The big easy-chair was drawn up before the fire, its hospitable arms
extended, to embrace a father with a little boy on one knee and a little
girl on the other. It was story-telling time.
“Well,” said Father, “where shall we travel tonight?”
The glowing embers showed two eager little faces. “Take us to Eskimo
Land!” they said. So the father settled deeper down in the cosy chair
and stretched out his long legs.
“Very well, to Eskimo Land we shall go. I will take you inside a ‘kasga’
and let the Eskimos tell you their own stories; but before we go there I
must explain to you that in every Eskimo village there is one house
called a ‘kasga.’ Now this kasga is the place where they all go to pass
the long, dark hours of winter, with song and story. Sometimes they
dance to the weird music of beating drums and chanting voices, and
again, they sit quietly mending their weapons, their fishnets or spears;
or again, some of them will be carving beautiful pieces of ivory taken
from a walrus tusk.
“The house called ‘kasga’ in which they meet is built by all the people
of the village. Every one lends a hand; even the little children do
their share of the work. There are logs of driftwood to be hauled: there
is turf or moss from the tundra to be put over the round roof, and
digging to be done with the big bone shovels. So they all help to build
the place in which they spend so much of their time. The men gather
there when they get home from hunting. They cannot be out long in
winter. It is dark most of the day as well as the night, and the storms
are so bad they do not dare to go very far away. The women bring their
sewing too, which they do with thread made from dried sinews from the
leg of the caribou or from the white whale which the old women patiently
pull apart into long threads.
“Now,” said Father, “shut your eyes tight and we will put on our
invisible caps and go to Eskimo Land, right inside a kasga to see what
is happening there this cold winter night.”
So the little boy and girl shut their eyes and clung tightly to Father’s
hand while he counted very slowly, “One, two, three!”
“Stoop over,” said Father, “and creep on your hands and knees, for to
get into the kasga we have to go through a long, low, tunnel-like
entrance, until we come to a hole right over our heads. Here we are! I
will give you a push. Jump up now!” And they popped right through a hole
into the middle of the floor of a big room. Isn’t that a funny way to
get into a house? They were in the kasga at last.
There are no windows to this house, but a round hole in the middle of
the ceiling, or roof, serves both as window and ventilator. This, in
winter, is usually covered with a curtain of bear or seal intestine,
which keeps out the cold. Also it keeps out the fresh air. Sometimes,
when the room is very full of people, the warmth from their bodies and
the steam from many breaths form a moisture that drops down upon them
like rain.
The room is square, and about it runs a wide platform. This platform is
about four feet from the ground. All the men sit on it, while the women
sit on the floor at their feet, with the little children gathered about
them. There are lots of little children in Eskimo Land. They are good
little ones, too. Their parents love them dearly, but they have to learn
early in life to be good and patient, for sometimes they get little or
nothing to eat for days at a time, when game is scarce and their fathers
come back from hunting without any meat for them. So these little ones
do not fuss and cry, for they know that they cannot always have what
they want when they want it.
There are no electric lights in Eskimo Land, nor do they have big open
fireplaces in the houses, with bright, crackling logs to keep them warm,
for wood is hard to get.
About the floor of the kasga are placed lamps of heavy stone, hollowed
out like dishes, in which wicks of moss soaked in seal oil are burned.
The lamps give a yellow, flickering light and a little heat. The women
take care of the lamps, keep them clean and see that they do not smoke
or go out.
On the middle of the platform, at the end of the room, sits the
“Ommalik” of the village. Eskimos do not have real chiefs like Indians,
but in every village there is a rich man; that is a man who has more
than the others of what the Eskimos use and need the most. The Ommalik
is like a chief for the time being, a sort of boss, so we will call him
chief for convenience sake.
In the kasga we are in now there are two shelves high up, one at each
end, where the unmarried men, the bachelors, sit; and quite a scramble
they have, too, in getting up so high.
On the floor at the feet of their husbands sit the married women with
their babies in their parka hoods and their children playing near them,
but the little ones keep very quiet and never dare to make a noise when
the grown-ups are talking—which would be a good example for lots of
little white children I know.
Huddled up in a corner sat a very dark little man, with long black hair
that hung down into his eyes. He was as close as he could get to one of
the lamps, and in his hand he held a piece of creamy ivory, upon which
he was carving the story of a walrus hunt, in pictures. Near him sat a
man busily mending a spear. Ommalik looked around the room. Soon his
eyes rested upon Ungukuk, the little man carving the picture story.
“Ungukuk,” said Ommalik, “will tell us a story.”
The little dark man stopped his work, but did not move or look up. No
one seemed to have heard the chief speak. Some of the little children
still slept on with their heads against their mothers’ knees.
Again Ommalik looked about him and said, “Ungukuk will tell us a story.”
Again there was silence, and the boy in the far corner went on mending
his fish net. At last, after five or six minutes had passed, Ungukuk
raised his head and peered into the dark faces about him. In a
monotonous, sing-song voice, he began the following story: