arose in driving across trackless tundras (the swampy, moss-covered
plains), in the darkness of midwinter, this great herd of more than four
hundred timid, intractable reindeer. Throughout the eight hundred miles
of travel the reindeer drivers had to carefully avoid the immediate
neighborhood of Eskimo villages for fear of the ravenous, attacking
dogs, who, however, on one occasion succeeded in stampeding the whole
herd. For days at a time the herders were at their wits' ends to guard
the deer against gaunt packs of ravenous wolves, who kept on their trail
and, despite their utmost vigilance, succeeded in killing and maiming
several deer. A triumphal but venturesome feat of Lopp's was the driving
of the herd across the sea-floes of the broad expanse of Kotzebue Sound,
thus saving one hundred and fifty miles of land travel and two weeks of
valuable time.
While there were eight skilled herders, Lapps and Eskimos, the most
effective work was that done by a little Lapp deer-dog, who circled
around the herd when on the march to prevent the deer from straying. If
a deer started from the main herd the dog was at once on his trail,
snapping at his heels and turning him toward the others. Very few deer
strayed or were lost, and three hundred and sixty-two were brought to
Barrow in good condition.
Travelling in advance, following the shore line by dog-sledge, Jarvis
and McCall were welcomed with warm generosity even by the most forlorn
and wretched Eskimos, who asked them into their huts, cared for their
dogs, dried their clothes, and did all possible for their safety and
comfort. The relief party, however, suffered much from the begging
demands of almost starving natives, from the loss of straying dogs, and
the desertion of several unreliable native employees. They were quite at
the end of their food when they reached, at Cape Krusenstern, their
depot. This had been brought up across country from Unalaklik through
the great energy and indomitable courage of Bertholf, whose journey and
sufferings were no less striking than those of his comrades.
Inexpressible was the joy of the party when, fifty miles south of Point
Barrow, the masts of the _Belvedere_, a whale-ship fast in the ice, were
sighted. Four days later they were at the point, their marvellous
journey of eighteen hundred miles ended and their coming welcomed as a
providential relief.
They found conditions frightful as regards the shelter, health, and
sanitation of the shipwrecked whalers. Three ships had been lost and
another was ice-beset beyond power of saving. The captains of the
wrecked ships had abandoned the care and control of their men as to
quarters, clothing, food, and general welfare. Provisions were very
short, and the seamen were depending on their safety through successful
hunting among the caribou herds in the neighborhood of Point Barrow,
which were rapidly disappearing.
Jarvis at once took charge of the situation. Dr. McCall found the
seamen's quarters in a most horrible condition, its single window giving
but a feeble glimmer of light at midday, and its ventilation confined to
the few air draughts through cracks in the walls. Eighty seamen
occupied for sleeping, shelter, and cooking a single room twenty by
fifty feet in size, wherein they were so badly crowded that there was
scarcely room for all to stand when out of their bunks together.
Moisture was continually dropping from the inner ceiling and walls,
which were covered with frost. Their bedding was never dry, sooty
grease was coated over all things, and no place was free from great
accumulations of filth and its accompaniments. The whalers were
"scarcely recognizable as white men," and large numbers of them would
without doubt have perished of disease but for the opportune arrival of
the relief party.
Order, cleanliness, decency, and discipline were instituted, the men
were distributed in light, airy rooms, their clothing was washed and
renovated, and intercourse with the natives prohibited. By inspection,
precept, and command the general health greatly improved. At every
opportunity individual men were sent south by occasional sledge parties.
Hunting was systematized, but it failed to produce enough food for the
suffering whalers. Recourse was then had to the herds driven north by
Lopp and Artisarlook, and with the slaughter of nearly two hundred
reindeer suitable quantities of fresh meat were issued. Out of two
hundred and seventy-five whalers only one died of disease. Captain
Tuttle by daring seamanship reached Icy Cape July 22, 1898, and took on
board the _Bear_ about a hundred men whose ships were lost.
With generous feeling Jarvis gives credit in his report to the
whaling agent, A. C. Brower, and to "the goodness and help of the
natives [Eskimos], who denied themselves to save the white people,"
subordinating with true heroic modesty his work to all others.
Gold and commerce have peopled the barren Alaskan wastes which were the
scenes of this adventurous journey with its unique equipment and its
cosmopolitan personnel of Eskimo, Lapp, and American.
While these men worked not for fame but for the lives of brother men,
yet in Alaskan annals should stand forever recorded the heroic deeds and
unselfish acts of Jarvis and McCall, of Bertholf and Lopp, and of that
man among men--Eskimo Artisarlook.
THE MISSIONARY'S ARCTIC TRAIL
"Blest river of salvation!
Pursue thy onward way;
Flow thou to every nation,
Nor in thy richness stay;
Stay not till all the lowly
Triumphant reach their home;
Stay not till all the holy
Proclaim--_The Lord is come!_"
--S. F. SMITH.
Among the heroic figures in the history of the human race there should
be none to command greater admiration than the typical missionaries who,
in foreign lands and among uncivilized tribes, have devoted their lives
to the good of man and to the glory of God. Of the countless many
through the ages may be named a few whose labors, actuated by a spirit
of lofty endeavor, particularly appeal to the imagination and love of
the people. Such men were Schwarz and Carey, in India; Livingstone, in
Africa; Egede, in Greenland; Eliot and Whitney, in America. Of earnest
missionaries in North America there are many worthy of special notice,
and among these are not a few of French birth whose memories remain
fragrant through heroic deeds and unselfish labors. Their work has
entered into the life of the people, though Pere Marquette is perhaps
the only one whose deeds have affected the growth of a nation. Of French
missionaries in late years whose activities have been exerted within
the arctic circle may be mentioned M. Emile Petitot, who served fifteen
years in the arctic regions of Canada, principally in the water-sheds of
the Anderson, the Mackenzie, and the Yukon. Apart from his labors of
piety and of love among the Indian tribes of northwestern Canada, M.
Petitot, in a dozen or more volumes, has contributed largely to our
knowledge of the customs, of the beliefs, of the methods of life, and of
the human qualities of the aborigines among whom he has labored.
Stationed on the shores of Great Slave Lake in 1863, in the autumn of
the following year he descended the Mackenzie and proceeded via Fort
Simpson for missionary labors at Fort Good Hope. With his experiences in
such voyages, and especially with his visit to the shores of the polar
sea, this tale is principally concerned.
* * * * *
Coming from the highly civilized and elaborately circumscribed life of
France, M. Petitot was vividly impressed with the enormous and
underlying difference in the methods of life in the two countries, the
more so on account of his youth. He says of this: "It is well to know
the advantages of an isolated life. There is an entire exemption from
taxes, tithes, levies in kind, quit-rents, poll-taxes, tariffs, customs
duties, town duties (octroi), inheritance-taxes, land rents, forced
labor, etc., etc."
[Illustration: Liverpool Bay Region.]
On the other hand he finds in the northern wilds "Perfect security,
unchanging peacefulness, liberty to plant, to cut, to clear land, to
mow, to reap, to fish, to hunt, to take and to give, to build and to
tear down"--in short, unrestricted personal liberty of action as of
thought.
In changing his station to the far north he made his first voyage down
the magnificent Mackenzie, which in the area of its drainage basin, its
outflow, its length, and its wondrous scenery is scarcely surpassed by
any other river of the world. His first stage of travel brought him to
Fort Simpson, where he came in contact with the chief factors or agents
of the Hudson Bay posts to the north, who gathered there in early autumn
to bring the winter furs and to obtain the annual supply of food and of
trading goods known as their outfit. For these men it was the holiday
season of the year, the only break in the fearful monotony of their
isolated lives, when they see their kind and speak their native tongue.
The final glass had been drunk, the precious outfit[20] had been stowed
safely under cover, the final word said, and then the Indian steersman
dexterously turned his paddle. The voyage to the real north thus began,
and the missionary's happiness was complete, though he travelled with
six Indians, the factor staying behind. Drifting throughout the night,
he could scarce believe his eyes when the sharp air of the cold morning
awoke him. He had left a land of green trees and now the foliage of the
elms that bordered the Mackenzie were as yellow as straw. The single
night of polar cold had checked the life-giving sap with the same
startling rapidity with which it had been caused to flow by a spring day
of warm, invigorating sunshine.
Then the priest, with the mountains in view, realized the justness of
the poetic Indian name, the Giant of the Highlands, given to the "noble
Mackenzie, with its vast outflow, its great length, its immense width,
and its majestic mountainous banks."
The river could be as terrible as it was majestic; and then came the
first touch of terror from the north, a tornado storm known as the
"white wind." Whirling downward from a cloudless sky, its furious force
lashed the water into waves, filled the air with sand and gravel, and
barely missed sinking the boats as they were rushed to the bank. There,
standing in water to their waists, the voyageurs held fast to the ends
of the boats until a brief lull made possible their discharging. For a
night and a day the storm-bound travellers were thus imprisoned on a
narrow ledge in wretched plight--without fire, drenched to the skin,
unable to sleep, shivering under the biting northerly gale.
Near their destination they had to run the fearful rapids of the
Ramparts, the most dangerous of the many swift currents of the
Mackenzie. Their skiffs flew with frightful velocity, plunging down
descents that were falls in low stages of water and being helplessly
whirled around and around. Three danger spots were passed under
conditions that made the missionary hold his breath, while admiring the
dexterity and composure of the Indian steersman. It seemed an
interminable eight miles, this series of rapids walled in by the
towering, precipitous Ramparts, with only two points of refuge in its
inhospitable cliffs even for a canoe.
Petitot soon made himself at home at the mission of Fort Good Hope,
situated on the arctic circle. He found the Hare Indians alert,
loquacious, companionable, warm-hearted, and childlike in their
sympathies and feelings. Speaking of the free, happy Indian life he
says: "How can such misery be combined with such contentment with their
lot? How does the sweet pride of a free man inspire their abject nomadic
life? Ask its secret from the bird which flies warbling from shrub to
shrub, waving its swift wings, drying its rain-wet plumage in the sun,
tranquilly sleeping on a twig, its head under its wing."
Learning the Hare language, baptizing the babes and teaching the adults,
he also put up buildings, cared for the sick, and in his garden raised
potatoes and turnips under the arctic circle. But ever keeping alive
that wandering spirit which had its influence in his choice for a
missionary life, Petitot was not content.
With his work well in hand he learned with sadness from some of his
Indian flock of the wretched conditions under which the Eskimos of
Liverpool Bay were living. Fired with his usual zeal for the wretched,
untaught savages, and perchance impelled somewhat by a desire to explore
the country to the north, Petitot decided to make a midwinter journey to
the polar sea. The agent, Gaudet, pointed out the dangers of travel in
winter when the cold was excessive, sometimes ninety degrees or more
below freezing, but when the priest insisted he accompanied him to Fort
Anderson (or Eskimo) both men following on snow-shoes the dog-team that
hauled their camp outfit over the two hundred and fifty miles of
snow-covered country.
Fort Eskimo, in 68 deg. 30' N., on Anderson River, was the most northerly of
the Hudson Bay posts, and its factor, MacFarlane, saw with surprise the
arrival of this young French priest with the alert bearing and splendid
confidence of his twenty-five years. It must be a matter of life or
death that brought him. What was his mission? The factor could scarcely
trust his ears when he heard that the object was a missionary visit to
Liverpool Bay.
MacFarlane told him that the country was so wild that Fort Eskimo was
palisaded, flanked with bastions, and loop-holed for rifle-fire, owing
to the desperate character of the surrounding and hostile tribes.
Meanwhile four Eskimos had come to the fort from Liverpool Bay,
including In-no-ra-na-na, called Powder Horn by the traders. The priest
had hoped to meet this native, whom the factor said was known to be the
greatest scapegrace on the arctic coast. Learning that Petitot was
unfamiliar with the Inuit language, and was travelling unarmed, his
anxiety increased and he told him that a journey into this unknown
country with this savage brute would prove fatal. It was pointed out in
vain that the Eskimos were bandits and outcasts--true pirates who,
glorying in theft, violence, and fraud, viewed their unbridled passions
as so many human virtues that showed the true man (Inuit).[21]
The pen portrait of In-no-ra-na-na, whom the missionary had chosen as
his guide, is worth reproduction as a type of Eskimo dandy no longer
seen. "He was a handsome man, well made, of large size, good presence,
fine face, and had a nearly white complexion. He wore an elegant suit of
reindeer-skin, its hair outside, stylishly cut and made. It can be
compared only to the costume of our ancestors in the time of Henry IV.
The close coat, old French breeches, and tightly fitting boots were of
a beautiful brown skin of the summer coat of the deer bordered with a
triple trimming of sea-otter, white wolf, and of the caribou, whose long
reddish hairs surrounded his figure like a flaming aureole. Similar
fringes around his arms and his legs set them off as by so many
phylacteries. A head-dress hollowed out of the scowling head of a wolf
surrounded his naked and closely shaven skull, which the Inuit could, if
needful, partly cover with a small hood made of the head of a reindeer
on which still remained the ears and budding horns of the animal." The
usual labrets (ornaments inserted through slits made in the cheeks) of
walrus ivory protruded from the great gashes in his face and hideously
completed his dress.
As nothing could shake the priest's resolution, Factor MacFarlane
decided to send as a companion a baptized Loucheux Indian, Sida-Jan,
usually known as General Bottom, who spoke a little Inuit. He would save
the situation and maintain the missionary's dignity by acting as his
cook, dog driver, and camp servant. Moreover, as the brutal, powerful
In-no-ra-na-na was actually going north the factor bribed him by giving
goods to the amount of twenty beaver-skins[22] to guard the priest from
insult or injury at the hands of his fellow-savages. Thus having done
his best MacFarlane cried out, as the whip cracked and the dogs jumped
to their traces, "May God protect your days among the bad people."
Eskimo fashion, they ran over the crisp, crackling snow in single file,
the leader I-you-ma-tou-nak (the itchy) breaking the trail, followed by
the great chief In-no-ra-na-na (Powder Horn), Sida-Jan (Bottom), and
Petitot. When asked why they always thus marched in single file the
Inuits answered: "The best-fitted leads and the others form the tail.
It is the order of the ducks and cranes who plough the air, of the
reindeer in migration, and of the buffalo or musk-oxen changing their
pasture-grounds."
The calm cold was not felt, though the mercury was frozen, until the
leader stopped short on the middle ice of the frozen Anderson, over
which their route lay, and began to unload his sledge while the others
were busy cutting through the snow for water. Petitot had a Hudson Bay
sledge with steel-clad, smooth bottom, while the native sledges ran on
two rough, solid side runners of wood. These runners drag fearfully when
not shod with ice, which coating usually wears off in a few hours of
land travel. So throughout the day, from time to time the Eskimo sledge
was turned upside down, and its ice runners renewed by frequent wettings
of the injured surfaces, the water freezing as it was applied.
As they were about camping the first night they met two young Inuits who
had a stone lamp and fresh whale blubber--essentials for a warm meal--so
the two parties joined forces to build a snow hut. Warned by the factor
not to endanger his life or impair his dignity by working with his
hands, the poor priest nearly froze as the house was reared, his
undergarments, damp with the perspiration of travel, chilling his body
bitterly. He tells us how deftly two of the natives carved from the
snow-drifts on the river wedge-shaped slabs. The builder skilfully laid
the blocks in spiral fashion, slicing them to fit and matching them
quite closely with his snow-knife. The master-workman sprinkled with
water the rising walls, which when finished formed a dome-like structure
of dazzling whiteness, though hermetically sealed. Then with a few
strokes of the snow-knife a door-way was carved out and to the windward
of it was built a circular snow wall. Meanwhile an Eskimo built of snow
inside the hut the customary divan--a raised shelf where the natives
sleep--whereon were arranged the bear and reindeer skins for bedding.
Close by the door was suspended the black pot-stone lamp, and directly
opposite was placed the proverbial chamber-pot--always present in the
Inuit huts.
After being brushed for the twentieth time with the reindeer wisp, to
remove every particle of snow from his fur garments, Petitot seated
himself in a corner of the divan, a place of honor. When all the Inuits
were within the hut they carefully drew up the circular snow wall to the
very door-way and poured water over the crevices. When it froze the six
travellers were in a hermetically sealed snow house, there being no
window or other opening through which a breath of wind could come.
The missionary's sufferings were intense that first night of arctic
travel. Smoky soot from the dirty lamp and the nauseous effluvia from
his unkempt bed-fellows were bad enough, but the excessive heat and
impure air became quite unendurable. The outside cold was about eighty
degrees below freezing, while the inside temperature was about eighty
degrees above, so that the inner snow-blocks sweat freely, the globules
of water forming on the surface ready to shower down on them at the
slightest shock.
The Inuits stripped as usual to the skin, but the shame-faced priest
felt obliged to keep on his clothes, removing his outer fur garments
only. He says: "I slept feverishly in cat-naps, with constant nightmare.
Tormented by my garments, perspiring terribly from the heat, crowded
between my companions like a packed herring, sickened by unhealthy
odors, and suffocated by unbreathable air, what fearful agony I suffered
that night! [He adds:] Save their odor and their nudity, the company of
the inmates was not disagreeable. Nor did the food prove less repulsive,
especially the opaline, greenish-white whale blubber, which, cut into
long, thin strips, forms a choice delicacy known to the Inuits as
_ortchok_. The native with his left hand holds the dainty morsel above
the greedily upturned open mouth which it at once fills. Gripping the
_ortchok_ fast with his teeth, with a knife in his right hand he cuts it
off as near the lips as he can, swallowing it with a gurgle of joy."
When Petitot asked for cooked blubber his host promptly pulled out the
melting piece from the smoking, dirty lamp, and was surprised that such
a delicacy was refused. When later tasted the raw blubber was found to
be insipid, though the fresh oil therefrom was not unlike olive oil in
its flavor.
As a kind of dessert they drew on their small supply of congealed
seal-oil, so rancid as to be offensive. To this food neither time nor
circumstance reconciles the white man.
The meal over the natives took to the soothing evening pipe, and
gradually began the talk of the day and of the morrow. Mindful of the
precious store goods in his pack and of his promise to the factor,
Powder Horn chanted the glory of Fort Anderson, and then sang to the
young stranger Inuits the praises of the missionary, whom he proclaimed
to be the Son of the Sun; despite his protestations, transforming the
priest into a demi-god.
The long day's march had seen the scattering groves dwindle and
fail--first the bankerian pine, followed in order by the balsam poplar
and the aspen. Now as they broke their morning camp the canoe birch was
a stunted, wretched shrub scarcely attaining the dignity of a tree, and
even this was gone when they made their next camp near the Anderson
delta, leaving here and there unsightly and rare specimens of the hardy
larch and the arctic spruces.
Next day they parted company with the young natives, who carried with
them the pot-stone lamp, much to the priest's annoyance, as he was
nearly frozen when they entered the igloo on the river ice. Powder Horn
under pressure showed his ingenuity in providing a substitute. Picking
up a piece of drift-wood, he hollowed it out lamp-shaped, and covered
its bottom and sides with pebbles and flat stones. As moss was lacking
for the wicking, he plucked a pinch of hair from his deerskin
sleeping-robe, twisted it into a mesh, and the lamp was ready. During
the night a violent gale buried the igloo in a snow-drift. The river ice
was under such storm-pressures and it oscillated so strongly and
continuously to and fro that they all feared that the river would open
and swallow them up. Throughout the whole night the roaring of the wind,
the groaning of the ice, and the quivering of the igloo made sleep
impossible.
As they passed the river's mouth the third day the landscape was one of
frightful sterility. Snow became thin and scanty, the ice was rougher,
and the bare spots of ground seemed to have no signs of vegetation,
trees and shrubs failing utterly. Nature was worse than dead with its
apparent desolation. Here both man and beast was doomed alike to a
constant and eternal struggle for bare existence in this adverse
environment.
The lack of material and the ingenuity of the Inuits in wresting a bare
subsistence from this forlorn country was indicated by a most efficient
fox-trap made entirely of ice.
Long after dark the wearied sledge dogs with loud howlings broke into a
rapid run, and were welcomed with fierce yells from the rival teams of
the Eskimo village, a dozen large snow houses on the shores of Liverpool
Bay. So dim was the light and so strange the garments and the attitudes
of the native women, fur-clad and crawling on all-fours from the huts,
that the missionary could scarcely distinguish them from the dogs.
Introduced to the people of the village by his Inuit protector as the
Son of the Sun, he was made welcome after the manner of the country. His
efforts at conversions did not bear visible fruit, though the natives
listened gravely to his sermons on kindness and goodness, on chastity
and honesty, on wifely fidelity and motherly love.