a company. They would open a store for themselves. Through the store
their furs and fish would be sent to market and they would get just as
big a price for their products as the traders got. They would buy the
store supplies at wholesale just as cheaply as the traders could buy
them. They would elect one of their number, who could keep accounts,
to be storekeeper. They would buy the things they needed from the
store at a reasonable price, and at the end of the year each would be
credited with his share of the profits. In other words, they would
organize a co-operative store and trading system and be their own
traders and storekeepers.
This meant breaking off from the traders with whom they had always
dealt and all hope of ever securing advance of supplies from them
again. It was a hazardous venture for the fishermen to make. They did
not understand business, but they were desperate and ready for any
chance that offered relief, and in the end they decided to do as
Doctor Grenfell suggested.
Each man was to have a certain number of shares of stock in the new
enterprise. The store would be supplied at once, and each family would
be able to get from it what was needed to live upon during the winter.
Any fish they might have on hand would be turned over to the store,
credited as cash, and sent to market at once, in a schooner to be
chartered for the purpose and this schooner would bring back to Red
Bay the winter's supplies.
A canvass then was made with the result that among the seventeen
families the entire assets available for purchasing supplies amounted
to but eighty-five dollars. This was little better than nothing.
Doctor Grenfell had faith in Skipper Tom and the others. They were
honest and hard-working folk. He knew that all they required was an
opportunity to make good. He was determined to give them the
opportunity, and he announced, without hesitation, that he would
personally lend them enough to pay for the first cargo and establish
the enterprise. Can any one wonder that the people love Grenfell? He
was the one man in the whole world that would have done this, or who
had the courage to do it. He knew well enough that he was calling down
upon his own head the wrath of the traders.
The schooner was chartered, the store was stocked and opened, and
there was enough to keep the people well-fed, well-clothed, happy and
comfortable through the first year.
In the beginning there were some of the men who were actually afraid
to have it known they were interested in the store, such was the fear
with which the traders had ruled them. They were so timid, indeed,
about the whole matter that they requested no sign designating the
building as a store be placed upon it. That, they declared, would make
the traders angry, and no one knew to what lengths these former
slaveholders might go to have revenge upon them. It is no easy matter
to shake oneself free from the traditions of generations and it was
hard for these trappers and fishermen to realize that they were freed
from their ancient bondage. But Doctor Grenfell fears no man, and,
with his usual aggressiveness, he nailed upon the front of the store a
big sign, reading:
RED BAY CO-OPERATIVE STORE.
It was during the winter of 1905-1906 and ten years after the
launching of the enterprise and the opening of the store, that I drove
into Red Bay with a train of dogs one cold afternoon. Skipper Tom was
my host, and after we had a cheery cup of tea, he said:
"Come out. I wants to show you something."
He led me a little way down from his cottage to the store, and
pointing up at the big bold sign, which Grenfell had nailed there, he
announced proudly:
"'Tis _our_ co-operative store, the first on the whole coast. Doctor
Grenfell starts un for us."
Then after a pause:
"Doctor Grenfell be a wonderful man! He be a man of God."
As expected, there was a furore among the little traders when the news
was spread that a co-operative store had been opened in Red Bay. The
big Newfoundland traders and merchants were heartily in favor of it,
and even stood ready to give the experiment their support.
But the little traders who had dealt with the Red Bay settlement for
so long, and had bled the people and grown fat upon their labors, were
bitterly hostile. They began a campaign of defamation against Doctor
Grenfell and his whole field of work. They questioned his honesty, and
criticised the conduct of his hospitals. They even enlisted the
support of a Newfoundland paper in their opposition to him. They did
everything in their power to drive him from the coast, so that they
would have the field again in their own greedy hands. It was a
dastardly exhibition of selfishness, but there are people in the world
who will sell their own souls for profit.
Grenfell went on about his business of making people happier. He was
in the right. If the traders would fight he would give it to them. He
was never a quitter. He was the same Grenfell that beat up the big boy
at school, years before. He was going to have his way about it, and do
what he went to Labrador to do. He was going to do more. He was
determined now to improve the trading conditions of the people of
Labrador and northern Newfoundland, as well as to heal their sick.
From the day the co-operative store was opened in Red Bay not one fish
and not one pelt of fur has ever gone to market from that harbor
through a trader. The store has handled everything and it has
prospered and the people have prospered beyond all expectation. Every
one at Red Bay lives comfortably now. The debt to Doctor Grenfell was
long since paid and cancelled. And it is characteristic of him that he
would not accept one cent of interest. Shares of stock in the store,
originally issued at five dollars a share, are now worth one hundred
and four dollars a share, the difference being represented by profits
that have not been withdrawn. Every share is owned by the people of
the prosperous little settlement.
Up and down the Labrador coast and in northern Newfoundland nine
co-operative stores have been established by Doctor Grenfell since
that autumn evening when he met the Red Bay folk in conference and
they voted to stake their all, even their life, in the venture that
proved so successful. Two or three of the stores had to discontinue
because the people in the localities where they were placed lived so
far apart that there were not enough of them to make a store
successful.
Every one of these stores was a great venture to the people who cast
their lot with it. True they had little in money, but the stake of
their venture was literally in each case their life. The man who never
ventures never succeeds. Opportunity often comes to us in the form of
a venture. Sometimes, it is a desperate venture too.
Doctor Grenfell had to fight the traders all along the line. They even
had the Government of Newfoundland appoint a Commission to inquire
into the operation of the Missions as a "menace to honest trade." A
menace to honest trade! Think of it!
The result of the investigation proved that Grenfell and his mission
was doing a big self-sacrificing work, and the finest kind of work to
help the poor folk, and were doing it at a great cost and at no
profit to the mission. So down went the traders in defeat.
The fellow that's right is the fellow that wins in the end. The fellow
that's wrong is the fellow that is going to get the worst of it at the
proper time. Grenfell only tried to help others. He never reaped a
penny of personal gain. He always came out on top.
It's a good thing to be a scrapper sometimes, but if you're a scrapper
be a good one. Grenfell is a scrapper when it is necessary, and when
he has to scrap he goes at it with the best that's in him. He never
does things half way. He never was a quitter. When he starts out to do
anything he does it.
XV
A LAD OF THE NORTH
The needs of the children attracted Dr. Grenfell's attention from the
beginning. A great many of them were neglected because the parents
were too poor to provide for them properly. Those who were orphaned
were thrown upon the care of their neighbors, and though the neighbors
were willing they were usually too poor to take upon themselves this
added burden.
There were no schools save those conducted by the Brethren of the
Moravian missions among the Eskimos to the northward, and these were
Eskimo schools where the people were taught to read and write in their
own strange language, and to keep their accounts. But for the English
speaking folk south of the Eskimo coast no provision for schools had
ever been made.
The hospitals were overflowing with the sick or injured, and there was
no room for children, unless they were in need of medical or surgical
attention. There was great need of a home for the orphans where they
would be cared for and receive motherly training and attention and
could go to school.
Dr. Grenfell had thought about this a great deal. He had made the
best arrangements possible for the actually destitute little ones by
finding more or less comfortable homes for them, and seeking
contributions from generous folk in the United States, Canada and
Great Britain to pay for their expense.
But it was not, perhaps, until Pomiuk, a little Eskimo boy, came under
his care that he finally decided that the establishment of a
children's home could no longer be delayed.
Pomiuk's home was in the far north of Labrador, where no trees grow,
and where the seasons are quite as frigid as those of northern
Greenland. In summer he lived with his father and mother in a skin
tent, or tupek, and in winter in a snow igloo, or iglooweuk.
Pomiuk's mother cooked the food over the usual stone lamp, which also
served to heat their igloo in winter. This lamp, which was referred to
in an earlier chapter, and described as a hollowed stone in the form
of a half moon, was an exceedingly crude affair, measuring eighteen
inches long on its straight side and nine inches broad at its widest
part. When it was filled with oil squeezed from a piece of seal
blubber, the blubber was suspended over it at the back that the heat,
when the wick of moss was lighted, would cause the blubber oil to
continue to drip and keep the lamp supplied with oil. The lamp gave
forth a smoky, yellow flame. This was the only fireside that little
Pomiuk knew. You and I would not think it a very cheerful one,
perhaps, but Pomiuk was accustomed to cold and he looked upon it as
quite comfortable and cheerful enough.
Ka-i-a-chou-ouk, Pomiuk's father, was a hunter and fisherman, as are
all the Eskimos. He moved his tupek in summer, or built his igloo of
blocks of snow in winter, wherever hunting and fishing were the best,
but always close to the sea.
Here, under the shadow of mighty cliffs and towering, rugged
mountains, by the side of the great water, Pomiuk was born and grew
into young boyhood, and played and climbed among the mountain crags or
along the ocean shore with other boys. He loved the rugged, naked
mountains, they stood so firm and solid! No storm or gale could ever
make them afraid, or weaken them. Always they were the same, towering
high into the heavens, untrod and unchanged by man, just as they had
stood facing the arctic storms through untold ages.
From the high places he could look out over the sea, where icebergs
glistened in the sunshine, and sometimes he could see the sail of a
fishing schooner that had come out of the mysterious places beyond the
horizon. He loved the sea. Day and night in summer the sound of surf
pounding ceaselessly upon the cliffs was in his ears. It was music to
him, and his lullaby by night.
But he loved the sea no less in winter when it lay frozen and silent
and white. As far as his vision reached toward the rising sun, the
endless plain of ice stretched away to the misty place where the ice
and sky met. Pomiuk thought it would be a fine adventure, some night,
when he was grown to be a man and a great hunter, to take the dogs and
komatik and drive out over the ice to the place from which the sun
rose, and be there in the morning to meet him. He had no doubt the sun
rose out of a hole in the ice, and it did not seem so far away.
Pomiuk's world was filled with beautiful and wonderful things. He
loved the bright flowers that bloomed under the cliffs when the winter
snows were gone, and the brilliant colors that lighted the sky and
mountains and sea, when the sun set of evenings. He loved the mists,
and the mighty storms that sent the sea rolling in upon the cliffs in
summer. He never ceased to marvel at the aurora borealis, which by
night flashed over the heavens in wondrous streams of fire and lighted
the darkened world. His father told him the aurora borealis was the
spirits of their departed people dancing in the sky. He learned the
ways of the wild things in sea and on land and never tired of
following the tracks of beasts in the snow, or of watching the seals
sunning themselves on rocks or playing about in the water.
The big wolf dogs were his special delight. His father kept nine of
them, and many an exciting ride Pomiuk had behind them when his father
took him on the komatik to hunt seals or to look at fox traps, or to
visit the Trading Post.
When he was a wee lad his father made for him a small dog whip of
braided walrus hide. This was Pomiuk's favorite possession. He
practiced wielding it, until he became so expert he could flip a
pebble no larger than a marble with the tip end of the long lash; and
he could snap and crack the lash with a report like a pistol shot.
As he grew older and stronger he practiced with his father's whip,
until he became quite as expert with that as with his own smaller one.
This big whip had a wooden handle ten inches in length, and a supple
lash of braided walrus hide thirty-five feet long. The lash was about
an inch in diameter where it joined the handle, tapering to a thin tip
at the end.
One summer day, when Pomiuk was ten years of age, a strange ship
dropped anchor off the rocky shore where Pomiuk's father and several
other Eskimo families had pitched their tupeks, while they fished in
the sea near by for cod or hunted seals. A boat was launched from the
ship, and as it came toward the shore all of the excited Eskimos from
the tupeks, men, women and children, and among them Pomiuk, ran down
to the landing place to greet the visitors, and as they ran every one
shouted, "Kablunak! Kablunak!" which meant, "Stranger! Stranger!"
Some white men and an Eskimo stepped out of the boat, and in the
hospitable, kindly manner of the Eskimo Pomiuk's father and Pomiuk and
their friends greeted the strangers with handshakes and cheerful
laughter, and said "Oksunae" to each as he shook his hand, which is
the Eskimo greeting, and means "Be strong."
The Eskimo that came with the ship was from an Eskimo settlement
called Karwalla, in Hamilton Inlet, on the east of Labrador, but a
long way to the south of Nachvak Bay where Pomiuk's people lived. He
could speak English as well as Eskimo, and acted as interpreter for
the strangers.
This Eskimo explained that the white men had come from America to
invite some of the Labrador Eskimos to go to America to see their
country. People from all the nations of the world, he said, were to
gather there to meet each other and to get acquainted. They were to
bring strange and wonderful things with them, that the people of each
nation might see how the people of other nations made and used their
things, and how they lived. They wished the Labrador Eskimos to come
and show how they dressed their skins and made their skin clothing and
skin boats, and to bring with them dogs and sledges, and harpoons and
other implements of the hunt.
The white men promised it would be a most wonderful experience for
those that went. They agreed to take them and all their things on the
ship and after the big affair in America was over bring them back to
their homes, and give them enough to make them all rich for the rest
of their lives.
The Eskimos were naturally quite excited with the glowing
descriptions, the opportunity to travel far into new lands, and the
prospect of wealth and happiness offered them when they again returned
to their Labrador homes. Pomiuk and his mother were eager for the
journey, but his father did not care to leave the land and the life he
knew. He decided that he had best remain in Labrador and hunt; but he
agreed that Pomiuk's mother might go to make skin boots and clothing,
and Pomiuk might go with her and take the long dog whip to show how
well he could use it.
And so one day Pomiuk and his mother said goodbye to his father, and
with several other Eskimos sailed away to the United States, destined
to take their place as exhibits at the great World's Fair in Chicago.
The suffering of the Eskimos in the strange land to which they were
taken was terrible. In Labrador they lived in the open, breathing
God's fresh air. In Chicago they were housed in close and often poorly
ventilated quarters. The heat was unbearable, and through all the long
hours of day and night when they were on exhibition they were
compelled to wear their heavy winter skin or fur clothing. They were
unaccustomed to the food. Some of them died, and the white men buried
them with little more thought or ceremony than was given those of
their dogs that died.
Pomiuk, in spite of his suffering, kept his spirits. He loved to wield
his long dog whip. It was his pride. Visitors at the fair pitched
nickles and dimes into the enclosure where the Eskimos and their
exhibits were kept. Pomiuk with the tip of his thirty-five foot lash
would clip the coins, and laugh with delight, for every coin he
clipped was to be his. He was the life of the Eskimo exhibit. Visitors
could always distinguish his ringing laugh. He was always smiling.
The white men who had induced the Eskimos to leave their homes failed
to keep their promise when the fair closed. The poor Eskimos were
abandoned in a practically penniless condition and no means was
provided to return them to their homes. To add to the distress of
Pomiuk's mother, Pomiuk fell and injured his hip. Proper surgical
treatment was not supplied, the injury, because of this neglect, did
not heal, and Pomiuk could no longer run about or walk or even stand
upon his feet.
Those of the Eskimos who survived the heat and unaccustomed climate,
in some manner, God alone knows how, found their way to Newfoundland.
Pomiuk, in his mother's care, was among them. The hospitality of big
hearted fishermen of Newfoundland, who sheltered and fed the Eskimos
in their cabins, kept them through the winter. It was a period of
intense suffering for poor little Pomiuk, whose hip constantly grew
worse.
When summer came again, Doctor Frederick Cook, the explorer, bound to
the Arctic on an exploring expedition, heard of the stranded Eskimos,
and carried some of them to their Labrador homes on his ship; and when
the schooners of the great fishing fleets sailed north, kindly
skippers made room aboard their little craft for others of the
destitute Eskimos. Thus Pomiuk, once so active and happy, now a
helpless cripple, found his way back on a fishing schooner to
Labrador.
We can understand, perhaps, the joy and hope with which Pomiuk looked
again upon the rock-bound coast that he loved so well. On _these_
shores he had lived care-free and happy and full of bounding health
until the deceitful white men had lured him away. He had no doubt that
once again in his own native land and among his own people in old
familiar surroundings, he would soon get well and be as strong as ever
he had been to run over the rocks and to help his father with the dogs
and traps and at the fishing.
Pomiuk could scarcely wait to meet his father. He laughed and
chattered eagerly of the good times he and his father would have
together. He was deeply attached to his father who had always been
kind and good to him, and who loved him better, even, than his mother
loved him.
Pomiuk's heart beat high, when at last, one day, the vessel drew into
the narrow channel that leads between high cliffs into Nachvak Bay. He
looked up at the rocky walls towering two thousand feet above him on
either side. They were as firm and unchanging as always. He loved
them, and his eyes filled with happy tears. Just beyond, at the other
end of the channel, lay the broad bay and the white buildings of the
Hudson's Bay Company's trading post, where his father used to bring
him sometimes with the dogs in winter or in the boat in summer. What
fine times he and his father had on those excursions! And somewhere,
back there, camped in his tupek, was his father. What a surprise his
coming would be to his father!
Pomiuk was carried ashore at the Post. Eskimos camped near-by crowded
down to greet him and his mother and the other wanderers who had
returned with them. It would be a short journey now in the boat to his
father's fishing place and his own dear home in their snug tupek. What
a lot of things he had to tell his father! And at home, with his
father's help he would soon be well and strong again.
Then he heard some one say his father was dead. Dazed with grief he
was taken to one of the Eskimo tupeks where he was to make his home.
All that day and for days afterward, days of deep, unspoken sorrow,
the thought that he would never again hear his father's dear voice was
in his mind and forcing itself upon him. The world had grown suddenly
dark for the crippled boy. All of his fine plans were vanished.
One day late that fall Dr. Grenfell found Pomiuk lying helpless and
naked upon the rocks near the tupek of the Eskimo who had taken him
in. The little lad was carried aboard the hospital ship. He was washed
and his diseased hip dressed, he was given clean warm clothing to
wear, and altogether he was made more comfortable than he had been in
many months. Then, with Pomiuk as a patient on board, the ship steamed
away.
Thus Pomiuk bade goodbye to his home, to the towering cliffs and
rugged sturdy mountains that he loved so well, and to his people. The
dear days when he was so jolly and happy in health were only a memory,
though he was to know much happiness again. Perhaps, lying helpless
upon the deck of the hospital ship, he shed a tear as he recalled the
fine trips he used to have when his father took him to the post with
dogs and komatik in winter, or he and his father went cruising in the
boat along the coast in summer. And now he would never see his dear
father again, and could never be a great hunter like his father, as he
had once dreamed he would be.
But the cruise was a pleasant one, with every moment something new to
attract his attention. Dr. Grenfell was as kind and considerate as a
father. Pomiuk had never known such care and attention. His diseased
hip was dressed regularly, and had not been so free from pain since it
was injured. Appetizing, wholesome meals were served him. Everyone
aboard ship did everything possible for his comfort and entertainment.
Pomiuk was taken to the Indian Harbor Hospital where he remained until
the cold of winter settled, and the hospital was closed for the winter
season. Then he was removed to a comfortable home up the Bay. Under
careful surgical treatment his hip improved until he was able to get
about well on crutches.
There was never a happier boy in the world than this little Eskimo
cripple in his new surroundings and with his new friends. He laughed
and played about quite as though he had the use of his limbs, and had
forgotten his affliction. During the winter one of the good
missionaries from the Moravian Mission at Hopedale visited him and
baptized him "Gabriel"--the angel of comfort. He was a comfort indeed
and a joy to those who had his care.
XVI
MAKING A HOME FOR THE ORPHANS
The next winter Pomiuk was taken to the hospital at Battle Harbor
where he could receive more constant surgical treatment. He was a joy
to the doctors and nurses. His face was always happy and smiling. He
never complained, and his amiable disposition endeared him not only to
the doctors and nurses but to the other patients as well.
But Pomiuk was never to be well again. The diseased hip was beyond
control, and was wearing down his constitution and his strength. One
day he fell suddenly very ill. For a week he lay in bed, at times
unconscious, and then early one morning passed away.