FORT MACPHERSON FOLK
"I have drunk the Sea's good wine,
Was ever step so light as mine,
Was ever heart so gay?
O, thanks to thee, great Mother, thanks to thee,
For this old joy renewed,
For tightened sinew and clear blood imbued
With sunlight and with sea."
--_A Pagan Hymn_.
On July 14th, shortly after we leave Arctic Red River, an open scow
passes us, floating northward with the stream. It comes in close to the
steamer, and we look down and see that every one of its seven occupants
is sound asleep. In traversing the Mackenzie, there is no danger of
running into ferry-boats or river-locks, if you strike the soft alluvial
banks here the current will soon free you and on you go. The voyagers in
the scow may sleep in peace.
At Point Separation, 67° 37' N., the Mackenzie delta begins. Where the
east and west branches diverge, the width of the river is fifty miles,
the channel becoming one maze of islands, battures, and half-hidden
sand-bars. The archipelago at the Arctic edge extends a full hundred
miles east and west.
The two lob-sticks at Point Separation are full of historic interest. It
was here, on the evening of July 3rd, 1826, that Sir John Franklin and
Dr. Richardson parted, Franklin to trend west and Richardson east, in
their mission of Arctic coastal exploration. Twenty-two years later,
Richardson, this time concerned with the _Plover_ Relief Expedition of
the lost Franklin, again visited Point Separation. He records,
"July 30th, 1848, Point Separation. In compliance with my instructions,
a case of pemmican was buried at this place. We dug a pit at a distance
of ten feet from the best grown tree on the Point, and placed in it,
along with the pemmican, a bottle containing a memorandum of the
Expedition, and such information respecting the Company's post as I
judged would be useful to the boat party of the _Plover_ should they
reach this river. The lower branches of the tree were lopped off, a part
of its trunk denuded of bark, and a broad arrow painted thereon with red
paint. In performing these duties at this place, I could not but recall
to mind the evening of July 3rd, 1826, passed on the very same spot with
Sir John Franklin. We were then full of joyous anticipation."
As we look at these enduring lobsticks, we recollect that Commander
Pullen, with two boats from the _Plover_ in 1849, visited the depot and
found the precious pemmican. We leave the Mackenzie proper for the
present and enter the easternmost channel of its farthest north
tributary, the Peel, and follow this considerable stream thirty-three
miles to Fort Macpherson, the most northerly post of the Hudson's Bay
Company.
Fort Macpherson has a striking site. To the east, spreads a rolling
wooded plain of alluvial origin, containing thousands of lakes. The west
aspect gives us an uninterrupted view of the wooded valley of the Peel,
backed by a heathery slope with the northern Rockies on the far horizon.
Due north, upstarts a peak of the Rockies known locally as Black
Mountain--a dark barren spur two thousand feet in height. A winter trail
from Macpherson to Arctic Red River cuts no fewer than thirty-three
small lakes.
[Illustration: Constable Walker and Sergeant Fitzgerald in Eskimo Togs]
On the beach to meet us are Mounted Police and Eskimo from Herschel
Island, Church of England missionaries, traders of the H.B. Co., and
Loucheux Indians. But here, as at Arctic Red River, it is that Polar
gentleman the Eskimo who claims our attention. Let Sergeant Fitzgerald,
R.N.W.M.P., stationed at Herschel Island, speak for the Kogmollye and
Nunatalmute Eskimo. In his departmental report this officer states, "I
have found these natives honest all the time I have been at Herschel
Island. I never heard of a case of stealing among them." He has been
there five years. Up here on the Arctic the bare word of an Eskimo is
accepted of all men. If he states to an H.B. Co. factor that he has an
order from a whaling captain to get certain goods for himself, that
unwritten order is honoured though it may date back two or even three
years, whereas an order presented by a white man must be in writing and
certified.
Why should I enter the lists and take up icy spear for my Eskimo fellow
British subject? Because he is so very worth while. Because through the
years the world has conspired to libel him. Because within a decade or
two he will have passed utterly off the map. And because it is so very
much pleasanter to write appreciations than epitaphs. This man wins you
at once by his frank directness; his bearing is that of a fearless
child. The Indian, like Ossian's hero, scorns to tell his name, and on
occasion will dodge the camera, but the Eskimo likes to be photographed.
Young and old, they press to our side like friendly boys and girls round
a "chummy" teacher, volunteering information of age, sex, and previous
condition, with all sorts of covetable bits of intimate family history.
You love the Eskimo because he is kind to his dogs and gentle to little
children. His entire willingness to take you on credit is contagious,
trust begets trust even in walrus latitudes.
[Illustration: Two Wise Ones]
The Mackenzie River Eskimo is a clever chap. With no school-teacher, no
school, no modern appliances, he does many things and does each
admirably. He is a hunter by land and sea, a fearless traveller, a
furrier, a fisherman, a carver, a metal-smith, and he takes in every
task the pride of a master mechanic,--"the gods see everywhere." The
duties of the man and the woman are well-defined. The head of the
Kogmollyc household is the blood-and-flesh-winner, the navigator of the
kayak, the driver of dogs. It is he who builds the houses on the march,
and when occasion requires he does not consider it _infra dig._ to get
the breakfast or mind the baby. The wife dresses the skins, prepares
the food, makes all the clothing, and the lord of the igloo demands from
her the same perfect work that he turns out himself.
[Illustration: A Nunatalmute Eskimo Family]
When an Eskimo wife has finished making her spouse a pair of waterproof
boots, she hands them to him, and he blows them up. If there is one
little pin-hole and the air oozes out, he throws the boots back to her,
and she may take up the pedal gauntlet in one of two ways. Either she
must meekly start to make a new pair of boots without murmuring a word,
or leave it open to him to take to his bosom another conjugal bootmaker.
We noticed with interest in watching this little tableau that there was
no recrimination. No word was spoken on either side, the exacting
husband contenting himself with blowing up the boots and not the wife.
With uncanny fascination we watched one old woman curry a sealskin. Her
tongue was kept busy cleaning the scraper, while her mouth was a
repository for the scrapings, which went first there, then to a wooden
dish, then to the waiting circle of pop-eyed dogs. The whole performance
was executed with a precision of movement that held us fascinated.
If a white woman were to be shipwrecked and thrown upon an Eskimo
foreshore and presenting herself at a Husky employment bureau, many
surprises would await her. Instead of asking for references from her
last employer, the genial proprietor would first ask to inspect her
teeth. In prosecuting female Eskimo handicraft your teeth are as
important a factor as your hands. The reporter for the funeral column of
an Eskimo daily, writing the obituary of a good wife, instead of
speaking of the tired hands seamed by labor for her husband and little
ones, would call pathetic attention to, "the tired and patient teeth
worn to their sockets by the yearly chewing for the household." A young
wife's cobbling duty does not end with making for her mate boots that
shall be utterly waterproof, but each morning she must arise before the
seagull and chew these into shape. You see, after the boots are wet
each day they get as stiff as boards, then they must be lubricated with
oil and chewed into shape. We watched Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Younger at
this wifely duty. Taking the big boot up in her well-shaped hands,
incisively, quarter-inch by quarter-inch, the white teeth made their way
round the borderland between upper and sole, the indentations looking
like the crisped edges on the rims of the pies your mother used to make.
Solomon's eulogy of Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak corrected to the latitude of 70°
North would read, "She seeketh fish and the liver of seals and worketh
willingly with her hands; she riseth also while it is yet night and
cheweth the boots of her household."
Every bit of Eskimo skin-clothing is as soft and pliable as a kid glove.
The effect is not produced without patient labor, and again the teeth of
the woman are brought into requisition. The raw sealskins or hides of
the reindeer and bear are staked out in the sun with the skin-side up
and dried thoroughly. Before this stiff material can be worked up into
garments it must be made pliable, and this is done by systematically
chewing the fibres, a slow and painstaking task. Creasing the hide along
its whole length, the women take it in their hands and chew their way
along the bend from one end of the skin to the other, working their way
back along the next half-inch line. Watching them, one is reminded of
the ploughman driving his team afield up one furrow and down the other.
It falls to the lot of the woman, too, to do her share of boat-making.
The men deftly fashion the frames of kayak and oomiak, using in their
construction not a single nail or piece of iron, but fastening the wood
together by pegs and thongs of skin. Then the women come on the scene,
measure the frame, and sew green hides of the proper shape to fit,
making wonderful overlapping seams that are absolutely watertight. As it
is necessary to put the skin covering on while the hides are raw, the
whole job has to be completed at one sitting. So a bee is held of the
women of the communal camp.
[Illustration: Cribbage-boards of Walrus Tusks
The scenes etched in the larger represent the events of one year of the
carver.]
Where did the Eskimo get his versatile ability? Only the walrus knows.
The whalers have inducted the Eskimo into the art of making
cribbage-boards. They use for each board a complete tusk of
walrus-ivory, covering the whole with a wealth of descriptive carvings
illustrative of all that comes into the yearly round of an Eskimo's
life,--ice-fishing, bear-hunting, walrus-sticking. So far as we could
find out, the Husky's connection with cribbage ceased with his making
these _edition de luxe_ boards. He seemed himself to have gathered no
inkling of the fine points of that game which one instinctively
associates with Dick Swiveller as tutor and as pupil the little
Marchioness, "that very extraordinary person, surrounded by mysteries,
ignorant of the taste of beer, and taking a limited view of society
through the key-holes of doors." In the world outside, far from igloos
and ice-floes, where people gather round cheery Christmas fires with
"one for his nob," "two for his heels," and "a double run of three,"
these ivory crib-boards are sold for from seventy-five to one hundred
dollars each. We have two among our most treasured trophies, and with
them an ivory ring beautifully formed which we saw made. Set in the ring
is a blue stone of irregular shape which was fitted into its ivory niche
with a nicety of workmanship that few jewellers could attain. I had
fashioned for me also a gavel in the shape of a sleeping seal, made of
fossil ivory from the Little Diomedes. The contrast of the weathered
brown of the outside of the ivory with the pure white of the inner
layers, when worked up into a carved design, gives the effect of cameo
and intaglio combined.
We tasted many new Eskimo dishes. When, on our return, we confessed that
the brain of the seal served here is a delicious dish, we ran against
the sensibilities of refined natures. But why is it cruder to enjoy
seal's brains _â la vinaigrette_, than to tickle our taste with brains
of the frolicking calf? The seal furnished a more equivocal dinner than
this, nothing less than entrails _au naturel_, which our hostess draws
through her fingers yard by yard in pure anticipative delight, each
guest being presented with two or three feet of the ribbon-like _pièce
de résistance_. The scene that jumps to our memory as we watch this
feast of fat things is connected with food-manipulations in Chicago. It
was down at Armour's in the stockyards that we had seen Polacks and
Scandinavian girls preparing in the succulent sausage a comestible that
bore strange family semblance to that which our friends are now eating
before us, this linked sweetness long drawn out.
[Illustration: Useful Articles Made by the Eskimo
A--Eskimo soapstone lamp which burns seal-oil. The wick is of reindeer
moss.
B--Eskimo knife of Stone Age.
C--Its modern successor, fashioned from part of a steel saw, with handle
of ivory. This is the knife used by the women; note how the old shape is
retained.
D--Eskimo Tam O'Shanter. The band is of loonskins, the cap proper being
carefully constructed from swans' feet. This admirably shows the
cleverness of the Eskimo in adapting natural forms to economic use, each
foot of the swan being a true sector of a circle.
E--Old-time stone hatchet.
F and G--Knives filed from saw-blades, with bone handles.
H--Mortar for pulverising tobacco into snuff.
I--Needle set in a wood handle, and by rapid rotary motion used to
pierce ivory.]
Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson's Bay Company here, gives us much
information regarding these people who for thirty-seven consecutive
years have traded with him. The Kogmollycs have been here "from the
beginning," the Nunatalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out
of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by a
scarcity of game. The two tribes live in peace and intermarry. The aged
among them are respected. Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed
from the drama. Supposed incurables commit suicide and in that act
reach immediately a hot underground heaven.
Nature to these Eskimo is especially benign. The junction of the
Mackenzie and the Peel is covered with a forest of spruce, and even to
the ocean-lip we trace foot-prints of moose and black bear. In the delta
are cross, red, and silver foxes, mink and marten, with lynx and rabbits
according to the fortunes of war. The Eskimo declare that, east of Cape
Parry, bears are so numerous that from ten to twenty are seen at one
time from a high hilltop.
The Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs, the man with the best stories and
the most inimitable way of telling them, is Roxi. It was Roxi who gave
us the love story of his cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar. This young man
wooed a maid. The girl's father had no very good opinion of the lad's
hunting ability and was obdurate. The lover determined to take destiny
into his own hands. A ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that
of the family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm a
drift-log formed a temporary bridge. Lothario, one night, crossed the
icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, seized her in her
_shin-ig-bee_ or sleeping-bag and lifted the dear burden over his back.
In spite of struggles and muffled cries from within, he strode off with
her to his side of the stream. The gulch safely crossed, he gaily kicked
the log bridge into the gulf and bore his squirming treasure to his own
igloo floor. He had left his seal-oil lamp burning and now it was with
an anticipative chuckle of joy that he untied the drawstring. We end the
story where Roxi did, by telling that the figure which rolled out
sputtering from the _shin-ig-bee_ was the would-not-be father-in-law
instead of the would-be bride!