Last summer I happened to notice an Eskimo woman striving to stop a dog
fight. There was nothing very unusual in the sight. Huskies, running
loose in a camp, keep up a constant warfare and invariably pile on the
top of any unlucky dog which has been pulled down by a stronger one.
What really attracted my attention was the way the woman undertook to
save the life of the under dog. Instead of screaming shrilly and using a
club of some sort to hit impartially at any head or back she could reach
in the writhing, snarling knot of fighting animals, she was hopping
around watching for a chance to grab a tail. Then, with a heave and a
twist of her body, she would drag one dog out of the scrimmage and fling
it over her shoulder, ten feet or so behind her. The unlucky animal
generally landed on his head or back, which seemed to surprise and scare
it far more than any kind of a blow.
Considering that a Husky weighs at least 75 pounds and that it took the
woman only a few minutes to put an end to that dog fight, I could not
help being duly impressed with the feat.
I pointed her out to our trader. Such was the way I met Gotehe, wife of
Enekatcha, on the bleak shores of Enendeia Lake.
“Four months ago she would not have had the strength to separate two
hard tacks,” was the man’s comment as she walked away. Scenting a story,
I waited.
It appears that Gotehe, last February, was travelling with her husband
somewhere north of where we were. One morning, when time came to break
camp, she plodded on alone to make the trail. Such is the custom.
Meanwhile, Enekatcha proceeded to ice the runners of the sleigh before
harnessing the dogs.
It was blowing hard and snowing. When the man had travelled an hour he
missed his wife’s tracks. Before he could find them again, a blizzard
came down. He wandered aimlessly all day, vainly searching. Night came.
The blizzard showed no signs of lifting. Enekatcha, believing that his
wife had turned south—her back to the gale—and made for our station
twenty miles away, went there. Nobody had seen her. The blizzard raged
for nine days. Three times, search parties went out and came back
without any news.
On the tenth day the weather cleared at dawn. At noon, Enekatcha found
Gotehe a few miles from where he had missed her trail. She was squatting
patiently behind the shelter of a rock, having “dug herself in” the
snow.
When she had left camp nine days ago she had nothing with her but a
pocket knife and a plug of tobacco. She had munched and swallowed the
latter while she had used her knife to cut strips off her deerskin boots
to chew. During that time she hadn’t had a fire. There was no wood to
burn even if she had had matches.
“She was pretty weak,” added the trader. “So weak that she couldn’t cut
in two the frozen fish which her husband handed her. The little hatchet
was too heavy for her to lift. But she wasn’t even frost bitten. She was
all right—just hungry. Three days at the post and she was off again with
Enekatcha as if nothing had happened.”
[Illustration: Goethe in the storm]