselves are oblong, and at each two workers face one another and rub the down back and forth across the slats of the frame until the refuse falls through and the down becomes clean and pure. The old women make sufficient at this work to keep them all the year round.

Labrador life does not tend to fastidiousness. The Eskimo when shopping at the store makes no difficulty of carrying away his purchases—tea, sugar, or flour, or what not—in any portion of his clothing that seems most available. A supply of molasses is, however, not so easy to handle. An Eskimo having bought a quart or two on one occasion, searched himself all over in vain; he could discover nothing to hold it. Saying he would go home and see what he could find there for transport purposes, he disappeared, and presently returned with a very old and highly-scented sealskin boot—these skin boots not being very well cured are redolent at all times—and insisted upon the molasses being poured into it, and when that was done carried off his purchase in triumph.

If a mouse “happens” into the molasses, it is taken out and held up by the tail and licked all over exhaustively that nothing be lost. Certainly, the Eskimo prefer high seal to fresh; and the flesh is often left buried to ripen until the ground above it is spongy to the foot! But this epicurean dish cannot at all times be partaken of with impunity. At Hopedale, some four or five years ago, an ancient dame was presented by a kindly disposed friend with a seal’s flipper, which is considered a dainty. The flipper was more than mellow, and the old lady invited a certain friend, Jonathan Assa, his wife, and a daughter of thirteen, to feast with her. The supper was thoroughly enjoyed; but the flipper had been permitted to “hang” a little too long, with the consequence that the whole party fell ill. The poor old hostess and the child died of the meal. Jonathan and his wife recovered.

[Illustration: Entrance to Eskimo House in Winter.]

But it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that fastidiousness is the outcome of artificial conditions of existence, whereas the Eskimo lives very close to nature, and the feeling upon which we civilised folks pride ourselves is fortunately absent from their physical and mental equipment.

The range of ideas that present themselves to the minds of the Eskimo is inevitably narrow. As an instance, I may give one of the difficulties met with by the Moravian Brethren in their translation of the Old Testament. One would imagine it simple enough to present the idea of the patriarchs with their wealth of flocks and herds; but horses, cattle and sheep do not exist on the Labrador; there may be a few individual animals in the south, but there certainly are none on the part of the coast inhabited by the Eskimo. They have, as a matter of fact, no domesticated animals, save the dogs. Thus the missionaries were driven to figure the herds of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob under the guise of seals and fish, interpreting the riches of the earth by the riches of the sea.

But in spite of their limited possibilities, the Eskimo are an intelligent people, and, moreover, possess a physique that must rank high among the diverse developments of mankind, for they have adapted themselves and their mode of living to the exigencies of a cruel environment, and their bodily robustness has enabled them to defy the onslaughts of the Arctic cold. Is not this a race well worth preserving?