Religion

John Harvey Kellogg sought to prove that vegetarians were physically superior by fielding a Battle Creek College football team, which he personally coached. According to a former player, "Brother" Wright, whenever Kellogg's players lost, he railed at them for cheating on their diets and held them captive until one would say he had broken training rules and eaten meat. Wright stated that sometimes a player would eventually lie that he had eaten meat just to get the team released. He described Kellogg's efforts as "a crusade to prove the superiority of vegetarianism." Ellen G. White's condemnation of this approach to proving SDA superiority led to a policy restricting interscholastic sports by Adventist schools.

The 1932 Cauldron reports that after a single win in 1926, “football was found to be unsuccessful at Battle Creek College and was discontinued the next year.” https://www.lostcolleges.com/battle-creek-college

As early as 1927 and 1928, an influenza epidemic killed half the Inuit population of Bernard Harbour. The onset of this epidemic coincided with the arrival of the HBC supply ship Baychimo, which also brought the Reverend J. Harold Webster, who converted many of the Inuit of the Holman-Coppermine region to the Anglican faith. Other fatal epidemics occurred throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Tuberculosis, especially, was a chronic health problem from the early 1930s until the 1970s.

From the 1930s, tuberculosis was one of the major illnesses affecting all of the Inuit, throughout the Canadian Arctic. Systematic tuberculosis X-ray surveys, however, did not begin in the Holman-Coppermine region until the spring of 1953. After 1953, these surveys, carried out by plane throughout the Kitikmeot region, were an annual event, taking advantage of the usually good spring traveling conditions and the, by then, deploy ingrained habit of the Inuit to gather for a couple of weeks around the missions and trading posts at Easter (Dr. Otto Shaefer, personal communication). Patients found to have advanced tubercular infections were flown out immediately to TB sanatoria, first in Aklavik, and later to Sir Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton.

Up until this time we had been pursuing the same course as the caribou and had regularly been able to butcher all the meat we required. Each time we shot something, we held a banquet and lived a life of gluttony. We would fell three or four caribou at a time, for it is astounding how much eight hungry men and thirty-two greedy dogs can stow away inside them when they set about it. Whenever we had enough to meet our requirements for the day, we never even thought of laying in a stock of meat for the next. The Indians were opposed to breaking camp with heavy loads for the sleds — quick light driving was to them of the utmost importance.

 And if ever I were to mention the future, they would answer light-heartedly that, if there were caribou today, there would be caribou tomorrow. 

But it was becoming more and more evident that we were in danger of losing contact with the caribou, which seemed to have swerved off on a more southerly course. This thought highly amused the Indians, for the previous year they had followed the herd all the way over to the Thelon; they shot all they needed, and never once did they have to stop and break trail, for there were hard-trodden paths all the way. 

This was an error in calculation. But, for the time being, there was nothing else to do but to keep moving eastward with the hope that sooner or later we would again fall in with the herd. 

Our meals were now all upset. At one time we were able to shoot some game, at another we couldn't find so much as a single track. Our bellies began to cave in and our spirits drooped. One evening we were particularly hungry as we sat about the stove and dreamed about food. I came out with the hopeful thought that on the morrow we would have meat in the pot. Immediately the Indians were on top of me, asking me how many caribou I thought we would fell. " Oh, two or three, I believe," I replied, jestingly. Then, when they all wanted to know how I knew, I realized that my statement had been taken seriously and that they imagined I was gifted with powers of divination. I felt somewhat ill at ease and did my best to change the subject. But I was unsuccessful, at best. 

Next morning Isep started out on snowshoe a half-hour in advance of the main party. We could take no chances. Even if we were to drive in silence, the sound of our bells would frighten the game. We had been driving only a short time when we heard several shots ring out in rapid succession. We were approaching a lake, and there we saw a number of caribou dashing back and forth in confusion. Altogether we felled three deer. One had been merely wounded by the first shot and was running away with its tripes dragging along in the snow behind it. I stood ready to deliver the coup de grace when Johnny crowded in ahead of me, let go his sled, and permitted his dogs to dash off on their own initiative. Like wolves they raced straight for the caribou, which halted and pointed its antlers in the direction of the approaching storm. Down it went in a confusion  of barking dogs, harness, and sled. " Dogs fine caribou hunters," came dryly from Johnny. 

After the head had been severed from each carcass, we dealt out the leg bones amongst ourselves, split them, and ate the marrow right there on the spot. We first removed the stomachs and filled them half-full of blood, then carefully cut out the hearts, kidneys, and all visceral fat, and these we stuffed into fragments of the intestines, which were first washed in snow. Our days without food had given us a new view of what may be eaten. Nothing went to waste. 

After having divided the carcasses, we made ourselves a fire and held a grand feast. All during the meal I was the center of attraction. Three caribou had, in truth, been slain and thus my prediction had come true. All were eager to know if I could divine the presence of caribou at any time I wished. I did not make much of a reply; instead, I cloaked myself in mystic shadows like any soothsayer and thanked my lucky stars. It may just as well be mentioned in this place that when on later occasions of food shortage I was called upon to prophesy the future, I was foolish enough to yield to flattery. On one day I predicted two caribou, on another I predicted four. On both days we went with empty stomachs. My authority was undermined, and I never again indulged in prophecy

Suddenly I heard a shot and at the same moment I saw Antoine fly like the wind over to something in the snow and madly pounce upon it. Now what under Heaven! Up on top of the esker, whom should I see but Jonas, standing there, his crutch in one hand, his gun in the other. With a long and difficult shot he had felled the hare at the very moment Antoine had chased it from cover. How Jonas had ever managed to come out to this place of ours was a puzzle to me, until I saw his tracks in the snow. From the tent to the top of the esker I discovered a deep furrow carved through the yard-deep snow. That plucky little devil, he had dragged himself along on his belly! 

Twilight had begun to fall and we turned back to the tent, where we prepared the hare and waited for the caribou-hunters to return. Later in the evening they appeared. The result of their hunt was one ptarmigan. So, after all, we had a Christmas Eve spread and this fact gave us much pleasure. With painful care we divided the food equally amongst ourselves and swallowed, as it were, all but the skin and the feathers. But Christmas Eve was no grand affair for the dogs. 

Next morning, when we were ready to strike camp, Johnny found that he had lost all but one of his dogs. He had been careless enough to allow them to run loose during the night, and now they were unquestionably roaming the wastes in search of some game of their own. The chances that they would find their way back to the tent were certainly not great, but we decided to wait over a day, in any event, to see if they might not turn up. Johnny scraped up sticks of wood from near and far and made a little fire up on a hilltop so that the dogs might catch scent of the smoke. There he sat, half-frozen, all day long and half the night, in his endeavor to keep his fire burning. Along toward morning the dogs, tired and footsore, came trotting into camp. 

Before we again broke camp, Antoine had a surprise for us. He dragged out a caribou stomach half-filled with blood and inner organs, which he had hidden away during an earlier hunt. He could not have given us a handsomer Christmas present. It was frozen as hard as a rock, but we chopped it up into fine bits with the ax and threw these into the large pot, which we then filled half-full of snow-water. The result was a greenish mess, but we drank it down greedily. Scraps of the skin of the stomach were dealt out equally and these we chewed carefully and swallowed bite by bite. 

This proved to be our last meal for some time. We continued east for three days without food. A couple of times we experimented with some black lichens thoroughly boiled in water. They didn't taste at all bad, but they were not in the least degree filling. Aside from this it was tea, morning, noon, and night. We made enormous quantities of it and drank it scalding hot. 

None of us were particularly spry as we tramped along on our snowshoes. It was a question of sparing the dogs as much as possible, so it was a rare occasion indeed when we could hop onto the load and ride. Gradually our gnawing hunger gave way to a feeling of general flaccidity. We felt the cold keenly at night, and in the daytime it was just as bad, for the icy snow of the Barrens would find its way in through the minutest rift in our clothing. The cold remained constant day after day and I am sure the temperature never rose above 40° below zero. 

Nevertheless, the hardships which we ourselves endured were nothing compared with those which afflicted the dogs. It was a week now since they had eaten anything resembling a square meal, though they worked faithfully in the traces from morning till night, none the less. Their tails drooped and there was no longer the old pulling-power in their gait, but they moved along somehow. It is unbelievable what these dogs of the Northland can endure in the way of toil and deprivation, and inspiring is their patient willingness to work until their last ounce of strength is gone and they drop in the traces. 

We crossed the divide, a conspicuous elevation in the terrain off to the northwest, and thereafter all the streams flowed east towards Hudson Bay. The third day after our meal of frozen caribou stomach we sighted some stunted spruces along a river course in a small valley. There we pitched our tent and held a general council to decide on the best course for us to pursue. Even the Indians could see that it would be dangerous to continue on our present course. Not a fresh caribou trail to be seen, and the wastes to the east of us gave promise of nothing. Hence we agreed to turn due south on the following morning. Everything considered, that must be the direction in which the caribou were holding themselves; hunting was the one matter which concerned us now. Along the way, too, we might cross the sled-trail of some white trapper who had a cabin somewhere along the edge of the forest. The Indians had heard about this cabin, but none knew its exact location. 

I should like to mention in this place that not once, either then or on later occasions when we were suffering from hunger, did I ever hear the Indians mention the possibility of eating the dogs. This was due to an old superstition to the effect that dogs are cannibalistic and therefore unclean, a belief I shall treat later. It has happened on occasion that white trappers have eaten their dogs, but amongst Indians I have never heard of such an occurence.

The Indians' world of ideas is extremely limited and is confined, as it is reasonable to expect, to hunting and wilderness life. They know little about anything that lies outside their immediate sphere of existence, and they have not the slightest interest in improving their knowledge. It has therefore been extremely difficult for the spiritual impulses of the white race to make any impression upon these people. 

The ancient heathenish conceptions are combined to form an implicit faith in spirits resident in the various beasts of the forest, in the sun, wind, stars, et cetera. In many instances the exact influence of a particular spirit is somewhat vague. When a person falls ill, it is a sign that a spirit has got into him. The spirit must therefore be expelled by means of divers rites. In other cases it is important that one should avoid doing anything which might invoke the displeasure of a certain spirit, lest its vengeance be visited upon the entire tribe. Ideas of punishment and reward beyond the grave have no place in the belief of these Indians. The origin of man is interpreted, in terms of legends dealing with animals and spirits. There are further indications of a myth concerning a deluge which, at the dawn of time, inundated all the land. 

The Indians of today are moved by teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, whose rituals find great response in their souls. How deeply rooted their faith has become is another matter entirely. It is possible that the Indians, even with the advent of the new teaching, remain faithful to their old superstition; the following will possibly throw some light on this subject. 

Presumably the old rites are continued in secret. I do not make this statement from personal experience, but from the observations of white men who, for certain specific purposes, stand in direct contact with the natives. 

The old belief in souls incarnated in the bodies of animals may still be traced. The Indians thus believe that misfortune will result from the killing of such creatures as the raven, the wolf, the wolverine, and the dog, and they avoid such killings whenever possible. It would be a simple matter for them to harvest wolf pelts in the same quantity as do the white trappers, but they refuse to slay a wolf, although a bounty of thirty dollars per head is offered for these creatures. There are Indians farther west who will even go so far as to throw away their rifles in the event of killing a wolf. This same superstition is probably responsible for the ancient custom of abandoning the old and infirm in the wilderness as sacrifices to the beasts of prey. 

The common rule is that the bear, too, must be preserved. But here another thought appears to be involved, a thought based upon the conception of guardian animals, in whose bodies reside spirits responsible for man's well-being. No guardian animal must ever be slain, and no use whatever may be made of its pelts, above all by women, if misfortune is to be avoided. It is a known fact that the bear is not preyed upon east of Slave Lake. It is slain only when there is a definite food shortage or in self-defense. 

In this connection, I once heard a story of a white man married to an Indian woman. The wife had been poorly for some weeks and was showing no signs of improvement. She could not understand what ailed her, until one day the thought came to her that perhaps her husband had a bearskin somewhere in the cabin. She set about to look for it. Sure enough, up under the rafters she found the pelt of a bear cub. The manner in which these married people reached a final agreement, we may just as well skip over, but the result was that the bearskin went out the door, and the wife recovered the very next day from her illness. 

Amongst the tribes living along the Mackenzie River guardian animals are determined in a particular manner. When a young boy or a young girl attain a certain age, they betake themselves unaccompanied into the forest. There they build a fire and lie down beside it. Without taking any nourishment whatever, they sit there keeping themselves awake for two or three days, until at length, from sheer exhaustion, they fall into a deep slumber. The first animal they see in their dreams becomes their guardian beast throughout their lives. 

In connection with their belief in spirits incarnate in animals and in the elements, the Indians also have their legends. These are handed down from one generation to the next whenever the Indians are gathered together for some special occasion. The legends often have to do with the characteristics of the various animals and are fantastic explanations of how these characteristics came into being — how the beaver came to have a flat tail, how the lynx came to have a spotted coat, et cetera. As an example, I shall repeat the story of the man who snared the sun: 

One winter a hunter and his squaw were roaming about after the caribou. They had packed everything they had to their name in a deerskin which the squaw was dragging along behind her. Farther and farther north they proceeded, but the caribou were nowhere to be seen. At last they found themselves in the Land without Trees. Here it was bitterly cold and this cold increased as the sun sank lower and lower until at length it had almost reached the edge of the world. " Now we are losing the sun, and that means we shall freeze to death," they said to each other. In one way or another they must prevent the sun from disappearing altogether. So the squaw took the deerskin she was dragging along, cut it up into long strips, and made an enormous lasso. The man then cast the noose about the sun, drew it tight, and fastened the nether end to a huge stone. The sun was ensnared. That was the end of the cold, but in his haste the hunter had drawn too hard upon the lasso, so that now the sun was right over their heads like a glowing ball of flame. They had been on the point of freezing to death before, but now they were in danger of burning up. Their experience was so limited that they didn't know how to cut the rope, for the rock to which they had fastened it was directly under the sun, and it was so scorching hot there that no living thing could get near it. 

At this point a shrewmouse came up to them and asked why they were wailing so. They explained to the shrew their difficulty. " Could be worse," said the shrew, which then left them and dug a deep tunnel through the earth right up to the rock. There he poked no more than the tip of his nose up through the ground and gnawed the lasso in two. With that, the sun sailed off into the blue. But the shrew's front teeth were badly scorched and have been brown ever since that day. . . .