Eskimo

Just northeast of the east end of Lambert Islandwe found, as we had expected, the village of the Noahanirgmiut Eskimo, con sisting chiefly of old friends and hunting companions of ours from the Bear Lake hunt of the summer before, but there were with them also a few families we had not seen. The Eskimo visit about a great deal, and although it is always possible for any one to say, “ This is the village of such and such a people,” still you are almost sure to find in any village members of one or more other tribes and generally of several. These visits are sometimes temporary, but commonly a family leaves its own tribe and joins another to be with it a period of a year, returning home at the end of that time, although sometimes the visit is only for a summer. A man who is in need of a new sled or a new bow, but whose own tribe hunts in a woodless country, may, for instance, join for the summer hunt a group that intends to go south to Bear Lake, in order to supply himself with the wood he needs. The Noahanirgmiut were still living on seal meat and were making no attempt to kill any of the numerous caribou that were continually migrating past. I thought at first that there might be some taboo preventing them from hunting caribou on the ice, but this they told me was not so. It was simply that they had never hunted caribou on the ice and had not considered it possible. It would in fact be a fairly hopeless thing for them to try it; and while no doubt some of them might occasionally secure an animal, they would waste so much time that the number of pounds of meat they obtained in a week's hunt in that way would be but a small fraction of the amount of seal meat they might have secured in the same time. Besides that, this is the season which the Eskimo give up to the accumulation of blubber for the coming year. Fresh oil is not nearly so palatable or digestible as oil that has been allowed to ferment in a sealskin bag through the summer, and besides that it is difficult often to get seals in the fall . By getting seals in the spring, therefore, they secure an agreeable article of diet for the coming autumn and provide themselves as well with a sort of insurance against hard luck in the fall hunt. Each family will in the spring be able to lay away from three to seven bags of oil. Such a bag consists of the whole skin of the common seal. The animal has been skinned through the mouth in such a way that the few necessary openings in the skin can be easily sewed up or tied up with a thong. This makes a bag which will hold about three hundred pounds of blubber, so that a single family's store of oil for the fall will run from nine hundred to two thousand pounds. 

To completely test the matter of whether there was a taboo or not, as well as to provide ourselves with fresh meat and our friends with a feast, Natkusiak and I intercepted one of the bands out of which he shot one and I shot three, two of the three, by the way, being killed in one shot as the animals were running past at a dis tance of about three hundred yards. The Eskimo immediately went at the skinning energetically, and I photographed them while they were at it . The meat was then cut up and divided equitably among all the families and the cooking began at once.

It is a theory which has been much in vogue among ethnologists that the fundamental reason back of the system of Eskimo taboos is that they are intended to keep the sea industries away from the land industries and the sea animals away from the land animals; the theory being that the Eskimo were once inland dwellers and accustomed only to land animals and hunting methods suited to the land, and that when they came down to the sea they found its requirements and its animal life so different from that of the land to which they were used that they conceived it necessary to keep the two rigidly apart and that taboos were therefore established. We have elsewhere pointed out that the western Eskimo consider that sudden death, pestilence, or famine will follow upon the sewing of caribou skin garments within a certain number of days after one of the large sea mammals has been killed. It is true among many tribes of Eskimo that caribou skin garments must not be made or mended on the sea ice. The flesh of caribou and of seals must not, among some tribes, be eaten at the same time, nor must the flesh of caribou be eaten on the sea at all. Under other circumstances when both may be eaten, they will have to be cooked in separate utensils and certain ceremonies have to be performed to cancel, as it were, the evil effects that might otherwise ensue. 

Here, however, everything was different. Not only did these seal hunters engage in the cutting up of the animals, but the meat was taken home and cooked in the same pots in which seal meat had been cooked and eaten; and not only the same day that seal meat had been eaten and the seals had been killed, but the seal meat and caribou meat were actually eaten at the same meal by the same individuals. One old man, however, said that he knew that it was not right to boil caribou meat in the same pot in which seal meat had been boiled unless you suspended the pot by a different string. His wife therefore took off the old greasy string which had served as a bale for the stone pot, braided a new sinew string, and swung the pot by that over the lamp. These Eskimo have various taboos relating to seal and to caribou, but none of those that I have seen in use or heard of, except in the case of this one incident of the string, had any tendency to keep the two apart.

When we started we followed the trail by which this party had arrived , and found eventually a village of five houses some six or eight miles east of Liston Island. Here we engaged to go with us to Banks Island a man whom we knew well and liked in a social way, but in whom we had no great confidence. He had, how ever, an excellent wife, which was the main consideration, for Natkusiak and I were well able to provide food and raw material for clothing, but we needed an able woman to do sewing for us and especially for making waterproof sealskin boots, without which a summer on the swampy tundra and more especially a spring on the water- covered spring ice were very disagreeable things to face. I was a little surprised to find Kirkpuk and his wife willing to go with us, for they had a baby not more than six or eight weeks old, but they told me that they would leave the child with its grandmother, and that the arrangement was one that they had contemplated anyway ; for had Kirkpuk not gone with us, he would, he said, have gone on a long hunt to Bear Lake, upon which journey the child would have been a burden, especially as he had another one, a boy of five or six. It was necessary, Kirkpuk told us, that we wait a day or two while his wife finished cutting up blubber and putting it in bags for the summer. Most of these he would give to his wife's father to cache on the mainland, but one bag we were to take along with us to cache on Victoria Island, with the idea of his using it next fall when he was returning from Banks Island to his own country.

In order to put the people in as good humor as possible, I told Natkusiak to go out and try to get one or more bearded seals, of which there were great numbers in this neighborhood. Dolphin and Union Straits, wherever they are narrow enough so that the current keeps the ice thin , are stocked with seals beyond any part of the Arctic Ocean known to me or to our Eskimo. And not only are there plenty of seals, but most of these are of the valuable bearded variety ( Phoca barbata ), one of which is easily equal to four common seals ( fætida) either in blubber or in meat. Curiously enough the eastern Eskimo do not use the bearded seal skins for boot soles, as do those farther west, but employ them entirely as material for ropes.

On the morning when we crossed from the mainland to Lambert Island I had, standing at sea level, counted with the naked eye over forty seals within a radius of two miles, basking in the sun, and more than three fourths of these were bearded seals. In this locality the bearded seal cannot be taken by the ordinary Eskimo method of hunting, which is to approach him by crawling up and playing seal and finally harpooning him. To try this would here be equivalent to an attempt at suicide by the hunter, for the ice is so thin that in order to pass over it safely at all the Eskimo in many places have to crawl on all fours or wiggle along on their stomachs, so as to distrib ute the weight of the body over a large area of ice ; if they stood up, they would break through. If on such ice a man were to harpoon a big seal or even a small one and try to hold him, there could be but one result. The ice would be broken by the struggle into small cakes, and the man would be pulled into the water. With a rifle this is all different, inasmuch as you can shoot your seal dead, then attach a line to him and carefully crawl away to a distance before you commence pulling, because the ice is always even thinner than elsewhere in the immediate vicinity of the seal's hole.

Although bearded seals are common enough in many districts inhabited by the eastern Eskimo, their taking is a rare thing. It is seldom or never attempted in the spring when they are basking on the ice, and only rarely in winter, when it is done by the ordinary waiting method described elsewhere, and with two men working together. Occasionally a man will spear a bearded seal thinking it is an ordinary one, in which case, if he be a stout hunter, he sometimes gets the beast and is considered a hero for it by all his country men. But sometimes the harpoon line proves too weak and the valuable harpoon head is carried off by the animal. Occasionally, when the line does not break, the man is not strong enough to hold the seal and the line and all are carried off.

Among a tribe whom we visited at another time a boy of fourteen unknowingly harpooned a bearded seal through a breathing-hole, and in order to hold him he wrapped the line around his waist. Only one thing could happen, for the seal was as strong as several boys of that age, and he drew the young fellow crosswise of the hole, which at that season was only four inches or so in diameter, and held him there a prisoner for several hours, until a man finally went out to look for him, and found him lying there across the hole. The boy and man together were able to enlarge the hole, haul the animal up through, and kill him. An adventure of this kind does not happen often, and no doubt will be told by that boy and his relatives as long as he lives.

There was great rejoicing in the village when it was learned that Natkusiak was going seal-hunting, and all the men were anxious to go with him, partly to secure their legal share of the booty and partly to see hunting with a rifle. Only three of those in the village had been with us the previous summer, and they were the only ones who had ever seen an animal killed with a bullet.

As a matter of local law there were two or three hunters who would not have needed to go along in order to get a share of the game, for in the division of the spoils only one piece of the seal goes to each household, irrespective of how many hunters representing it are present. The rule is that when a bearded seal is killed, the man who does the killing takes his stand in a conspicuous place near the dead animal and makes signals, usually by swinging out his arms at right angles. All those hunters near enough so they can see the sign come running up. Then the animal is divided into as many segments as there are families represented by the hunters present ; and when the cutting up has been done, the most influential person present has the first choice, which means that he takes the biggest and best piece, while the hunter himself, irrespective of his standing in the community, takes the last and therefore the poorest piece ; but he has the honor, which is no small thing among them, for not only is the deed considered one of prowess but the man who provides so much food for the community thereby becomes a public benefactor, and gets a valued reward in the consciousness of increased public esteem .

While the other hunters were away I passed the time in writing up my diary and in the occasional pursuit of bands of caribou that were passing. They were however more than usually wary that day for some reason, and I secured only two. Late in the evening the sealers came home successful. Natkusiak had shot two bearded seals, although one of them had been on such thin ice that they had been compelled to approach it slowly and carefully after it was shot, with the result that the warm blood from the wound made the place in which the body lay so slippery that the carcass slid of its own weight into the water and was lost.

When one shoots seal on solid ice, the ordinary procedure is to drop one's gun immediately after it is fired and to run at top speed to the seal. It has happened to me many a time that after a fifty yard sprint I have barely caught the animal by his hind flipper as he was beginning to slide, and it has happened oftener yet that I have been too late and have merely seen the splash as the animal disappeared in the water. Running of course was not to be thought of on the thin ice upon which Natkusiak hunted that day. The other seal had not slid from where he lay when shot, and had accord ingly been saved and cut in six segments for the six native families represented , for Natkusiak had told them that as we were the guests of the village at the time and were not doing our own housekeeping, he did not consider we were entitled to a share.

When he got near he told me that he knew already who I was, and that very likely I knew who he was, for he was a man so much more unfortunate than other men that the story of his misfortune had traveled to distant places. No doubt I had heard the story, he said, but nevertheless he would tell it to me himself so that I might know it from his own lips and take warning from it and tell my friends to do the same. 

Many years ago his house had been standing by itself some distance from the village, but from where he stood beside the seal-hole watching for the seal to come up he could see several other hunters out sealing. The seal, when it came, proved to be a bearded one, but being a strong man he had been able to hold it and to kill it. Without any assistance he had with his ice pick enlarged the breathing-hole enough to pull the animal out. ( It was no mean feat, seeing that a bearded seal will weigh from six hundred to eight hundred pounds. ) Up to this time he had not thought of the other hunters, but now he looked around and saw that they were all far away, and while distinctly visible he felt sure that none of them had any idea what kind of a seal he had caught. ( The hunters' law does not require that the hunters within sight be summoned to share at the cutting up of a common small seal. ) When a bearded seal is killed all the hunters within view must be called in to share the prize. It had occurred to him that by keeping the thing secret (by pretending this was a common seal), he might keep the animal to himself, and especially the skin, for he knew that he could sell pieces of it to a neighboring tribe who seldom catch bearded seals, for numerous articles of value. Accordingly he secretly cut the animal up, gave out the story that he had killed only a small seal, and pledged his wife to secrecy; but the story leaked out as such stories will. People came to him and took away from him both the skin and the meat and reproached him bitterly. He now repented his act and felt crushed by the disapproval of his people, but his punishment was to be made even heavier, for within a year he began to lose his eyesight and in another year he was stone blind. Since then he, poor miserable man, had been blind and a charge upon the community. Thus it was sure to go with those who did wicked things; and while he felt sure that I was a good man, nevertheless to know his story would do me no harm, and he wished I would pass it on to others, warning them to avoid selfish ways. 

I had never heard this tale before, but Natkusiak told me later he had heard it from the Eskimo we had been with the previous summer. After this occurrence, whenever we told that we had visited this particular village, we were always asked whether we had seen the blind man, and then the story would be repeated to us, exactly as the blind man had told it, to illustrate how punishment comes to those who break the law

Range of the Kanghirgyuargmiut. In summer some of them (a few) hunt towards Minto Inlet; some hunt southeast and meet the Puiblirgmiut; most, however, hunt east and meet the Ekallugtogmiut and Ashiagmiut who live “on the east coast of our country, which is not far from here overland, and good sledding because we go by the rivers.” Some join the Ekallugtogmiut for a time and with them visit the Arkilinik (near Baker Lake above the head of Chesterfield Inlet] “where there are trees, and where the people have guns and white men's clothes.” (Have seen many metal articles, one shirt, one red knit woollen hood, etc., brought from these trips. ) They never met the Nagyuktogmiut. One man at least — Hitkoak has been both to the Akilinik and to Umingmuktok.

In the fall they (the Kanghirgyuargmiut] come to Prince Albert Sound and proceed to Banks Island where in winter they live chiefly on bears (some entirely; others partly on seals) off Nelson Head and east of it. When bear hunting they often see Cape Parry [on the mainland to the south ]. Nelson Head can be seen from Parry only from the hill tops, and that rarely, and it is much higher than Parry, so they must hunt almost to the middle of the strait.

They usually have houses on or by the shore when in Banks Island. They often see caribou but “do not know how to hunt them in winter.” They know there are musk-oxen inland but they do not go after them. In spring they return to the Sound and soon scatter to the various hunting places. Those going to the Ekallugtogmiut are already on the way intended starting the day after we came to the village and delayed for us). Those going north towards Minto do not leave the sea till “ the snow gets soft on the ice.” Wednesday, May 17. Have given up going farther in direction of Banks Island, as there are no people that way. Started 3:30 P.M. heading for Cape Back about true southwest. Camped 7:30 P.M. to get chance to write up some of my briefer notes before the fillings-in are forgotten or misremembered. Game. No seals seen on top the ice -- ugrug (bearded seals) are to be expected nearer land and seals are not up yet. Crossed about 400 or 500 caribou tracks, i of them over a week old. Migration seems over, or at least there is a lull. Saw three bands of eight, seven, and three. The latter two Natkusiak tried but got shot at last only three misses on the run at 200 yards. Ptarmigan seen every day, mostly ( or all ?) rock ptarmigan. Crows every day. No snow buntings since leaving Walliraluk. Distance traveled: 12 miles.

Pamiungittok tells : The Banks Island people used to be well off. They killed so many deer and [musk ] oxen that their dried meat sometimes lasted the year round. They got to killing each other. One man killed had relatives in the Sound. For this reason (i.e. because of witchcraft practised by the dead man's relatives in the Sound ) food became scarce [ in Banks Island ); there were no seals for food or fuel and the people died of hunger -those that had not been murdered in the feuds. This happened some fifteen years ago i.e. when Agleroittok (who is now about twenty - five) was a boy but [after] his two brothers (were] grown up.