Religion

Early one Saturday afternoon about Christmas time a man and his wife arrived at Cape Smythe with a few caribou skins to sell. The word that they had skins for sale and sinew passed around quickly, and I heard of it the same day because my Eskimo, Natkusiak, came and asked me whether I wanted to buy any of the skins. The couple reported that they had been spending the autumn on the upper Colville River, that game had become scarce there, and that they had struck across country, a distance of perhaps two hundred miles, toward Cape Smythe. This was the substance of all they told until about midnight of the day of their arrival, when they added the further detail that on the Colville with them had been another Eskimo family, the woman of which was the sister of the man who had arrived at Cape Smythe. The two families with their two dog-sleds had left the Colville together, but the man now at Cape Smythe had had his sled loaded with caribou meat and the other family had none. With great magnanimity the man who had the meat fed his sister and her husband, but would not give their dogs anything to eat, although he fed his own dogs well. The result was that the dogs of the second couple got weak with hunger and finally froze to death. When the dogs were all dead the second family were no longer able to keep up, and so were left behind about forty miles east of Cape Smythe. 

When the Cape Smythe people heard this story they immediately set about organizing a search party and were about to start off when somebody pointed out that it was now already Sunday (for Sunday, according to Cape Smythe opinion, begins at twelve o'clock Saturday night). When those about to start on the search for the abandoned couple realized it was Sunday they saw at once that nothing could be done, for no work must be done on the Sabbath , and especially no journey must be started on the Sabbath day. 

Curiously enough, although all the white men at Cape Smythe had heard at noon on Saturday the story of the arrival of the couple with the skins to sell, none of us happened to hear until late Sunday evening the story of the other couple who had been left to starve thirty or forty miles to the east of us. We found out later that the case had been the subject of continuous conversation among the Eskimo for the last twenty-four hours, but for some strange reason none of us happened to hear of it. Dr. Marsh conducted his Sunday evening service that night in the ordinary way, but when it was over he was surprised to find that the people, instead of going home at once as they commonly did on Sunday nights, all lingered about the church . When he asked them what they were waiting for they told him they were waiting for Sunday to be over, so they could start out to the rescue of a man and his wife who were starving and probably freezing to death. As soon as Dr. Marsh realized the facts he did everything possible to get the search party started, but it was already after midnight and the Sabbath well over when they finally got off. 

In following the trail eastward they found evidences to show that the couple who had arrived at Cape Smythe had been traveling with great speed, taking turns sitting on the sled while the other ran ahead of the dogs. In other words, had they so desired they could very easily have brought home the other couple instead of abandoning them, for both they and their dogs had evidently been in full strength. 

A blizzard came up on Monday morning before the searching party had got far enough east to discover the place where the couple had been abandoned. The Sunday which they had wasted in inactivity had been a day of excellent weather, but that was all changed now, for the snow was drifting so thick that the searchers were unable to find the abandoned couple and returned empty-handed on the second day. But the same morning on which the searchers returned empty-handed to Cape Smythe, Mr. Thomas Gordon, who lives three miles north of the Cape, heard a faint noise outside his man. door. He took it for the noise made by the scratching of a dog, but a few minutes later when the door was accidentally opened by some member of the household they found outside it an unconscious man. When the warmth of the house had restored him it turned out that he was the man of the couple who had been abandoned. He had barely had the strength to drag himself to Mr. Gordon's house and had collapsed two or three times within the last two hundred or three hundred yards before reaching it . Mr. Gordon at once sent out a search party, who followed the man's trail through the snow and found his wife, with her hands and feet slightly frozen, in a fireless camp a few miles to the east. 

During the next few weeks I often saw the abandoned man and his wife, but the couple who abandoned them I now met here in Smith Bay for the first time. When we took our meal together on the first evening I noticed that this man was the one who took it upon himself to say grace, and as the circumstance interested me I inquired carefully of him about his religious views and how long he had been a Christian. He had been a Christian for about ten years, he said, and knew more prayers than any other Eskimo and was very particular not to break any of the commandments of the Lord . For many years he had done no work on Sunday; for many years he had never eaten a meal without saying grace; and in every other way he lived according to the law as he understood it. I asked him whether he had never heard that such things as leaving his sister to starve to death were also against the law of the Lord. He replied that he never had heard anything about a that th.. His Christianity, he told me with evident regret, might not be the best and most up-to-date kind, for he had never himself had the chance to get any first-hand from a missionary . He had learned his Christianity entirely from the converted Eskimo of the Kuvuk River, who, he said , might not be well informed about all the prohibitions neces sary for salvation. 

It may be worth a passing note that the abandoned family were also Christians. During the several weeks that they were being nursed back to health by Mr. and Mrs. Gordon they noticed Mr. Gordon never said grace at meals, and they many times expressed to my Eskimo companion, Natkusiak, their strong abhorrence of their host's irreverent ways. After they finally left his house and began to live with some Eskimo relatives in the Cape Smythe village I questioned them as to what they thought of Mr. Gordon and got some frank criticisms, but no expression of gratitude. The following spring when Mr. Gordon needed some help in whaling he asked this man to work for him, but he preferred to work for some one else at the same salary offered by Mr. Gordon.

One of the things that interested me was to see some shooting with the strong-looking bows and long copper-tipped arrows that we found in the possession of every man of the tribe. I therefore said that I would like to have them illustrate to me the manner in which they killed caribou, and I would in turn show them the weapons and method used by us. Half a dozen of the men at once sent home for their bows, and a block of snow to serve as a target was set up in front of our house. The range at which a target a foot square could be hit with fair regularity turned out to be about thirty or thirty -five yards, and the extreme range of the bow was a bit over one hundred yards, while the range at which caribou are ordinarily shot was shown to be about seventy - five yards. When the exhibition was over, I set up a stick at about two hundred yards and fired at it. The people men, women, and children -who stood around had no idea as to the character of the thing I was about to do, and when they heard the loud report of my gun all the women and children made a scramble for the houses, while the men ran back about fifteen or twenty yards and stood talking together excitedly behind a snow wall. I at once went to them and asked them to come with me to the stick and see what had happened to it. After some persuasion three of them complied, but unfortunately for me it turned out that I had failed to score. At this they seemed much relieved, but when I told them I would try again they protested earnestly, saying that so loud a noise would scare all the seals away from their hunting grounds, and the people would therefore starve. 

It seemed to me imperative, however, to show them I could keep my word and perforate the stick at two hundred yards, and in spite of their protests I got ready to shoot again, telling them that we used these weapons in the west for seal-hunting, and that the noise was found not to scare seals away. The second shot happened to hit, but on the whole the mark of the bullet on the stick impressed them far less than the noise. In fact, they did not seem to marvel at it at all. When I explained to them that I could kill a polar bear or a caribou at even twice the distance the stick had been from me they exhibited no surprise, but asked me if I could with my rifle kill a caribou on the other side of a mountain. When I said that I could not, they told me a great shaman in a neighboring tribe had a magic arrow by which he could kill caribou on the other side of no matter how big a mountain. In other words, much to my surprise, they considered the performance of my rifle nothing wonderful.

 I understand the point of view better now than I did then. It is simply this: if you were to show an Eskimo a bow that would in the ordinary way shoot fifty yards farther than any bow he ever saw, the man would never cease marveling, and he would tell of that bow as long as he lived; he would understand exactly the principle on which it works, would judge it by the standards of the natural, and would find it to excel marvelously. But show him the work of the rifle, which he does not in the least understand, and he is face to face with a miracle; he judges it by the standards of the supernatural instead of by the standards of the natural; he compares it with other miraculous things of which he has heard and which he may even think he has himself seen, and he finds it not at all beyond the average of miracles; for the wonders of our science and the wildest tales of our own mythologies pale beside the marvels which the Eskimo suppose to be happening all around them every day at the behest of their magicians. 

Perhaps I might here digress from the chronological order of my story to point out that the Eskimo's refusal to be astonished by the killing at a great distance of caribou or a bear by a rifle bullet whose flight was unerring and invisible, was not an isolated case. When I showed them later my binoculars that made far-away things seem near and clear, they were of course interested when I looked to the south or east and saw bands of caribou that were to them invisible, they applauded, and then followed the suggestion: “Now that you have looked for the caribou that are here today and found them, will you not also look for the caribou that are coming tomorrow, so that we can tell where to lie in ambush for them? ” When they heard that my glasses could not see into the future, they were disappointed and naturally the reverse of well impressed with our powers, for they knew that their own medicine-men had charms and magic paraphernalia that enabled them to see things the morrow was to bring forth. 

At another time, in describing to them the skill of our surgeons, I told that they could put a man to sleep and while he slept take out a section of his intestines or one of his kidneys, and the man when he woke up would not even know what had been done to him, except as he was told and as he could see the sewed -up opening through wkích the part had been removed. Our doctors could even transplant the organs of one man into the body of another. These things I had actually never seen done, but that they were done was a matter of common knowledge in my country. It was similar in their country, one of my listeners told me. He himself had a friend who suffered continually from backache until a great medicine -man undertook to treat him. The next night, while the patient slept, the medicine -man removed the entire spinal column, which had become diseased, and replaced it with a complete new set of vertebræ, and what was most wonderful — there was not a scratch on the patient's skin or anything to show that the exchange had been made. This thing the narrator had not seen done, but the truth of it was a matter of common knowledge among his people. Another man had had his diseased heart replaced with a new and sound one. In other words, the Eskimo believed as thoroughly as I in the truth of what he told; ' neither of us had seen the things actually done, but that they were done was a matter of common belief among our respective country men; and the things he told of his medicine-men were more marvelous than the things I could tell of mine. In fact, I had to admit that the transplanting of spinal columns and hearts was beyond the skill of my countrymen; and as they had the good breeding not to openly doubt any of my stories, it would have been ill-mannered of me to question theirs. Besides, questioning them would have done no good; I could not have changed by an iota their rock-founded faith in their medicine-men and spirit -compelling charms. In spite of any arguments I could have put forth, the net result of our exchange of stories would have been just what it was, anyway—that they considered they had learned from my own lips that in point of skill our doctors are not the equals of theirs.

May 15, 1910, was the third day after our discovery of the Dolphin and Union Straits Eskimo. For two days they had entertained us with warm hospitality, and had already grounded firmly in my mind the impression which a year of further association with them was destined to do nothing to weaken —that they are the equals of the best of our own race in good breeding, kindness, and the substantial virtues. They were men and women of the Stone Age truly, but they differed little from you or me or from the men and women who are our friends and families. The qualities which we call “Christian virtues” (and which the Buddhists no doubt call “ Buddhist virtues”) they had in all their essentials. They are not at all what a theorist might have supposed the people of the Stone Age to be, but the people of the Stone Age probably were what these their present-day representatives are: men with standards of honor, men with friends and families, men in love with their wives, gentle to their children, and considerate of the feelings and welfare of others. If we can reason at all from the present to the past, we can feel sure that the hand of evolution had written the Golden Rule in the hearts of the contemporaries of the mammoth millenniums before the Pyramids were built. At least, that is what I think. I have lived with these so-called primitive people until “savages” and all the kindred terms have lost the vivid meanings they had when I was younger and got all my ideas at second-hand; but the turning blank of this picturesque part of my vocabulary has been made up to me by a new realization of the fact that human nature is the same not only the world over, but also the ages through .

On our return journey from Bear Lake I was one morning surprised to see on the sky-line a party who evidently were not Eskimo. We hastened to intercept them, and found them to be Slavey Indians, one of whom spoke fairly good English. They had been to the northward hunting caribou, and with a vague notion that they wanted to go farther than usual on the chance of seeing Eskimo. Two days before we saw them, when they had found traces of Eskimo, they had completely lost their desire to see them. Their courage had suddenly given out, and they were now in full retreat. When they learned, however, that we had been spending several months with the Eskimo and had found them to be very friendly, the English speaking Slavey, who gave his name as Jimmie Soldat, told me that he was in the service of my friend Hornby; that Hornby had told him to keep a lookout for me, and to assist me in every way he could, and that Hornby had further requested that I take Jimmie in hand and bring him in contact with the Eskimo, so that later Jimmie might be able to guide Hornby to the place where the Eskimo are. 

Now I did not desire to bring my unspoiled Coronation Gulf people into contact with civilization, with the ravages of which among the Eskimo of Alaska and the Mackenzie I am too familiar; but it seemed that the thing could not be staved off for more than a year or two, anyway, for the fact of my living with the Eskimo was already well known, and both the traders and missionaries who operate through Fort Norman would be sure to make use of the information. While I regretted the event in general, I was glad to be able to do a service, as I thought, to my friends Melvill and Hornby; so next day I took Jimmie and two of his Slavey companions to within a mile or two of an Eskimo encampment, and left them there in hiding behind a hill while I went to the Eskimo to ask their permission to bring the Indians into camp. 

At first the Eskimo refused flatly. They said that they themselves had never had anything to do with the Indians; that their ancestors had had but rare contact with them, and that this contact had never been friendly; that sometimes Indians had killed some of them and sometimes they had killed some Indians, and that now no doubt these Indians had treacherous intentions in wanting to be introduced into camp. Through our long residence with them, however, Natkusiak and I had their confidence so fully that we finally talked them into allowing the Indians to come, on the condition that they leave their weapons behind them. 

When I returned to Jimmie with this ultimatum, the Indians in their turn said that the intentions of the Eskimo were clear: that they intended to get them unarmed into their clutches and murder them, and Jimmie would have nothing more of the adventure. His backing out at this stage, however, did not suit me, for the Eskimo were sure to take that as a sign of treachery, and it would not have been a day until every Eskimo party in the neighborhood was on its way to the coast in a retreat in which they would have abandoned their sleds, their skins intended for clothing, and through which we would lose prestige by having brought this calamity upon them. Natkusiak and I therefore took the Indians practically by force into camp, threatening them with all sorts of dire results if they backed out. The Eskimo's reception of the Indians was friendly. The Indians were dressed in white men's clothing, and were not at all what the Eskimo had expected Indians to be like; and in fact several of them said to me at once that had they known the Indians were like this they would not have been so frightened of them.

 This was early September, and the nights were dark at midnight. We had brought the Indians to camp about sundown, and an hour later, when supper had been eaten, the Eskimo invited the Indians to come and sleep in their tents; but this the Indians would not do, saying that it was their custom to sit beside the fire. This seemed to the Eskimo a strange thing, but to me it was a self- evident fib. The Indians were simply too frightened to trust themselves in the dwellings of the Eskimo. Natkusiak and I therefore sat up with the Indians for an hour or two until all the Eskimo were sound asleep, and then finally, by lying down one on either side, we got the Indians to go to sleep between us. The next morning after breakfast the Indians invited the Eskimo to accompany them down to their lodges, where they had considerable quantities of smoked caribou meat, caribou fat, and marrow-bones. Seven of the Eskimo went, including two women, and much of the forenoon was spent in the commodious lodges of the Slaveys in feasting and in exchanging opinions, in all of which I had to act as interpreter. 

Finally when the feast was over and the Eskimo were apparently in the best of spirits, Jimmie brought forward a package of pictures of saints and holy men, and made a little speech in which he asked me to tell the Eskimo that he was an ambassador of a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, and that the bishop said that if they were good men and never killed any more Indians and ab jured their heathenish practices, he would come and build a mission among them and would convert them to the true faith. This speech, which meant so much to the Indian, would of course have meant nothing to the Eskimo, for they had never heard of the good bishop or of the faith he preaches. Jimmie went on to say that he had a picture for each of them, and that if they would take them and wear them over their hearts, the pictures would protect them from all evil and be of the greatest value to them. Without translating any of these things, I took the pictures, which were the ordinary religious chromos, and gave them to the Eskimo. 

It turned out that Jimmie had had no commission from Hornby, and that he had merely, from overhearing Melvill's and Hornby's conversation, found out that I was a friend of theirs, and he had used this knowledge in a confidence game of his own, the object of which was to become the first Indian who had been in friendly contact with the Eskimo, that he might thereafter pride himself on that fact, and might be able to represent himself to the bishop as having been a pioneer in the spread of the faith among the Eskimo. Apparently the results have been what he desired, for I have since heard that the Roman Catholic Church sent in missionaries at once, who arrived among the Eskimo soon after we left them, and whose work in that field will no doubt continue indefinitely. 

Among other things, Jimmie told me that Melvill and Hornby were somewhere on Great Bear Lake. This was good news, and from that time I was continually on the lookout for some signs of them. Finally, on the 13th of September, it happened that the pursuit of a large band of bull caribou had taken me a long distance away from our camp, and when I finally shot three of the animals it was on a slope of a hill facing the southwest. While I was skinning them I happened to look in the direction of Bear Lake, which lay some fifteen miles distant, and there, not more than a mile away, was pitched a tepee. I took this for an Indian camp, but went up to it to make inquiries about my friends, and it turned out to be their camp. They had a day or two before heard from Jimmie about my presence in the country, and were also looking for me. They had been down on the Mackenzie River in the summer, and had some news of the outside world. King Edward was dead, and a heavier than air flying-machine had crossed the English Channel. This news, not half a year old, was fresh news indeed in that country.

As with many other Inuit groups, Copper Inuit religion was more concerned with the here and now than with an afterlife. Most important was the relationship between humans and the spirits of the animals upon which humans depended for food. It was essential that the proper rituals be followed, so as not to offend these spirits, who are perceived as being much like humans. An animal spirit that had been offended through the violation of a taboo or the omission of an important ritual might decide to take revenge upon the group as a whole. Illness, starvation, or some other disaster could result. Copper Inuit observed a number of taboos which were believed to be important to maintaining good relations with the spirit world. A number of observances were related to the separation of land animals and sea animals. Copper Inuit were prohibited for cooking products of the land and sea in the same pot. Nor could they place seal meat next to caribou meat on the sleeping platform of the snow house.  Most pronounced was the prohibition against sewing caribou skin clothing during the early winter. All winter clothing had to be prepared in the fall, at the gathering places, and completed before the move to the sealing grounds on the sea ice.

In addition to believing in the spirits of animals and the shades of deceased humans, the Copper Inuit subscribe to a world inhabited by wondrous and often dangerous creatures dwarfs, giants, and Caribou people. They believed in a sea goddess (known as Sedna in other regions) who control the animals of the Seas. Arnapkapfaaluk, or 'big bad woman,' was not a benevolent goddess looking out for human beings: when offended by the violation of a taboo or some indiscriminate action, she would withhold the seals upon which people depended for survival.

Animal spirits

William Kuptana: The custom of the Eskimos is that when they take part in a hunt and make a kill, all who hunted the animal must participate in the cutting and sharing of the carcass. Those who do not follow that custom embarrass the animal spirit; therefore, it is believed that the non-participant will be hunted himself.

Death was not accompanied by elaborate ceremony. In Winter, the body was usually left behind and it's no house, while in summer, the body was wrapped in skins and left on the time go. The concept of an afterlife was not well developed. Jenness reported that it was definitely not viewed as a land of joy and plenty, but a "big and gloomy realm where, even if want and misery are not found (and of this they are not certain), joy and gladness at least must surely be unknown." (Jenness 1922: 190)

Shamans (angatkut) Served as important intermediaries between humans in the spirit world. Shamans provided a number of essential functions. They could act as healers, in the event of an illness, or could determine what taboos were violated When Animals became scarce. They were also believed to have powers for controlling the weather and warding off evil spirits. The shaman, acting as an intermediary, could communicate with animal spirits, often doing so with the aid of a spirit helper or familiar. Most angatkut claimed to have more than one helper. Jenness met one Copper Inuit shaman, Uloksak, who claimed to have a white man, a polar bear, a wolf, and a dog as helping Spirits. Shamans could be either male or female, but no matter what their gender they were expected to have some kind of visionary experience whereby a spirit helper revealed itself to the future angatkut. In their shamanistic performances, shamans may have relied upon ventriloquism and other dramatic acts to impress their audiences and demonstrate their powers. Shamans by definition are neither good nor bad. Some angatkut developed reputations for kindness and generosity;  others were greatly feared and used their powers to gain advantage over others.