AMONG
UNKNOWN ESKIMO
AN ACCOUNT OF TWELVE YEARS INTIMATE RELATIONS
WITH THE PRIMITIVE ESKIMO OF ICE-BOUND
BAFFIN LAND, WITH A DESCRIPTION OF
THEIR WAYS OF LIVING, HUNTING
CUSTOMS & BELIEFS
BY
JULIAN W. BILBY
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
Member of the Folk Lore Society
WITH THIRTY-THREE ILLUSTRATIONS & A MAP
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: SEELEY, SERVICE & CO., Ltd.
1923
PREFACE
In offering the present book on the Eskimo tribes of the Arctics to the
reading British public, I must discharge the grateful and pleasing duty
of acknowledging my indebtedness for much courtesy and documentary
assistance to the Canadian Government, in the person of F. C. C. Lynch,
Esq., Superintendent of the “National Resources Branch of the
Department of the Interior.” He has been zealously instrumental in
enabling me to consult sources of classic recent information of which
otherwise I should not have had the confirmation and the benefit, and
also has placed at my publishers’ disposal the section of the official
map which represents the most up-to-date geographical information about
Baffin Land.
There is a considerable literature about the Eskimo (as distinct from a
quite formidable list of works dealing with travel and voyages in the
Arctics) which should be consulted by students of ethnography.
The classical authorities in this department are Dr Franz Boas and Dr
Rink, a study of whose researches should underlie all the more recent
first-hand contributions to what must remain for a long time to come a
new subject.
For the photographs I am greatly indebted to the Rev. A. L. Fleming,
L.T.H., who spent several years among the Eskimo of South Baffin Land.
His photos were taken during many intrepid journeys in those wilds, and
he knew exactly the scenes it was desired to record by photography in
this work. I am also indebted to Miss A. B. Teetgen for her assistance
in the literary construction of the book.
Finally, I wish to record my admiration and respect for the genial and
brave Eskimos of those barren lands, and for the way they face and
overcome the difficulties of the Arctic wilds.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Voyage to the Arctics 17
CHAPTER II
Baffin Land 32
CHAPTER III
Arctic Flora & Fauna 47
CHAPTER IV
The Eskimo 56
CHAPTER V
The Building of the Village 72
CHAPTER VI
The Sealing Grounds 85
CHAPTER VII
Womanhood in the Arctics 97
CHAPTER VIII
Clothing—Boat Building 108
CHAPTER IX
Eskimo Dogs 119
CHAPTER X
Tribal Life 136
CHAPTER XI
Tribal Life—continued 154
CHAPTER XII
The Eskimo Language 171
CHAPTER XIII
Legends 184
CHAPTER XIV
The Conjurors 196
CHAPTER XV
The Sedna Ceremony 210
CHAPTER XVI
The Native Surgeon 224
CHAPTER XVII
Sport & Hunting 235
CHAPTER XVIII
The Creatures of the Wild 252
Appendix 265
Index 271
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A Woman of the Fox Channel Tribe Frontispiece
PAGE
An Ancient Aboriginal Encampment 40
Part of an Eskimo Tribe of Women and Children 56
An Iglovegak or Eskimo Dwelling 64
An Eskimo Tupik 73
An Eskimo Snowhouse 76
An Eskimo Home 80
The Return of the Successful Seal Hunter in Springtime 88
Young Seal Hunting in May 92
Two Women in Summer Dress 96
A Young Wife with her Baby in her Hood 104
Eskimo Family Group 104
Models of Kayak, Umiak, and Okushuk 112
An Ancient Form of Sled 134
The Two Wives of a Hunter 144
An Eskimo Family outside their House 144
Preparing for a Long Winter Journey 160
A Native Chart 177
Asseak and his Wife 200
An Umiak or Family Boat 208
The Summer Tent or Tapik 208
A Conjuror’s Mask 211
A Kagge or Singing House (Elevation) 218
A Kagge or Singing House (Plan) 219
An Eskimo Woman of the Fox Channel Tribe 224
An Eskimo Summer Encampment 224
Specimens of Native Stone Carving 232
An Eskimo in his Kayak 240
Beginning to Build a Snowhouse 240
A Wolf Trap 255
An Eskimo Trap for Bears, Foxes or Wolves 257
A Seagull Trap 261
THE ESKIMO OF BAFFIN LAND
CHAPTER I
THE VOYAGE TO THE ARCTICS
A voyage to the Arctics has always been a dangerous and exciting
adventure, whether entered upon by whalers and hunters, intrepid men
lured by the hardy business of the frozen North, or by the no less
intrepid pioneers of exploration and of science. For the moment, we are
not concerned with the latter, but rather with some aspects of life in
the barren lands and icy seas north of “the Circle,” and with the
adventures and experiences of the few ships’ crews who have been making
yearly voyages in those regions for trading purposes ever since the
efforts of the sixteenth century navigators to discover the famous
North West Passage began to chart out these hitherto unnavigated seas.
The search, indeed, for this passage, a sea route of communication
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (or, in other words, a short
way to the East Indies without doubling the Cape of Good Hope)—was
incidentally the means of opening up the whole of the north polar
regions to exploration and discovery. As early as the year 1527, the
idea of such a passage was suggested to Henry VIII by a merchant of
Bristol; but it was not until the beginning of the following century
that a first expedition was fitted out at the expense of some London
merchants and despatched to the arctic seas.
Centuries before this, however, the Arctic Ocean was entered by a
Norwegian adventurer about the time of King Alfred; and the west coast
of Greenland was colonised from Iceland early in the eleventh century.
But no further progress was made in arctic discovery until the
sixteenth century, when various seas and points of land were mapped
out, mainly in the eastern hemisphere. The navigator Henry Hudson
discovered the Straits and Bay named after him in the great North
American archipelago, in 1610. Frobisher, Drake, and Hall, made voyages
to the west coasts of Greenland and to the opposite coasts; but the
entrance to the arctic regions west of that continent was discovered by
John Davis in 1585. In 1616, Baffin and Bylot passed through this
passage and sailed up Smith Sound, but nothing further was learned of
these parts for another two hundred years.
The Eskimo preserve to this day the story of Frobisher. It was, indeed,
narrated to the writer with a wealth of authentic detail by a native,
to whom it had been handed down amid other oral traditions of his tribe
and locality.
“Now it is said that Frobisher, coming to Nauyatlik for the first time,
not knowing the place or where there was a safe anchorage, crept along
the side (of the land) in his small ship, and was wrecked. For it was
shallow water there, and getting aground, he ordered the fuel (coal) to
be taken out and carried ashore to a place called Akkelasak. For the
ship was no longer habitable. The crew found refuge on a small, flat
island, and pitched tents there of the vessel’s sails, and began to
fashion a graving dock by digging out the soft ground. When it was
finished, they towed the wreck to the spot and docked her. All this
happened a long time ago, but traces of their work are still visible.
The shipwrecked sailors overhauled the hull. When at length their
repairs and rebuilding were complete, they towed out the ship and
moored her alongside a cliff, at the top of which they fixed their
tackle, unstepped and restepped the mast, their task being completed.
At last, and having buried those of their shipmates who had died during
this weary time, they abandoned the remainder of their fuel and set
sail for home. This is the narrative of one who had it from her mother,
who in turn had received it from her dead father, who had it from his
forbears; for thus they were accustomed to narrate it.”
The above translation, of course, is very free. It would interest the
philologist to have it in the original, or even in a literal version;
but possibly the foregoing will convey to the general reader that
graphic grasp of the story which renders all Eskimo history so reliable
and enduring.
The attempt to find a north west passage by sea, from the Atlantic
Ocean to Behring Strait, where farthest east meets farthest west, was
abandoned until Commander John Ross, in modern times (1818), was sent
out to prosecute further exploration in the Arctic. Throughout the
nineteenth century, many intrepid voyages were made, with which the
names of such men as Parry, Ross, Richardson, Rae and Franklin are
associated. Prior to this wonderful epoch of dauntless adventure, all
within the Arctic Circle upon the map was a blank. The entire geography
of the Canadian arctic archipelago has been worked out, defined,
charted, and named, since that time. Voyages of discovery were made in
rapid succession, after Sir John Ross’s expedition in 1818, many of the
leaders working in conjunction with the officials of the Hudson Bay Fur
Trading Company, who were anxious to determine the extent and limits of
the immense continent they controlled, now known as the North West
Territories. Every name upon the arctic map, whether of sea, sound,
inlet, strait, island, peninsula or cape, is a historical association
with the personnel or the patrons of these numerous expeditions.
All the islands of the Arctic Archipelago lying to the northward of the
mainland of the continent, and the whole of Baffin Land, form part of
the British possessions in North America by right of discovery. They
were formally transferred to the Dominion of Canada by Order in Council
of the Imperial Government on September 1st, 1880.
An immense amount of scientific information was derived from all this
hardship, endurance and enterprise. The story of Sir John Franklin
alone is a deathless epic in the annals of this seafaring nation. And
the whole field was opened up for the whalers, sealers, hunters and
fishers, whose business it soon became to demonstrate that arctic
exploration had a bearing on commerce and the hardier industries of
maritime mankind.
The whaling trade originated as early as the discoveries of Barentz and
Hudson, but Sir John Ross opened up the northernmost waters of Baffin’s
Bay to it, in recent times. The search for the North West Passage,
indeed, proved abortive for many years, owing to the fact that the
season in which it was possible to navigate in very high latitudes only
lasted about seven weeks. The most experienced men, though, never gave
up the theory of the probability of its existence. Half a century went
by before the route was found at last. Captain McClure, in the search
for the long-lost Franklin, achieved the discovery of two routes to the
Behring Straits and the Pacific Ocean, in the autumn of the year 1850.
Useless and futile as the discovery proved to be, who can sufficiently
estimate and appraise all that has gone, of human worth and high
resolve, of suffering and of life itself, to the making of it?
Of the whalers and traders who followed in the wake of the explorers,
the Scottish seamen have been the most persistent. Scotch vessels
continue, to-day, to visit the Arctic every year. They sail from home
in early summer, cross the North Atlantic, work their way up Davis’
Strait, and, (unless they winter on the coast of Baffin Land or
Greenland), return to Scotland late in “the fall.” Sometimes the
practice was to make the passage, generally through open water, from
Dundee to St. John’s, spend some weeks upon the sealing grounds, then
return to refit at the Newfoundland port for a whaling cruise farther
north in Lancaster Sound. Having secured their cargo of seal skins and
oil, they return home. The vessels of the Dundee whaling fleet are
designed and built for navigation in northern seas. The hull is of
wood, on account of its resisting power where pressed by ice, and the
hardwood (“greenheart”) sheathing minimises the abrasions caused by
conflict with the jagged edges of the floes. The ship is immensely
braced by stout cross beams inside. The cutwater is protected by iron
bands or plates, to enable her to withstand the heavy strain of the
ice. She is barque rigged (i.e., a square rigged vessel, having yards
on the foremast and mainmast, but not on the mizzen mast), and fitted
with steam, to enable her to proceed during a calm, to shear her way
through ice, or to enter and leave harbour independently of wind or
tide. On all other occasions she depends upon her sails. A whaler
fitted after this fashion is called an “auxiliary steam vessel.” She
sails, however, much faster than she can steam. She carries about 500
tons of coal.
Many of these tried and tested Scottish whaling ships have been bought
up by the leaders of Arctic and Antarctic exploring expeditions, and
remodelled and refitted for the scientific uses to which they would be
put, and have done yeoman service in the assault on the Poles.
Of late years the Hudson Bay Company (of historic and ubiquitous
enterprise in Canada), have established posts on the southern shores of
Baffin Land, (opposite to that northernmost region of the bleak
Labrador known as Ungava), so that their ships, which sail from
Montreal as annual supply ships for all the Company’s “Forts” and
“Factories” along the Canadian coasts, have points of call along Hudson
Strait en route for Hudson Bay itself and the fur ports of that vast
inland sea.
The Scotch whaling industry has various agents posted in many a bleak,
un-heard of spot along the icebound littoral of the Eskimo countries,
whose duty it is to collect and store the pelts brought in by the
natives—employed by the agent—and ship them away annually or
bi-annually, as the case may be.
A whaling voyage was filled, especially in the earlier days, with as
much danger as adventure. The ships were manned by sailors who had
taken to the life as lads, or, held by the fascination of the North,
returned thither year after year, seldom caring to make voyages
elsewhere. They lived amid the ice. True northman and fine seaman, many
a whaler’s master is proud of the fact that he began his career as a
cabin boy and worked his way aft. He is a fighter, every inch of him,
such as only “the wild” can breed. He has an iron code of honour, and a
strain of true Norse hardness in him for his enemy. But he has also the
manly virtues of his type—fidelity to his fellows, and generosity to
lesser men than himself.
Previous to an Arctic voyage, months were spent in the commissioning of
these vessels. Every rope and block was overhauled. The ships’ boats
were rigorously tested and each carefully fitted out. Food and stores
of all kinds were taken aboard wholesale, against every contingency
experience and foresight could suggest, especially that of a forced
wintering in the north. An armoury of weapons was carried: harpoons and
harpoon guns for the boats, lances for killing whales, huge knives for
cutting up the carcases, bombs, hatchets, rifles and ammunition. No
less exhaustive was the inventory of the “trade”—articles for the
Eskimo trade and barter—such as needles, soaps (scented and otherwise),
pipes, matches, calico, beads, and, above all, tobacco! Every boy’s
book of adventure will suggest the scope of the slop chest, the
incredible handiness and nattiness of the galley, the reek of the
fo’c’sle, the snug dignity of the Captain’s cabin, and the compressed
completeness of an equipment designed to last a ships’ entire crew (let
us say her tonnage is about 129, and her company number twenty-nine)
over many months of toil, emergency, and utter isolation. She carried
no doctor. The first mate presided over the medicine chest, and had
resort to some small book of directions as to what to give and what to
do in case of illness or accident. In the early days adventurers to the
Arctic were sorely stricken with scurvy, for want of vegetable food and
a knowledge of how to provide against this deficiency. We have often
heard of desperate feats of amateur surgery carried out on board ship.
It has been that the mate of a whaling vessel often acted, not at all
unsuccessfully, as surgeon.
Doctor William S. Bruce, indeed, tells us in his “Polar Exploration”
that, generally speaking, germ diseases are unknown in the Arctic, the
intense cold making everywhere—in the air, on the sea and on the
land—for a high degree of bacterial sterility. “Under ordinary
conditions it is not possible to ‘catch cold’ in the polar regions ....
infectious fevers are practically unknown, unless contracted in a dirty
ship or filthily kept house.” Hence the feasibility of a practical
asepsis in accident or operation. Bishop Bompass once amputated a man’s
leg above the knee, and the operation was completely successful. The
Bishop had no medical knowledge beyond having attended some lectures at
an opthalmic hospital, in order to learn how to treat his Indians for
snow-blindness.
The whaling voyage itself might be uneventful enough until a high
latitude was reached; but after that, the greatest possible skill was
required to navigate the ship safely through the “pack” ice coming down
from the Pole through Davis Straits and Fox Channel, on its way to the
coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, to be finally melted and dispersed
in the Gulf Stream.
Arctic navigators and oceanographers enumerate many varieties and
vagaries of the polar ice. Suffice it here to note that “pack ice” is
the jammed and frozen conglomeration of masses of ice from broken floes
and vast disintegrating “fields” of ice. In Straits, this pack is
always heaviest in the centre but less compact along the shores, so
that a vessel can sometimes be worked along the coast when navigation
in the middle would be impossible. This “middle pack” is rightly
dreaded by Arctic seamen. A change of wind might drift it in upon the
shore, when the ship’s destruction would be inevitable. The great
danger in meeting the ice pack out at sea consists in the fact that the
larger part of the floe is almost submerged and little of it is to be
seen. Again, it bristles with spurs and points which stick up and out
like spears and rams, any one of which might rip up a hull sailing at
any speed.
The rapidity with which the ice pack moves is something wonderful.
Miles upon miles of sea will be free from ice, with the exception of
small masses from the floes, and the ship ploughs a steady course to
the north. Suddenly the wind changes. Ice swiftly makes its appearance
on every quarter, and—with incredible rapidity—the vessel is
surrounded. But warning has been given from the “crow’s nest” (the
look-out aloft, a barrel at masthead), and the Master works a cautious
way through the “leads” in the shifting ice. Should the pack be
exceptionally heavy, threatening to pen in the ship completely,
measures for her safety are immediately taken. Orders ring out sharply.
The crew, with ice saws or blasting powder, quickly make a space in the
ice, like a temporary dock, large enough to warp her into, where she
can lie snug while the savage floes grind and crash against each other
without. Woe to the ship caught between them ere such a refuge can be
made! No vessel that ever adventured in the polar seas could stand the
awful grip. There would be a rending of the stoutest timbers, groans of
a ship in agony, a lift and a quiver, and as the floes swung apart on
the black swell below, the brave creature, mangled, rent, and stove in,
would plunge to her bitter grave. As for her crew, their only chance
would be to lower the boats, and, either marooned on the ice, drift
south on the prevailing current until perchance sighted by a ship; or,
if afloat, work their perilous way to the Greenland coast, and take
refuge at one of the Danish settlements sparsely scattered on its
southern extremity.
Icebergs—those rightly dreaded wanderers of the northern seas—afford a
glorious vision in bright, calm weather, as they wend their majestic
course to the south, tinted by the setting sun or by the indescribable
loveliness of the northern sunrise. Sometimes a large portion having
been melted, breaks from the berg, when the vast mass slowly careens
over, plunges with a thunderous crash, and reasserts itself upon a new
floating base, peerless and beautiful as ever. The ship is fortunate
who finds herself standing well away at such a moment.
In spite, however, of their bad reputation, the bergs have their uses
for those hardy wayfarers of the sea who know them. The ancient Arctic
mariner will tell you that an iceberg can sail against the wind as well
as with it! Gripped for two-thirds of its bulk by a strong
under-current, it can crash its way and forge ahead against the wildest
adverse gale. An old whaler told of an experience he had when his ship
was beset by the loose floe, and like to be crushed to matchwood. The
men were striving all they knew to get her into safety, when a vast
berg drove slowly down beside her through the ice, shouldering it aside
as a giant liner drives through a heavy sea. With the inspiration of
sheer desperation, the Captain saw his chance! The vessel was
cautiously worked still nearer the berg and then kedged on to it. Towed
thus, with resistless might, she too forged safely through the chafing
floe to clear water and deliverance.
Again, a ship—no matter of what class or tonnage—can only carry a
certain quantity of water. So, too, with a whaler; she is limited in
her supply. It sometimes happens that, cruising about week after week,
she runs short of water. On sighting an iceberg, she sends off her
boats loaded with casks, and the crews refill them either with water
from the pools at the foot of the berg, or with the ice itself, which
being fresh water ice, melts down, of course, into splendid drinking
water after the brine and salt coating from the sea has first been
scraped off. For, be it remembered, an iceberg is a portion—the seaward
end—of one of the polar glaciers. As the immense ice river reaches the
coast it is pushed out over the cliffs, and vast masses break off with
terrific detonation, plunge into the sea, and the newly born icebergs
go floating far and wide. A large number of these bergs are formed in
Eternity Fiord on the Greenland coast, and the crash and roar of them
can be heard for miles.
As the season wears on and the whaler’s hold slowly fills with the
cargo of the Arctic hunt, from time to time she puts into the sparse
harbours of the northern coasts, to refit, or to meet the tribes of
Eskimo gathered there to do “trade” with her. The Hudson Bay Company
have lately introduced a form of coinage for this purpose, anything of
the sort being previously quite unknown among the natives. Pieces of
metal in various shapes represent the values of a currency and are used
as money. But the prehistoric marketing of barter still holds good
throughout the greater part of the Arctic regions.
Sometimes a shipmate has to be left, perforce of accident or illness,
to sleep the long sleep that knows no earthly waking, in this drear and
far-off land.
So much then for the voyage and the voyagers to the Arctic. Now for
that frozen world itself, and for those strange people whose lot,
compared with that of all the rest of the more genially situated sons
of men, would seem to have fallen in the bleakest, harshest and most
forbidding places, where human life might scarcely exist.
When the first ship seen by an Eskimo tribe touched on the coast, what
did they think of it; what was the bewildering impression they got? An
old hunter, recounting the story of his tribe and its adventures, gave
the writer a graphic account of just such an event. An enormous boat,
he said, appeared, filled with Kabloonâtyet (strangers), speaking an
unknown tongue and having hairy faces! The tall masts were hung with
the clouds (sails), and there was a door in the roof (the companion
leading from the deck), instead of in the side of the house. At first
the tribesmen hovered round this amazing thing in their canoes, afraid
to approach too near. Presents were thrown out to them of which they
could make nothing. They just smelt at the tobacco, biscuit and sweets,
and cast them aside. There were knives, but they cut themselves with
these, not knowing how to handle steel ones. It was almost as if some
unimaginable craft from another sphere were to visit the Earth and make
incomprehensible overtures to us by means of objects which conveyed
nothing to our intelligence—something after the style of Mr. Wells’s
Martians. At last, however, looking glasses resolved the situation.
These the Eskimo received with huge delight and amazement. Eventually
they were induced to board the strange boat and open up some sort of
initial overtures with her alarming crew. His fore-fathers, said the
old hunter, had seen these things and carefully handed them down.