Religion

November 9th we arrived at an Eskimo village of five houses near where the Itkillik River empties into the head of the Colville delta. Most of the people belonged to one or another of the Colville River tribes, but a few of them hailed from across the mountains in the Kuvuk and Noatak valleys and elsewhere. Their houses were of the typical inland Eskimo type - a dome-shaped frame, of stout willows covered with moss and earth to a thickness of six or eight inches, with doors about three feet high in the wall, closed with flaps of bearskin or heavy caribou hides. Most of these people had sheet-iron stoves which they had bought from the Point Barrow Eskimo, about whose trading operations we have already spoken, but some of them had open fires built on the center of the floor, with holes in the roof which served the purposes alternately of a chimney and a window. When the fire was going these openings in the roof were kept uncovered, and when the fire was extinguished they would be covered with transparent membranes made in some cases of the thin skins of summer-killed caribou or of fresh-water codfish, after the manner of the inland dwellers; in other cases the windows had been purchased from the Point Barrow Eskimo and were made of the intestines of bearded seals or walrus according to the custom of the coast. These people had made the summer caribou hunt inland and had killed a large number of caribou but had made no use whatever of the meat. One man , who six weeks before we saw him had killed about one hundred and twenty- five caribou, was now living on fish entirely and had only a few days' provisions ahead, for the caribou had been killed a long way from where he intended to winter and he had taken only the skins as he could not haul the meat home. This camping ground, which a dozen families had selected for their winter home, was at a fairly good fishing place and every one was catching enough to eat for the time being. Still, it was a foregone conclusion that they would starve more or less before spring. 

Although white men do not frequent the Colville district, most of these Eskimo were familiar with the ways of white men and all of those who were full grown had seen white men once or oftener. But many of the children had never seen a white man until they saw me, even those who were thirteen or fourteen years of age. Nevertheless they were all Christians and had been for several years. Christianity had come to them, spreading up the Kuvuk and Noatak rivers from Kotzebue Sound, where it had been started by Moravian missionaries. When we came to the village we were invited, according to Eskimo custom, to come in and have something to eat, but contrary to Eskimo custom a wash dish and towel were placed before us, and after the water had been blessed with a lengthy prayer we were directed to wash our hands and faces. My Eskimo did as they were told, and after the washing was over the water in the bowl was again blessed before it was spilled out. A lengthy grace was then said over the food and a separate grace over the tea which came after. Finally at the end of the meal thanks were returned. All of this was of course in Eskimo. When the ceremonies were over we were asked whence we came; and when it turned out that my Eskimo had been to Herschel Island, where there was known to be a missionary, the local people inquired eagerly whether we had brought any new prayers with us. Natkusiak, who was at that time scarcely a Christian as yet, although since then he has become exceedingly devout, did not know any prayers, but Akpek knew a great many. For that reason Natkusiak was from the beginning treated with little consideration by the community, while Akpek gained their highest respect at once and retained it to the end. During our entire stay he was much sought after and continually invited around to the various houses to eat and to teach the community new prayers. 

What the people especially wanted, they told us, was a new prayer for caribou. Three years before , they said, they had obtained an excellent prayer for caribou from Kotzebue Sound. It had worked so well for the first two years that they had secured plenty of caribou through the use of it, not only during the summer season when the skins are good for clothing, but also (so efficient was the prayer) during the winter, when under ordinary circumstances they would not have been able to get any. But this year the prayer did not seem to be working so well. They supposed that white men's prayers,, like their rifles and other things, no doubt deteriorated with age, and now they were anxious to secure a new and more efficient prayer. Akpek told them that he had a very good one, and he at once proceeded to teach it to them. I refrained from much comment on all these things for I had come to the country to learn rather than to teach , but it was difficult for me to restrain myself from pointing out to our hosts that unless they had better success with this prayer than Akpek himself had had with it during the time he had been in our service, they would probably find it a weak reed to lean upon in time of emergency.

It seems that in Kotzebue Sound the fishing is chiefly done with nets. The missionary, in teaching his flock to keep the Sabbath holy, has prohibited the use of nets on Sunday, saying nothing about other methods of fishing, for he found no others in use. The news of this prohibition spread not only northwest along the coast to Point Hope and thence to Point Barrow , but also northeast up the Kuvuk and Noatak rivers and across the mountains to the Colville, where we were trying to lay up a winter store of fish, chiefly by netting but also by the use of the hook, which we found a less productive as well as a more laborious method. When the commandment reached us it appeared in the form : “God has said, you shall not use fish nets on Sunday" (the implication being, of course, that if you did you would be liable to eternal damnation). Being good Christians and anxious to do nothing which could possibly endanger their eternal welfare, the Colville River natives accordingly pulled their fish nets out of the water on Saturday night, fished with hooks all day Sunday, and put their nets back on Monday morning.

At the same time that Dr. Marsh and I went southwest to Icy Cape, there also went from Point Barrow something like fifteen or twenty Eskimo sleds to a native dance at Icy Cape. The white men call it a “dance,” but really it is the most northeasterly variant of the British Columbian “potlatch.” Formal invitations had been sent by certain men at Icy Cape to certain men at Point Barrow to visit them . These invitations had included a statement of what sort of present the host expected to receive from his guest on his arrival. The messengers from Icy Cape when they returned home from Point Barrow carried in turn not only the acceptances or re grets of the people who had been invited , but in case of acceptances they carried also an intimation of what sort of present the visitors would expect in return for the presents which their hosts demanded. I did not see the dance at Icy Cape, but have seen a number of similar ones and the procedure is always the same. The visitors camped a few miles before reaching the Icy Cape village and a messenger was sent ahead in the evening to announce their coming. Several young men then came from Icy Cape to the camp of the visitors, and the following morning when everything was ready, these and a few of the young men from among the visitors ran a race back to Icy Cape. Each man who runs a race does it not for himself but as the representative of some prominent man who is going to take part in the ceremonies. Each racer as he arrives in the village goes to the dance-house, where he is met by the wife of his master, or other woman of his household, who brings him a warm drink of water and something to eat. Later on, the main body of visitors arrive and either pitch their own camps or move into the houses of their friends in the village. 

That evening the dance begins. A local man will dance first, singing songs, recounting his own achievements and telling whatever is in his mind to tell. Following this his wife or some one of his household hands him the articles which he intends to present to his guest. When the presentation is over the guest arises, and in some cases dances and sings in the manner of his host, but in others merely makes a brief speech and hands over the articles with which he pays for the present he has received . Sometimes the initial presents, or else the counter presents that pay for them, are not material, but ap parently one of them must be, for I never saw a pledge of super natural assistance paid for in kind. At one of these dances at Point Barrow I have seen a man give two cross fox skins to an old “medicine man” in return for the promise that the shaman would see to lit that he got two whales the following whaling season. Incidentally it may be stated here that the man who gave the two fox skins really did get the two whales which were promised in return for them. This somewhat strengthened at Point Barrow the general opinion that while Christian prayers are very good in ordinary things, the old-fashioned whaling charms are much more effective when it comes to catching whales. 

At such a dance or potlatch as this one at Icy Cape the visitors usually remain for several days, although the ceremony of exchanging presents is commonly accomplished within twenty-four hours after the arrival of the party. There is a good deal of feasting, sing ing, dancing, and story-telling, and every one has a good time. 

On this trip of ours to Wainwright Inlet and Icy Cape we kept getting new sidelights on the forms the new religion is taking in northern Alaska. One of the first things that an Eskimo learns when he becomes Christian is the importance of refraining from work on Sunday. In general the Eskimo's own religion consists mainly in a series of prohibitions or taboos, and the prohibitions of Christianity are therefore, of all the new teachings, the things he most readily understands. Under the old religion it used to be believed that sickness, famine, and death were caused by such trivial things as the breaking of a marrow bone with the wrong kind of hammer, or the sewing of deerskin clothing before enough days had elapsed from the killing of the last whale or walrus. To avoid breaking these taboos meant prosperity and good health, and the gaining of all the rewards (or rather the escape from all the penalties) provided for by that system of religion. Similarly, now that they know about salvation and damnation it seems but logical to them that one may be gained and the other avoided by the mere observance of such simple prohibitions as that against working on Sunday. 

Dr. Marsh , who is a man of university education and of broad views in religious matters, often tried to explain to his congregation at Point Barrow that while the keeping of the Sabbath was in general an estimable thing, there were certain circumstances under which it was not called for, nor even desirable. To try to make clear this idea he preached again and again from the text of how Our Lord gathered the ears of corn on the Sabbath , but failed completely in getting them to see the matter from his point of view. I suggested to Dr. Marsh, therefore, that possibly his own example would do more good than his preaching in showing the Eskimo how Sunday might safely be treated. Accordingly, in order to give the people an example, we traveled on two occasions upon Sunday. But the example availed nothing except further to lose Dr. Marsh his standing in the community. I heard many comments, most of which were to the effect that if Dr. Marsh was willing to endanger his temporal and eternal welfare, they nevertheless were not. They knew of old how dangerous it was to break taboos; they could see now that undoubtedly many of the past misfortunes and accidents of their people were no doubt due to the fact that they had broken the Sabbath taboo before they knew of its existence. Now that they knew it, no man who took thought of his own interests or those of the community would break the taboo. Possibly Dr. Marsh and I had some charm by which we could evade the effect of our transgression , but the punishment would surely fall on some one.

It has been true in Greenland, and wherever Christianity has long had root among the Eskimo, that it has taken upon itself develop ments such as those just indicated, which are strange to our European ideas, and which the European missionaries are entirely powerless to check. So it was with Dr. Marsh at Point Barrow. He tried to combat certain doctrines, which to his mind were narrow-minded and which were certainly of local growth, with the result that his own congregation judged him a man who was opposed to the Kingdom of God and one whom they did not desire to have as a missionary. The case is interesting, and although the ending of it does not fall at this point of our narrative chronologically, it may be as well to take it up here, seeing that I, in a measure, deserve the blame for urging Dr. Marsh into a conflict in which I might have known he was sure to be defeated. 

Some of Dr. Marsh's more serious difficulties with his flock grew out of matters pertaining to whaling. The whaling season at Point Barrow in the spring is about six weeks long, beginning generally the first of May. At that time northeasterly winds usually blow, with the result that a lead opens up, commonly somewhere between a half and five miles offshore. This lead may be anything from a few yards to several hundred yards in width, and extends southwest along the coast to Bering Straits, forming a path of open water along which the whales come in the spring on their annual migration from the Pacific to the Beaufort Sea. Whether the land-floe be half a mile or five miles wide, the whalemen must go to the outer edge of it with their boats and whaling gear and wait there for the coming of the whales. There is no regularity about the migration of the animals, and often at the height of the whaling season the crews may be encamped for a week at a time without seeing any; and then, all in one day, scores of whales may come along and pass on to the eastward. This day of opportunity is, according to our modern way of thinking, as likely as not to be a Sunday. When the Eskimo learned that God had forbidden work upon the Sabbath they took the point of view that it does not profit a man that he gain the whole world if he lose his own soul, and although the catching of whales was the one thing in the world which all of them most desired, nevertheless they agreed that the loss of one's soul was too great a price to pay for even a bow-head whale. Accordingly they would commence on Saturday afternoon to pull back their boats from the edge of the ice and get everything ready for the Sabbath observance. Saturday evening the men themselves would abandon temporarily their boats and gear, on the outer edge of the shore ice, to go ashore and remain there all day Sunday. It usually took them half of Monday to get everything ready for work again. In this manner they lost two days out of every seven from a harvest season of only six weeks in the year. 

It was in vain that Dr. Marsh expostulated with the people, and pointed out that not only were they losing the chance of getting whales but that they also ran a serious risk of losing their boats and whaling gear in case a strong northeaster should happen to blow up while they were ashore. This would carry all of their belongings out to sea in the break - up of the ice that was sure to occur under a strong offshore wind. “But can't you see to it,” they asked him, “that the whales do not come on Sunday and that a northeaster does not blow too hard while we are away from our boats? God controls the winds and the movements of the whales; can't you ask Him to have the whales come on week days only, and can't you ask Him to keep our boats and gear safe?” Dr. Marsh explained to them that, according to his view, the Lord governed the earth by certain laws with the operation of which he was not likely to interfere even in response to the most heartfelt prayers. He explained further in the most modern way the subjective efficacy of prayer and how , if they prayed rightly and sincerely, a balm would descend upon their souls and make them stronger and better men. But they did not want a balm they wanted a change of wind, and they began to mutter among themselves that this was a fine sort of missionary to have, who was unable to control the winds and help them in whaling. They re minded themselves how their own medicine men had been able not only to control the comings and goings of the whales, but had even been able to make the whales willing to be killed. They also in quired from their countrymen in other districts, who reported that the missionaries whom they had assured them that, if they prayed to God in the right way, He would do for them whatever they asked Him. That was the kind of missionary to have, and why could not they, too, have such a missionary? And so they formulated charges, which were written down by the scholars among them and forwarded to the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, in New York . There were a good many counts in the charges, but the ones of the greatest importance to the Eskimo mind were these : that Dr. Marsh encourages Sabbath-breaking; that Dr. Marsh teaches that prayers are of no avail; and that Dr. Marsh encourages immodesty by taking off his coat in the Eskimo houses. 

With reference to the last charge it may be said that it was the Eskimo custom for men and women , whenever they entered their superheated dwellings, to take off their coats and sit naked to the waist, while children were commonly allowed to go entirely naked up to the age of six years. The fact that the human form is essentially vile and must be kept from sight was not known to the primitive Eskimo, but was accepted unquestioningly by them, along with the other truths of Christianity, so soon as they heard of it. 

When a missionary or any one connected with the church tells the Eskimo anything, they always take it as coming directly from God, or else as a downright falsehood. It had been so with the shamans before the missionaries the good and honorable ones spoke the simple truth as they received it from the spirits; the bad shamans were merely liars, who pretended to represent the spirits but did not. The missionary, who in the mind of the Eskimo is a new and in certain ways a superior kind of shaman, does not, therefore, speak as a private individual; he is in their eyes but the mouth piece of the Lord. When some missionary somewhere in Alaska had said that sitting stripped to the waist was wrong, the Eskimo had understood it as one of the things which if done would lead to damnation. When Dr. Marsh had failed to fall in with this view, but on the other hand considered taking off his coat the only sensible thing to do in the overheated houses, they believed him in error either through malice or lack of knowledge of the taboo in question, and considered he was encouraging a practice that endangered the eternal welfare of those who might follow it.

I have no information at hand to indicate why the Board of Home Missions in New York dismissed Dr. Marsh from his post at Point Barrow, as they eventually did the summer of 1912. But I do know why his congregation thought him dismissed. The Eskimo at Point Barrow consider that it was done on the basis of the complaints which they themselves had sent to the Mission Board, the vital points of which , to their minds, are the three cited above; and I do know that they expressed great satisfaction in securing a missionary, in 1912, who believed with them that prayers would have a material and immediate answer of the sort they desired. 

But while the Point Barrow Eskimo rejoiced that they were getting a missionary with more orthodox views and whose influence with the Lord was more immediate and effective than that of Dr. Marsh, they also realized their loss in being compelled, in the future, to go without his constant medical care as a doctor. There was many a chronic invalid at Point Barrow whom I saw him visit every day for months on end, and many a woman whose life he had saved at childbirth. Especially when the day of his leaving had come, when they saw their minister's family packing up their things in preparation for departure, this aspect of the case began to strike the people more forcibly, and on that day (when I was about to take the revenue cutter at Point Barrow in 1912) a number of them came to me saying that they were the ones who had signed the complaint against Dr. Marsh and that they were now sorry they had done it. They wanted me to intercede with the captain of the revenue cutter, whom they supposed all-powerful, to get him to permit Dr. Marsh to stay after all . Of course I had to tell them that the revenue cutter had nothing to do with it —that Dr. Marsh was going, never to return, and that they would now have to depend upon the efficacy of prayer for the cure of their ailments as well as for the success of their whaling.

We settled down to live with these Colville people, and commenced making preparations for the winter. The only thing to do was to catch fish. Now it seems that in Kotzebue Sound, where the Chris tian doctrines of the Colville people had originated, fishing is by nets only. As fishing is no doubt practically the only work done there, or was so before the development of mining, the missionary had probably said to them, “ Do not put out your fish-nets on Sunday," meaning thereby, “ Do not work on Sunday" — there being no other work. However that may be, the prohibition came to our community in the form : “ God has said you must not use fish-nets on Sunday. ” Accordingly the entire community pulled their fish-nets out of the river Saturday night, fished with hooks all day Sunday, and put the nets back into the water Monday morning.

The winter of 1908–09, while I was staying at the village of Cape Smythe, there arrived one Saturday about noon a man and his wife with a well- fed team of dogs and sled - load consisting partly of fresh caribou skins and caribou sinew, which latter has a high value on the north coast of Alaska as sewing- thread. Although this couple did not actually appear at the whaling station where I was staying, I learned about their coming immediately, for the news spread like wild - fire through the village that people had come who had caribou skins to sell. The couple said that they had spent the fall on the upper Colville River, had made a successful caribou hunt there, had stayed until all the meat was eaten up except what they could haul with them on their sled, and had then set out across country, heading northwest for Cape Smythe. This was the substance of what they told about their journeyings, until toward midnight, when they added the further detail that the man's sister and her husband had been with them on the upper Colville, that they had not succeeded so well in the caribou hunt, and that when they started, each family with its own sled, from the Colville, the sled of this second couple had been empty of meat. The family who had plenty had with great generosity fed the family which had none, but had refused to give any meat to their dogs, with the result that the poor animals became nothing but skin and bones. Then a severe blizzard struck them, and all the hungry dogs froze to death, while of course nothing happened to the well- fed dog team. When the one couple had no dogs with which to haul their sled, the other could no longer wait for them and had abandoned them about forty miles southeast from Cape Smythe. 

The people who had been abandoned had some relatives in the Cape Smythe village, and even apart from them there were many who were ready to go to the rescue. The relief party was about to set out when someone pointed out that Saturday was just merging into Sunday and that no work must be done on the Sabbath. 

Strangely enough, none of the white men at Cape Smythe heard anything of the abandoned couple, although we learned later that their case had been a topic of continuous conversation all day Sunday. The first any white man knew of it was after Dr. Marsh had conducted the regular evening services in the church, when he found, very much to his surprise, that the people after the service did not leave the church as usual and go to their homes. When he asked them why this was, they replied that they were waiting for Sunday to be over so that they could start out to the rescue of a starving couple that had been abandoned inland. When Dr. Marsh knew about the case he of course did all he could to hurry things up, but it was already midnight when the searchers got started. The weather had been fine on Saturday, and there would that day have been no trouble in following the trail of the couple who had arrived, but by Sunday night the wind had been blowing and the drifting snow had covered up the trail. The search party was out two days, but returned to Cape Smythe without finding any one. 

A day or two after this, Thomas Gordon, who was living about three miles northeast of Cape Smythe, heard a faint noise outside his front door. He thought nothing of it at first, but a little later someone accidentally went out and found an Eskimo who had collapsed and fainted on the front-door step. When this man had been revived in the warmth of the house, it turned out that he was the man of the couple abandoned. Mr. Gordon sent a sled on the man's trail, and they soon found his wife encamped in a fireless hut, with her hands and feet slightly but not seriously frozen. Half a dozen hours later she would no doubt have been maimed for life. 

While I was in the Cape Smythe village, I never saw the man who had abandoned his sister and her husband to starve and freeze, but it happened a month or two later that my party was storm-bound on the southeast corner of Smith Bay, at the house of an old acquaintance of ours named Kunagrak, who was related to all the people concerned. The man who had done the abandoning happened to be staying with Kunagrak. I noticed that when we sat down to meals it was he who said grace; in spiritual matters he seemed to be an authority and the leading light of the place. As a matter of curiosity I asked him if he had been long a Christian, and he replied, “ About ten years. ” He further volunteered the information that during all that time he had never eaten a meal without saying grace, and had never worked on Sunday, and had kept all the commandments of the Lord. I asked him if he had never heard that to abandon people to starve was against the commandments of the Lord. He had never heard that particular commandment, he said; but that might be because his Christianity had come entirely from some Kotzebue Sound Eskimo. He had never had the advantage of the direct instruction of a white missionary, and no doubt he might not have heard all the commandments of which those might have knowledge who had been better instructed than he. Just as a man who sits down to a meal of mountain sheep will adopt quickly a food taboo of which he is informed by any one who happens to be present, so this man seemed glad to learn that abandoning people to starve was against the desire of the Lord, and he would make a point of seeing that it did not happen again.