WE MEET THE CHUKCHES
At dawn the next morning we left our igloo and went back over the trail
we had made to the place where we had thrown off our supplies the
afternoon before. Owing to the bad light and the drifting snow, we had
a good deal of trouble in picking up our things and the trail itself
was frequently obscured, but we managed to get our stuff together again
and by nine o’clock were back at our igloo ready to begin our march
eastward. We made some tea and at ten o’clock started on our way. On
account of the overcast sky and the thick snow we could see little of
the surrounding country and I had no way of telling just where we were.
Later on, when I had a chance to go over the chart with Baron Kleist
at East Cape, I figured out that we had landed near Cape Jakan, about
sixty miles west of Cape North.
We found the travelling excellent along the tundra. The trail was
plainly marked, for the wind had swept the land nearly bare of snow,
and the tracks of the sledge that had passed that way before were
defined enough to be easily followed. After our days of stumbling over
the rough ice and crossing open leads it seemed as simple as walking
along a country road. Our dogs were in bad shape and only one of the
four was of any real use.
About two o’clock in the afternoon we could make out black objects some
distance ahead of us; as we drew nearer we could see that they were
moving. Kataktovick had been ahead, while I drove the dogs; now he
stopped, came back and said, “Eskimo igloo.”
“_Ardegar_,” I replied, and told him to go on.
He set his face eastward again and I urged the dogs harder than ever.
Ordinarily he was a good walker but now he seemed to be lagging a
little and dropping back, nearer and nearer the dogs. I asked him what
the matter was.
“Eskimo see me, they kill me,” he said. “My father my mother told me
long time ago Eskimo from Point Barrow go to Siberia, never come back,
Siberian Eskimo kill him.”
I told him that he was mistaken and repeated what I had said the day
before about the hospitality of the Siberian Eskimo. Our troubles were
at an end, I said; we should now have a place to dry our clothes and
get them mended, or perhaps get new ones. “Maybe,” I added, “we get
tobacco.”
Kataktovick was still reluctant, even though I told him that perhaps
we could get some dogs, or even persuade some of the Eskimo to travel
along with us.
We could now make out that the objects ahead of us were human beings
and that they were running about, apparently very much excited by our
approach. Kataktovick hung back near the dogs. At length I said, “You
drive the dogs now and I will go ahead.” He did so with evident relief
and so we went on until I was within ten yards of the Eskimo. Then I
put out my hand and walked towards them, saying in English, “How do
you do?” They immediately rushed towards us and grasped us each warmly
by the hand, jabbering away in great excitement. I could understand
nothing of what they were saying, nor could Kataktovick. I tried to
make them understand who we were and where we had come from but they
were as ignorant of my language as I was of theirs.
There could be no doubt, however, that they were glad to see us and
eager to show their hospitality, for the first thing we knew they had
unharnessed our dogs and were feeding them, had taken our sledge into
the outer part of their house and put it, with everything still on
it, up on a kind of scaffold where it would be away from the dogs and
sheltered from the weather. Then an old woman caught me by the arm and
pushed me into the inner inclosure and on to a platform where three
native lamps were going, one at each end and the other in the middle.
The roof was so low that my head touched it, so I sat down. The woman
brushed the snow off my clothes with a snow-beater shaped like a sickle
and thinner than ours, placed a deerskin on the platform for me to sit
on, pulled off my boots and stockings and hung them up to dry. Then she
gave me a pair of deerskin stockings, not so long as ours, because,
as I could see, the trousers that these Siberians wore were longer
than ours. After that she took off my parka or fur jacket and hung it
up to dry, while I pulled off my undershirt. Others were waiting upon
Kataktovick in the same way and here we were, when we had hardly had
time to say, “Thank you,” clad only in our bearskin trousers and seated
comfortably about a large wooden dish, filled with frozen reindeer
meat, eating sociably with twelve or fourteen perfect strangers to
whom, it might be said, we had not been formally introduced. Never have
I been entertained in a finer spirit of true hospitality and never have
I been more thankful for the cordiality of my welcome. It was, as I
was afterwards to learn, merely typical of the true humanity of these
simple, kindly people.
When I had time to look about me, I found that I was seated in a large,
square room, shaped somewhat like a large snow igloo, though the
Siberian Eskimo or Chukches, as these natives are called, know nothing
of snow igloos or how to build them. Their house, as I was presently to
learn, is called an aranga. There is a framework of heavy drift-wood,
with a dome-shaped roof made of young saplings. Over all are stretched
walrus skins, secured by ropes that pass over the roof and are
fastened to heavy stones along the ground on opposite sides. The inner
inclosure, which is the living apartment, is about ten feet by seven;
it is separated by a curtain from the outer inclosure where sledges
and equipment are kept. In the living apartment the Chukches eat and
sleep on a raised platform of turf and hay, covered with tanned walrus
skin. They light and heat their houses and do their cooking with a lamp
which consists of a dish of walrus or seal oil, with a wick of moss in
it. This is superior to wood for such a dwelling-place, for it makes
no smoke; the lamp is lighted by a regulation safety match, though to
be sure it is seldom allowed to go out. The three lamps in this aranga
made the room pretty hot; the temperature, I should guess, was about a
hundred.
Our hosts and hostesses, comprising three families who dwelt in three
arangas at this place, were always drinking tea. They used copper
kettles to melt the ice in and Russian tea, put up in compressed slabs
a foot long, eight inches wide and three-fourths of an inch thick. In
our honor the old woman brought out cups and saucers of the prettiest
china I have ever seen; the cups were very small, holding about three
sips. Each cup was wrapped in a dirty cloth, on which the old woman
wiped it after carefully spitting on it to make it clean. When I saw
her method of dish-washing, I was impolite enough to ask Kataktovick
to go out and get my mug from the sledge; when he returned with it our
hostess looked disappointed, though whether from the large size of the
mug or because I did not apparently appreciate her kindness in using
her best china for us, I cannot say.
When we had finished the wooden dish of reindeer meat, which though
uncooked was good eating, they brought in another filled with walrus
meat, evidently taken from a walrus killed the previous summer, which
had a smell that I cannot describe. Out of politeness I tried to eat
it, but found it was a little too much for me. Kataktovick enjoyed it.
Later on I asked him why he wanted the same food we had aft while he
was on the ship and yet was willing to eat this foul walrus meat; he
said he liked it. Apparently although they live pretty much on white
man’s food the Eskimo enjoy getting back once in a while to walrus meat
and blubber that have seen better days.
After the walrus meat we had more tea. I had about a hundred saccharine
tablets with me, so when the fresh tea was brought in I used them all
up in it.
I could see that the Siberians were puzzled about Kataktovick. They
talked about him and to him; at first, I am quite sure, they did not
think that he was an Eskimo. They evidently took me for a trader,
though they had not seen me go up the coast. The sledge was all bundled
up, so that they could not see what I had, and rather lightly loaded,
so that apparently I had sold my goods and was now working down
the coast on my homeward journey. They were in evident doubt about
Kataktovick, because he and they could not understand each other’s
speech. He would talk to them in the language of the Alaskan Eskimo and
they would put up their hands and touch their faces to show that they
did not understand. Then they would talk to him and he, in turn, would
throw up his hands and say, “Me no savvy.”
After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signs to show
that they wanted to know where we came from. I took out my charts,
showed them where we drifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and told them
of the men there, showed them where the ship sank and where we had
just landed. I first made a ship out of matches. When I saw that this
did not convey any idea to them I drew pictures on the charts; to show
where the _Karluk_ sank and what happened to make her sink, I drew a
picture of a ship, surrounded it with lines intended to represent ice,
clapped my hands and rubbed the whole thing out. This they understood
well enough to know what I was driving at. They told me their names but
I could neither pronounce them nor write them. We started our feast
at two o’clock and continued through the afternoon and until late at
night, having tea every five minutes.
We still had four or five of the little tin boxes of tabloid tea left;
there were pictures of India on the box-covers which attracted the
Chukches wonderfully. I had some Burberry cloth left and I had the
old woman make a bag, into which I emptied the tea; then I gave the
empty tins with their pretty covers to the children. The tea tablets
interested the older folk so I contributed some to the “party.”
[Illustration: CAPTAIN BARTLETT’S CHART OF THE SIBERIAN COAST AND
BERING STRAIT
“After we had finished our second round of tea, they made signs to show
that they wanted to know where we came from. I took out my charts,
showed them where we drifted, pointed out Wrangell Island and told them
of the men there, showed them where the ship sank and where we had just
landed.” _See page 213._]
Spreading out the chart I inquired by signs about the people that we
might find on our journey eastward, I was assured that we should see
them all along the coast and that there were one or two communities of
them like this on the way to Cape North. I could find Cape North on the
chart, on which, of course, it was clearly marked. The Chukches,
however, did not know what I meant when I used the name but finally one
of them said “Irkaipij.” He repeated it again and again and at last I
understood that it was another name for the same place. I laid a lot of
matches on the chart, showing our course, and the same man, by means of
these matches, indicated that at Cape North were several arangas. From
the presence of cooking utensils, tea and tobacco I concluded, and, as
I learned later, correctly, that I should run across Russian traders
here and there on our march.
I wondered whether these Chukches were travellers and ever left the
coast to journey into the interior of the country. By drawing pictures
of trees and reindeer on the chart I found that I could make them
understand what I wanted to know; then by marking on the chart they
showed me that they made journeys of fifteen sleeps’ duration before
they reached the reindeer country. I learned afterwards that there were
two kinds of natives, the coast Eskimo and the deer men, the latter a
hardier type of man than the former. The coast natives get their living
by hunting, their chief game being walrus, seal and bear. Some of them
have large skin-boats for travelling from settlement to settlement,
covering in this way considerable stretches of coast. They do not go
out upon the drift ice. Two years before, so Kataktovick discovered,
two hunters had got adrift on the ice and had not come back; we were
now requested to tell whether we had seen any signs of them.
They establish their arangas when possible near a river, where they
can fish for salmon and trout and get ice to melt for water, instead
of using snow, a large quantity of which is needed for such a purpose.
I found a number of men and women along the coast who were between
fifty and sixty years of age, but they looked and acted older; they
seem to be pretty generally affected with turberculosis, more or less
developed, and do not take the right care of themselves. When they
get too old and feeble to support themselves and have become a burden
to others, they destroy themselves. I do not think they make any
graves,—at least I saw none; apparently their bodies are left for the
birds and animals to eat.
I did not, of course, acquire all my information about the natives from
the first ones I met, though to be sure they were a typical group and
exemplified, the more I studied them, all the customs of the country,
especially that of continual feasting of the stranger within their
gates.
About eleven o’clock that night we all lay down together on the
bed-platform,—men, women and children; the youngsters had all remained
outside the curtain until that time. The air was hot and ill-smelling,
and filled with smoke from the Russian pipes which the Chukches used,
pipes with little bowls and long stems, good for only a few puffs. When
they were not drinking tea they were smoking Russian tobacco. All the
time, with hardly a moment’s cessation, they were coughing violently;
tuberculosis had them in its grip. When they lay down to sleep they
left the lamps burning. There was no ventilation; the coughing
continued and the air was if anything worse and worse as the night
wore on. Some time between two and three in the morning I woke up; I
had been awake at intervals ever since turning in but now I was fully
aroused. The air was indescribably bad. The lamps had gone out and when
I struck a match it would not light. The Chukches were all apparently
broad awake, coughing incessantly. I felt around for the curtain and
when I found it held it open. This was evidently a new experience for
them; they were clearly afraid of draughts. I was a guest, however, and
they politely refrained from outward objections.
My diary for the next day, April 6, begins: “Anniversary of the
discovery of the North Pole. No doubt in New York the Explorers’ Club
is entertaining Peary.”
All day the wind blew hard from the northwest, with blinding
snowdrifts. Had we been ever so inclined to move we could have
done little travelling and our enforced stay gave us a good chance
to dry out our clothes, which had became saturated with salt water
and perspiration, and to mend the numerous tears where the jagged
corners of the raftered ice had got in their work. I borrowed boots
and stockings from the natives for Kataktovick and sent him out with
another Eskimo to repair our sledge, which was much the worse for wear.
We made some new dog-harness and repaired the old. I tried to buy a dog
or two here but the natives had none to sell; in fact they had very few
dogs at any time.
Towards afternoon Kataktovick came in and told me that he thought one
of the natives would go on to Cape North with us, taking with him his
dog and his small sledge. This was welcome news, for by guiding us
along the uncertainties of the trail he could expedite our travelling.
I had two or three cheap watches and other small articles and had saved
half a dozen razors of my own; these things I divided among the natives
along the way. Money, of which I had only a little, was not much good.
To the old woman who had taken off my boots when we first arrived here
I gave a cake of soap and some needles, to her daughter some empty tea
tins and to her twelve-year-old boy a watch and a pocket-knife. The
Siberian women are very industrious; they do all the housework, of
course, sewing and mending the skin clothing, and, if need be, they
drive the dogs.
With the conditions now favorable for progress along shore, I knew
that, with luck, I should be able to reach civilization and arrange to
have aid sent to the men on Wrangell Island. I thought about them all
the time, however, and worried about them; I wondered how the storms
which had so delayed our progress across Long Strait had affected
Munro’s chances of retrieving the supplies cached along the ice from
Shipwreck Camp and getting safely back to the main party, and how
the men would find life on the island as the weeks went by and they
separated according to my instructions for the hunting which would
sooner or later have to be their main dependence.