be visited by Europeans was Greenland--nearly a thousand years ago. The
European settlement, the Christianization, and the abandonment of
southern Greenland, covering a period of three centuries, has lately
received interesting and exhaustive treatment by a famous arctic
expert who has brought together all existing data. Foreign to these
investigations are the facts associated with the discovery during the
past hundred years of three Inuit tribes of Greenland previously unknown
to the world. It seems astonishing that nine hundred years of
Greenland's history and of its exploration should have passed without
revealing the existence of the Eskimos of Etah, of Omevik, and of
Angmagsalik. This narrative dwells more particularly on the finding of
the tribe of Angmagsalik, on the coast of East Greenland, by Captain G.
Holm, Royal Danish Navy, through whose heroic efforts and wise
recommendations the tribe is now under the protecting influences of the
government of Denmark and has become a Christian, well-cared-for
people.[24]
* * * * *
In 1818 Captain John Ross, R.N., in an attempt to discover the northwest
passage, though verifying the discredited discoveries of Baffin in 1616,
failed in his special effort. However, he added a new people to the
knowledge of the world through meeting in the neighborhood of Cape York,
Baffin Bay, eight of the Inuits, now known as the Etah or Cape York
Eskimos, whom he fancifully designated as the Arctic Highlanders. Elisha
Kent Kane was the first to have familiar relations with and give
detailed information about these isolated natives, the tribe in 1854
consisting of one hundred and forty persons. In later years the Etahs
have been frequently visited by explorers, whalers, and hunters. As the
most northerly inhabitants of the world at the present time, they
naturally have engaged the earnest attention of all who have met these
hardy, kindly, and resourceful people. Kane's fear of their extinction
was groundless, as against the number of one hundred and forty, given by
him, Peary's census figures of 1897 show two hundred and thirty-four, an
increase of ninety-four in forty years. Rasmussen relates that within
the memory of man, but evidently since Kane's time, fourteen Eskimos
from the region of Baffin Land have joined the Etah natives. It is
reasonable to believe that the origin of the Cape York Eskimo was
through similar migrations probably two or three centuries earlier.
Prior to the nineteenth century practically the only known Eskimo people
of Greenland consisted of those under Danish protection, who occupied
the entire ice-free west coast from Cape Farewell 60 deg. N. to Tasiusak,
73 deg. 24' N. Traditions of the existence of tribes of natives on the east
coast have long prevailed, but up to the nineteenth century there were
known only a few individuals, quite near Farewell, which were visited by
Wallo in 1752.
Still among the Inuits of extreme southern Greenland were numerous and
curious traditions of the inhabitants of the east coast, one to the
effect that far to the northward were some light-haired people of
European complexion. Another tale oft told in winter gatherings was one,
doubtless in ridicule, of the occasional Inuit who, holding fast to a
barren land, came west only to trade and never to live. It is a
beautiful legend showing true and abiding love of home and country. Dr.
Rink thus translates it: "A man from the east coast of Greenland from
love of his home never left it even during the summer-time. Among his
principal enjoyments was that of gazing at the sun rising out of the
ocean. But when his son grew up he became desirous of seeing other
countries and above all of accompanying his countrymen to the west
coast. At length he persuaded his father to go with him. No sooner,
however, had they passed Cape Farewell and the father saw the sun about
to rise behind the land than he insisted upon returning immediately.
Having again reached their island home, he went out from his tent early
next morning, and when his people had in vain waited for his return they
went out and found him dead. His delight at again seeing the sun rise
out of the ocean had overpowered and killed him."
The first definite knowledge of the Eastern Inuits came by accident,
through the boat voyage of Captain W. A. Graah, who under the directions
of the King of Denmark was searching for the ruins of the East Bygd--the
colony of Scandinavians of the twelfth to the fifteenth century. During
this search, which extended to within sight of Cape Dan, Graah found no
less than five hundred and thirty-six Inuits living at about twenty
different places. Of these more than one-half had never seen a white
man.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF THE ESKIMO INUITS.]
Graah says of them: "The affection the Eastlanders have for their
children is excessive.... Notwithstanding the little care bestowed on
them, the children conduct themselves so as to seldom merit reproof....
The East Greenlanders look on begging, especially for food, as a
disgrace.... As soon as a boy can creep about alone his father gives him
a little javelin, which he is taught to throw at a mark. He thus
speedily acquires that dexterity in the management of his weapon on
which in after years he is to principally depend for his own and his
family's subsistence. When he grows older he is provided with a
kayak, and learns to battle with the waves, to catch birds, and to
strike the seal. When the youth comes home for the first time with a
seal in tow the day is made a holiday and the friends and neighbors
invited to a feast, at which, while he recounts all the circumstances of
the chase, the maidens present lay their heads together to choose a
bride for him.
"Their intercourse with each other is marked with singular urbanity;
they are modest, friendly, obliging, and forbearing.
"When the howling of the dogs proclaim the arrival of strangers the
people hurry to the shore to welcome them and to invite them to their
houses. The wet clothes of the visitors are taken from them and hung up
to dry. Dry ones are lent in their stead, and if a hole is discovered in
their boots the landlady sets to work straightway to patch it.
"They are a gentle, civil, well-behaved set of people among whom one's
life and property are perfectly secure as long as one treats them with
civility and does them no wrong. Their veracity and fidelity are beyond
impeachment.
"The northern lights they take to be the spirits of the dead playing
ball with the head of a walrus."
The principal encampments were between Kemisak and Omevik, beyond which
place to the north, said the natives of Kemisak, there were no
inhabitants. The Eskimos numbered two hundred and ninety-five and were
called the Omivekkians.
Of their environment in favorable places and their amusements Graah
reported: "The cove had fields of considerable extent, covered with
dwarf willows, juniper berry, black crakeberry, and whortleberry heath,
with many patches of fine grass. The stream, abounding in char, had its
source in the glaciers of which several gigantic arms reached down from
the height in the background. Flowers everywhere adorned the fields.
Three hundred paces from the sea the cliffs rise almost perpendicularly,
with snow-clad summits, far beyond the average height. The natives had
here assembled to feast upon the char, plentiful and of large size, the
black crakeberry, and angelica, gathering them also for winter use. They
give themselves up to mirth and merrymaking. This evening, to the number
of two hundred or more, they began by torch-light their tambourine
dance, a favorite festival."
Graah believed that there were no natives living to the north of Cape
Dan, and that, when the greater part of the Eskimos seen by him moved to
West Greenland, in the course of a few years, the whole coast was
deserted. This belief was seemingly, though erroneously, confirmed
by the fact that, while Clavering saw a few natives in 74 deg. N.,
Scoresby, Koldewey, Ryder, Nathorst, and the Duke of Orleans, in
their explorations, saw no living native on the east coast.
It remained for the expeditions of Hall, Nares, Greely, Amdrup, Holm,
and Mylius-Erichsen to prove by their united observations that there was
not only an Inuit settlement on the east coast, but that such natives
are the descendants of the true Children of the Ice, who have crossed
Grinnell Land, skirted northern Greenland, and thus come eventually to
their present habitat. Their fathers were formerly inhabitants of the
most northerly lands of the globe, of the lands of Grant, Grinnell,
Greenland, and Hazen (or Peary).
Brief and transient may have been their occupation of many of the
various encampments during their devious wanderings in the long
migration, covering nearly two thousand miles of travel. Their summer
tent-rings and stone winter huts dot the favoring shores of every
game-producing fiord from Cape Farewell, in 60 deg. N., northward to
Broenlund Fiord, Hazen (Peary) Land, 82 deg. 08' N., on the nearest known
land to the north pole.
They travelled leisurely, seeking fruitful hunting grounds and living on
the game of the land or of the adjacent sea. They thus netted the salmon
of the glacial lakes, searched the valleys for deer, snared the
ptarmigan, lanced the lumbering musk-ox, speared the sea-fowl, caught
the seal, slaughtered the walrus, and they are believed to have even
pursued in kayaks and lanced the narwhal and the white whale.
While Mylius-Erichsen and his heroic comrades obtained the definite
information as to the extreme northern limit of Inuit habitation of all
time, and paid the price of such data with their lives, it was with
equal bravery but happier fortune that Captain G. Holm rescued from
oblivion, and thus indirectly raised to happier life, the struggling
descendants of the iron men and women whose unfailing courage and
fertile resourcefulness had wrested food and shelter from the most
desolate and the most northerly land environment of the world.
Once, in 1860, there came to the Cape Farewell trading station an Inuit
who had lost his toes and fingertips. Though just able to grasp a paddle
with his stumpy fingers, he was an expert kayaker and threw his javelin
with the left hand. He said that he was from a place called Angmagsalik,
and that between eight hundred and a thousand natives dwelt in that
vicinity. For nearly a quarter of a century this report of the existence
of an unknown tribe of Inuits remained unverified. In 1883, however, the
exploration of this part of East Greenland was made by a Danish officer
of extended and successful experience in the governmental surveys of
southern Greenland, who fully recognized the hazardous and prolonged
nature of such an expedition. The Inuits said that many lives had been
lost in attempting the shore-ice of the east coast, and that a round
trip to and from Angmagsalik--"Far, oh! so far to the north!"--took from
three to four years.
Thoroughly familiar with the native methods of life and of travel, this
officer, Captain G. F. Holm, Royal Danish Navy, adopted the safest,
indeed, the only, method of coast transportation--in the _umiak_.
The _umiak_ (called the woman's boat, as it is always rowed by women) is
a flat-bottomed, wooden-framed, skin-covered boat about twenty-five feet
long and five feet wide. Only the framework, thwarts, and rowing
benches are wooden, the covering being well-dried, blubber-saturated,
hair-free skins of the _atarsoak_ (Greenland seal). Resembling in
appearance the parchment of a drum-head, the seal-skin becomes quite
transparent when wet so that the motion of the water is seen through it.
Sometimes a light mast carries a spread seal-skin for sail, but as a
rule the boat is propelled by short, bone-tipped paddles which, in the
hands of several strong women, carry the _umiak_ thirty miles a day
through smooth, ice-free water. When going near the ice a heavy
seal-skin is hung before the bow to prevent the delicate boat skin from
being cut. When a little hole is worn through, the women deftly thrust a
bit of blubber through it until the boat is hauled up on the shore,
which must be done daily to dry the sea-saturated covering. These boats
can transport from three to four tons of cargo, and are so light that
they can be readily carried on the women's backs overland.
Holm knew that his journey must entail at least one winter among such
natives as he might meet, so that his equipment was very carefully
selected, with a view to the gifts and trading which are so dear to the
native heart. The northward journey was full of incident and of
interest. Not crowding his women rowers, Holm tarried here and there for
the hunt; besides, he wished both to gather information from an
occasional encampment and also to cultivate loyalty in his reluctant
crew by permitting his women to show their west coast riches to the
east-coast heathen.
Here seal were killed and there the polar bear was chased, while the
sea-fowl, the narwhal, and the white whale were the objects of pursuit
to the eager native hunters, who accompanied the _umiaks_ in their
light, swift-flying kayaks.
In voyaging there was the usual danger from sharp ice cutting the
_umiaks_ and necessitating repairs, and from lofty bergs and ancient
hummocks as they crossed the ocean mouths of the ice-filled fiords, and
alas! too often there were tedious, nerve-racking delays when on
desolate islands or rocky beaches the _umiak_ fleet was ice-bound for
days at a time.
Wintering near Cape Farewell, Holm, with Garde and Knutsen, put to sea
May 5, 1884, his _umiaks_ being rowed by nineteen women and five men,
while seven hunters followed in kayaks. Garde devoted himself to the
precipitous, ice-capped coast, and between 60 deg. and 63 deg. N. found nearly
two hundred living glaciers that entered the sea, seventy being a mile
or more broad. In Lindenows Fiord, 62 deg. 15' N., were found almost
impenetrable willow groves near old Scandinavian ruins. Fine new
ice-fiords were discovered which put forth innumerable numbers of
icebergs, the highest rising two hundred feet above the sea.
The western Eskimos were alarmed either at the ice difficulties which
lengthened the voyage, or feared the _angekoks_, or magicians of the
east coast, and nineteen of them insisted on turning back. Holm was
obliged to send them back under Garde, but with determined courage to
fulfil his duty as an officer of the Danish navy, he went on with
twelve faithful women and men, although he was not half-way to Cape Dan.
As before told, Graah turned back in sight of Cape Dan, believing that
he had reached the limit of human habitations. Great then was Holm's
surprise to here find the last of the three missing polar tribes, who to
the number of five hundred and forty-eight individuals were occupying
the fertile hunting-grounds of the archipelago of Angmagsalik, which
consists of about twenty ice-free islands to the west of Cape Dan, about
65 deg. 31' N., adjacent to the beautiful Sermilik ice-fiord. In this
district the tides and currents keep open the inland water-ways, so that
seals are plentiful and easily taken, thus making it an Inuit paradise.
Holm and Knutsen here wintered, 1884-5, and in their ten months'
residence with these people gathered a vast amount of ethnographic
and historic material pertaining to the lives of these extraordinary
Inuits, who had never before seen a white man.[25]
This missing polar tribe pertains to the stone age of the world, its
weapons being almost entirely of bone, while its methods of hunting
follow lines long since abandoned by Inuits who have had contact with
whites. Their high sense of fidelity was shown by Navfalik, who was
placed in charge of stores left for the winter at Kasingortok. That
winter his family suffered from lack of food, but all through these
days of terrible distress and prolonged hunger the stores of the white
man were untouched by this faithful Eskimo.
Of these natives Rasmussen says: "There is no people with a history
which, as regards the bitterness of its struggle for existence and the
eeriness of its memories, can be compared with that of the Eskimo....
His mind can be calm and sunny like the water on a summer day in the
deep, warm fiords. But it can likewise be savage and remorseless as the
sea itself, the sea that is eating its way into his country."
Of their endurance of cold Poulsen records: "Inside the house both
grown-up people and children wear, so to speak, nothing, and it does not
inconvenience them to walk out into the cold in the same light dress,
only increased by a pair of skin boots. I remember seeing two quite
young girls walking almost naked on the beach, fifteen minutes' walk
from the house, gathering sea-weed, though the temperature was about
twenty-four degrees below the freezing-point."
As a dumb witness of their method of life in their permanent homes may
be mentioned the house at Nualik, more than a hundred miles to the north
of Angmagsalik (discovered by Amdrup), where an entire settlement of
twenty or more perished, probably of ptomaine poisoning from semi-putrid
meat (a delicacy among the Eskimos as is semi-putrid game with us).
"On the platform along the back wall, as shown by the skeletons, the
inhabitants had once lain comfortably between the two bear-skins, the
upper one with the hair down. On the five lamp-platforms stood the
lamps and the stone pots. The drying-hatches above them had fallen down,
but remains of bear-skin clothes still lay on them. Under the platform
there were chip-boxes and square wooden[26] cases, and on the
stone-paved floor large urine and water tubs. In front of one of the
small side platforms there was a blubber-board and a large, well-carved
meat-trough, and scattered about the floor lay wooden dishes,
blood-scoops, water-scoops, besides specimens of all the bone utensils
which belong to an Eskimo house.
"Near the house stood four long, heavy stones, placed edgewise, on the
top of which the _umiak_ rested (protected thus from the dogs).
Scattered around were kayak frames and their bone mountings, hunting and
other implements. Amongst the big heap of bones outside the house were
the skulls of narwhals, dogs, and bears. Among the utensils was a
blood-stopper ornamented with a neatly cut man's head, which, recognized
by old Inuits at Angmagsalik, identified this party as a northerly
migrating band from the main settlement."
Of the after life a glimpse is given by the talk of an east-coast Inuit
to Rasmussen: "On a lovely evening a broad belt of northern lights shot
out over the hills in the background and cast a flickering light over
the booming sea. Puarajik said: '_Those are the dead playing ball. See
how they fly about! They say that they run about up there without
clothing on._'"
Of the seamy side of life he adds: "But in the winter, when people were
gathered together, the larders were full, and desires centred on the
shortening of the long, idle winter nights, things would be quite
different [from the happy, industrious life of summer]. Much food and
sitting still, the desire to be doing, the craving for change made
people pick quarrels. Old grievances were resuscitated; scorn and
mocking, venomous words egged on to outbursts of anger; and in winter
feasts regrettable incidents occurred. Men and women, excited and goaded
on by others, forgot all friendly feeling, and on most extraordinary
pretexts often challenged each other to insult-songs, fought duels, and
committed most appalling murders."
It is evident that among the people of the stone age there exists the
same inclination to exploit and perpetuate deeds of individual and
warlike prowess, that appears not only in modern history as a whole but
also in news of current publication.
Acts of kindness, deeds of heroism, and displays of the fair and humble
virtues that sweeten daily life are entirely absent from the old Inuit
traditions. Yet these "True Tales" depict the honesty of Navfalik, the
humanity of Kalutunah, the fidelity of Broenlund, and the devotion of
Mertuk.
The total omission of similar tales of admirable and humane conduct from
the legends and the folksongs of the Inuits of the stone age doubtless
depends in part on the savage superstitions, wherein magical powers and
forces of evil are greatly exalted, and in part on the disposition to
dwell on the unusual and the terrifying.
So there are reasons to believe that the survivors of the stone age in
East Greenland exhibit in their daily life human qualities of goodness
and of justice that were characteristic of their rude and virile
ancestors.
Such, though inadequately described, are the newly found Inuits of the
Angmagsalik district of East Greenland, the sole surviving remnant of
the untutored aborigines of the north polar lands. Their human evolution
is of intense interest, as it has been worked out under adverse
conditions of appalling desolation as regards their food and their
travel, their dress and their shelter, their child-rearing and their
social relations.
That the world knows the last of the missing polar tribes, and that this
remote, primitive people is now being uplifted in the scale of humanity,
must be credited to the resolute courage, the professional zeal, and,
above all, to the sympathetic human qualities of Captain Holm and his
faithful officers and assistants.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] See map on page 235.
[25] The data relative to this expedition is not available in English,
but has been published in full in vol. IX, "Meddelelser om Gronland
(Communications on Greenland)," in Danish text. With its generous
policy the Danish Government has taken these natives under its
fatherly protection, so that their future welfare is assured against
exploitation, degradation, and early extinction.
[26] The wood was obtained from the drift-wood along the east coast,
supposed to come from Asia, along the line of drift shown by the voyage
of the _Fram_.
THE FIDELITY OF ESKIMO BROeNLUND
"And truly he who here
Hath run his bright career,
And served men nobly, and acceptance found,
And borne to light and right his witness high,
What better could he wish than then to die?"
--ARNOLD.
The Mylius-Erichsen arctic expedition of 1905 sailed for the east coast
of Greenland in the ship _Danmark_, commanded by Captain Trolle, Danish
Royal Navy. Its purpose was to continue the remarkable surveys of the
Danish government by completing the coast-line of northeast Greenland.
From its winter quarters at Cape Bismarck, 76 deg. 14' N., autumnal sledge
parties established advance depots of supplies in order to facilitate
the travel of its surveying party the following spring.
The field work was under charge of Mylius-Erichsen personally, a
Danish explorer of ability and experience, already distinguished for
successful work in northwestern Greenland. It was planned that near
the eighty-second parallel of north latitude the main party should be
divided, so as to complete the work that season. Lieutenant Koch was to
outline the southeastern shore-lines of the land to the north of
Greenland, while Mylius-Erichsen was to carry his surveys inland until
they joined those of Peary, thus filling in the totally unknown regions
of extreme northeastern Greenland.
This plan was carried out in the spring of 1906, the two parties
separating at Northeast Cape, whence Koch struck courageously north on
May 1, with food for fourteen days only. Game fortunately came to him
and he was enabled to advance his country's colors to an unprecedentedly
northern latitude for Denmark, 83.5 deg. N., and by his explorations to
complete the survey of the most northerly land of the globe--originally
named Hazen Land, which is now known as Peary Land. The brilliant
discoveries, tragic experiences, and heroic struggles of Mylius-Erichsen
and his topographer Hagen, and the fidelity unto death of his Eskimo dog
driver, Joergen Broenlund, are briefly outlined in this narrative.
* * * * *