The Long Labrador Trail Part 15

Love is not essential to a happy marriage among the Eskimos. When a man wants a woman he takes her. In fact they believe that an unwilling bride makes a good wife. Potokomik's wife was most unwilling, and he took her, dragging her by the tail of her adikey from her father's igloo across the river on the ice to his own, and they have "lived happily ever after," which seems to prove the correctness of the Eskimo theory as to unwilling brides. Of course if Potokomik's wife had not liked him after a fair trial, she could have left him, or if she had not come up to his expectations he could have sent her back home and tried another. It is all quite simple, for there is no marriage ceremony and resort to South Dakota courts for divorce is unnecessary.

If a man wants two wives, why he has them, if there are women enough.

That, too, is a very agreeable arrangement, for when he is away hunting the women keep each other company. Small families are the rule, and I did not hear of a case where twins had ever been born to the Eskimos.

Dancing and football are among their chief pastimes. The men enter into the dance with zest, but the women as though they were performing some awful penance. Both s.e.xes play football. They have learned the use of cards and are reckless gamblers, sometimes staking even the garments on their backs in play.

The Eskimo is a close bargainer, and after he has agreed to do you a service for a consideration will as likely as not change his mind at the last moment and leave you in the lurch. At the same time he is in many respects a child.

The dwellings are of three kinds: The _tupek_--skin tent; _igloowiuk_--snow house; and permanent igloo, built of driftwood, stones and turf--the larger ones are _igloosoaks_.

Flesh and fish, as is the case with the Indians, form the princ.i.p.al food, but while the Indians cook everything the Eskimos as often eat their meat and fish raw, and are not too particular as to its age or state of decay. They are very fond of venison and seal meat, and for variety's sake welcome dog meat. A few years ago a disease carried off several of the dogs at Fort Chimo and every carca.s.s was eaten. One old fellow, in fact, as Mathewson related to me, ate nothing else during that time, and when the epidemic was over bemoaned the fact that no more dog meat could be had.

On the Atlantic coast where the snow houses are not used and the Eskimos live more generally during the winter in the close, vile igloos, there is more or less tubercular trouble. Even farther south, where the natives have learned cleanliness, and live in comfortable log cabins that are fairly well aired, this is the prevailing disease.

After leaving Ramah, the farther south you go the more general is the adoption of civilized customs, food and habits of life, and with the increase of civilization so also comes an increased death rate amongst the Eskimos. Formerly there was a considerable number of these people on the Straits of Belle Isle. Now there is not one there. South of Hamilton Inlet but two full-blood Eskimos remain. Below Ramah the deaths exceed the births, and at one settlement alone there are fifty less people to-day than three years ago.

Civilization is responsible for this. At the present time there remains on the Atlantic coast, between the Straits of Belle Isle and Cape Chidley, but eleven hundred and twenty-seven full-blood Eskimos.

Five years hence there will not be a thousand. In Ungava district, where they have as yet accepted practically nothing of civilization, the births exceed the deaths, and I did not learn of a single well-authenticated case of tuberculosis while I was there. There were a few cases of rheumatism. Death comes early, however, owing to the life of constant hardship and exposure. Usually they do not exceed sixty or sixty-five years of age, though I saw one man that had rounded his three score years and ten.

Formerly they encased their dead in skins and lay them out upon the rocks with the clothing and things they had used in life. Now rough wooden boxes are provided by the traders. The dogs in time break the coffins open and pick the bones, which lie uncared for, to be bleached by the frosts of winter and suns of summer. Mr. Stewart has collected and buried many of these bones, and is endeavoring now to have all bodies buried.

Of all the missionaries that I met in this bleak northern land, devoted as every one of them is to his life work, none was more devoted and none was doing a more self-sacrificing work than the Rev. Samuel Milliken Stewart of Fort Chimo. His novitiate as a missionary was begun in one of the little out-port fishing villages of Newfoundland.

Finally he was transferred to that fearfully barren stretch among the heathen Eskimos north of Nachvak. Here he and his Eskimo servant gathered together such loose driftwood as they could find, and with this and stones and turf erected a single-roomed igloo. It was a small affair, not over ten by twelve or fourteen feet in size, and an imaginary line separated the missionary's quarters from his servant's.

On his knees, in an old resting place for the dead, with the bleaching bones of heathen Eskimos strewn over the rocks about him, he consecrated his life efforts to the conversion of this people to Christianity. Then he went to work to accomplish this purpose in a businesslike way. He set himself the infinite task of mastering the difficult language. He lived their life with them, visiting and sleeping with them in their filthy igloos--so filthy and so filled with stench from the putrid meat and fish sc.r.a.ps that they permit to lie about and decay that frequently at first, until he became accustomed to it, he was forced to seek the open air and relieve the resulting nausea. But Stewart is a man of iron will, and he never wavered. He studied his people, administered medicines to the sick, and taught the doctrines of Christianity--Love, Faith and Charity--at every opportunity. That first winter was a trying one. All his little stock of fuel was exhausted early. The few articles of furniture that he had brought with him he burned to help keep out the frost demon, and before spring suffered greatly with the cold. The winter before our arrival he transferred his efforts to the Fort Chimo district, where his field would be larger and he could reach a greater number of the heathens.

During the journey to Fort Chimo, which was across the upper peninsula, with dogs, he was lost in storms that prevailed at the time, his provisions were exhausted, and one dog had been killed to feed the others, before he finally met Eskimos who guided him in safety to George River. At Fort Chimo the Hudson's Bay Company set aside two small buildings to his use, one for a chapel, the other a little cabin in which he lives. Here we found him one day with a pot of high-smelling seal meat cooking for his dogs and a pan of dough cakes frying for himself. With Stewart in this cabin I spent many delightful hours. His constant flow of well-told stories, flavored with native Irish wit, was a sure panacea for despondency. I believe Stewart, with his sunny temperament, is really enjoying his life amongst the heathen, and he has made an obvious impression upon them, for every one of them turns out to his chapel meetings, where the services are conducted in Eskimo, and takes part with a will.

The Eskimo religion, like that of the Indian, is one of fear. Numerous are the spirits that people the land and depths of the sea, but the chief of them all is Torngak, the spirit of Death, who from his cavern dwelling in the heights of the mighty Torngaeks (the mountains north of the George River toward Cape Chidley) watches them always and rules their fortunes with an iron hand, dealing out misfortune, or withholding it, at his will. It is only through the medium of the Angakok, or conjurer, that the people can learn what to do to keep Torngak and the lesser spirits of evil, with their varying moods, in good humor. Stewart has led some of the Eskimos to at least outwardly renounce their heathenism and profess Christianity. In a few instances I believe they are sincere. If he remains upon the field, as I know he wishes to do, he will have them all professing Christianity within the next few years, for they like him. But he has no more regard for danger, when he believes duty calls him, than Dr. Grenfell has, and it is predicted on the coast that some day Dr. Grenfell will take one chance too many with the elements.

Of course, coming among the Eskimos as we did in winter, we did not see them using their kayaks or their umiaks,* but our experience with dogs and komatik was pretty complete. These dogs are big wolfish creatures, which resemble wolves so closely in fact that when the dogs and wolves are together the one can scarcely be told from the other. It sometimes happens that a stray wolf will hobn.o.b with the dogs, and litters of half wolf, half dog have been born at the posts.

* A large open boat with wooden frame and sealskin covering. The women row the umiaks while the men sit idle. It is beneath the dignity of the latter to handle the oars when women are present to do it.

There are no better Eskimo dogs to be found anywhere in the far north than the husky dogs of Ungava. Wonderful tales are told of long distances covered by them in a single day, the record trip of which I heard being one hundred and twelve miles. But this was in the spring, when the days were long and the snow hard and firm. The farthest I ever traveled myself in a single day with dogs and komatik was sixty miles. When the snow is loose and the days are short, twenty to thirty miles const.i.tute a day's work.

From five to twelve dogs are usually driven in one team, though sometimes a man is seen plodding along with a two-dog team, and occasionally as many as sixteen or eighteen are harnessed to a komatik, but these very large teams are unwieldy.

The komatiks in the Ungava district vary from ten to eighteen feet in length. The runners are about two and one-half inches thick at the bottom, tapering slightly toward the top to reduce friction where they sink into the snow. They are usually placed sixteen inches apart, and crossbars extending about an inch over the outer runner on either side are lashed across the runners by means of thongs of sealskin or heavy twine, which is pa.s.sed through holes bored into the crossbars and the runners. The use of lashings instead of nails or screws permits the komatik to yield readily in pa.s.sing over rough places, where metal fastenings would be pulled out, or be snapped off by the frost. On either side of each end of the overlapping ends of the crossbars notches are cut, around which sealskin thongs are pa.s.sed in lashing on the load. The bottoms of the komatik runners are "mudded." During the summer the Eskimos store up turf for this purpose, testing bits of it by chewing it to be sure that it contains no grit. When the cold weather comes the turf is mixed with warm water until it reaches the consistency of mud. Then with the hands it is molded over the bottom of the runners. The mud quickly freezes, after which it is carefully planed smooth and round. Then it is iced by applying warm water with a bit of hairy deerskin. These mudded runners slip very smoothly over the soft snow, but are liable to chip off on rough ice or when they strike rocks, as frequently happens, for the frozen mud is as brittle as gla.s.s. On the Atlantic coast from Nachvak south, mud is never used, and there the komatiks are wider and shorter with runners of not much more than half the thickness, and as you go south the komatiks continue to grow wider and shorter. In the south, too, hoop iron or whalebone is used for runner shoeing.

A sealskin thong called a bridle, of a varying length of from twenty to forty feet, is attached to the front of the komatik, and to the end of this the dogs' traces are fastened. Each dog has an individual trace which may be from eight to thirty feet in length, depending upon the size of the team, so arranged that not more than two dogs are abreast, the "leader" having, of course, the longest trace of the pack. This long bridle and the long traces are made necessary by the rough country. They permit the animals to swerve well to one side clear of the komatik when coasting down a hillside. In the length of bridle and trace there is also a wide variation in different sections, those used in the south being very much shorter than those in the north. The dog harness is made usually of polar bear or sealskin. There are no reins.

The driver controls his team by shouting directions, and with a walrus hide whip, which is from twenty-five to thirty-five feet in length. An expert with this whip, running after the dogs, can hit any dog he chooses at will, and sometimes he is cruel to excess.

To start his team the driver calls "oo-isht," (in the south this becomes "hoo-eet") to turn to the right "ouk," to the left "ra-der, ra-der" and to stop "aw-aw." The leader responds to the shouted directions and the pack follow.

The Ungava Eskimo never upon any account travels with komatik and dogs without a snow knife. With this implement he can in a little while make himself a comfortable snow igloo, where he may spend the night or wait for a storm to pa.s.s.

In winter it is practically impossible to buy a dog in Ungava. The people have only enough for their own use, and will not part with them, and if they have plenty to eat it is difficult to employ them for any purpose. This I discovered very promptly when I endeavored to induce some of them to take us a stage on our journey homeward.

CHAPTER XX

THE SLEDGE JOURNEY BEGUN

Tighter and tighter grew the grip of winter. Rarely the temperature rose above twenty-five degrees below zero, even at midday, and oftener it crept well down into the thirties. The air was filled with rime, which clung to everything, and the sun, only venturing now a little way above the southern horizon, shone cold and cheerless, weakly penetrating the ever-present frost veil. The tide, still defying the shackles of the mighty power that had bound all the rest of the world, surged up and down, piling ponderous ice cakes in mountainous heaps along the river banks. Occasionally an Eskimo or two would suddenly appear out of the snow fields, remain for a day perhaps, and then as suddenly disappear into the bleak wastes whence he had come.

Slowly the days dragged along. We occupied the short hours of light in reading old newspapers and magazines, or walking out over the hills, and in the evenings called upon the Post officers or entertained them in our cabin, where Mathewson often came to smoke his after-supper pipe and relate to us stories of his forty-odd years' service as a fur trader in the northern wilderness.

One bitter cold morning, long before the first light of day began to filter through the rimy atmosphere, we heard the crunch of feet pa.s.s our door, and a komatik slipped by. It was Dr. Milne, away to George River and the coast on his tour of Post inspection, and our little group of white men was one less in number.

We envied him his early leaving. We could not ourselves start for home until after New Year's, for there were no dogs to be had for love or money until the Eskimos came in from their hunting camps to spend the holidays. Everything, however, was made ready for that longed-for time. Through the kindness of The'venet, who put his Post folk to work for us, the deerskins I had brought from Whale River were dressed and made up into sleeping bags and skin clothing, and other necessaries were got ready for the long dog journey out.

Christmas eve came finally, and with it komatik loads of Eskimos, who roused the place from its repose into comparative wakefulness. The newcomers called upon us in twos or threes, never troubling to knock before they entered our cabin, looked us and our things over with much interest, a proceeding which occupied usually a full half hour, then went away, sometimes to bring back newly arriving friends, to introduce them. A mult.i.tude of dogs skulked around by day and made night hideous with howling and fighting, and it was hardly safe to walk abroad without a stick, of which they have a wholesome fear, as, like their progenitors, the wolves, they are great cowards and will rarely attack a man when he has any visible means of defense at hand.

Christmas afternoon was given over to shooting matches, and the evening to dancing. We spent the day with The'venet. Mathewson was not in position to entertain, as the Indian woman that presided in his kitchen partook so freely of liquor of her own manufacture that she became hilariously drunk early in the morning, and for the peace of the household and safety of the dishes, which she playfully shied at whoever came within reach, she was ejected, and Mathewson prepared his own meals. At The'venet's, however, everything went smoothly, and the sumptuous meal of baked whitefish, venison, with canned vegetables, plum pudding, cheese and coffee--delicacies held in reserve for the occasion--made us forget the bleak wilderness and ice-bound land in which we were.

It seemed for a time even now as though we should not be able to secure dogs and drivers. No one knew the way to Ramah, and on no account would one of these Eskimos undertake even a part of the journey without permission from the Hudson's Bay Company. As a last resort The'venet promised me his dogs and driver to take us at least as far as George River, but finally Emuk arrived and an arrangement was made with him to carry us from Whale River to George River, and two other Eskimos agreed to go with us to Whale River. The great problem that confronted me now was how to get over the one hundred and sixty miles of barrens from George River to Ramah, and it was necessary to arrange for this before leaving Fort Chimo, as dogs to the eastward were even scarcer than here. Mathewson finally solved it for me with his promise to instruct Ford at George River to put his team and drivers at my disposal. Thus, after much bickering, our relays were arranged as far as the Moravian mission station at Ramah, and I trusted in Providence and the coast Eskimos to see us on from there. The third of January was fixed as the day of our departure.

Our going in winter was an event. It gave the Post folk an opportunity to send out a winter mail, which I volunteered to carry to Quebec.

Straggling bands of Indians, hauling fur-laden toboggans, began to arrive during the week, and the bartering in the stores was brisk, and to me exceedingly interesting. Money at Fort Chimo is unknown. Values are reckoned in "skins"--that is, a "skin" is the unit of value. There is no token of exchange to represent this unit, however, and if a hunter brings in more pelts than sufficient to pay for his purchases, the trader simply gives him credit on his books for the balance due, to be drawn upon at some future time. As a matter of fact, the hunter is almost invariably in debt to the store. A "skin" will buy a pint of mola.s.ses, a quarter pound of tea or a quarter pound of black stick tobacco. A white arctic fox pelt is valued at seven skins, a blue fox pelt at twelve, and a black or silver fox at eighty to ninety skins.

South of Hamilton Inlet, where compet.i.tion is keen with the fur traders, they pay in cash six dollars for white, eight dollars for blue (which, by the way, are very scarce there) and not infrequently as high as three hundred and fifty dollars or even more for black and silver fox pelts. The cost of maintaining posts at Fort Chimo, however, is somewhat greater than at these southern points.

Here at Ungava the Eskimos' hunt is confined almost wholly to foxes, polar bears, an occasional wolf and wolverine, and, of course, during the season, seals, walrus, and white whales. An average hunter will trap from sixty to seventy foxes in a season, though one or two exceptional ones I knew have captured as many as two hundred. The Indians, who penetrate far into the interior, bring out marten, mink and otter princ.i.p.ally, with a few foxes, an occasional beaver, black bear, lynx and some wolf and wolverine skins. There is a story of a very large and ferocious brown bear that tradition says inhabits the barrens to the eastward toward George River. Mr. Peter McKenzie told me that many years ago, when he was stationed at Fort Chimo, the Indians brought him one of the skins of this animal, and Ford at George River said that, some twenty years since, he saw a piece of one of the skins. Both agreed that the hair was very long, light brown in color, silver tipped and of a decidedly different species from either the polar or black bear. This is the only definite information as to it that I was able to gather. The Indians speak of it with dread, and insist that it is still to be found, though none of them can say positively that he has seen one in a decade. I am inclined to believe that the brown bear, so far as Labrador is concerned, has been exterminated.

New Year's is the great day at Fort Chimo. All morning there were shooting matches and foot races, and in the afternoon football games in progress, in which the Eskimo men and women alike joined. The Indians, who were recovering from an all-night drunk on their vile beer, and a revel in the "Queen's" cabin, condescended to take part in the shooting matches, but held majestically aloof from the other games. Some of them came into the French store in the evening to squat around the room and watch the dancing while they puffed in silence on their pipes and drank tea when it was pa.s.sed. That was their only show of interest in the festivities. Early on the morning of the second they all disappeared. But these were only a fragment of those that visit the Post in summer. It is then that they have their powwow.

At last the day of our departure arrived, with a dull leaden sky and that penetrating cold that eats to one's very marrow. The'venet and Belfleur came early and brought us a box of cigars to ease the tedium of the long evenings in the snow houses. All the little colony of white men were on hand to see us off, and I believe were genuinely sorry to have us go, for we had become a part of the little coterie and our coming had made a break in the lives of these lonely exiles. Men brought together under such conditions become very much attached to each other in a short time. "It's going to be lonesome now," said Stewart. "I'm sorry you have to leave us. May G.o.d speed you on your way, and carry you through your long journey in safety."

Finally our baggage was lashed on the komatik; the dogs, leaping and straining at their traces, howled their eagerness to be gone; we shook hands warmly with everybody, even the Eskimos, who came forward wondering at what seemed to them our stupendous undertaking, the komatik was "broken" loose, and we were away at a gallop.

Traveling was good, and the nine dogs made such excellent time that we had to ride in level places or we could not have kept pace with them.

When there was a hill to climb we pushed on the komatik or hauled with the dogs on the long bridle to help them along. When we had a descent to make, the drag--a hoop of walrus hide--was thrown over the front end of one of the komatik runners at the top, and if the place was steep the Eskimos, one on either side of the komatik, would cling on with their arms and brace their feet into the snow ahead, doing their utmost to hold back and reduce the momentum of the heavy sledge. To the uninitiated they would appear to be in imminent danger of having their legs broken, for the speed down some of the grades when the crust was hard and icy was terrific. When descending the gentler slopes we all rode, depending upon the drag alone to keep our speed within reason.

This coasting down hill was always an exciting experience, and where the going was rough it was not easy to keep a seat on the narrow komatik. Occasionally the komatik would turn over. When we saw this was likely to happen we discreetly dropped off, a feat that demanded agility and practice to be performed successfully and gracefully.

It was a relief beyond measure to feel that we were at length, after seven long months, actually headed toward home and civilization. Words cannot express the feeling of exhilaration that comes to one at such a time.

We did not have to go so far up Whale River to find a crossing as on our trip to Fort Chimo, and reached the eastern side before dark.

Sometimes the ice hills are piled so high here by the tide that it takes a day or even two to cut a komatik path through them and cross the river, but fortunately we had very little cutting to do. Not long after dark we coasted down the hill above the Post, and the cheerful lights of Edmunds' cabin were at hand.

Here we had to wait two days for Emuk, and in the interim Mrs. Edmunds and Mary went carefully over our clothes, sewed sealskin legs to deerskin moccasins, made more duffel socks, and with kind solicitation put all our things into the best of shape and gave us extra moccasins and mittens. "It is well to have plenty of everything before you start," said Mrs. Edmunds, "for if the huskies are hunting deer the women will do no sewing on sealskin, and if they're hunting seals they'll not touch a needle to your deerskins, though you are freezing."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Oh, some of their heathen beliefs," she answered. "They think it would bring bad luck to the hunters. They believe all kinds of foolishness."

Emuk had never been so far away as George River, and Sam Ford was to be our pilot to that point, and to return with Emuk. The Eskimos do not consider it safe for a man to travel alone with dogs, and they never do it when there is the least probability that they will have to remain out over night. Two men are always required to build a snow igloo, which is one reason for this. It was therefore necessary for me at each point, when employing the Eskimo driver for a new stage of our journey, also to engage a companion for him, that he might have company when returning home.

Our coming to Whale River two months before had made a welcome innovation in the even tenor of the cheerless, lonely existence of our good friends at the Post--an event in their confined life, and they were really sorry to part from us.

"It will be a long time before any one comes to see us again--a long time," said Mrs. Edmunds, sadly adding: "I suppose no one will ever come again."