WELCOME FROM THE ESKIMOS
As we approached Cape York, which is farther from the Pole in actual
distance than New York is from Tampa, Florida, it was with a peculiar
feeling of satisfaction that I saw the foremost of our Eskimo friends
putting out to meet us in their tiny kayaks, or skin canoes. Here is the
southernmost of the Eskimo villages, by which a permanent settlement is
not meant, for these barbarians are nomads. One year there may be two
families there; another year ten; and still another season none at all,
for the Eskimos seldom live more than a year or two in one place.
As we neared the Cape, the headland was encircled and guarded by an
enormous squadron of floating icebergs which made it difficult for the
_Roosevelt_ to get near shore; but long before we reached these bergs
the hunters of the settlement were seen putting out to greet us. The
sight of them skimming the water so easily in their frail kayaks was the
most welcome spectacle I had seen since we sailed from Sydney.
[Illustration: ESKIMOS COMING OFF TO THE ROOSEVELT IN KAYAKS]
It seems fitting to give a good deal of attention at this point to the
consideration of this interesting little race, the most northerly people
in all the world, for their help is one of the elements without which it
is possible that the North Pole might never have been reached. Some
years ago, in fact, I had occasion to write of these people a few
sentences that, as it has turned out, were so prophetic that it seems
appropriate to reproduce them here. Those sentences were:
"I have often been asked: Of what use are Eskimos to the world? They are
too far removed to be of value for commercial enterprises and,
furthermore, they lack ambition. They have no literature nor, properly
speaking, any art. They value life only as does a fox, or a bear, purely
by instinct. But let us not forget that these people, trustworthy and
hardy, will yet prove their value to mankind. With their help, the world
shall discover the Pole."
The hope that had been expressed in this language so long before was in
my mind as I saw my old friends coming out to meet us in their tiny
kayaks, for I realized that I was once more in contact with these
faithful dwellers of the North, who had been my constant companions for
so many years, through all the varying circumstances and fortunes of my
arctic work, and from whom I was again to select the pick and flower of
the hunters of the whole tribe, extending from Cape York to Etah, to
assist in this last effort to win the prize.
[Illustration: ESKIMO IN KAYAK]
Since 1891 I had been living and working with these people, gaining
their absolute confidence, making them my debtors for things given them,
earning their gratitude by saving, time after time, the lives of their
wives and children by supplying them with food when they were on the
verge of starvation. For eighteen years I had been training them in my
methods; or, to put it another way, teaching them how to modify and
concentrate their wonderful ice technic and endurance, so as to make
them useful for my purposes. I had studied their individual characters,
as any man studies the human tools with which he expects to accomplish
results, until I knew just which ones to select for a quick, courageous
dash, and just which dogged, unswerving ones would, if necessary, walk
straight through hell for the object I had placed before them.
I know every man, woman, and child in the tribe, from Cape York to Etah.
Prior to 1891 they had never been farther north than their own habitat.
Eighteen years ago I went to these people, and my first work was from
their country as a base.
Much nonsense has been told by travelers in remote lands about the
aborigines' regarding as gods the white men who come to them, but I have
never placed much credence in these stories. My own experience has been
that the average aborigine is just as content with his own way as we are
with ours, just as convinced of his own superior knowledge, and that he
adjusts himself with his knowledge in regard to things in the same way
that we do. The Eskimos are not brutes; they are just as human as
Caucasians. They know that I am their friend, and they have abundantly
proved themselves my friends.
When I went ashore at Cape York I found there four or five families,
living in their summer tupiks, or skin tents, From them I learned what
had happened in the tribe in the last two years; who had died, in what
families children had been born, where this family and that family were
then living--that is, the distribution of the tribe for that particular
summer. I thus learned where to find the other men I wanted.
It was about seven o'clock in the morning when we arrived at Cape York.
I selected the few men needed from that place, told them that when the
sun reached a certain point in the heavens that evening the ship would
sail, and that they and their families and possessions must be aboard
the ship. As hunting is the only industry in these Eskimo villages, and
as their goods are of an easily portable character, consisting mainly of
tents, dogs and sledges, a few skins, pots and pans, they were able to
transport themselves to the _Roosevelt_ in our boats without much loss
of time. As soon as they were on board we started north again.
There was no question of their willingness to follow me; they were only
too glad to go. These men knew from past experience that, once enrolled
as members of my expedition, there was no danger that their wives or
children would suffer from hunger; and they knew also that at the end of
the journey, when we brought them back to their homes, I would turn over
to them the remaining supplies and equipment of the expedition, which
would ensure living for another year in absolute plenty, that, in
comparison with the other members of their tribe, they would indeed be
multi-millionaires.
An intense and restless curiosity is one of the peculiar characteristics
of these people. As an illustration, one winter, years ago, when Mrs.
Peary was in Greenland with me, an old woman of the tribe walked a
hundred miles from her village to our winter quarters in order that she
might see a white woman.
It may perhaps be fairly said that it has been my fortune to utilize the
Eskimos for the purpose of discovery to a degree equaled by no other
explorer, and for that reason it may not seem amiss to suspend the
general narrative long enough to give a little information regarding
their characteristics, the more so as without some knowledge of these
peculiar people it would be impossible for any one really to understand
the workings of my expedition to the North Pole. It has been a
fundamental principle of all my arctic work to utilize the Eskimos for
the rank and file of my sledge parties. Without the skilful handiwork of
the women we should lack the warm fur clothing which is absolutely
essential to protect us from the winter cold, while the Eskimo dog is
the only tractive force suitable for serious arctic sledge work.
The members of this little tribe or family, inhabiting the western coast
of Greenland from Cape York to Etah, are in many ways quite different
from the Eskimos of Danish Greenland, or those of any other arctic
territory. There are now between two hundred and twenty and two hundred
and thirty in the tribe. They are savages, but they are not savage; they
are without government, but they are not lawless; they are utterly
uneducated according to our standard, yet they exhibit a remarkable
degree of intelligence. In temperament like children, with all a child's
delight in little things, they are nevertheless enduring as the most
mature of civilized men and women, and the best of them are faithful
unto death. Without religion and having no idea of God, they will share
their last meal with any one who is hungry, while the aged and the
helpless among them are taken care of as a matter of course. They are
healthy and pure-blooded; they have no vices, no intoxicants, and no bad
habits--not even gambling. Altogether, they are a people unique upon the
face of the earth. A friend of mine well calls them the philosophic
anarchists of the North.
I have been studying the Eskimos for eighteen years and no more
effective instruments for arctic work could be imagined than these
plump, bronze-skinned, keen-eyed and black-maned children of nature.
Their very limitations are their most valuable endowments for the
purposes of arctic work. I have a sincere interest in these people,
aside from their usefulness to me; and my plan from the beginning has
been to give them such aid and instruction as would fit them more
effectively to cope with their own austere environment, and to refrain
from teaching them anything which would tend to weaken their
self-confidence or to make them discontented with their lot.
The suggestions of some well-meaning persons that they be transported to
a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their
extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they
could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and
bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and
corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship;
while to our complex environment they could not adjust themselves
without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief
virtues. To Christianize them would be quite impossible; but the
cardinal graces of faith, hope, and charity they seem to have already,
for without them they could never survive the six-months' night and the
many rigors of their home.
Their feeling for me is a blending of gratitude and confidence. To
understand what my gifts have meant to them, imagine a philanthropic
millionaire descending upon an American country town and offering every
man there a brownstone mansion and an unlimited bank account. But even
this comparison falls short of the reality, for in the United States
even the poorest boy knows that there is a possibility of his attaining
for himself those things on which he sets his heart, if he will labor
and endure, while to the Eskimos the things which I have given them are
absolutely out of their world, as far beyond their own unaided efforts
as the moon and Mars are beyond the dwellers on this planet.
My various expeditions into that region have had the effect of raising
the Eskimos from the most abject destitution, lacking every appliance
and accessory of civilized life, to a position of relative affluence,
with the best material for their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the
best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets,
and saws for their work, and the cooking utensils of civilization.
Formerly they were dependent upon the most primitive hunting weapons;
now they have repeating rifles, breech-loading shotguns, and an
abundance of ammunition. There was not a rifle in the tribe when I first
went there. As they have no vegetables, and live solely on meat, blood,
and blubber, the possession of guns and ammunition has increased the
food-producing capacity of every hunter, and relieved the whole tribe
from the formerly ever-present danger of starvation for a family, or
even an entire village.
There is a theory, first advanced by Sir Clements Markham, ex-president
of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that the Eskimos are the
remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon; that the last
members of this tribe were driven out on the Arctic Ocean by the fierce
waves of Tartar invasion in the Middle Ages, and that they found their
way to the New Siberian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet
undiscovered to Grinnell Land and Greenland. I am inclined to believe in
the truth of this theory for the following reasons:
Some of the Eskimos are of a distinctly Mongolian type, and they display
many Oriental characteristics, such as mimicry, ingenuity, and patience
in mechanical duplication. There is a strong resemblance between their
stone houses and the ruins of the houses found in Siberia. The Eskimo
girl brought home by Mrs. Peary, in 1894, was mistaken by Chinamen for
one of their own people. It has also been suggested that their
invocation of the spirits of their dead may be a survival of Asian
ancestor worship.
As a general rule the Eskimos are short in stature, as are the Chinese
and Japanese, though I could name several men who stand about five feet
ten inches. The women are short and plump. They all have powerful
torsos, but their legs are rather slender. The muscular development of
the men is astonishing, though their fatty roundness hides the
differentiation of the muscles.
These people have no written speech, and their language is
agglutinative, with complicated prefixes and suffixes, by which they
extend a word to a considerable length from the original stem. The
language is relatively easy to acquire, and during my first summer in
Greenland I gained a fair knowledge of it. In addition to their ordinary
speech, they have an esoteric language known only to the adults of the
tribe. I cannot say wherein it differs from the other, having made no
attempt to learn it, and I doubt if any white man has been fully taught
this secret speech, as the knowledge is carefully guarded by its
possessors.
The Eskimos of this region have not, as a rule, applied themselves to
the study of English, for they were clever enough to see that we could
learn their language more easily than they could learn ours.
Occasionally, however, an Eskimo will startle all hands by rolling out
an English phrase or sentence, and, like a parrot, he seems to have a
special aptitude in picking up from the sailors phrases of slang or
profanity.
On the whole, these people are much like children, and should be treated
as such. They are easily elated, easily discouraged. They delight in
playing tricks on each other and on the sailors, are usually
good-natured, and when they are sulky there is no profit in being vexed
with them. The methods which children characterize as "jollying" are
best for such emergencies. Their mercurial temperament is Nature's
provision for carrying them through the long dark night, for if they
were morose like the North American Indians, the whole tribe would long
ago have lain down and died of discouragement, so rigorous is their lot.
In managing the Eskimos it is necessary to make a psychological study of
them, and to consider their peculiar temperament. They are keenly
appreciative of kindness, but, like children, they will impose upon a
weak or vacillating person. A blending of gentleness and firmness is the
only effective method. The fundamental point in all my dealings with
them has been always to mean just what I say and to have things done
exactly as ordered. For instance, if I tell an Eskimo that if he does a
certain thing properly he will get a certain reward, he always gets the
reward if he obeys. On the other hand, if I tell him that a certain
undesirable thing will happen if he follows a course I have forbidden,
that thing invariably happens.
I have made it to their interest to do what I want done. For example,
the best all-round man on a long sledge journey got more than the
others. A record was always kept of the game secured by each Eskimo, and
the best hunter got a special prize. Thus I kept them interested in
their work. The man who killed the musk ox with the finest set of horns
and the man who killed the deer with the most magnificent antlers were
specially rewarded. I have made it a point to be firm with them, but to
rule them by love and gratitude rather than by fear and threats. An
Eskimo, like an Indian, never forgets a broken promise--nor a fulfilled
one.
It would be misleading to infer that almost any man who went to the
Eskimos with gifts could obtain from them the kind of service they have
given me; for it must be remembered that they have known me personally
for nearly twenty years. I have saved whole villages from starvation,
and the children are taught by their parents that if they grow up and
become good hunters or good seamstresses, as the case may be,
"Pearyaksoah" will reward them sometime in the not too distant future.
Old Ikwah, for example, who is the father of the girl for whose
possession hot-hearted young Ooqueah of my North Pole party fought his
way with me to the goal, was the first Eskimo I had, away back in 1891.
This young knight of the Northland is an illustration of the fact that
sometimes an Eskimo man or woman may be as intense in his or her affairs
of the heart as we are. As a rule, however, they are more like children
in their affections, faithful to their mates from a sort of domestic
habit, but easily consoled for the loss of them by death or otherwise.
[Illustration: DECK SCENE ON THE ROOSEVELT]