UTILIZATION OF ESKIMOS AND DOGS
Next after the special ship, the most important tool in my campaign of
polar work has been the Eskimo, as dog drivers. A fundamental principle
of all my work has been the utilization of the Eskimos and dogs. I have
used the Eskimos to a greater extent than any other explorer. They have
formed the rank and file of my sledging- and hunting-parties, and have
built my sledges, dog harnesses, and other equipment; the women have
skilfully fashioned the fur clothing, essential for comfort in these
regions.
From the very beginning of my polar work I believed that these most
northerly human beings in the world could afford me invaluable
assistance in my plans for exploration. Later I had a fatalistic
feeling that the Almighty had put the little tribe in this particular
place for the express purpose of assisting to win the pole.
Using their country as a base for my work, I have lived among and
worked with them from 1891 to 1909, a period of eighteen years, during
which time I made a thorough study of their language, their mode of
living, the food they ate, the houses they built, and the clothing
they wore. I made these people my friends, training them in my methods,
and directing the modification and concentration of their own methods
in order to make them more useful and valuable in my work. In 1909
there was not a man, woman, or child in the whole tribe between Cape
York and Etah that I did not know, as well as their capacity for
endurance and work. In my last expedition it was in my power to utilize
the entire energy and concentrate the entire resources of the tribe on
my work and objects.
In powers of endurance, in ingenuity and intelligence in adapting
themselves to their surroundings and in using to advantage every one of
the all too few possibilities of their land, they are, in my opinion,
unequaled by any other known aboriginal race. With their wonderful
knowledge of ice technic and their ability to handle sledges and dogs,
the Eskimos were really more necessary as members of individual parties
than white men; for although they were not qualified to lead, they
could follow another’s lead and drive dogs much better than any white
man.
[Illustration: YOUNG ESKIMO MOTHER AND BABY]
[Illustration: ESKIMO FAMILY AND “TUPIK,” OR SUMMER TENT]
Eskimos in the party make it easier for the leader in various ways. A
party of Eskimos, sent out to hunt, to scout, or to establish a depot,
need only to be told what they are going out for. It is not necessary
to go into every detail of how to do it, or to caution them in regard
to all the minutiæ of field-work and its dangers, as in the case of
a party of white men. All these things they know, and when they have
started, the leader may dismiss them from his mind and not worry a
minute about them. They will return in good condition. In this way they
count very pronouncedly for conservation of the leader’s nerve force.
If I turned back a party of three or four Eskimos from Cape Hecla or
Columbia, or two or three marches out on the ice, to make their way
back to Conger or Payer Harbor or Etah, I dismissed them from my mind
as soon as they were out of sight, knowing that they would make the
trip all right. In the same circumstances, I should have a party of
white men on my mind until I saw them again weeks or months later.
The language of the Eskimos is not difficult to acquire, one season
spent among them being sufficient to gain a working knowledge of it. It
is necessary for explorers to learn it, as the Eskimos have little or
no desire to speak English, and consider it far simpler for the white
man to speak their language.
One must make a psychological study of these people properly to manage
them. They are people of peculiar temperament, very much like children,
and should be handled like children, firmly, but gently. They are as
easily discouraged as they are elated. For the most part they are good
natured, but occasionally indulge in a fit of sulks. It is no use at
all to get vexed at a sulky Eskimo, but one can usually be jollied out
of such a mood without difficulty. They greatly appreciate kindness,
but are very quick to impose upon a weak or vacillating person. They
never forget a broken promise or one that has been kept. In all my
dealings with them I have made it a point to mean exactly what I said,
and to insist upon things being done according to my instructions. If
I promised an Eskimo a certain reward for a task well done, he always
got it. If, however, I told him a certain punishment would follow a
forbidden course, he knew it would come.
By way of encouraging them to do the things I wanted done and keeping
them interested in their work, a record was kept of the game brought
in by every Eskimo, and a special prize went to the best hunter. The
man who secured the musk-ox with the best set of horns or the deer with
the finest antlers got a special reward, as did the man who turned
out the best sledge or proved to be the best all-round man on a long
sledge-trip. In firmness, tempered with love and gratitude, I have
found the best method of dealing with them, and their faithfulness has
abundantly attested its efficacy.
Some may get the idea that the Eskimos would serve as faithfully as
they did me, almost any one who offered them gifts, but the record of
arctic exploration shows that such is not the case. They have not only
known me for almost twenty years, but I have saved whole villages from
starvation, and the greatest hope and ambition of the children have
been to become hunters or seamstresses who would some day be rewarded
by “Pearyaksoah.”
As a result of my various sojourns among them, the entire tribe has
been raised from the most abject destitution to a condition of relative
affluence. Twenty-five years ago they were dependent upon hunting
weapons of the most primitive type. There was not a rifle in the
whole tribe when I first visited it, and they had only a scant supply
of knives, which they had obtained from whalers or exploring ships
visiting their shores or caught in the ice near Cape York. In olden
times these people improvised knives from the iron of the great Cape
York meteorites that I brought home in the summers of 1896 and 1897.
Pieces of bone or ivory formed the handles of these knives, and in a
groove of the handle small fragments of the meteorite were ingeniously
set to form the cutting edge. Very small and crude an instrument it
appeared to be, yet it was a great improvement over the bits of flint
which in still earlier times had been the only implements the tribe
possessed for cutting purposes.
These iron knives had been discarded several generations previous to
my first trip north, but in the spring of 1895 I was fortunate enough
to run across one of these relics which a woman of the tribe had
unearthed in the interior of an old igloo which she was rebuilding for
winter use. A few months later a man discovered the handle of another,
and an old Eskimo identified them both, the former as a woman’s knife,
the latter a man’s. They were the only ones of their kind known to any
of the tribe.
Twenty-five years ago there were few _kayaks_, or skin canoes, among
the Eskimos, and the man who owned a spear-shaft or a harpoon-shaft
made of a single piece of wood was well off indeed. There were also
many women who had no needle, and had to do all their sewing with the
aid of a bone awl. They first made a hole in the garment with this, and
then drew the thread through. For thread they used the sinews of the
reindeer and narwhal.
Conditions are now different among these people. Instead of lacking
every accessory and appliance of civilization, every man and boy owns
his canoe; there is an ample supply of cutlery, knives, hatchets,
saws, cooking-utensils, and needles. All the men have their own
repeating-rifles and breech-loading shot-guns and plenty of ammunition,
and every hunter has wood for his sledge, his lance, his harpoon, and
his seal spear. As a result of owning better weapons, the condition of
the whole tribe has improved. The efficiency of the hunters is double
what it used to be, thus insuring a more abundant food-supply and
better clothing. Warmly clad and well fed, they can meet more easily
with hardships which are their daily lot.
[Illustration: DECK SCENE ON THE “ROOSEVELT” (NOT A PINK TEA)]
[Illustration: SOME OF MY HUNTERS]
I have a sincere interest in and affection for these children of
the North, and have tried to help and instruct them to cope more
effectively with their inhospitable surroundings and to avoid weakening
their confidence in themselves and their content with their lot in
life. How to care for themselves, how to treat simple diseases,
wounds, and other accidents, are some of the fundamentals which I
have attempted to instil in their minds. In exchange for dogs, skins,
or other supplies necessary for my work, or as rewards for service
rendered, I have always given them the very best articles and material
which could be bought.
Gustav Olsen, a Danish missionary at North Star Bay, Northern
Greenland, in his report to the State Department of Denmark in 1910
made the following statement in regard to the improved conditions of
the Eskimos:
The Eskimos here, both his companions and others, have a large
number of articles of utility of various kinds, which they have
obtained from Peary, so that they, in regard to arms, tools, etc.,
are better provided than their countrymen in the southern part of
the country.
The Eskimos have always been quick to grasp the objects of my
expeditions and in the later ones eager to concentrate all their energy
upon the task of achieving these ends. As they have come into contact
with my parties they have adapted themselves easily and readily to the
use of various tools. To be able to depend on the natives to do the
work of a white man with the tools of a white man means much to an
explorer anxious to avoid taking north a party which would be so large
as to be unwieldy.
An arctic traveler in winter-time is often obliged to sleep in an
Eskimo igloo, an experience which is not soon forgotten. These igloos
are made of stones and earth, and are all built on the same general
plan, though an Eskimo can easily tell by the workmanship just who made
each one.
Some of the igloos are generations old. Usually existing igloos are
used, occasionally new ones are built. Sometimes this is done because
an Eskimo, usually a good hunter, wishes to get away from his fellows
in order not to help support less energetic ones, and so builds his
igloo in a previously unoccupied locality; sometimes because an
unusual number of families selects the neighborhood of an expedition’s
headquarters for a winter’s residence. When this happens, the work
is usually done leisurely in September, while the family is still
occupying the summer tent. Then when really cold weather sets in the
family moves into the new house and strikes its tent.
A month is ample time to erect a winter home for an Eskimo family. A
hole is first dug in the ground to form the floor of the house. Around
this walls of stones, filled in with bits of moss, are built. The roof
is composed of long flat stones placed across the top of the walls
and covered with earth, the whole structure finally being banked with
snow. The roof is of the cantilever style, the stones being weighted
and counter-weighted at the outer edges. When finished, the house is
ten or twelve feet long, eight or ten feet wide, and usually six feet
high. A small window space is inserted in front, and covered with the
thin intestinal membrane of the seal. A hole in the floor leading into
a tunnel anywhere from ten to twenty-five feet long forms the entrance.
A raised platform at one end of an igloo serves as a bed for the entire
family. Sometimes the earth’s surface forms the platform, and the floor
space in front of it is made by digging out the earth for a depth of
a foot and a half. Sometimes long, flat stones, supported by stones,
are used; but more often than not one finds a platform of lumber in
those built since the advent of lumber in this land. Sledge-loads of
grass are brought in and placed on the platform, and with sealskins and
the skin of the deer or bear they have a good mattress. For covering,
deerskins are used.
A soapstone lamp on a large stone in front of the platform, where it
can be tended by the woman at night, burns day and night, warming the
igloo so that little clothing is needed, and also serving as a stove
for cooking. For fuel, for light, heat, and cooking, small pieces of
blubber are cut, and laid in the shallow lamp close to a long wick of
pulverized moss. The burning moss, trying out the oil of the blubber,
gives a remarkably hot flame. Formerly they used flint and steel from
a vein of pyrite for ignition, and pieces of soapstone, of which there
are a few veins in their country, were used for lamps and pots. They
now are supplied with matches and lamps and cooking-utensils of metal.
While a night spent in one of these ill-smelling homes with a family
of Eskimos is not exactly pleasant, a man engaged in polar work cannot
be too particular, and warmth, supper, and sleep even amid such
surroundings are welcome to a tired, cold and hungry traveler at the
end of a long march.
In the spring these houses become damp and unfit for habitation. The
roofs are removed to dry the interior, and the family takes up its
residence in a _tupik_, or tent of skin, from June to September. Tents
are made of ten or twelve sealskins sewed together. This large piece
is stretched on poles, with the hair inside, and is high in front and
slopes toward the back, the edges being weighted down with stones. The
floor of earth varies according to the size of the family from six
to eight feet in width and from eight to ten feet in length.
[Illustration: ESKIMO WOMAN, FULL SUMMER COSTUME]
[Illustration: ESKIMO MAN, SUMMER COSTUME]
One of the most valuable things we have learned from the Eskimos is
the building of snow houses, a necessity when a party is in the field
during the winter months. A snow igloo can be built by four good men
in about an hour. First blocks of snow are cut out with strong, stiff
saw-knives about a foot and a half long, with saw-teeth on one side and
a smooth cutting-edge on the other. The blocks for the bottom layer
are sometimes two or three feet long by two feet high,--sometimes
smaller,--while those for each succeeding layer are made smaller and
less heavy. If the snow is hard, the blocks need to be only six or
eight inches thick; but when the snow is soft, they must be thicker in
order to hold their shape. Each block is placed on a curve to make an
ovoid when all are put together. For a party of three men the interior
of an igloo should be about eight by five feet; for five men these
measurements should be increased to ten by eight feet to allow for a
wider bed platform.
If possible a sloping snow-bank is selected for the site of the house,
and when enough snow blocks have been cut out, an Eskimo takes his
place here, and as the rest bring up the blocks, setting them on edge
end to end in an ovoid about him, he fits and joints them with a snow
knife.
The second row is placed on the first with a slight inward slope, each
block being held in position by the one on either side. On this another
layer of blocks is set; and so on, each slanting inward a little more
than the tier below it, until at last there is an opening at the top
just large enough to take one block.
The Eskimo in the igloo shapes a block, pushes it through the opening
endwise, reaches out, turns it over, and lowers it into its place,
afterward chipping it off with his knife until it fits perfectly tight.
At one side of the igloo, at the bottom, an aperture, large enough
to permit a man to crawl through, is cut. At the farther end of the
igloo the slope is leveled off for a bed platform, and a space in
front of it is dug out for standing room and cooking-utensils. All the
superfluous snow is then thrown out the door, and the cooking-outfit
and sleeping-gear are brought inside. When the party turns in for the
night, the entrance is closed by a large cake of snow.
It is doubtful if the North Pole would ever have been discovered with
our present means and facilities but for the help of the faithful
Eskimos, and it is an absolute certainty that it would still be
undiscovered but for the Eskimo dog to furnish traction power for
our sledges, thus enabling us to carry supplies where nothing else
could carry them. All kinds of methods and devices such as balloons,
motor-cars, ponies, trained polar bears, reindeer, etc., have been
suggested in connection with the attainment of the pole, but all are
unsuitable.
These Whale Sound Eskimos could be of great value in antarctic
work, but there are probably not more than four men living who have
experience to use them.
The whole animus of the polar regions is against machinery, and those
regions are the last places in the world in which to try out or develop
an untried device. Even devices which work satisfactorily in temperate
regions are more than likely to fall down when called upon to perform
under the handicap of polar conditions.
Sooner or later--and usually sooner--any machine will fall down in
polar work, and when it does so it is simply a mass of old junk which
neither men nor dogs can eat, and which cannot even be burned to cook a
pot of tea.
The use of ponies, for which the British have shown a great
predilection in antarctic work, is not as efficient or simple as the
use of dogs.
Assume that a pony is equivalent in tractive force and weight to a team
of ten Eskimo dogs, which is approximately correct. Then as between
two expeditions having an equal amount of tractive force and equal
weight of motors, one in the form of ponies and the other in the shape
of dogs, the former will have ten motors and the other one hundred,
and the motors of the former will each weigh ten times as much as the
motors of the latter. Every motor that one expedition loses means a
loss of ten per cent of its tractive force, while every motor that the
other loses means only one per cent loss.
In crossing thin sea ice the concentrated weight of a pony will cause
him to break through with almost certainty of loss, while on the
same ice the dispersed weight of ten dogs will enable them to cross
in complete safety. On the Antarctic Barrier and the great interior
snow-cap, in crossing the snow covering of the deadly masked crevasses,
a pony will break through and be lost when a team of ten dogs will
cross and never know the crevasse existed.
Dogs require no assistance during the march and no care or shelter at
the camps, and when it comes to the matter of food, then everything
is in favor of the dogs. With dogs as motors, the food for the men
and fuel for the motors are the same--pemmican. With ponies it is a
different and a bulkier article. When a pony dies, or is no longer
needed as a result of the reduced loads, he can be eaten by the men
of the party, but is not available as fuel for the other ponies. When
a dog is no longer needed, he can be eaten by the party or used for
fuel for the other motors, and in this way not an ounce of material is
wasted.
With two kinds of food, pemmican and dog meat, at his command, both
equally available for dog or man, the leader of an expedition,
watching his party with the same care that an engineer watches a
running motor, can adjust his food-supply to meet varying conditions
and without wastage. He can put his party on reduced rations and keep
up the number of his dogs to increase the speed and take all work
except that of walking from his men, or he can feed the dogs to each
other, and so conserve the amount of pemmican available for the men
alone in the latter part of the journey. In this way every ounce of
food in the party, whether in tins or “on the hoof,” is utilized, and
can be used at the time and in the way that will be most effective. I
could dilate at very considerable length on details of this method,
but it seems as if its simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility must be
self-evident to every reader. A leader who has once tried this method
will never handicap himself with any other. With apologies for my
assurance in the matter, I may say it is absolutely the _only_ method.
The whole difference between Amundsen’s dash to the South Pole--a
picnic as he characterized it, and actually that relatively as
antarctic trips go--and Scott’s heroic struggle and tragic finish may
be expressed in four letters, _dogs_.
This is said not in a spirit of criticism, but of sorrowful fact.
Amundsen and his men, when they made camp at the end of each march,
were tired in every bone, as is every member of every serious polar
sledge-party; for handling a sledge is like handling a breaking-up plow
in new land. But the dogs had done the major part of the work, and the
men still had a reserve of physical and nerve force left. When Scott’s
ponies failed him, he and his men dragged their hearts out pulling the
sledges, and when they made camp at the end of a march they were all
in. When finally, within eleven miles of their depot of supplies, the
blizzard caught them at the physical dead center, there was not an
ounce of reserve force left in the entire party to permit reaching the
depot. And so they died. Ah, the pity of it!
When dogs as tractive force are compared with men, then the results are
startling, as the following instances will show.
The winter quarters of the _Alert_ of the British Arctic Expedition of
1875–76, and of the _Roosevelt_ in the two expeditions of 1905–06 and
1908–09 were essentially the same, Cape Sheridan on the north shore
of Grant Land. Northwest along the coast were Capes Joseph Henry,
Hecla, and Columbia. The British parties, using man power for dragging
sledges, were five and more days going to Cape Henry in various trips.
My parties, using dogs, went regularly to Cape Hecla beyond Cape Henry
in two marches, and returned in one.
Aldrich, in one of the principal spring sledge-journeys of the
expedition, was twenty-seven days to Cape Columbia. My parties, with
loaded sledges, made it regularly in four marches, returning in two.
Bartlett, on one occasion in the autumn work, came back the entire
distance in one march. My North Pole party, after reaching land and
resting and feeding men and dogs for two days at Cape Columbia, made
the journey to Sheridan in two marches.
Even when compared with the journey of Lockwood and Brainerd from
Conger to Lockwood Island, using southern Greenland dogs and driver,
the journey of MacMillan and Borup along the same coast from Cape
Sheridan to Cape Morris Jesup is instructive. Lockwood and Brainerd
were twenty-five marches from Conger to Lockwood Island and sixteen
marches on the return.
MacMillan and Borup went from Cape Sheridan (nearly the same distance
as Conger) to Cape Jesup forty miles beyond Lockwood Island, in much
less time and on the return covered the distance in eight marches
averaging thirty-four miles per march.
In 1911 I was in London with Scott for two weeks before his expedition
started for the South Pole, was on his ship, the _Terra Nova_, the day
she steamed out of the London docks, and I talked dogs and dogs with
him, but without results. Possibly it was too late for him to make any
change. I have repeatedly talked dogs to Shackleton, and before his
last expedition urged upon him the desirability of dogs, dogs, and yet
more dogs.
I was met by the statement that dogs could not be driven in the driving
snow that sweeps along the surface of the antarctic ice-cap. But for
my experience in my earlier expeditions across the Greenland ice-cap,
where identical conditions are encountered, I might have accepted this.
In my Greenland work members of my parties drove their dogs day after
day in a low, blinding drift of snow sweeping along the surface of the
ice-cap with the steadiness of a stream of water.
I was interested very recently to hear Shackleton in San Francisco, in
the first public lecture given after his return from his last antarctic
expedition, express unreservedly his conversion to a belief in dogs.
As a matter of fact, the Eskimo dog is absolutely the only motor for
polar work, and will remain so until superseded by the aëroplane.
These sturdy, magnificent dogs can do a greater amount of work on less
food than any other animal. They eat meat and meat only, and for water
they eat snow. Even a month-old puppy is hardy enough to stand the
coldest weather, and it is not necessary to house them at any season of
the year. In appearance as well as in usefulness they are remarkable
creatures. The males weigh on an average from eighty to one hundred
pounds, the females of course being rather smaller. These dogs, said
by some scientists to be descendants of the arctic wolf, are of one
breed only, but are found in a variety of markings and colors, gray,
black, yellow, brown, and mottled. The pure blooded type dogs are
marked like the arctic white wolf. In my opinion there is no handsomer
dog to be found than one of these Eskimo dogs, with its pointed muzzle,
sharp-pointed ears, and wide-set eyes, shaggy coat, and bushy tail, and
as a rule they are obedient and affectionate as any dog.
[Illustration: ESKIMO KING DOG]
In purchasing dogs at Cape York I have always secured enough to allow
for the loss of sixty per cent. of them by accident or sickness. It is
impossible to count on the length of an Eskimo dog’s life. They will
go through the severest hardships, work hard on almost nothing to eat,
and stand exposure to the worst storms, and then with plenty to eat,
nothing to do, will suddenly die or be taken with _piblokto_, a malady
which has threatened at times to completely cripple my expeditions and
to wipe out one of the most valuable resources of the Eskimos, and
for which there is no known remedy. A victim of this dread disorder
refuses all nourishment and howls and snaps, biting any other dog it
comes in contact with, and often dies of convulsions the same day it is
attacked.