CHRISTMAS--THE "DEER KORAKS"
I celebrate Christmas day with the over-kind assistance of
two hundred natives--Koraks as sharp-shooters--Comic
features of a Russian dance--Off for Kaminaw--Another
runaway--Slaughtering deer--A curious provision of
nature--Eight families in one yourta--Korak method of
washing dishes--A herd of ten thousand deer.
When I reached town the Russians desired to know what I had
accomplished, and I was obliged to tell them that I had discovered no
considerable deposits of gold on the head waters of the Ghijiga.
Some time before this I had caused it to become known that I would pay
liberally in tea or other commodities for bags of rock picked up in
the beds of streams and delivered in Ghijiga. I now found upward of a
ton of such specimens awaiting my inspection. This was my information
bureau. I had found the natives trustworthy, and I knew they would not
pick up specimens near by and claim they had been brought from a
distance. Some that I thus examined had been brought seven hundred
miles. By a careful examination and classification of these specimens
I was able to determine the various geological formations of the
district, and the next three weeks were spent in this important work.
I wanted to be off again promptly, but as Christmas was at hand, it
was impossible to secure dog-teams; so I was obliged to rest.
As I sat in my cabin on Christmas eve, thinking over old times, and
feeling, perhaps, a trifle blue, I determined to usher in the great
day with some éclat. So I loaded up every firearm that I had, and when
midnight came I stepped outside and "let loose" with revolvers,
rifles, and shotguns. The first effect was to wake up four hundred
dogs, who responded with howls and barks, which they kept up till
morning. At seven o'clock, my Russian friends came flocking over to
find out what I was celebrating. I told them that it was our Christmas
day. Their Christmas comes twelve days later than ours. When they
found out the cause of my exhilaration they slipped away, but within
three hours the women and children began to appear, each loaded with a
steaming dish. There were meats, fowls, berries, pasties, fish,
blubber, stuffed ptarmigan, deer tongues, and other things--enough to
feed a hundred men. When the table was so full that it could hold no
more, they put the dishes on the floor. I knew well that they had
brought much more than I could handle, and I was somewhat embarrassed
by their excessive generosity. But my fears were ill-founded, for soon
the whole village began to arrive. The priests and magistrates came
first, and then the rest in descending scale, and by the time they
were done, all the good things that they had brought had been
consumed, as well as all that I could obtain from Mrs. Braggin. Two
hundred were fed, and by night I was entirely cleaned out--cupboard,
shelf, and cellar. What the small children could not eat they put in
their pockets. The Russian storekeepers sent me a bag of coppers,
telling me that it was the custom to give each child a coin on such
occasions. When I went to bed at night, I determined that I would
never again disturb the peace of Christmas night with firearms.
On New Year's eve, fearing that the ceremony might be repeated, I
stole away on my snow-shoes and spent the day hunting ptarmigan. I had
good luck, and bagged all I could carry. These beautiful little birds
are about the size of a pigeon, but of heavier build. In summer their
color is brown, but in winter it is pure white, and they sit
motionless in the snow, so that it is almost impossible to discover
them. The native boys kill them with bows and arrows. Almost all the
natives of the far north are good shots, being trained to it from
boyhood. In order to catch ermine and _belk_ (arctic squirrel) they
must be marksmen of the first order; for these animals are small, and
must be shot in the head, or the skin is worthless. For this purpose,
twenty-two caliber rifles of German manufacture are used. They are
muzzle-loaders, and can be purchased in Vladivostok for four roubles.
The natives rig them up with a forked rest, and an ermine at
seventy-five yards stands no chance of escape.
About twenty years ago the Russian Government sent a company of expert
Cossack rifle-men into this north country to teach the natives how to
shoot. These instructors never got further than Ghijiga, though it had
been the plan to distribute them throughout the district. Targets were
set up, and the Cossacks did some fancy shooting. The natives looked
on stolidly, and when asked to shoot, declined to do so, but called up
some of their boys, who easily worsted the Cossacks at their own game.
The natives were always curious about my Colts forty-five caliber
six-shooters, as this weapon is not known in that section. In my
younger days, I had seen something of Arizona and Texas life, and
thought I was a pretty fair shot. One day a native with whom I was
stopping asked me to let him have a shot with my revolver. I tore a
small piece of paper from my note-book and pinned it on a tree about
twenty yards distant. I shot first, and came within an inch or so of
the paper--a fairly good shot; but the old Korak took the weapon, and,
bringing it slowly into position, let drive, and hit the paper. I
could detect no look of exultation on his face, nor on that of any
spectator. They took it as a matter of course that their tribesman
should out-shoot me with my own weapon, the very first time he ever
had one like it in his hand. I have never tried to shoot against a
Korak since then. My only consolation was that it might have been an
accident, for he refused to shoot again, although I pressed him to do
so. For hunting large game, they use a forty-four caliber Winchester,
or a forty-five caliber German muzzle-loader.
The feasting at the Russian Christmas-tide lasts fully three days. In
the morning the entire population attends church, after which,
apparently, a contest ensues as to who shall get drunk first; and the
priest generally wins. They hitch up their dog-teams, and go from
house to house, feasting and drinking. Etiquette demands that a man
use his team, even if calling at a house ten rods away. The women
troop about in gay dresses of calico, with bright silk handkerchiefs
over their heads, and the men in their best furs, embroidered with
silk. One of the most distinctive features of a Christmas celebration
is that each person takes a full bath with soap, before the great day
is ushered in. At the same time, the hair is combed and done up
afresh. The transformation is so great that it is often hard even for
bosom friends to recognize one another. All day long bands of boys go
about singing carols. They enter one's home, and bow before the icon,
and sing their songs, after which it is the proper thing to give each
of them a coin or something to eat. In the evening, young men repeat
the same performance, except that they bring large illuminated wheels,
which they whirl before the icon as they sing the Christmas hymns.
They receive about half a rouble apiece for this service.
The next day I started in to return their calls. It is an insult not
to taste every dish on the table of your host, and the result was that
I soon reached my utmost capacity. In the evening, I dined with Mrs.
Braggin, and afterward the room was cleared, and the whole village
came in for a dance. For music, we had a piano, an accordion, and a
violin; the last was played by an old Russian, who knew sixteen bars
of a single tune, and repeated it over and over, _ad nauseam_. In this
primitive fashion, we made merry till the morning. The dance was a
curious kind of quadrille, in which the men did almost all the
dancing. The ladies stood at the corners, and the men in the center.
The men danced very energetically, with many steps that resemble the
"bucking" and "winging" of the negro in the United States. At the same
time, they shouted at the top of their voices. As for the women, they
merely moved forward and back, with little mincing steps, and then
turned around in their places. All this time the samovar was going
full blast, and every one was streaming with perspiration.
[Illustration: Reindeer.]
About midnight, the fun grew fast and furious, and every one started
in to kiss and hug his neighbor; for by this time, more than half were
intoxicated. The worst feature of such a Russian festive occasion is,
that every one grows fearfully affectionate as he begins to feel the
effect of the liquor.
When the Christmas festivities were over, I made preparations to carry
out a more extensive plan of exploration. It was my purpose to examine
the valleys of the rivers running from the Stanovoi range of mountains
into Bering Sea; the beaches along the shore of that sea, and then to
turn south to Baron Koff Bay, on the eastern coast of Kamchatka, where
sulphur deposits were said to have been found; then across the neck of
the Kamchatka Peninsula to Cape Memaitch, and around the head of the
Okhotsk Sea to Ghijiga, my starting-point. This trip was in the form
of a rough circle, and the total distance, including excursions,
proved to be upward of twenty-five hundred miles. This distance I had
to cover between January 15 and May 15, when the road would no longer
be passable for sledges.
My first work was to select and buy the best sledge-dogs to be found
in the town. By this time, I had become fairly adept at driving a
dog-team. Old Chrisoffsky did not care to undertake such a long trip,
and so I selected as my head driver a half-caste named Metrofon
Snevaydoff. Two villagers also contracted to go as far as the village
of Kaminaw, which lies three hundred miles to the northeast of
Ghijiga. They would not go further, because the country beyond this
was unknown to them. But the magistrate gave me a letter to two
Cossacks stationed at Kaminaw, requesting them to furnish native
dog-teams to take me on east from that point. I took but little
dog-food, as the territory through which I was going abounds in
reindeer, and we could get all the meat we needed. Provisions were
beginning to run low in Ghijiga, and all I could buy was tea, sugar,
tobacco, and a little dried fruit.
It was the middle of January when we started out, all in good health
and spirits. The thermometer stood at forty-six below zero. The dogs
were fat, and their feet were in good condition. We whirled out of the
village at breakneck speed, followed by friendly cries of "Dai Bog
chust leewee budet!" ("God give you good luck!")
I had all I could do to manage my team. The road was worn perfectly
smooth, and the sledge would slew about from side to side in constant
danger of striking some obstruction and going over. I had to pull off
my koklanka and work in my sweater, and yet even in that biting air
the exercise kept me quite warm. In two hours the dogs settled down to
a steady six-mile gait, and, leaving old Chrisoffsky's house on the
left, I laid a direct course over the tundra for the mountains now
visible far to the northeast. By five o'clock, we saw signs of deer,
which showed us that we were nearing the encampment that was to be our
lodging-place for the night. Mounting a rise of land, we beheld,
scattered over the face of the landscape, thousands of reindeer which
belonged to the denizens of half a dozen skin yourtas, sheltered from
the wind in the valley below.
Snevaydoff's team, which was in the lead, caught the scent of the
deer, and dashed down the hill, and I after him, though I jammed my
polka down and braked with all my might. It had no effect on my
speed, and I saw that I was simply being run away with. On the left,
near a yourta, a bunch of deer were standing, and, in spite of all my
efforts, my dogs left the road and bolted straight for them. The deer
bounded away in mad flight. Snevaydoff had already turned his sledge
over and brought his team to a halt, but I was enjoying a new
sensation. I pulled out my polka and "let her slide," literally. I was
minded to save the Koraks the trouble of slaughtering a few of their
deer by doing it myself. Just as "Old Red" got a good mouthful of
hair, our flight suddenly came to an end with the sledge turning
upside down. The natives hurried up and caught the dogs, and, bringing
them down to the yourtas, fastened them securely.
I have coursed antelope in Texas, and in Arizona have picked wild
turkeys from the ground while on horseback, but for good exhilarating
sport give me fourteen wild sledge-dogs, the open tundra, and a bunch
of deer ahead.
I found, to my surprise and pleasure, that the old Korak in charge of
the village was the one who had helped me the summer before when I was
trying to find my way back to Ghijiga. I was now better able to talk
with him than I had been at that time, especially as I had Snevaydoff
for interpreter. After tea, I went outside to see how things were
getting on. Four men were out among the herd, lassoing those intended
for slaughter. They did it much after the fashion of cow-boys at home.
Having secured an animal, two men held it while a third drew out a
long, keen knife and plunged it into the animal's heart. The poor
beast would give one or two wild leaps, and then fall dead. The Koraks
do not bleed their animals when they butcher them. This scene was
enacted three times, each deer being intended as food for a single
team of dogs. It took place in plain sight of the dogs, who leaped in
their collars, and yelled applause at every stroke of the knife.
[Illustration: Herd of Reindeer.]
The men's work ended with killing the deer, and the women and children
followed, the former with sharp knives, and the latter with bowls. It
was their part of the work to skin and cut up the dead deer. With a
deft stroke, they ripped up the belly and drew out the entrails, being
very careful to leave all the coagulated blood in the abdominal
cavity. When the viscera had all been removed, the carcass was tipped
up, and the blood was caught in the bowls, and carried to the dogs.
The tongue and the leg-bones were removed and laid aside for home use,
and all the rest of the carcass went to the dogs.
As the women were skinning the deer, I noticed that every few moments
they would lean down and tear off, with their teeth, little round
protuberances which grew on the under side of the skin. These were an
inch long by a quarter of an inch thick, and were bedded in the skin,
and surrounded with fat. They proved to be bots, formed by a fly that
is the special torment of the deer in summer. On one skin I counted
more than four hundred of them. A little child came up and offered me
a handful. I found that they are considered a delicacy by the natives.
The flies deposit minute eggs in the skin in mid-summer, and the larva
lies under the skin, imbedded in fat. The following spring the deer is
tormented with itching, and rubs against anything it can find, and so
liberates the larva, which comes forth in the shape of a fly, an inch
in length, only to repeat the same operation. It is a marvelous
provision of nature that teaches the fly to seek the only place where
its larvæ can be kept warm and safe during the terrible cold of
winter.
When the last deer had been skinned, the men brought axes and chopped
the carcasses into equal portions, each dog receiving a good ten
pounds. When I went back to the yourta I left them snarling and
growling over their meal, like so many wolves.
The yourtas of these natives are covered with deerhides. The hair is
cut down to a quarter of an inch in length, and is put on the
outside. The construction of the frame-work of the yourta is very
ingenious, and is the result of centuries of experimenting. They
require no guy-ropes to keep them erect, but the frame-work of poles
is so constructed and so braced on the inside that they resist the
most violent wind. After the poles are lashed in place by the women
the deerhides are fastened over them separately, not sewed together;
for this would make it difficult to move readily. At the top there is,
of course, the usual exit for the smoke.
The yourta that I entered was about thirty-five feet in diameter and
fourteen feet high, and divided, by means of skin curtains, into eight
little booths or apartments, each of which could be entirely closed,
to secure privacy. These little booths are arranged around the side of
the yourta, and each one is occupied by an entire family. The booths
are eight feet long, five feet high, and six feet wide, and are heated
only by lamps. The great fire in the center of the yourta is not
primarily for heat, but for cooking purposes, all the families using
it in common. The various kettles are hung over the fire by means of
wooden hooks. The food is either boiled or eaten raw. They do not seem
to know the use of the frying-pan.
The main door of the yourta is formed by two flaps of deer skin, an
inner and an outer one, which gives the effect of a storm-door. The
dogs generally huddle between the two, and occasionally one of them
sneaks into the yourta itself, only to be promptly kicked out.
Our dinner consisted of boiled deer ribs, sticks of frozen marrow, and
half-digested moss, taken from the stomach of the deer. This last was
cooked in seal oil, and looked much like spinach. I found some
difficulty in bringing myself to eat it, but I craved vegetable food
so keenly that at last I was able to overcome my repulsion, and found
it not so bad after all. The reindeer, therefore, furnishes the Korak
with meat, clothing, shelter, and vegetable food. The dinner was
served on wooden plates, and conveyed to the mouth with fingers,
except that for the "spinach" they had spoons carved from the horn of
the mountain-sheep. The host persisted in offering me the daintiest
lumps of fat in his fingers; and I accepted them. In that far northern
latitude, we all craved fat or any kind of oil. The women did not eat
with us. The host and I sat in one of the little booths, while the
women remained outside by the fire. The children, however, could not
resist the temptation to "peek," and they lay on the ground, looking
up from below the edge of the skin partitions, like a row of
detached heads, with the eyes blinking solemnly at me.
[Illustration: Reindeer, Herders in background.]
After we had eaten, I made them all happy by sending Snevaydoff out to
the sledge for some tea, and some broken bits of sugar. The host
brought out the family treasures, the gaudy cups which I have
heretofore mentioned. The women licked the saucers, and wiped them
with moss, after which tea was served.
Strange is the effect of environment; a year previous, no inducement
could have made me use those cups after seeing them cleansed in that
fashion. Was I, after all, a savage, and civilization but a thin
veneer? I found myself at times looking at life from the standpoint of
these people. I was thinking, dreaming, and talking in my sleep in my
polyglot language. At times I would talk to myself in English, just to
enjoy the sound of it. I had with me no books, except a Bible, which
was in my valise, but the print was too fine to read, except with a
good light. Action was my only salvation. Had I been compelled to stay
in one place I should have feared for my reason.
After two or three cups, every one perspired freely, and off came one
garment after another, until the men were entirely naked, and the
women were naked to the waist. When we had imbibed ten or a dozen
cups, the kettle was replenished with hot water, and handed out to
those in the main part of the yourta. I gave each one a lump of sugar
to make him happy, and then, leaning back among the skins, lighted my
pipe, and had a long talk with my host, during the course of which I
elicited much curious information.
At bedtime, two of the smaller children were put in tiny cradles,
swung from the top of the yourta. The compartment in which I slept
held eight people that night. The lamp was left burning all night, for
the sake of its warmth. As far as I could discover, there was an utter
lack of ventilation.
When I crawled out of that noisome hole the next morning, I found that
the dogs were very uneasy; they scratched the snow continually with
their hind feet. This was a sure sign that one of the dreaded
storms--a porgo--was coming. As I had experienced one of them, I had
no wish to be caught out in another, so I determined to wait where I
was till it blew over. By ten o'clock it was raging, and for three
mortal days there was no stirring from that village. Just before the
storm came on I secured some photographs of the reindeer. They were
very tame indeed, and would come up to me and smell of my garments,
and would even lick them, hoping to get some salt. I had to carry a
short stick to keep them from pressing too close upon me. I walked in
among the herd, which numbered about ten thousand, and watched them
eat. They would paw away the snow until they reached the moss, which
lay about ten inches below the surface, and then, kneeling down, would
dig it out with their teeth. The moss is about ten inches thick, and
is a loose, spongy mass of vegetation. It will not bear the weight of
a man, the foot sinking through it. It forms a most excellent food for
deer, but horses will not eat it. The Tunguse deer, which is larger
than the Korak, eats only moss, but the Korak deer will eat either
moss or grass.
These nomads have regular roads to and from the coast, and generation
after generation they follow the same old beaten tracks. In December,
they are farthest from the sea. Once in two, three, or four weeks,
according to the supply of moss and the size of the herd, they break
camp and move off on the trail. Late in December they turn, and
gradually work their way back, so that by the time that June and the
mosquitos have arrived they are near the sea. The deer eagerly lick
the salt from the rocks, and even drink the sea water. They stay on
the coast until late in August, when the frosts kill off the
mosquitos, and then they move off inland for another winter. In
summer, the deer grow very poor and weak, for they find little moss
near the coast. All along the shores of Bering Sea thousands of deer
can be counted every summer. A few years ago, when the United States
Government wished to secure some reindeer herds for Alaska, they sent
all the way to Lapland, and imported the deer at enormous expense,
took them across the American continent by rail, and shipped them by
steamer to Alaska. By the time they arrived, those that had not died
must have cost an enormous sum. If the government had sent a steamer a
single day's run across Bering Sea, it could have purchased fifty
thousand reindeer right on the coast at a cost of one rouble, or fifty
cents, apiece. Coin cannot be used in purchasing these animals, for
the natives do not understand nor use our coinage, but they can be
obtained by barter at the rate of one rouble's worth of tobacco a
head. Some rich natives might accept a few silver coins to hammer up
into buttons for their children's clothes, but not as a medium of
exchange.
The rutting season is in July, and fights between the male deer are
not uncommon. But most of the male deer are gelded, only enough being
left for breeding purposes. The natives watch their herds carefully,
both night and day, but without the use of dogs. The principal enemy
of the deer is the great gray Siberian wolf, which stands as high
as a Saint Bernard dog. One of these wily fellows will dash into a
herd, "cut out" three or four deer, and run them off into the
wilderness. When a deer grows tired the wolf runs alongside, and,
seizing it by the nose, brings it to the ground and despatches it.
[Illustration: Reindeer--Summer.]
The Koraks eat the hoofs after burning them on the fire and thus
setting free the gelatin. The weapons used by the Koraks, and the
Tunguses as well, are the modern rifles, or in default of these the
regular old-fashioned muzzle-loader. They do a little trapping, but
only for sport. The little boys take out the knuckle-bones from
wolves' feet and set them up like ninepins, and pitch stones at them.
Even the grown men sometimes indulge in this sport. It is not their
custom to use the reindeer under the saddle. They do not even carry a
pack, as among the Tunguses. Even in summer the Korak prefers to carry
his goods on a sledge, as many as eight deer sometimes being required
to draw the load.
There is one physical feature which helps to determine the
geographical division between the "dog" people and the "deer" people;
and this is the depth of the snowfall. For instance, on the peninsula
of Kamchatka there are many places where the snow is so deep that the
deer could not dig down to the moss in winter. All through the
northwestern portion of the peninsula, however, where the land is
occupied mostly by Koraks, the snow is not so deep, and the keeping of
deer is possible.