AN ARCTIC OASIS
In a little arctic oasis lives the meager and scattered handful of the
Eskimo population--a little oasis along the frowning western coast of
Northern Greenland between Melville Bay and Kane Basin. This region is
three thousand miles north of New York City, as a steamer goes; it lies
about half way between the Arctic Circle and the Pole, within the
confines of the great night. Here, taking the mean latitude, for one
hundred and ten days in summer the sun never sets; for one hundred and
ten days in winter the sun never rises, and no ray of light save from
the icy stars and the dead moon falls on the frozen landscape.
[Illustration: THE ICE CLIFFS OF HUBBARD GLACIER]
There is a savage grandeur in this coast, carved by eternal conflict
with storms and glaciers, bergs and grinding ice-fields; but behind the
frowning outer mask nestle in summer many grass-carpeted,
flower-sprinkled, sun-kissed nooks. Millions of little auks breed along
this shore. Between the towering cliffs are glaciers which launch at
intervals their fleets of bergs upon the sea; before these cliffs lies
the blue water dotted with masses of glistening ice of all shapes and
sizes; behind the cliffs is the great Greenland ice cap, silent,
eternal, immeasurable--the abode, say the Eskimos, of evil spirits and
the souls of the unhappy dead.
In some places on this coast in summer, the grass is as thick and long
as on a New England farm. Here bloom poppies, with dandelions,
buttercups, and saxifrage, though to the best of my knowledge the
flowers are all devoid of perfume. I have seen bumblebees even north of
Whale Sound; there are flies and mosquitoes, and even a few spiders.
Among the fauna of this country are the reindeer (the Greenland
caribou), the fox--both blue and white--the arctic hare, the Polar bear,
and perhaps once in a generation a stray wolf.
But in the long sunless winter this whole region--cliffs, ocean,
glaciers--is covered with a pall of snow that shows a ghastly gray in
the wan starlight. When the stars are hidden, all is black, void, and
soundless. When the wind is blowing, if a man ventures out he seems to
be pushed backward by the hands of an invisible enemy, while a vague,
unnamable menace lurks before and behind him. It is small wonder the
Eskimos believe that evil spirits walk upon the wind.
During the winter these patient and cheerful children of the North live
in igloos, or huts, built of stones and earth. It is only when they are
traveling, as sometimes during the moonlit period of the month, that
they live in the snow igloos, which three good Eskimos can build in an
hour or two, and which we built at the end of every day's march on our
sledge journey to the Pole. In summer they live in the tupiks, or skin
tents. The stone houses are permanent, and a good one will last perhaps
a hundred years, with a little repairing of the roof in summer. Igloos
are found in groups, or villages, at intervals along the coast from
Cape York Bay to Anoratok. As the people are nomadic, these permanent
dwellings belong to the tribe, and not to individuals, constituting thus
a crude sort of arctic socialism. One year all the houses in a
settlement may be occupied; the next year none, or only one or two.
These houses are about six feet high by eight to ten feet wide by ten to
twelve feet long, and one may be constructed in a month. An excavation
is made in the earth, which forms the floor of the house; then the walls
are built up solidly with stones chinked with moss; long, flat stones
are laid across the top of the walls; this roof is covered with earth,
and the whole house is banked in with snow. The construction of the
arched roof is on the plan which engineers know as the cantilever, and
not that of the Roman arch. The long, flat stones which form the roof
are weighted and counter-weighted at the outer ends, and in all my
arctic experience I have never known the stone roof of an igloo to fall
upon the inmates. There are never any complaints made to the Building
Department. There is no door in the side, but a hole in the floor at the
entrance leads to a tunnel, sometimes ten, sometimes fifteen, or even
twenty-five, feet in length, through which the tenants crawl into their
home. There is always a small window in the front of the igloo. The
window space is not glazed, of course, but is covered with the thin,
intestinal membrane of seals, skilfully seamed together. To a traveler
across the dark and snowy winter waste, the yellow light from the
interior lamp is visible, sometimes, a long distance away.
At the farther end of the igloo is the bed platform, raised about a foot
and a half above the earthen floor. Usually this platform is not built,
but is the natural level of the earth, the standing space being dug
before it. In some houses, however, the bed platform is made of long,
flat stones raised upon stone supports. When the Eskimos are ready to
move into the stone houses in the fall, they cover the bed platform
first with grass, which they bring in by the sledge-load; the grass is
then covered with sealskins; above these are spread deerskins, or
musk-ox skins,--which form the mattress. Deerskins are used for
blankets. Pajamas are not in fashion with the Eskimos. They simply
remove all their clothes and crawl in between the deerskins.
The lamp, which stands on a large stone at the front of the bed platform
on one side, is kept burning all the time, whether the family is asleep
or awake. An imaginative person might liken this lamp to an ever-burning
sacred flame upon the stone altar of the Eskimo home. It serves also as
a stove for heating and cooking, and makes the igloo so warm that the
inhabitants wear little clothing when indoors. They sleep with their
heads toward the lamp, so the woman may reach out and tend it.
On the other side of the house food is generally stored. When two
families occupy one igloo, there may be a second lamp on the other side;
and in that case the food must be stored under the bed. The temperature
of these houses varies from eighty or ninety degrees Fahrenheit, on the
bed platform and near the roof, to something below freezing point at the
floor level. There is a little air-hole in the center of the roof, but
in the happy home of an Eskimo family, in winter, the atmosphere could
almost be handled with a shovel.
Often, in winter traveling, I have been obliged to sleep in one of these
hospitable igloos. On such occasions I have made the best of things, as
a man would if compelled to sleep in a tenth-rate railroad hotel or a
slum lodging-house, but I have tried to forget the experience as soon as
possible. It is not well for an arctic explorer to be too fastidious. A
night in one of these igloos, with the family at home, is an offense to
every civilized sense, especially that of smell; but there are times
when a man, after a long sledge journey in the terrible cold and wind,
hungry and footsore, will welcome the dim light shining through the
translucent window of an igloo as one welcomes the light of home. It
means warmth and comfort, supper, and blessed sleep.
There is no blinking the fact that my Eskimo friends are very dirty.
When I have them on the ship with me they make heroic efforts to wash
themselves occasionally; but in their own homes they practically never
do, and in winter they have no water except from melted snow. On rare
occasions, when the dirt gets too thick for comfort, they may remove the
outer layer with a little oil. I shall never forget the amazement with
which they made acquaintance with the white man's use of the
tooth-brush.
With the coming of the summer, the stone and earth houses become damp,
dark holes, and the roofs are taken off to dry and ventilate the
interior. The family then moves outside and sets up the tupik, or skin
tent, which is their home from about the first of June till some time in
September. The tupik is made of sealskins, with the hair on the inside.
Ten or twelve skins, sewed together in one large piece, make a tent. It
is stretched on poles, high in front and sloping toward the back, thus
offering the least possible resistance to the wind, the edges held down
with stones. The earth floor of these tents is six or eight feet wide
and eight or ten feet long, according to the size of the family.
In recent years my Eskimos have adopted an improvement upon the building
customs of the west coast natives, and many of them have an entrance
extension to their tents made of transparent tanned sealskins, thick
enough to keep out the rain but not the light. This adds to the
roominess and comfort of their summer dwellings. A usual practice among
the better class of Eskimos is to use the old tupik of the previous
summer for a rain or weather-guard to the new tent. In heavy winds or
heavy summer rains, the old tupik is simply spread over the new one,
thus giving a double thickness and protection to the owners.
The bed platform in the tupik is now generally made of lumber, which I
have furnished, raised on stones, and in pleasant weather the cooking is
done outside. Oil is the only fuel for heat, light, and cooking. The
Eskimo women trim the lamps so well that there is no smoke from them,
unless there is a draft in the tent or igloo. They cut small pieces of
blubber, which they lay on moss and ignite, and the heat from the moss
dries out the oil, making a surprisingly hot flame. Until I gave them
matches, they had only the primitive means of ignition by flint and
steel, which they obtained from a vein of pyrites. When I first went up
there, all their lamps and rectangular pots were made of soapstone, two
or three veins of which are found in that country. Their ability to
utilize the soapstone and pyrites is an illustration of their
intelligence and ingenuity.
As a rule little clothing is worn in the tupiks in warm weather, as the
normal summer temperature is around fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and in the
strong sunlight may go as high as eighty-five or even ninety-five.
The trial marriage is an ineradicable custom among the Eskimos. If a
young man and woman are not suited with each other, they try again, and
sometimes several times; but when they find mates to whom they are
adapted, the arrangement is generally permanent. If two men want to
marry the same woman, they settle the question by a trial of strength,
and the better man has his way. These struggles are not fights, as the
disputants are amiable; they are simply tests of wrestling, or sometimes
of pounding each other on the arm to see which man can stand the
pounding the longer.
Their fundamental acceptance of the proposition that might is right in
such matters sometimes extends to a man saying to the husband of a
woman: "I am the better man." In such case the husband has either to
prove his superiority in strength, or yield the woman to the other. If a
man grows tired of his wife, he simply tells her there is not room for
her in his igloo. She may return to her parents, if they are living;
she may go to a brother or a sister; or she may send word to some man in
the tribe that she is now at liberty and is willing to start life again.
In these cases of primitive divorce, the husband keeps one or all of the
children if he wants them; if not, the woman takes them with her.
[Illustration: ESKIMO MOTHER AND CHILD]
The Eskimos do not have many children, two or three being the usual
number. The woman does not take her husband's name in any case.
Akatingwah, for instance, will remain Akatingwah, whether she has had
one husband or several. Children do not address their parents as father
and mother, but call them by their names, though sometimes very small
children use a diminutive which corresponds to our "mamma."
Among the Eskimos the woman is as much a part of the man's property as
his dog or sledge--except in some rare cases. The cause of the
suffragettes has as yet made little headway in this region. I remember
one instance in which an Eskimo woman had a difference of opinion with
her husband, and proved her right to independence by blackening the old
man's eye; but I am afraid that the more conservative members of the
tribe attributed this unfeminine behavior to the corrupting influence of
contact with civilization.
As there are more men than women among the Eskimos, the girls marry very
young, often about the age of twelve. In many cases the marriages are
arranged between the parents when the children are quite young; but the
boy and girl are not bound, and when they are old enough they are
permitted to decide for themselves. In fact, they can make several such
decisions without losing caste. On the last expedition, as on those of
former years, I found that a number of matrimonial changes had taken
place among my Northern friends since I was last among them.
[Illustration: ESKIMO CHILDREN]
It would be worse than useless to attempt to engraft our marriage
customs upon these naive children of Nature. Should an arctic explorer
consider it his duty to tell a young Eskimo that it was not right for
him to exchange wives with his friend, it would be well for the explorer
to have his supporting argument well prepared beforehand, for the
censured one would probably open wide his eyes and inquire, "Why not?"
These people of the ice-land, like all intelligent savages, are
remarkably curious. If confronted, say, with a package containing
various supplies unknown to them, they will not rest until they have
examined every article of the lot, touched it, turned it over, and even
tasted it, chattering all the while like a flock of blackbirds. They
exhibit, too, in marked degree, all the Oriental capacity for imitation.
Out of walrus ivory, in some respects their substitute for steel,--and a
surprisingly good substitute it is,--they will construct amazingly good
models or copies of various objects, while it does not take them long to
master the use of such tools of civilization as may be put into their
hands. It will easily be seen how valuable and useful a quality this has
proved for the purposes of the arctic explorer. If he could not rely on
the Eskimo to do the white man's work with the white man's tools, the
labors of the arctic traveler would be tremendously increased and the
size of his expedition would have to be enlarged to limits that might be
found unwieldy in the extreme.
[Illustration: KUDLAH, ALIAS "MISFORTUNE," WITH PUPPIES]
My own observations of this interesting people have taught me to repose
no confidence whatever in the tales of barbaric craft and cruelty which
I have heard of them. On the contrary, taking into consideration their
uncivilized state, they must be ranked as a humane people. Moreover,
they have always been quick to grasp the purposes that I have had in
view and to bend their energies toward achieving the ends for which my
expeditions have been striving.
Their humanity, as has been indicated, takes a form that would delight a
socialist. They are generous and hospitable in a crude way, almost
without exception. As a general rule, good and bad fortune are shared.
The tribe shares in the proceeds of good luck on the part of the hunters
and, as their existence depends on hunting, this accounts in large
measure for the preservation of the tribe.