ALONG THE GREENLAND COAST
We hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter
behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There
were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for
specimens.
On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy
and full of fish and seal bones.
When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends,
Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite
rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great
big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a flip as he was trying
to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over
the gunwale.
One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed
them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike
them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we
eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small
screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.
When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted
and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never
seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea
islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t
know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours
who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they
liked them all very much, especially a picture showing lions playing
with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion.
There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.
It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos
that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English
except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard.
For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins.
And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and
such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.
They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man
brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them,
even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of
a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at
home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.
Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made
of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for
all of one’s friends at home.
The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can
play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly
love to dance.
We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to
give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our
stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy,
etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors
always go well.
At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark.
After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in
the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of
tipsy and can hardly walk.
Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing me how to skin birds. It
is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a
bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will
not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the
nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out.
Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the
breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.
Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop
up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the
skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as
the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the
knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above
where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and
the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a
little beyond the eyes. Then the head is scraped and a knife is put
between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so
that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with
arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the
feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum
to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.
When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very
good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of
the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time,
for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is
a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.
There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and
fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the
winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and
hunting. When we went ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal
unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored
away in a big storehouse.
Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos
out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four
o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little
toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and
rifles tied down with thongs.
At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our
interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good
Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his
home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty
much the same as Danish.
We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is
published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a small red
building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the
Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland.
The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff
in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it
in.
The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn.
When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which
works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out
it takes a long time and is really hard work.
In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff
because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached
there about seven. It was a very small harbor so the Morrissey could
not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at
the little wharf.
At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied
up with ropes and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen
that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six
feet.
While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little
hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor,
even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out
to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high
shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy
inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.
The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur
seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for
oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but
they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very
small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder.
And naturally they have very small feet.
At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the
other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind
of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of
soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain,
because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.
We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because
the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for
candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food,
and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take
anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them
something really helpful in exchange for important things. For
instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and
materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and
useful thing we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound
tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot
everywhere, while we on board always drank it.