_Substances used for food._--The food of these people consists almost
entirely of animal substances. The staple article of food is the flesh
of the rough seal, of which they obtain more than of any other meat.
Next in importance is the venison of the reindeer, though this is
looked upon as a kind of dainty.[N98] Many well developed fœtal
reindeer are brought home from the spring deer hunt and are said to be
excellent eating, though we never saw them eaten. They also eat the
flesh of the other three species of seal, the walrus, the polar bear,
the “bowhead” whale, the white whale, and all the larger kinds of
birds, geese, ducks, gulls, and grouse. All the different kinds of
fish appear to be eaten, with the possible exception of the two
species of Lycodes (only a few of these were caught, and all were
purchased for our collection) and very little of a fish is wasted
except the hardest parts. Walrus hide is sometimes cooked and eaten in
times of scarcity. Mollusks of any kind are rarely eaten, as it is
difficult to procure them. After a heavy gale in the autumn of 1881,
when the beach was covered with marine animals, mostly lamellibranch
mollusks with their shells and softer parts broken off by the violence
of the surf, we saw one woman collect a lapful of these “clam-heads,”
which she said she was going to eat. The “blackskin” (epidermis) of
the whale is considered a great delicacy by them, as by all the other
Eskimo who are able to procure it, and they are also very fond of the
tough white skin or gum round the roots of the whalebone.[N99]
[Footnote N98: The Eskimo of Iglulik “prefer venison to any kind
of meat.” Parry, 2d Voyage, p. 510.]
[Footnote N99: Compare Hooper, Tents, etc. “This, which the Tuski
call their sugar,” p. 174; and Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 132
(Baffin Land).]
We saw and heard nothing of the habit so generally noticed among other
Eskimo and in Siberia of eating the half-digested contents of the
stomach of the reindeer, but we found that they were fond of the fæces
taken from the rectum of the deer. I find that this curious habit has
been noticed among Eskimo only in two other places--Greenland in
former times and Boothia Felix. The Greenlanders ate “the Dung of the
Rein-deer, taken out of the Guts when they clean them; the Entrails of
Partridges and the like Out-cast, pass for Dainties with them.”[N100]
The dung of the musk ox and reindeer when fresh were considered a
delicacy by the Boothians, according to J. C. Ross.[N101] The entrails
of fowls are also considered a great delicacy and are carefully cooked
as a separate dish.[N102]
[Footnote N100: Egede, Greenland, p. 136.]
[Footnote N101: Appendix to Ross’s 2d Voyage, p. xix.]
[Footnote N102: Compare the passage from Egede, just quoted, and
also Kumlien, Contributions, etc., p. 20, at Cumberland Gulf.]
As far as our observations go these people eat little, if any, more
fat than civilized man, and, as a rule, not by itself. Fat may
occasionally be eaten (they are fond of the fat on the inside of duck
skins), but they do not habitually eat the great quantities of blubber
spoken of in some other places[N103] or drink oil, as the Hudson Bay
Eskimo are said to do by Hall, or use it as a sauce for dry food, like
the natives of Norton Sound. It is usually supposed and generally
stated in the popular accounts of the Eskimo that it is a
physiological necessity for them to eat enormous quantities of blubber
in order to obtain a sufficient amount of carbon to enable them to
maintain their animal heat in the cold climate which they inhabit.
A careful comparison, however, of the reports of actual
observers[N104] shows that an excessive eating of fat is not the rule,
and is perhaps confined to the territory near Boothia Felix.
[Footnote N103: For instance, Schwatka says that the Nĕtcĭlĭk of
King William Land devour enormous quantities of seal blubber,
“noticeably more in summer than the other tribes,” viz, those of
the western shores of Hudson’s Bay (Science, vol. 4, p. 544).
Parry speaks of the natives of the Savage Islands, Hudson’s
Strait, eating raw blubber and sucking the oil remaining on the
skins they had emptied (2d Voyage, p. 14).]
[Footnote N104: See for example Egede’s Greenland, p. 134; Crantz,
History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 144; Dall, Alaska, passim;
Hooper, Tents of the Tuski, p. 170; Nordenskiöld, Vega, p. 110.]
Eggs of all kinds, except, of course, the smallest, are eagerly sought
for, but the smaller birds are seldom eaten, as it is a waste of time
and ammunition to pursue them. We saw this people eat no vegetable
substances, though they informed us that the buds of the willow were
sometimes eaten. Of late years they have acquired a fondness for many
kinds of civilized food, especially bread of any kind, flour, sugar,
and molasses, and some of them are learning to like salt. They were
very glad to purchase from us corn-meal “mush” and the broken victuals
from the table. These were, however, considered as special dainties
and eaten as luncheons or as a dessert after the regular meal. The
children and even some of the women were always on the watch for the
cook’s slop bucket to be brought out, and vied with the ubiquitous
dogs in searching for scraps of food. Meat which epicures would call
rather “high” is eaten with relish, but they seem to prefer fresh meat
when they can get it.
_Means of preparing food._--Food is generally cooked, except, perhaps,
whale-skin and whale gum, which usually seem to be eaten as soon as
obtained, without waiting for a fire. Meat of all kinds is generally
boiled in abundance of water over a fire of driftwood, and the broth
thus made is drunk hot before eating the meat. Fowls are prepared for
boiling by skinning them. Fish are also boiled, but are often eaten
raw, especially in winter at the deer-hunting camps, when they are
frozen hard. Meat is sometimes eaten raw or frozen. Lieut. Ray found
one family in camp on Kulugrua who had no fire of any kind, and were
eating everything raw. They had run out of oil some time before and
did not like to spend time in going to the coast for more while deer
were plentiful.
When traveling in winter, according to Lieut. Ray, they prefer frozen
fish or a sort of pemmican made as follows: The marrow is extracted
from reindeer bones by boiling, and to a quantity of this is added 2
or 3 pounds of crushed seal or whale blubber, and the whole beaten up
with the hands in a large wooden bowl to the consistency of frozen
cream. Into this they stir bits of boiled venison, generally the
poorer portions of the meat scraped off the bone, and chewed up small
by all the women and children of the family, “each using some
cabalistic word as they cast in their mouthful.”[N105] The mass is
made up into 2-pound balls and carried in little sealskin bags. Flour,
when obtained, is made into a sort of porridge, of which they are very
fond. Cooking is mostly done outside of the dwelling, in the open air
in summer, or in kitchens opening out of the passageway in winter.
Little messes only, like an occasional dish of soup or porridge, are
cooked over the lamps in the house. This habit, of course, comes from
the abundant supply of firewood, while the Eskimo most frequently
described live in a country where wood is very scarce, and are obliged
to depend on oil for fuel.
[Footnote N105: Lieut. Ray’s MS. notes.]
_Time and frequency of eating._--When these people are living in the
winter houses they do not, as far as we could learn, have any regular
time for meals, but eat whenever they are hungry and have leisure. The
women seem to keep a supply of cooked food on hand ready for any one
to eat. When the men are working in the kû´dyĭgi, or “club house,” or
when a number of them are encamped together in tents, as at the
whaling camp in 1883, or the regular summer camp at Pe´rnyû, the women
at intervals through the day prepare dishes of meat, which the men eat
by themselves. When in the deer-hunting camps, according to Lieut.
Ray, they eat but little in the morning, and can really be said to
take no more than one full meal a day, which is eaten at night when
the day’s work is done.[N106] When on the march they usually take a
few mouthfuls of the pemmican above described before they start out in
the morning, and rarely touch food again till they go into camp at
night.
[Footnote N106: “They have no set Time for Meals, but every one
eats when he is hungry, except when they go to sea, and then their
chief Repast is a supper after they are come home in the Evening.”
(Egede, Greenland, p. 135. Compare also, Crantz, vol. 1, p. 145.)]
When a family returns from the spring deer hunt with plenty of venison
they usually keep open house for a day or two. The women of the
household, with sometimes the assistance of a neighbor or two, keep
the pot continually boiling, sending in dishes of meat at intervals,
while the house is full of guests who stay for a short time, eating,
smoking, and chatting, and then retire to make room for others. Messes
are sometimes sent out to invalids who can not come to the feast. One
household in the spring of 1883 consumed in this way two whole
reindeer in 24 hours. They use only their hands and a knife in eating
meat, usually filling the mouth and cutting or biting off the
mouthful. They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women,
eating all the time when they have plenty, but we never saw them gorge
themselves in the manner described by Dr. Kane (2d Grinnell Exp.,
passim) and other writers.
Their habits of hospitality prevent their laying up any large supply
of meat, though blubber is carefully saved for commercial use, and
they depend for subsistence, almost from day to day, on their success
in hunting. When encamped, however, in small parties in the summer
they often take more seals than they can consume. The carcasses of
these, stripped of their skins and blubber, are buried in the gravel
close to the camp, and dug up and brought home when meat becomes
scarce in the winter.