Christianization

Seeing the white men at Point Barrow living in frame houses would of itself have been sufficient to induce the Eskimo to do likewise, for the white men are well- to -do and powerful, and therefore become leaders of fashion in the matter of houses as in other things. The Eskimo have not had the means to build houses as well constructed as those of the white men, and even had they had the houses they would not have had the resources to keep them supplied with fuel, for coal is naturally expensive. 

But the pernicious practice of building frame houses has had more than the passive encouragement of the resident whites. Active steps have been taken by various well-meaning persons to try to get the Eskimo to quit what the white men consider their “native hovels” in favor of the frame house. It is the natural tendency of the thought less white to assume that his ways are the best ways. Even the Department of Education has not been guiltless, for officers in Washington have issued, presumably on the basis of their experience of the climate of Virginia and Maryland, instructions to the school teachers in Alaska to encourage the Eskimo in general to adopt white men's ways. My friend Mr. J. E. Sinclair, who for a year taught the government school on Wainwright Inlet, told me that he had specific instructions to encourage the Eskimo to dig coal in the coal mine there with the double idea that they might use the coal for heating their houses, and that they might earn money with which to buy flour to eat instead of the seal meat and walrus which was their ordinary diet. It is hard for me personally to get the point of view of a man who thinks that coal mining is a more desirable occupation than seal hunting. It would be a safe bet that he himself has never either hunted seal or dug coal . But during the last few years there has fortunately come a change, largely, I believe, through the influence of Mr. Lopp and Mr. Evans, the present superintendent and assistant superintendent of the government schools of northern Alaska, who are men of considerable experience in the country, and who have come to see clearly that the white-man style of frame house is one of the most serious evils which they have to fight. Mr. Evans told me, the autumn of 1912, that he was doing everything he could to get the Eskimo to refrain from building frame houses and to induce them to go back to the building of houses of the old type. Any one who has the welfare of the Eskimo at heart will wish Mr. Evans success in his enterprise ; but any one who understands the Eskimo will fear that success will come with difficulty, if at all. For the frame house has unfortunately become fashionable. It is not easy to get our own people to refrain from certain habits — of dress, for instance on the ground that they are unhealthful. Neither will it be easy to get the Eskimo to avoid the frame house on the ground that it is dangerous to life . My experience of the Eskimo is that they are even more inclined than the white race to eat, wear, and use things on the ground that they are expensive and fashionable rather than on the ground that they are excellent in themselves.

Many of my ideas as to the form which Christianity takes in the minds of the Eskimo I naturally get from the Eskimo with whom we most associated, the civilized Alaskans whom we employed to accompany us on our journeys of exploration. One of them, Ilavinirk, was a native of Kotzebue Sound, and had for over twenty years been fairly continuously in the service of white men, although, like the rest of the natives of Herschel Island, he had not been an avowed Christian more than four years.

 During the summer of 1909, when we were traveling by boat east along the coast from Flaxman Island, there was in our party, but sailing his own boat, an Eskimo by the name of Oniyak. His old and decrepit father was also of the party, and it seemed to me that I had seldom seen an old man so badly treated, for every evening he was compelled to make his own camp separate from that of his son and family, although there was plenty of room for him in his son's tent. He was not allowed to take his meals with the rest of them, but was given a sort of “hand out. ” He was continually short of tobacco and matches, although his son was a trader and had more of both than he needed for his own use. The old man used to beg various things from us, which we of course gave him gladly. I did not understand at the time why he should have been so treated, and thought of it only as an unusual example of unfilial conduct. In general I have seen old people among the Eskimos remarkably well treated. 

It was only one day at Langton Bay, two years later, that Ilavinirk asked me if I knew why it was that Oniyak treated his father in this way, and when I said I did not know why, he explained that it was because the son had just been converted to Christianity, and the missionary had told the converts not to associate with unbelievers. The old man and one old woman in the tribe were the only two who did not accept Christianity. The old man's son, Ilavinirk said, was in a great quandary, because he was fond of his father but did not dare to disobey the missionary's injunctions. He had found a sort of middle course, therefore, by compelling the old man to keep his own house and to eat by himself. 

Continuing on this subject, Ilavinirk said that the old woman who would not accept Christianity was the most perverse old body he ever heard tell of. All arguments had failed to convince her of the truths of Christianity, and she kept saying that she had seen the spirits of her own belief cure disease, avert famine, and bring a change of wind, and she had yet to see that the new religion could do any better. It was of no avail to explain to her that the new religion did not claim to do any better in these things, but differed from the old in promising eternal blessedness to those who lived righteously, and threatened eternal punishment to those who did not. The old woman kept saying she would wait and see. She would not believe in either heaven or hell until she saw them. 

Ilavinirk said that the old woman's son was greatly worried by this attitude of mind of his mother, and whenever he got new arguments and new facts from the missionary or from the converted Eskimo he would always present them to his mother with the hope of getting her to experience a change of heart. One day a missionary had preached to them in this way : If any of you believe that fire will not burn you if you stick your hand into it, then you may believe also that the things I tell you are not true; but if you believe that fire would burn you, then you must believe also that what I say is true. (Naturally, no missionary ever said any such thing. What he really said can only be guessed at. Extreme misunderstandings are, of course, common, due partly to the missionary's imperfect command of Eskimo, and partly to the fact that his ideas are essentially strange to them. ) When her son presented this argument, Ilavinirk said that such was the old woman's perversity that she only laughed and ridiculed it, saying that she did not see anything convincing about that sort of reasoning. Hoping nevertheless to convince her by an actual test, her son waited until she was asleep, when he lit a match and held it under her hand, letting the flame play over her fingers. The old woman awoke screaming with pain. But so perverse was she that even this did not convince her, and so far as Ilavinirk knew she was still a heathen. Some people are that way, Ilavinirk philosophized. He supposed, however, that if the fire of a match was not hot enough to make unbelievers change their minds, perhaps the fires of hell would be more convincing. 

I heard from Ilavinirk a good deal about the religious views of the Baillie Islands Eskimo, but knew little of them otherwise, for it has happened that I have never associated much with that particular group. The summer of 1911 I sent Ilavinirk and Natkusiak to the Baillie Islands with a boat, and they remained there for several weeks. At that time Ilavinirk told me there came from the Mackenzie River the report that God had said that you must not look at the sun. It is difficult to guess what the foundation of this story may have been. It is conceivable it may have been based on the story of how the Israelites fell away from the true religion and worshiped false gods, and how some people have looked upon the sun as a god. Possibly the missionary may have meant to tell his hearers that they must not look upon the sun, powerful and brilliant though it is, as a deity. But what they understood was that they must not glance at it. This commandment struck Ilavinirk as a little unreasonable, and he said that he had argued with the Baillie Islanders to the effect that no doubt God did not mean that they should be prohibited from glancing at the sun, but only that they must refrain from staring intently at it. 

As an introduction to the narrative that follows it is necessary to point out that among the Eskimo, as among many other primitive people, notably in North America, a person who is under some sort of taboo must not follow in the trail made by other people, and if he makes a trail, then others must not follow it. 

Apparently some missionary in Alaska, or it may possibly have been at Mackenzie River, had preached from the text : “ Do not follow in the footsteps of the wicked. ” What some of the Eskimo thought of me, no less than how they understood the text upon which the missionary had preached, can be seen from the fact that one day I noticed that some Eskimo who were traveling behind me were not following in my trail.

The chief interest in life among the civilized Eskimo in winter is trapping fur. This was an interest of ours also, because we were anxious to secure wolf, wolverine, and fox skins for museum specimens. It had accordingly been our arrangement on hiring our Eskimo that we pay them not only $200 a year in money or its equivalent (for the North Alaskans well understood the use of money) , but we had also agreed with them that whenever we had nothing else for them to do they were to be free to trap, and half of what they got should belong to them. Trapping around Coal Creek had been poor and only something like thirty skins altogether had been secured of foxes (white, red, and cross), wolves, and wolverines. There was a firm belief in our party that foxes were abundant down on the seacoast, and a strong desire therefore to move to the sea for the purpose of trapping. This did not suit me at all. I much preferred living in the wooded and well- sheltered creek bottom where our house stood to trapping foxes along the barren and shelterless coast of Langton Bay, but in order to keep peace in the family I finally agreed that some of our party should go down and try the trapping. Accordingly Ilavinirk's family and myself crossed the Melvill Mountains to Langton Bay, leaving the others behind on Horton River.

The same whale carcass which had been so useful to us the year before was still lying stranded on the beach west of Langton Bay. It had been about two miles west of the harbor the year before, but the past summer the waves had moved it about a mile nearer to our storehouse. Within a day or two from getting down to the coast we caught six white foxes near this carcass, but after that no more; and there was not a track to be seen.

This failure of our trapping even in the neighborhood of a stranded whale gives us the text for discussing the peculiar habits of the Arctic fox. In summer the white fox is a land animal, but in winter ninety per cent of them probably go off on the sea ice and live parasitically, as it were, upon the fruits of the labor of the polar bear. Whenever you see the tracks of a bear in winter you are likely to see following them the tracks of anywhere from one to a dozen foxes. Here and there on the ocean seals and fish that died from natural causes are thrown up and are found by the keen scent of the foxes. Here and there also when the ice is being crushed up into pressure ridges a few fish are caught and killed by the tumbling blocks, and these the fox also tries to find . But this supply depends upon accident and is not what the fox really relies upon. His main dependence is the skill and energy of the polar bear as a seal hunter. If the bear has hard luck and kills only a seal in a great while, he may devour the whole animal, and the fox which follows behind will go hungry. But if the bear has any ordinary luck at all , he will kill off more seals than he needs and will eat only a small part of what he kills, leaving the rest. When he has dropped asleep near the remains of his feast or has gone ahead about his business, the foxes that have been dogging his footsteps come up and eat whatever is left.

The polar bear can get seals only along the edge of open water. Certain years the winds are such that in the neighborhood of Cape Parry, and elsewhere on the north coast of America, lanes of open water are only a few miles offshore. Those years there are plenty of polar bears around and consequently plenty of foxes also. The winter of 1911-1912 was exceptional apparently in ice conditions. None of our party ever went far out on the ice and I know of no one on the thousand -mile stretch between Cape Parry and Point Barrow who did, but knowing the habits of the bears and the foxes, it seems to me evident that there could have been no open water anywhere near shore, for the year was remarkable above all others to which the memory of the Eskimo in Alaska and the white traders extended , in the almost complete absence from the whole coast line from November until late March of both polar bears and foxes. At the Baillie Islands, for instance, energetic Eskimo trappers that habitually get two hundred foxes in winter had caught less than ten by the end of March. This was a universal calamity, comparable to a drought in a farming district, for the game upon which the Eskimo formerly lived has been destroyed throughout this entire district by the bringing in of firearms and the wanton destruction of food animals that followed , and the Eskimo now depend for their food and clothing in a large part upon the provisions which they can buy from the trading ships in summer in exchange for furs.

We spent between two and three weeks on the coast at the Langton Bay ship harbor without succeeding in getting any more foxes. Finally, December 11th, we started back south and December ) we arrived home.

The foundation of the next story we have to tell is no doubt a discussion by some missionary of a text the substance of which is that everything on earth, and all that men have, is from God. This the Eskimo have understood in a manner to make Christ practically the equivalent of the ancient culture hero. Just as Hiawatha gave mankind the Indian corn and taught us how to cultivate it, so Christ has given the white men everything they have and taught them everything they know. Consequently it is not such a wonderful thing, nor indeed one with which we ought to credit ourselves particularly, that we possess marvelous inventions and much knowledge. It is Hiawatha and not the ordinary Indian who deserves the credit for introducing the art of corn-growing; and so it is Christ and not any ordinary human being who deserves the credit for having taught white men how to raise wheat and grind it into flour. “All our knowledge is from God” they understand to mean that Christ, who represented God on earth, personally instructed us in all arts and crafts. Gunpowder and field -glasses are wonderful in their way, but the Eskimo does not see why he should be considered behind the white man just because Christ taught the white men how to make these things. He did not happen to teach it to the Eskimo, which is the misfortune of the Eskimo and not their fault. 

In the winter of 1911–12 I met with a striking example of this belief among the members of my own party. There is in use among the Mackenzie River Eskimo for writing purposes an alphabet introduced among them by Rev. C. E. Whittaker, the missionary of the Church of England at Fort McPherson. This alphabet being based on English and being introduced by Mr. Whittaker before he had as yet acquired the same command of the language which he now has, is not very phonetic, and for my own use I had devised an alphabet on more strictly phonetic principles, where the ideal is that each letter shall represent but one sound, and that there shall be a separate letter for every sound. My own Eskimo, who knew Mr. Whittaker's system of writing, soon picked up mine and grew to prefer it. They were very enthusiastic about the new system, and commenced teaching it to their neighbors, for one of the most remarkable things about the Eskimo is their passion for such rudiments of learning as they have been able to lay their hands on. 

One day there arose in our house a discussion of the various arts and inventions possessed by the white men, and the Eskimo, in a moralizing way, said that we had to be thankful to Christ not only for the spiritual blessings which He had bestowed upon mankind and the hope of salvation He had given them, but also for teaching them useful things, and especially for teaching them to read and write, for they considered reading and writing to be the foundation of all knowledge and of all the advancement of the white men. With reference to this, I said that they had evidently misunderstood the missionary. The missionary had no intention of telling them that Christ had taught us how to read and write. “Well,” they asked me, “if Christ did not teach you, how did you first learn it?” I had to reply that I did not know how we first learned, but I did know that it occurred longer ago than the date assigned as that on which Christ lived on earth, and explained to them the fact that many books of the Bible much antedated the coming of Christ. That was as it might be, about the antiquity of the books of the Bible, they said in reply, but one thing they did know was that Mr. Whittaker had told them that Christ taught mankind to read and write, and as for them, they believed it. They did not know what I thought of Mr. Whittaker, but they believed that he was a truthful man. I told them that my regard for the veracity of Mr. Whittaker was quite as high as theirs, but I felt sure that they had misunderstood him, and then, in a joking way, I said to them that whoever it might have been who originated the alphabet which Mr. Whittaker gave them, it was I myself who had originated the alphabet which they were now using. No doubt, they replied, I knew whereof I spoke with reference to my alphabet; but so did Mr. Whittaker know with reference to his alphabet; Mr. Whittaker had told them that Christ had made it, and that being so, they were hereafter going to use Christ's alphabet and not mine. From that time on they ceased writing letters to their friends in my alphabet or in any way using it, going back entirely to Mr. Whittaker's alphabet. 

Those who do not know any situation analogous to the one we are describing are likely to say that any such notions as those indicated by these scattered anecdotes can be easily eradicated by a missionary who understands the situation and sets himself to the work, but this is not so. (Fundamentally, the Eskimo consider themselves better men than we are. In the matter of Christianity they concede that we introduced it, but they do not concede that we know more about it than they do; just as many Christians concede that Christianity spread from Rome, but do not concede that Rome is nowadays the highest authority in religious matters. 

A striking way in which this shows itself is in the belief in special revelations which come directly to the Eskimo, and the belief in the rebirth of the Saviour among them. Both in Alaska and in Green land there have been, since the coming of Christianity, many cases of Immaculate Conception and the birth of heralded saviors of the In some cases the thing has been nipped in the bud through the fact that the child born happened to be a female, which was not according to the predictions. A sufficient number of these cases are on record in books, and instead of retelling them I shall therefore merely refer to the interesting accounts of Knud Rasmussen from Greenland, which can be secured in any bookshop or library. 

There are also in every community Eskimo who are in the habit of visiting heaven and conferring there with Christ Himself, with Saint Peter and others, quite in the manner in which they used to visit the moon while still heathen and have discussions with the man in the moon. The man in the moon used to teach the shamans songs and spells, and now St. Peter teaches the deacons of the Eskimo church hymns and chants (which are, curiously enough, generally race in the jargon language which the whalers use in dealing with the Eskimo). 

There are also frequent and weighty revelations in the matter of doctrine. If the missionary should learn of any of these things and should disagree with them (but he is not likely to learn, for the Eskimo have found out that the missionaries do not approve of present-day revelation, and therefore keep it secret as much as possible), they might be respectful and polite about it to his face, as they always are, but among themselves they would say that while they had no doubt that the Lord spoke unto Moses, neither did they doubt that he also spoke unto this and that countryman of theirs; and if what God said to the Hebrews seems to disagree with what He has said more recently, then evidently it is only reasonable to accept the latter version.

The fact that most things have a religious or supernatural explanation implies that few things have natural ones. The miracles of the Eskimo are like ours in being of supernatural origin, but they differ from ours in being of more frequent occurrence. It would surprise most of us to see miracles happening all around us. It is not so with the Eskimo. They expect them continually, and when any one tells of having seen or heard of a miraculous thing, there is only unquestioning belief, for it is but the narration of an expected occurrence and an ordinary one. 

Apparently miracles may happen at the instigation of uncontrolled spirits, but certainly over ninety per cent of them are directly ascribed to the activities of a spirit controlled by some shaman. 

The list of the different kinds and characteristics of miracles would be too long to recite. We shall describe merely what, among Mackenzie River Eskimo at least, is the commonest of all miracles, the best understood and most universally vouched for — the spirit flight in which the actual body of the shaman flies to some distant place, sometimes to a neighboring village, often to a far country, and most frequently of all, to the sun, to the moon, or to the bottom of the sea. There is also another kind of spirit flight in which the body remains in its place and the soul alone goes abroad. These two sorts of spirit flights differ essentially in this : that while the first must be performed in darkness, the second can be managed in daylight. 

The bodily shamanistic flight takes place usually at night in winter and in the dark of the moon. The event is announced beforehand and all those who desire to be present gather in the clubhouse or the largest available private residence. As is always the case in the Mackenzie River houses, there is one window at the peak of the cottage ” -shaped roof, and directly under this, near the center of the floor, sits the shaman, usually wearing no clothes except knee breeches, although he may be fully dressed. Two or three men who are skilled in the manipulation of ropes take a long thong and tie and truss the shaman until, humanly speaking, it is impossible for him to move. Usually one feature of the tying is that a bight of the rope is passed under his knees and over the back of his neck and the rope drawn tight until his chin rests between his knees. When the tying is done, there is always left over a loose rope -end about three inches long to which is attached a stone or other heavy object, such as a hammer or an ax -blade. Before the beginning of the performance the window has been covered with a thick skin or blanket. All the people take their seats in a circle about the shaman as far away as possible from the center of the house, leaving him in an unoccupied circle of perhaps ten feet diameter. The lights are put out and the house is so dark that one can see absolutely nothing. Nevertheless every one leans forward and closes his eyes tightly. If there are any children present, an older person sits behind each child and holds his hands over the child's eyes. 

The moment after the light goes out the shaman begins to chant a magic song. Presently he says : “ I do not feel so heavy now as I usually do. Somehow it seems as if I were not sitting very heavily upon the floor. Now I am becoming as light as a feather. Now I am beginning to want to rise like a dry stick in water.” All these things he says in a low and indefinite tone of voice, speaking well in his throat so that it is difficult to judge just how far away he is, but of course thus far every one knows exactly where he is, for he remains (by his own account) in the center of the circle where he was when the lights were put out. 

The next stage of the performance is that the shaman, still speaking in the manner of a ventriloquist, says : “ Now I am beginning to rise; now I am going to fly in circles slowly just above the floor ; now I am flying fast; now I am flying faster.” Presently the people begin to hear a whizzing noise. This is the stone or ax which was attached to the loose rope-end. The shaman is now flying in circles so fast that the centrifugal force makes the hammer on the rope -end produce a whizzing noise. If any one were to open his eyes even a little to try to see what was going on, the hammer would strike him in the head, killing him instantly. Consequently, the louder the whizzing noise the more tightly is every eye squeezed shut, and the more firmly are the hands of the parents held over the eyes of their children. 

While the hammer still continues the whizzing noise the voice of the shaman is heard to say : " Now I am rising above your heads ; now I am getting near the roof; now I am about to pass out through the window. ” Then the voice grows actually fainter and fainter as the shaman rises toward the roof and flies out through the window, and finally the whizzing noise dies away in the distance. 

For half an hour or more the audience sits in absolute silence with eyes shut, and then is heard again the shaman's voice : “ Now I am coming in through the window ; now I am settling down ; now I am down on the floor ; now you may open your eyes and light the lamps.” The lamps are lighted, and, lo! there sits the shaman exactly where he was when the lights were put out three -quarters of an hour before. 

Some one now unties the shaman and he relates to an attentive audience his adventures on the spirit flight. He went to the moon and approached the house of the man in the moon. He did not dare to enter, but waited outside until the man in the moon's wife came out, saw him, and invited him in. Shortly after, the man in the moon himself came home from a caribou -hunt, bringing with him a back load of meat and a number of marrow bones. A meal was prepared of caribou meat, and after that the three of them cracked marrow -bones until the broken bones lay in a large heap on the floor. The man in the moon said that last year the caribou-hunt had not been very good in the moon, but this year it was much better ; the caribou in the moon this year were fatter than usual, which was no doubt due to the fact that the summer had been cool and there had not been very many mosquitoes. The man in the moon's wife also joined in the conversation, saying that they had already secured an abundance of skins for clothing for the coming winter, and that as for sinew with which to sew, they had enough already for two years. She inquired for the shaman's wife, whether his little boy had begun yet to kill ptarmigan, whether the people in the shaman's village care fully kept all the taboos, and who it was that had broken some, for she knew from the vapor rising from the village that something was amiss. 

The shaman had answered her questions to the best of his ability. He regretted that a certain young woman had been very careless in sewing caribou skin soon after the killing of white whales, and various other things of this sort the shaman was compelled reluctantly to tell, for he was a truthful man ånd must speak out, although he was ashamed of his fellow -countrymen and would gladly have been able to conceal the facts from the moon people. 

Time is not measured the same way in the moon as upon earth, the shaman tells, and really he had been in the moon a long time, although on earth it seemed but a short while that he was away. He had lingered, feasted, and talked, but finally his visit was at an end, and he started off, promising the man in the moon to visit him again next year. 

When the shaman's narrative is over, a general discussion takes place, in which both men and women join, and finally when the crowd gets tired and sleepy they disperse to their own homes. 

This that we have described is not one of the most wonderful miracles, but merely the commonest one and the best attested. Some miracles, such as the walking on water, are of rare occurrence, and only a few people have seen them. Raising people from the dead is also a seldom thing. But every man and woman you meet can attest the genuineness of the spirit flight, for they have all been present when it was done. Besides that, such things are a matter of common knowledge among the people. You might as well try to convince an Englishman that balloon flights have never been taken in the British Isles as an attempt to persuade an Eskimo that spirit flights have never occurred in the Mackenzie delta. 

One day when I was explaining to my Eskimo that there were mountains on the moon and going into details of the moon's physical characteristics, the account I gave did not coincide with the opinion held by my Eskimo listeners, and they asked me how I knew these things were so. I explained that we had telescopes as long as the masts of ships and that through them we could see the things on the moon's surface. “ But had any white man ever been to the moon? ” I was asked, and when I replied that no one ever had, they said that while they did not have any telescopes as long as ship's masts, yet they did have men, and truthful men, too, that had been to the moon, walked about there and seen everything, and they had come back and told them about it. With all deference to the ingenuity of white men, they thought that under the circumstances the Eskimo ought to be better informed than the white men as to the facts regarding the moon. 

It may seem to you that these that we have described are extraordinary and untenable views, and that it ought to be an easy thing to undeceive the men who hold them, but if you have ever tried to change the religious views of one of your own countrymen so as to make them coincide with yours, you will know that the knowledge that comes through faith is not an easy thing to shake, and if you want to appreciate such an attitude of mind as that of the Eskimo and cannot find an analogy among your own neighbors, I would recommend the reading of Mark Twain's A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. It is one of the remarkable things about Mark Twain that he understood the minds of the intellectually primitive as few others have done -even of those who have made a study of such things. Mark Twain's Englishmen of King Arthur's time think such thoughts as I have found the Eskimo thinking in our own generation, and justify them in the manner in which the Eskimo justify theirs. If you were to try to displace from the minds of the Eskimo such beliefs as we have described, you would find (as I have found upon occasion) that you would succeed no better than did Mark Twain's Yankee in his crusade against Merlin. But if you concern yourself not with the unteaching of old beliefs but with the teaching of new ones, you will find an easy path before you. The Eskimo already believe many mutually contradictory things, and they will continue believing them while they gladly accept and devoutly believe everything you teach them. They will ( as the Chris-tianized Arctic Eskimo are in fact doing) continue believing all they used to believe and will believe all the new things on top of that. The belief in the spirit flight is as strong at Point Barrow after more than ten years of Christianity as the belief in witchcraft was in England after more than ten centuries of Christianity.