THE WINTER MASTERS OF THE LABRADOR.
By the dogs of Labrador, I do not mean the Labrador dogs so well known to
sportsmen, and owned by a few favoured people in Great Britain.
So far _as I know_, not a single representative of this breed exists
to-day in Labrador, nor was I able to trace any reasonable tradition
concerning their origin there. The only dogs to be found on the coast are
the wolf-like huskies, and these have so marked a place in the national
life that I must devote a chapter to them.
The Labrador possesses a vast and most intricate coast line, and is over
500,000 square miles in extent, yet the Eskimo or husky dog is for over
half the year the master of the inhabited part of the peninsula. He is a
wonderful animal, of enormous value as a means of communication between
the settlements, which, without him, would be isolated for the greater
part of the year.
The husky has been both advertised and extolled in recent fiction. Some
of the novels which have been written round him are remarkable on many
counts; artistic in treatment and accurate in detail, they appeal very
strongly to the imagination. But the obvious necessity of attracting
sympathy to the central figure has coloured the portrait. Not many, if
any, huskies compel sympathy, or need it. The villainous dog, and the
bullying dog, are far more true to the type than the hero dog. There may
be a few of the latter, but men with a life-long knowledge of huskies
agree that, however gentle and amenable occasional dogs may appear, they
are never really to be relied on, as they seem incapable of losing the
innate savagery and treachery which comes to them through their wolf
ancestry.
A census of the dogs has never, and probably never will be, taken in
Labrador, but the numbers can hardly be computed at less than 5,000 on
the Eastern Coast alone. Every settler and every Eskimo has his team more
or less numerous—a good team ranges from 9 to 12 dogs—these, with their
due proportion of pups, half-grown dogs and so forth, amount to a large
total. So that it is possible in winter to travel from Fort Chimo, in
Ungava Bay, and following the coast of Labrador, to reach Battle Harbour
by stages, picking up a new team and driver every 30 or 50 miles. It
may be said that the worldly position of a settler can, up to a certain
point, be gauged by the number and condition of his dogs.
Probably the reason why the more well-to-do do not greatly increase their
packs is due to the difficulty of finding food for the animals in summer,
when the husky dogs do not work, and are consequently, by the Eskimo at
any rate, not much regarded. Indeed, at that season, many of the poorer
people leave their dogs to find their own subsistence as best they may.
The result of this policy is, that the dogs raid the trout nets at low
water and steal all they find, often damaging the nets badly. When the
caplin visit the coast they catch them on the tide-edge; at other times
they range far and wide inland. The writer has seen them hunting deep in
the interior.
[Illustration: The Labrador “Sinbad.”
No specimen of these magnificent dogs now exists in Northern Labrador.]
Still, game is scarce, and it would be idle to deny that in summer the
lot of the husky is a hard one. Few seals are killed in the warm months,
and the most the average dog can expect is, that his master may throw him
some fish-offal, sculpin, or, as the Eskimo call them, _kanayuk_, and
rock cod, these last not being accounted man-food in the fishing season.
Even in Nain, where boats are continually coming and going to and from
the fishing grounds and the dogs consequently pick up a certain amount
of food, an instance occurred this year showing the extraordinary summer
hunger of the dogs. A large sleeper shark was caught by its tail in one
of the trout nets, killed, and hauled on the beach. In an instant about a
hundred huskies—all the Nain dogs which were not away with their owners
at the fishing stations—had galloped down and sat round with streaming
jaws, while a settler and a young Eskimo carefully took out the shark’s
liver, which consists of two long light yellow lobes, and yields oil of
a good quality. When the men left the carcass the dogs gathered closer
to the shark in great excitement, but, with the exception of a couple
of young puppies that licked up the blood, they sniffed at it gingerly,
and most of them went off without attempting to eat it. As a matter
of fact the dogs, though they appear to relish the hard spines of the
sculpin, will only eat shark’s flesh when driven desperate by hunger.
In this case, as soon as the big and better-fed dogs lost interest, the
off-scourings belonging to the poorer Eskimo came down, and by afternoon,
after much howling, bickering, and rending, nothing was left of the
carcass but the tail.
It is not too much to say that during the whole summer the majority of
the dogs are hungry and in a sense outcast. They drowse in the hot sun
through the July and August days, haunted and tortured by mosquitoes
and flies of various kinds; when not away hunting, they hang about the
wharves and sight the incoming boats even before their masters. The
advent of such is the signal for a general assembly; the bigger huskies
walk gravely and delicately, as their manner is, to the landing steps,
and the gaunt, rough, and often frowsy individuals, hustle together
behind, in the hope, usually unfulfilled, that the incoming boat may
carry something unfit for human consumption, but welcome as dog-provender.
This trick of meeting boats is an awkward one for the stranger who,
making some lonely landing after dark, finds himself confronted by some
score of huskies, whose neutrality is never quite to be depended upon.
The settlers usually take their teams to their summer fishing, as do many
of the Eskimo, and it is no unusual thing to see a boatload returning for
a day or two to the settlement for stores, bringing their dogs with them.
Huskies at a fishing camp are generally well-fed, and consequently look
sleek, clean, and handsome.
Such then is the existence of the husky in summer; but when the winter
snow falls he enters into his kingdom. Then, apart from the snow
shoe, the _komatik_, or dog-sledge, is the only means of travel and
communication. Then he is fed and looked after and rendered fit to fill
his niche in the economy of the Labrador. And it must be put to his
credit that the Eskimo dog, whatever his faults, loves his work. When
the _komatik_ is first drawn from its summer resting place, the huskies
bark and leap, half beside themselves with joy. They will toil and die
in their traces. From Nain, the settlers often drive out thirty miles
through the vast barrier of islands, to the _sina_, the ice-edge of the
open sea, to fish or catch seals for the day, returning the same night.
Nor is this distance considered any undue strain upon the team.
There are regular _komatik_ routes leading from the coast inland all up
the Labrador, which are used by the hunting parties; others lead from
bay to bay. The annual winter mail, which reaches Nain about Christmas,
sometimes follows these, but much of this great north road leads over
the sea-ice, which presents a better surface for travelling. On a clear,
still winter’s day, no scene more eloquent of the north can be imagined,
than the dark moving blots and the humped sledgeload behind them, which,
as they approach over the white world, resolve themselves into eight
huskies full of the joy of life, and behind them the wind-blackened face
and sleepy eyes of the Eskimo driver, who, with his short handled whip,
lashed with thirty feet of hide, can, not only touch any dog he pleases,
but can flick a fly, drive in a nail, or kill a willow-grouse with a turn
of his wrist.
As to distances which husky teams travel, they can continuously draw
a light load each day for forty or fifty miles for a week on end. The
driver controls the dogs by voice, backed by fear of his whip. If they
should break away, as they do sometimes on the scent of game, he is
likely to have an awkward time of it. As this is the case, it can readily
be imagined how much depends on the character of the leader of the team.
A good and steady leader is of immense value. He must start at the cry
of “Huit!” stop when his driver shouts “Ah!” turn to the right at “Ra,
ra, ra!” and to the left at “Auk, auk, auk!” Added to all this is the
qualification on which fiction has laid so much stress, that the leader,
when a male, must be able to lord it over his team, fight any member of
it to a finish, and keep order generally.
Curiously enough, in every team besides a leader there is also a
scapegoat. This unhappy animal—often an ex-leader, who at the fangs of a
younger, lustier brute has learned the bitter lesson of life that “youth
will be served”—is set upon by his team-mates at all times and seasons.
So terribly are such dogs punished that they often have to be destroyed.
The record journey of which I have knowledge in north central Labrador
was that made by the Rev. Bishop Martin from Nain to Okak on a matter
of urgency. Starting from Nain at seven in the morning with the team of
Mission dogs driven by an Eskimo, he reached Okak the same night, having
covered by the route he took something over 100 miles. Mr. Kristian
Schmitt of the Mission has also made several fine journeys.
When women are travelling, a strong oblong box of wood is lashed on the
_komatik_, and over this a frame covered with sail cloth can be placed at
night or in bad weather. But an annoying and somewhat dangerous incident
is occasionally experienced by the occupants of the “women’s box,” and
this is when the team sight or scent a deer or a fox. If not immediately
and cleverly headed off, the dogs stampede at once in pursuit, and the
unlucky women and children are bumped along mercilessly or overthrown.
Sometimes the dogs break their traces and disappear for hours or for
days. Should such a happening occur when the _komatik_ is being driven
through a wooded district, the chances of a mishap are much increased,
as the dogs with their long traces running on different sides of the
trees, are certain to bring the sledge in contact with one of them, a
result more than likely to end in a dangerous or even fatal accident.
Indeed, thick wood tests the good qualities of a driver, and the whip who
can “hold ’em and hit ’em” in fairly thick timber has no further height
of skill to climb.
The pace of the team is of course regulated by the smoothness of the
surface, and good travelling is more commonly to be met with on the
sea-ice or the high barrens. When in spring the Eskimo pass away inland
on their annual deer-hunt, long distances are covered each day. The
Nain Eskimo make their first camp at Poungassé, fifty miles from the
settlement. Here it is necessary to haul dogs, sledges, and outfit up a
steep rift to the higher level of the interior. After that there is good
going over the snow for a great distance to the south-west. As far as I
could gather from talking with the hunters, they have in some years when
unable to find the deer, slept five or six times before turning back.
This would take them some 200 miles in a south-westerly direction, and it
was doubtless upon such a journey that they saw the “great water, greater
than any with which we Eskimo are acquainted,” and which was possibly
Lake Michimakats or Michikamau.
In past days the Eskimo on their caribou-hunts used to push forward
looking for the deer until the dog-food was exhausted; when that came to
an end and they had so far failed to fall in with the herds, they ate
the dogs and afterwards starved to death if they still could not kill
game. This year-to-year history of the annual hunt, with its persistent
tragedies, now only lives in tradition. The east coast hunting parties
of recent times run little risk, as when the dog-food is half done they
turn home again. It is no longer necessary to gamble with their lives
in the finding of the deer, upon which formerly much of their winter
provision depended, for now they have the Moravian Missions to apply to,
and they know very well that they will not be allowed to starve.
The food most prized for the dogs, and that on which they appear to
work best, is seal meat. Caplin, the small fish which is the favourite
food of the cod, and which appears in vast shoals off the coast in most
seasons, comes next. Whale meat is also used, but when none of these can
be obtained a coarse paste of oatmeal is carried.
Accidents while travelling on _komatik_ occasionally occur. A year or two
ago, late in the evening, a settler drove over a cliff and was dashed to
pieces on the ice below. Interspersed with such tragedies are wonderful
escapes such as come to pass in all countries where the snow drifts, for
a deep drift makes soft falling. For the most part, however, the huskies
are not to be forced to advance over bad or unsafe footing, and many a
driver owes his life to their instinct.
The price of a full-grown sledge-dog is from two dollars upwards, and as
the spring always sees a large increase in their numbers, a puppy’s price
at that time of year is often nominal in the settlements, though in the
outlying bays the demand may exceed the supply with the usual results.
Even dead puppies are of value, for their soft fur is used for edging
slippers.
The litters run to seven or eight in number as a rule, and interbreeding
with the wild wolves is by no means unknown. The result of the cross
is not markedly more savage than the pure-bred husky, which, after
all, is practically a domesticated wolf. The Eskimo prize a black dog
above any other, and black puppies are never killed. The reason is
truly characteristic of this essentially utilitarian race, the skin of
a black dog whenever he dies is in some demand among the Eskimo dandies
for trimming the pointed hoods of the blanket or sealskin dickies or
_attacheks_.
The early life of a puppy is generally a bitter experience. The chances
are about one in ten that he will be eaten by some big and hungry husky,
and even when this danger is over, and until he attains to something of
the strength of maturity, he will be driven from his food or comfortable
lying-place by full-grown dogs. It is a case of survival of the fittest,
and if a dog be knocked down in a struggle for food or in a fight, the
other dogs in the pack at once spring upon him and only by human agency
can he be saved from the stomachs of his friends. The human agency
usually takes the form of an Eskimo woman or boy, who rushes down with
a pole or a volley of well-aimed stones in the attempt to scatter the
combatants. At any hour of the day or night the sounds of a dog-fight
will bring the inmates of a Labrador dwelling tumbling out of doors—to
hesitate but for a matter of seconds may mean the death of a valuable dog.
It is practically impossible to keep a domestic animal of any kind on the
Labrador on account of the predatory husky. There are, it is true, a few
horses at Hamilton Inlet which so far have escaped, but further north
they would probably have been killed. Attempts have been made to keep
sheep and goats in some of the Moravian settlements, but they were penned
inside high palisades. The few fowls on the coast, however carefully
guarded, suffer a constant diminution in numbers. But at Makkovik a
cat of remarkable character has lived for ten years, “in the midst of
alarms,” and daily, almost hourly, owes her survival to the agility with
which she takes to the spruce trees that surround the station.
The huskies show marvellous ingenuity and perform no less marvellous
feats in order to kill. At Nain they leaped a stockade seven feet high
to get at a tame deer, and when leaping is made impossible to them, they
often gnaw their way through wooden walls. They are very cunning, as for
example a dog, finding a _cache_ of meat raised on a scaffold out of
reach of leap, and supported by poles thinner than ordinary, chewed away
their bases and so secured the meat. The pack also are always aware when
a house is empty at the stations, and not unseldom have made their way
in during church-time. Once inside, they wreck everything, tearing even
the carpets or rugs to pieces, and I should be sorry if they found a baby
there; but Labrador babies begin regular church attendance at very tender
ages.
Puppies that are played with and handled by the children always turn out
better dogs, but no matter how long or carefully a husky is trained, he
never becomes trustworthy, as, after years of apparent gentleness, he may
break out into savagery. Mr. Payne, recently of the Hopedale Moravian
settlement, has, I think, gone furthest in the experiment of reclamation.
He has taught a pure-bred husky to trust, beg, and perform other tricks,
yet this dog, given temptation, will always go the way of her kind. There
would appear to be some quality in the husky that defies all efforts to
bring him anywhere near the standard of faithfulness which we associate
with the friend of man. It cannot be doubted that a few masters are
brutal in the use of the whip, but as a rule, and in fact almost in
every case, the owners of dogs treat them wisely and justly. On the
lowest ground it is policy to do so, for the obedience of teams is built
upon a clear and strictly enforced justice, a scheme of well-understood
punishment and reward.
The husky is then, in the winter, master of Labrador. As more fortunate
lands depend upon railways, so the northern people depend upon him;
without his aid life could not at present continue. Over leagues of snow
and ice he hauls in all man’s allies against the cold to his doors;
seals from the _sina_, the ice-edge, fuel from the woods perhaps fifty
miles away, the carcases of deer from the interior. Without him much
of this provision would have to be foregone and many would starve. Add
to this that he is extraordinarily healthy and enduring, sleeping out
in all weathers, from soaking wet to Arctic cold, that he is perfectly
sure-footed, and that he obviously rejoices in his toil in the traces,
taking his long days cheerfully, even when at a pinch he travels seventy
miles between rest and rest. He is a good servant if not much of a
companion to his master.
But now to turn to the darker side of the picture, which will explain
why a man sometimes feels the desire stir in him to go out and destroy
every husky he can lay hands on. At the opening of this chapter I
dwelt on the hopeless treachery of the breed. He is as treacherous as
a leopard or a tiger, small germ of the loyal dog-nature appears to
exist in him, training and gentling, however prolonged, do not affect
the untrustworthiness that is the bed-rock of his nature, and which he
derives from his wolf-blood. This fault in conjunction with the great
hunger he often suffers, has led him to commit crimes which it is just
possible may yet bring about his extinction by club and bullet over all
Labrador.
The most terrible count against the dog packs is the fact that human life
has been taken by them when emboldened by the chance fall or weakness of
their victim the huskies have been tempted to attack. I will give such
instances as came directly under the knowledge of the missionaries of
Hopedale and Nain.
An Eskimo woman at Hopedale some few years ago took her baby in a
perambulator—a box on wheels—and left it at the door of a friend’s house
while she went in to chat for a few moments. When she came back she found
the infant hanging out of the box, mauled about the head and upper part
of the body by the dogs. She snatched up the poor little creature in her
arms and ran to the Mission House (as all the Eskimo do in the moment
of trouble), but the infant was, of course, quite dead. They suppose
the child hung its arm over the side of its cart and the dogs could not
resist the temptation of a meal.
Another instance. Three children—a boy and two girls—were berry-picking
in the woods close to Nain, when some dogs came round them. One of
them, a girl of eight, became terrified, and began to scream. The boy
would have beaten off the dogs, for they are readily cowed by any show
of boldness, but the second girl held him and dragged him away. The
frightened child was pulled down, killed, and partly eaten. A little
white, wooden cross stands to-day on the spot where the remains were
found.
But now I will relate one of the most extraordinary and daunting stories
of which I have knowledge.
On an island in a bay some miles north of Hopedale—the second most
southerly mission station—there lived an old man. He was known to me
personally, for one day, in 1903, when travelling up Jack’s Brook, I
came upon him setting a bear-trap. I wrote of him at the time: “A white,
forked beard swept his breast, and as we came nearer, we saw he was clad
from head to foot in sealskins. On our return, when we mentioned meeting
him, we heard that having taken a bear in a trap earlier in the season,
the old man, finding himself without a gun, had gone steadily to work and
stoned the bear to death.”
Four winters ago, this old man—he was between seventy and eighty—started
from his home by _komatik_, or dog-sledge, to attend the Christmas
church festival at Hopedale. He was accompanied by his wife, whom he
had recently married, and by one of his grandchildren. The trail to
Hopedale—a trail only used at rare intervals by three families—leads over
a pass, and for this pass “Old Man Lane,” for such was the name he went
by, set out. He had not started very long before a tremendous snowstorm
swept down over the land and forced him to change his course. Some days
later another settler, who lived in the same Bay (Jack Lane’s), started
for Hopedale, and was surprised on arrival there to find that Old Man
Lane had not put in an appearance. Nor was his fate and that of those
with him discovered until the dogs of his team returned to his home on
the Island in the bay about a fortnight later. The brutes looked so sleek
and fat that the worst was at once suspected, and a couple were shot.
The fact that at a post-mortem examination, human hair was found in the
stomachs of these dogs proved their guilt, and the entire team was, of
course, destroyed. All that really occurred in the storm and darkness of
that December night must remain for ever uncertain, but from discoveries
made in the following spring, the probable course of events can be pieced
together with accuracy.
Overtaken by the driving snow the old man had wandered from the trail,
finally reaching a deserted cabin. Here he arranged for his wife and
grandchild to pass the night inside the palisade, while he himself, it
appeared, had gone out to lie among his dogs. Even at home it was nothing
unusual for him to do this, since he took a great pride in his team and
often slept among them, in spite of all remonstrance.
During the night he either was killed by his dogs, or, as is just
possible, died from exposure. At any rate, alive or dead, the dogs
devoured their master. Inside the palisade, their attitudes preserved
through months of snow and frost, his wife and grandchild were found, the
boy kneeling at the knees of the woman inside the box of the sledge.
At Savage Bay, in the summer of 1910, a boy of five was killed and partly
eaten just outside his father’s door by the huskies. This case I give on
the authority of Dr. Grenfell. I could, indeed, multiply instances—such
as the case of the attack on the H.B. Co.’s factor’s daughter, at
Cartwright—but the details are painful and no good purpose would be
served. It is, of course, true that such incidents are comparatively
rare, but every now and again one of these dreadful occurrences takes
place, though in five cases out of six the dogs are beaten off before
much harm is done. In no spot out-of-doors is a young child _absolutely_
safe. One of Bishop Martin’s sons, a boy of three, was attacked on the
very threshold of the Mission house. An Eskimo came to the rescue and
drove off the brutes, but the shock to the child’s nerves was such that
he never really recovered it, and he died a year later.
It is, however, not quite fair to lay all the blame for these disastrous
happenings upon the dogs alone; their masters must be apportioned their
full share of it, for it is only too true that the less prosperous and
reliable settlers and Eskimo allow their animals to become so emaciated
as to be a scandal—it is a sad sight to see the poor brutes with eyes
preternaturally bright, their bodies mere fur and bone, enduring all
the tortures of hunger for weeks on end. Indeed the huskies are sinned
against as well as sinning. On the other hand even those owners of teams
who feed their dogs well and adequately go in fear of them at certain
times. I vividly remember one night in 1903—I was new to the country
then—I was at the house of a settler, when it was discovered, about ten
o’clock at night, that the washing had been left out on the bushes.
Neither the settler nor his son seemed inclined to fetch it, so, because
I wanted a clean shirt for the morrow, I undertook to do so. As I walked
to the bushes, which were about 200 yards away, I was convoyed by the
whole pack. Their attitude was certainly inimical and I was glad to pick
up a branch by way of a weapon, and still more so when the washing and I
were once more safe in the cabin.
The chief reasons why the huskies are occasionally dangerous—as they
undoubtedly are—lies in the fact that, true to their wolf ancestry,
they attack in packs. Though not so large as a wolf, they are strongly
built and very powerful, and as they stand some 2½ feet or more at the
shoulder, and weigh from 80 to 100 lbs., a single husky would prove a
formidable antagonist easily capable of killing an unarmed man; but when
a pack combine to attack, literally a few seconds suffices to rip away
the life and to devour the body of the victim. Personally speaking, I
would far rather face any single living animal than I would a pack of
huskies, provided they really meant business.
And the huskies are ready to attack at any time, except when they are
tired. All they wait for is a leader, so that the danger lies in the
temperament and mood of the boldest or the most savage dog. Let him lead
and the rest will inevitably back him. An attack is generally opened by
the dog or dogs leaping and bounding playfully round. The moment they
begin this game, it is wise to go at them with a big stick or a stone,
for they will not face a determined attitude. But young children cannot
do this, and from time to time, as long as the husky continues to lord it
in Labrador, the settlements or the lonely bays will occasionally be the
scenes of these horrible events.
Some few years ago it appeared hardly possible that the husky could ever
be dispensed with and pass away from the Labrador. I remember in 1903,
after hearing a peculiarly harrowing account of an attack upon a little
girl, which had taken place that year, asking if there was no possible
substitute for the dogs. “Only us,” said the settler, conclusively.
But since then a presage of change has come. Dr. Grenfell, impelled
by the example of the U.S. Government in Alaska, purchased a herd of
reindeer from Norway. He brought over Lapp herdsmen to St. Anthony, on
the Newfoundland coast, and in due time he hopes to introduce them into
Labrador.
In the points of haulage and endurance of fatigue, it is extremely
improbable that the deer can ever equal the husky, but, on the other
hand, the deer can find food everywhere on the tundras and barrens, where
uncounted square miles of caribou moss flourishes, whereas provision for
a husky team means a very serious addition to the amount of weight to be
carried on the sledges. Also the deer give excellent milk and would form
a supply of fresh meat on a coast where tinned provisions of all kinds
make up the staple diet. How wholesome and welcome such a change would be
needs no argument.
It may be then that some day even the conservative Labrador will grasp
the possibilities of Dr. Grenfell’s scheme, which indeed goes much
further than I have here space to indicate, but before they can adopt it
or keep tame deer the dogs must change their habits or be exterminated.
The next few years will be a time of probation, and if the reindeer
realise expectations, the huskies may be in part superseded, and with the
diminution of their numbers and the better control of those which remain
there may pass from the land the shadow of a fear which to-day causes
many a father and mother to pray:
“Deliver my soul from the sword and my darling from the power
of the dog.”