MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN
"Into this Universe, and _Why_ not knowing
Nor _Whence_, like Water willy-nilly flowing,
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not _Whither_, willy-nilly blowing."
--_The Rubaiyat_.
The Midnight Sun! The sun does not sink to the horizon, but pauses for a
moment and rises again. Dawn and eventide are one. The manifestations of
light ever since we left Athabasca Landing have been wonderful,
uplifting. The supreme marvel of the Midnight Sun is not what we see but
what we feel. Standing at this outpost of Britain's Empire, we give our
imagination rein and see waking worlds and cities of sleep. As this red
sun rises from its horizon-dip, it is the first of the unnumbered
sunrises which, as hour follows hour, will come to the continents.
Longfellow says:
"Think, every morning where the sun peeps through
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old, melodious madrigals of love!
And when you think of this, remember too
_'Tis always morning somewhere_, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."
[Illustration: Home of Mrs. Macdonald.]
How do the people of Macpherson divide into day and night their
largesse of light? By common consent four o'clock in the morning seems
to be bedtime, and by four in the afternoon people are busying
themselves with breakfast. _In Polar Circles, do as the Polars do_, is
good advice, and we follow suit. Individuality is strongly marked at
this metropolis on the Peel. Every one you meet is a mine of interest,
and sharp contrasts present themselves. Mrs. Macdonald discusses fur and
deer-meat with Jack Johnson. He is a trapper who plays the game alone
and who last year was reduced to killing his favourite dog for food.
Current report credits him with having "killed his man in the Yukon."
Mrs. Macdonald is a Loucheux woman who, at the age of fourteen or
fifteen, married Archdeacon Macdonald of the English Church and for
eight long years afterwards assisted him in his life work of translating
the Gospels into the Loucheux language. She has come all the way from
Winnipeg to the Arctic Circle to spend the summer visiting her people.
We lose our hearts to her two sons, splendid fellows both.
It is the Eskimo who brings both missionary and trader to Fort
McPherson. Are these Eskimo, Christians? Are they _civilised_? These are
the questions that confront us when we speak of these Farthest North
Canadians. It is an age of classification. You cannot find a flower
nowadays that some one has not tacked a Latin name to, and it goes by
inverse ratio--the smaller the flower the longer the name. Every bird
you hear sing, even though it stop but an hour to rest its tired pinion
on its northern migration, has an invisible label pinned under its coat.
How can a man, a tribe, a people, hope to escape? In the northeast of
Canada the Eskimo is a disciple of the Moravian missionary. In Alaska,
on the extreme northwest of the continent, the Greek Church takes him to
its bosom. In between these two come the people we are studying. The
Episcopalians through the years have made some sporadic attempt to
influence these people, but so far as I know these Eskimo are not
Episcopalians. What then must we call these splendid fellows so full of
integrity and honour, whose every impulse is a generous one? Heathens?
The question sets us thinking.
The Century Dictionary defines a heathen as "Any irreligious, rude,
barbarous or unthinking class or person." This Eskimo is not
"irreligious," for he has a well-formed conception of a Great Spirit and
an Evil One, he looks to a place of reward or punishment after death,
and he accedes to Kipling's line without ever having heard it,--"They
that are good shall be happy." He is not "rude," but exceedingly
courteous, with a delicacy of feeling that is rare in any latitude.
"Unthinking" he certainly is not. Six months' darkness within the igloo
gives him the same enviable opportunity of thinking that the shoemaker
has in his stall, and the whole world knows that the sequestrated
cobbler is your true philosopher.
There remains but the one ear-mark, "barbarous." The dictionary declares
that barbarous means, "not classical or pure," "showing ignorance of
arts and civilisation." On the first of these indictments our poor
Kogmollyc must fall down, for he is not classical. And what man dare
pronounce on the purity of another? Then we come to "arts" and
"civilisation." In arts, this Eskimo can give cards and spades to every
European who has visited him. The stumbling-block in this honest search
for a tag to put on my people is the term "civilisation." One is
reminded of the utterance of the Member of the British House of Commons:
"Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is the other man's doxy." Was it not
Lowell who at a Harvard anniversary said, "I am conscious that life has
been trying to _civilise_ me for now seventy years with what seems to me
very inadequate results"?
If "Christianity" with the Eskimo means taking him into the white man's
church, and "civilising" means bringing him into close contact with
white men's lives, then he has not yet attained the first, and has but
little to thank the second for. Two years ago eighty of these people in
one tribe died of measles, a white man's disease. A stray chaplain
wandered into an encampment of Eskimo, finding his way from a whaling
ship. He told the people of Heaven, its golden streets, pearly gates,
and harp-songs, and it meant nothing to these children of frost. They
were not interested. Then he changed his theme, and spoke of Hell with
its everlasting fires that needed no replenishing. "Where is it? Tell
us, that we may go!" and little and big they clambered over him, eager
for details.
Prayer as presented by the white man is recognised as an incantation
which should bring immediate and literal results. An enquiring scientist
was seated one day with Oo-vai-oo-ak, the two fishing through adjacent
air-holes in the ice. Calling across to the white man, Oo-vai-oo-ak
said, "How is it, brother, have you any fish?"
"No," replied the man of letters, "I have taken nothing."
"Have you spoken to God this morning?" asked the Eskimo in a
business-like tone.
"No," said the wilted Walton.
"Well, that's what's the matter," returned Oo-vai-oo-ak; "I always speak
to God every morning before I go fishing. Once, when I went to Herschel
Island, a missionary told me what to say. It always works. I have many
fish."
The scientist, interested, queried, "And do you do the same when you go
duck-hunting or goose-hunting or when you are after seal?"
"No," eagerly responded Oo-vai-oo-ak, dropping his line and pressing
close to the geologist, "Is there a prayer for duck, and for geese, and
one for seal? The missionary never told me that. You teach it to me, eh?
I like to make sure what to say to catch that fellow,--goose and seal."
But, unfortunately for both, the university man did not have the charm.
[Illustration: Eskimo Kayaks at the Arctic Edge]
Broadly speaking, the Eskimo's theory of things, evolved from white
spirits on the ice-floes or carried across in the age of the mastodon
from sires and grandsires in Asia, does not differ materially from our
own. There is a Good Spirit, called by different tribes Cood-la-pom-e-o,
Kelligabuk, or Sidne, who dwells high in the zenith, and to whom it is
good to pray. There is an Evil Spirit, Atti, symbolising cold and death.
Their heaven is a warm underworld reached by entrances from the sea.
Hell is a far, white, dreary plain. The Eskimo pray to Sidne; but it is
wise to propitiate Atti or Tornarsuk, and in this last idea they but
follow their Chinese or Tartar ancestors. In common with all nations,
the Kogmollycs have a tradition of the flood. Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the
Elder said, "This world once covered with the sea." Asked why she
thought so, she replied, "You have been down to the land of the
caribou, eh? Little smooth stones from the sea are there, and shells."
The labrets or lip-ornaments, shirt-stud shaped effects worn in holes
pierced in the cheek, strike us with interest. Is it too daring a
conjecture to trace in these, which Eskimo men so sedulously cherish and
resolutely refuse to talk about, a religious significance? The term
"Kelligabuk" in a literal translation means "Mastodon." This animal,
whose bones not infrequently are unearthed from ice-floes, has been for
all time venerated as a god of the hunting grounds. Is it too fanciful
to suggest that the labrets are a sort of peripatetic idol carried
around on the person as an imitation of the tusks of this God-Mammoth?
East and south of the Mackenzie delta the Eskimo tell of a Supreme
Goddess, Nuliayok, who was once a coy maiden and refused to marry a
mortal. Wooed by a gull, she accompanied the bird to an inland home, to
find instead of her dreams of delight a nest of sticks and rotten fish
on a high-hung ledge. Jostled by the other fulmars, or gulls, who tried
to push her off the rocks, she sent for her father. In the night-time he
came and sailed with her over the water in an oomiak. The deserted
fulmar-bridegroom, taking a leaf out of Prospero's book, raised a storm.
The father, to lighten the craft and propitiate the storm-spirit at the
same time, threw the poor bride over-board, and cut off her fingers as
she clung to the boat. As the four fingers dropped into the sea they
changed respectively into beluga the white whale, nutchook the common
seal, oog-zook the big seal, and ibyl the walrus. After thus giving
origin to the four great sea-friends of the Innuit, the Goddess
Nuliayok let go the boat and went to the world beneath the sea, where
she now lives in a whalebone house with a dog for husband. She cannot
stand erect, but hunches over the ground, holding one foot under her as
a baby does who has not yet learned to walk.
It is to Nuliayok that the spirits of sea-animals go after staying three
days by their dead bodies; and this is the reason why the Eskimo breaks
the eyes of a killed seal. He does not want it to witness the indignity
of seeing its own body denuded of its skin. This too is the _raison
d'être_ of the ceremonies which every Eskimo punctiliously performs in
connection with the animal he kills. Each animal has a soul or spirit to
be offended or placated; if pleased, the spirit of the dead animal
communicates with its living kin, who in turn will deem it an honour to
be killed by such considerate folk as the ceremonious Innuit. Round the
igloo fire we heard another tradition of Nuliayok. The Goddess of the
Sea once gave birth to a litter of white and red puppies. These she put
into two little water-tight baby-boots and set them floating before a
north wind. The puppies landed on southern shores and became the white
race and the red race, the Europeans and the Indians. The Innuit, of
course, had lived from the beginning.
We arrogate to ourselves the term of "white race," but if these Eskimo
were to wash themselves daily (which they do not do yearly) they would
be as white as we are. They have fleshy intelligent faces and eyes with
more than a suggestion of the almond-slant of the Oriental. The idea
occurs to us that the full appearance of the cheeks of the women is more
likely to be caused by the exercise of chewing skins and boots than by
an accumulation of fatty tissue. The men are distinguished by the thin,
straggling growth of beard and moustache which adorns their Asiatic
progenitors. The labrets of the men are offset by the long pendant
earrings of the women, which are made from H.B. Co. beads and shells
brought by Alaska Indians from the Pacific, It is only the women who
here tattoo their faces, the three long stripes extending from lower lip
to the chin. The men crop their hair in the style of the tonsure of the
monk. Neither man nor woman provides any head covering except the hood
of the _artikki_ or smock, which hood, fringed with waving hair of the
carcajou or wolverine, hangs loosely at the back until called into
requisition by a winter's storm or a summer's siege of mosquitoes.
Eskimo clothing is much lighter in weight than it seems, and this is one
reason why the Eskimo attachés of every Arctic expedition have moved
around with less exhaustion than their European or American leaders. A
well-made Eskimo outfit of inner and outer suits, with mittens, socks,
and boots, weighs about thirteen pounds, while one imported fur coat of
European deerskin will alone weigh more than that.
A custom noted at the afternoon whale-meets and pink-teas might
fittingly find way into the latitudes where narrow toes and French heels
obtain. Two ingenious young Kogmollyc belles had placed applique pockets
mid-leg on their lower garments. When the walrus was passed round and
conversation became general, the boots were slipped off quietly and one
foot at a time was thrust for a resting spell into the pocket provided
on the opposite trouser-leg. This act of easement was done deftly, and
the neat action of instep boot-jack never lost its fascination for us.
[Illustration: A Wise Man of the Dog-Ribs]
All the way from boundary-line to ice-barrier we had seen Indians
tricked out in grotesque garments borrowed from the white man and used
in combination with their own tribal covering of skins and furs. These
sun-bonnets and shepherd's-plaid trousers, silk hats and red-flannel
petticoats, the trader had persuaded the child of the woods to buy. The
debonair Eskimo is a re-incarnation of the bastard brother of Aragon's
Prince, and, leaning his furry back against the North Pole, says with
him, "I smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no
man's pleasure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business,
laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour."
[Illustration: A Study in Expression]
You cannot induce an Eskimo to think he wants anything just because you
have found that thing to your liking. There are two reasons for this.
First, long experience in the most rigorous climate which the human race
inhabits has taught this man what garments are the most suitable for him
in which to live and move and have his being. Second, although the
Indian may ape the white man as a superior being from whom eleemosynary
grub and gew-gaws may be wheedled, the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta
considers himself to be the superior of every created being. The Eskimo
knows what he wants; he is always sure of it, and there is no
vacillating. When he comes into the H.B. Company's post to trade, skins
are his currency, the pelts of the silver-fox his gold coinage. A good
silver, or black-fox is worth here about one hundred dollars in barter.
We saw a band of Nunatalmutes come into Fort Macpherson to do their
summer shopping. They wanted English breakfast tea, superior rifles and
ammunition, and a special brand of tobacco. Failing any or all of these,
it was in vain that the Factor displayed before them the wares of John
Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any seductive lure made in
Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a-sook-tok bought what they found to their
liking, took small change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the
remaining six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once their
savings bank and letter of credit for the season to come. The
hungry-eyed H.B. man confided to us that two of these coveted pelts had
been thus exhibited to him and thus tucked back into the Eskimo
sinking-fund for three successive seasons.
As regards weapons, we found Eskimo hunters in the transition stage. The
old-time spears, four feet long and tipped with ivory, are still in
active service. The bows, with arrows finished in copper, flint, and
bone, have been relegated largely to the boys, while Krag-Jorgensen,
Lee-Enfield, and other high-power guns are bought from American whalers.
The fish-hooks which I got in friendly barter are interesting to any one
born with angling blood in his veins. Beautifully fashioned of ivory,
copper, bone, and beads, the contrivance is a sinker, bait, and hook,
all in one. The daily baskets procured with this lure incontestably
proves the Husky a judicious hooker.
The Eskimo is a merger. Father Petitot shows us the close analogy
between the Kogmollyc language and the tongues of eastern Asiatic
tribes, ancient and modern. This Eskimo's speech, then, gives him a
connection with the effete East (which is his west), while enamelled
washbasins, with here and there a corrugated wash-board, prove that
slowly but surely Canadian culture is reaching him from the south.
With two modifications, this Eskimo is invariably truthful. Like the
Indians to the south of him, seeking to please you by answering a
question in the way that you desire, he will at times tell you an
untruth, for it seems to him discourteous to answer your question other
than in the way which you anticipate. For instance, if you say to Roxi,
"Wasn't that a grey goose we heard overhead?" Roxi will readily assent,
though he well knows it to have been a mallard duck, but he would spare
your ignorance. Again, it is Eskimo etiquette to belittle your own
success in hunting and, in so doing, be not literally truthful. When we
place this delightful trait alongside the fish-stories we are familiar
with, who would seek to change the heathen?
Marriage with the Eskimo is not a ceremony, it is not even the taking of
each other for better or for worse. It is an easy union entered upon and
maintained so long as both parties are pleased. This arrangement has one
manifest advantage,--Eskimo annals tell of no unhappy marriages. When
unhappiness conies in at the door of the igloo, marriage flies out of
the chimney. When a woman leaves her tentative husband, she takes
herself and her babies back to the paternal topik, and no odium
attaches. As the marriage vows melt into the Arctic air, the quondam
husband is expected, however, to play the game. Last winter a young
Nunatalmute and his sorry spouse came to the parting of the ways. She
asked him to take her back to Papa, but he said, "No. You may go
to-morrow if you wish, but I am ready to hunt in the opposite direction,
and I hunt." Off to the chase he went and took the family auto, i.e.,
the sled and dogs, with him. The once-wife, travelling five days and six
nights by the fitful light of the Aurora, found her way to her father,
for the instinct of direction is unerring in these people; but the
ex-bride's feet became badly frozen. Public opinion in this case was
strongly roused against the husband and probably if there had been a
tree handy he would have been lynched. This would have been the first
lynching recorded in Canada. The feeling of the Eskimo community was
that, when the wife announced her intention of enforcing a divorce, the
bounden duty of the husband was either to drive her himself in proper
state to her father's door or to let her have the dogs.
In their beliefs in the great powers of concentration and in
re-incarnation we find traces in the Eskimo of those Theosophical
ancestors of theirs far off on Asian shores. The ceremonies which
approximate in time to our New Year's Day and Christmas show the
importance they attach to concentrated thought. Early in the morning of
what corresponds to our New Year's Day, two young men, one of them
grotesquely dressed in women's garments, visit every igloo and blow out
each seal-oil lamp. The lights are afterwards renewed from a
freshly-kindled fire. The chief, asked the meaning of the ceremony,
replied, "New light, new sun," showing his belief that the sun was
yearly renewed at this time. This early morning visit from igloo to
igloo reminds us of the "first-footing" of the Scottish village. The
mummery of wearing the fantastic dress of the woman points back to the
old Lord of Misrule.
About the season of Christmas, a great meeting is held in the igloo,
presided over by the Angekok or medicine-man, who entreats the invisible
powers for good fortune, immunity from storms, and a plenitude of
blubber for the ensuing year. This invocation is followed by a family
feast. Next day the ceremonies are carried on out-of-doors, where all
from oldest to youngest form a ring-around-a-rosy. In the centre of the
circle is set a crock of water, while to the communal feast each person
brings from his own hut a piece of meat, raw preferred. This meat is
eaten in the solemn silence of a communion, each person thinking of
Sidne, the Good Spirit, and wishing for good. The oldest member of the
tribe, a white-haired man or tottering dame, takes up a sealskin cup,
kept for this annual ceremony, dips up some of the water and drinks it,
all the time thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, while the others close
their eyes in reverent silence.
Before passing the cup on to the rest of the company that they may
drink, the old man or woman states aloud the date and place of his or
her birth, as accurately as it can be remembered. The drinking and
thinking ceremony is performed by all in succession, down to the last
naked baby cuddling in its mother's _artikki_, the little child that
cannot yet speak. The solemn rite is brought to a close by the tossing
of presents across the ring from one to the other, the theory being
that, as they generously deal with others, so Sidne will deal with them
in the coming year. So up here on the edge of things, among our
"uncivilised heathens," we have our Christmas presents and "_Peace on
earth, good will to men_."