IN DANGER AMONG THE ESKIMO
People get very much excited over the North Pole explorations. They
praise, too, the few men of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, who in
these days patrol the Arctic coast at the mouth of the Mackenzie River.
But how few know about the missionary heroes who have advanced into those
desolate regions, facing hardships and even death to bear the Gospel
message to the Eskimo living in those places. It was Mr. Bompas who first
went as a missionary to the Arctic coast at the mouth of the Mackenzie
River, and the story of his experiences and narrow escape from death is
one of the most thrilling in missionary annals.
On a journey to Fort Yukon he had met a number of Eskimo at Fort
McPherson, who requested him to go with them down to the coast. He could
not get these poor creatures out of his mind, so in the spring he went
back over the mountains for the purpose of visiting them. These natives,
with their strange, uncouth manners, strongly appealed to his noble
nature, and he expressed his feelings for such in the following beautiful
words:
“At the funeral of the great Duke of Wellington, it was considered to be
a mark of solemn respect that the obsequies should be attended by one
soldier from every part and regiment of the British army; and it is a
part of the Saviour’s glory that one jewel be gathered to His crown from
every tribe of the lost human race. It is an honour to seek to secure
for our Lord one such jewel from even the remotest tribe.”
Leaving Fort McPherson on April 18, 1870, Mr. Bompas started down the
river in company with two Eskimo, hauling a small sled with blankets and
provisions. On the way he received a message from the Chief of the Eskimo
telling him to go back, as the natives “were starving and quarrelling,
and one had just been stabbed and killed in a dispute about some
tobacco.” But this message had no effect upon the missionary; he was busy
in his Master’s service, and he knew that same Master would take care of
His servant, and undaunted, he pressed bravely forward.
For three days they continued to travel without any difficulty, camping
at night on the river-bank, and making a small fire of broken boughs. But
the glare of the spring sun was very severe, and Mr. Bompas was stricken
with snow-blindness. This affliction is one common in the North, and only
those who have themselves suffered on the trail can fully realize what it
means.
“As the sun rises higher,” wrote Mr. Bompas, “and has more power in the
months of March and April, to walk long over the snow in the sunlight
becomes distressing to the eyes from the dazzling brightness. This is
especially the case in traversing a wide lake or in descending a broad
river, where there are no near forests of dark pines to relieve the gaze,
but an unbroken expanse of snow.
“The effect of this is to produce, after a time, acute inflammation of
the eyes. These, in the end, may be so entirely closed as to involve a
temporary blindness, accompanied by much smarting pain.... The voyager
feels very helpless during the acute stage of snow-blindness, and, like
Elymas the sorcerer, or St. Paul himself, he ‘seeks some one to lead him
by the hand.’”
For three days in awful darkness he was led by the hand of the native
boy, making about twenty-five miles a day, till the first Eskimo camp
was reached. It was only a snow-house, and to enter it with closed eyes,
stumbling at every step, was a most disagreeable introduction.
A description of what a snow-house is like is given by the Rev. Mr.
Whittaker, who years afterwards lived among the Eskimo at Herschel Island.
“I remained,” he says, “at the village [Kitligagzooit] just two weeks,
and a most uncomfortable time it was, principally on account of the cold.
They are all in snow-houses now, and the temperature required to preserve
a snow-house will not conduce to a white man’s comfort. I suffered
constantly and almost unremittingly with cold hands and feet, and no
amount of clothing would keep them warm. My blood appeared to stagnate
and afford me no heat. The intense cold made me ravenously hungry, and
although deer meat was plentiful, I craved fat, and at length was tempted
to try some of the white whale that had lain in the ground since summer.
It was strong, even burning my throat, but after a little I ate it with
relish. It is eaten about half-frozen—raw, of course.
“In the house where I stayed were two Huskie families, seven of them and
myself all in one room about the size of an ordinary bedroom. There we
ate, drank, slept, and lived the daily round. The houses are just such as
you may see in any pictures of Arctic scenes. There is no fire in them
except the big seal-oil lamp, over which they do much of their cooking.”
And yet such sufferings were little considered by Mr. Bompas. “They are
delights,” he once said. “The first footprint on earth made by our risen
Saviour was the nail-mark of suffering, and for the spread of the Gospel
I, too, am prepared to suffer.”
After one day of rest in the snow-house, he recovered his sight, and
then, moving forward, reached another camp. His appearance at each place,
so he tells us, “excited a great deal of observation and curiosity, as
they had never had a European among them in the same way before.”
In this camp he was disturbed “by yelling and dancing” on the very spot
where he was lying. This was caused by an old woman “making medicine—that
is, conjuring in order to cure a man who was, or was thought to be,
sick.” Mr. Bompas, unable to stand the terrible confusion, tried to stop
them by saying that medicine-making was all a wicked lie, whereupon the
old woman threw herself upon the missionary, and in no gentle manner
vented upon him her wrath. After this he left the place and betook
himself to another camp, where he lay down and “enjoyed a good night’s
rest.” Next morning, seeing the man who was the cause of all the trouble,
Mr. Bompas found he was suffering from a sore head, for which he gave him
a “small piece of soap and a few grains of alum to rub it with.” When
he saw the man some time later, he was told that his conjuring was very
strong.
What a forlorn hope lay before this missionary in trying to uplift and
save such wild, uncouth creatures, who were ever around him! Yet there
were many things which appealed to him. He looked deeper than the mere
surface, and, studying them very carefully, saw there was much cause for
encouragement. He noticed how ingenious the Eskimo was in the formation
of implements “out of any old iron which he is able to obtain, such as
files, saws, etc., from which he will forge variously shaped knives,
gimlets, and other tools, with which he constructs his boats and canoes,
as well as arrows, bows, spears, fishing-hooks, nets and tackle, sledges,
and all other implements for the chase, as well as furniture for his
tent.”
Then he watched his skill in building the snow-house, which he could
“compare to nothing but the skill of the bee in making its honeycomb....
The snowy material is so beautiful that the work proceeds as if by magic.
The blocks of frozen snow are cut out of the mass with large knives, and
built into solid masonry, which freezes together as the work proceeds,
without the aid of mortar. Being arched over, a dome-shaped house is
formed, with a piece of clear ice for a window, and a hole, through which
you creep on all-fours, for a door or entrance. One-half of the interior
is raised about two feet, and strewn with deer-skins as beds and sofas,
on which the long nights are passed in sleep, for which an Eskimo seems
to have an insatiable capability and relish.” People who were so clever
and artistic, he well knew, must have a love for the beautiful, and were
capable of higher things.
He studied their religious instincts, and found they were very low. They
were addicted to lying, stealing, and even stabbing. “They practised
heathen dances, songs, and conjuring, and placed much dependence upon
spells and charms.” And yet, sifting all this, he found they believed in
two spirits: one “an evil, named Atti, which seems to symbolize cold and
death, and which they seek to exorcise or appease by their charms and
spells; the other, a dim idea of a good spirit connected with the sun, as
the source of warmth and life.” Their faint idea of heaven was that of
a “perpetual spring, and the name they give to ministers who bring them
tidings of the world above is ‘Children of the Sun.’” He also learned
that they possessed a tradition of the Creation, and of the descent of
mankind from a single pair.
Though he found them at times very treacherous, yet there was a spirit
of true hospitality still existing, which he felt could be fanned into
a flame, and which would work a great change. His own difficulty was
the language, and he maintained that the best hope would be to bring a
Christian Eskimo from Labrador, as the Moravian missionaries there and
in Greenland had mastered the language in the course of many years’
labour.
Though the language was a great obstacle, still Mr. Bompas determined
to do the best he could. He collected many Eskimo words, and, with his
remarkable linguistic ability, made fair progress in a short time. He
found they expressed great willingness to be taught, and he says:
“They have received the little instruction I have been able to give
them with great thankfulness. At the same time, their ignorance and
carelessness are so great that they seem quite unable at present to
apprehend the solemnities of religion. The chief idea they have in seeing
my books is to wish that they could be metamorphosed into tobacco, and,
indeed, at present smoking seems to be the sole object of their lives.”
He accompanied them on their various hunting and fishing journeys, and
lost no opportunity of studying them and winning their affection. He
stood by their side as they fished for hours through holes in the ice,
and, observing their great patience, he himself became strengthened in
the greater task of fishing for souls, and expresses the thought in the
following words:
“We may admire the patience of an Eskimo fishing for hours over the
blow-hole for a seal; and such should be the perseverance of a watcher
for souls. ‘Lord, we have toiled all night, and have taken nothing;
nevertheless, at Thy word I will let down the net.’”
During the cold weather Mr. Bompas slept with the Eskimo in their small,
crowded houses, and the inconvenience he suffered must have been great,
as the following words will show:
“The Eskimo sleep in their tents between their deer-skins, all together
in a row extending the whole breadth of the tent; and if there are more
than enough for one row, they commence a second at the foot of the bed,
with the head turned the other way. For myself, I always took care to
commence the second row, keeping to the extremity of the tent, and thus
generally rested without inconvenience, except, perhaps, a foot thrust
occasionally into my side. At the same time, it must be confessed that
the Eskimo are rather noisy, often talking and singing a great part of
the night, especially the boys; and if any extra visitors arrive, so that
the tent is overfull, it is not exactly agreeable.”
When the warmer weather arrived, Mr. Bompas began to camp by himself
outside, and found it much better. The days became so long that he
found it difficult to tell what time of the day or night it was, as he
“thought it most prudent” not to carry his watch with him. Seldom did the
missionary speak of his hardships; but, reading between the lines of the
few words he utters, one can see they were of no ordinary nature.
In a letter to Mrs. Loft, in England, Mr. Bompas gave a vivid description
of these Eskimo.
“It would be easy for you to realize,” he wrote, “and even experience,
the whole thing if so minded. First go and sleep a night in the first
gipsy camp you can find along some road-side, and that is precisely like
life with the Indians. From thence go to the nearest well-to-do farmer
and spend a night in his pig-sty (with the pigs, of course), and this
is exactly life with the Eskimo. As this comprises the whole thing in a
nutshell, I think I need give you no further description. The difficulty
you would have in crawling or wriggling into the sty through a hole only
large enough for a pig was exactly my case with the Eskimo houses. As
to the habits of your companions, the advantage would be probably on
the side of the pigs, and the safety of the position decidedly so. As
you will not believe in the truth of this little simile, how much less
would you believe if I gave you all particulars! So I prefer silence to
exposing myself to your incredulity; but if I had to visit them again, I
should liken it rather to taking lodgings in the den of a polar bear. The
first time, in God’s good providence, he did not show his claws.
“Harness yourself to a wheelbarrow or a garden-roller, and then, having
blindfolded yourself, you will be able to fancy me arriving, snow-blind
and hauling my sledge, at the Eskimo camp, which is a white beehive
about six feet across, with the way a little larger than that for the
bees.... As to one’s costume, you cannot manage that, except that a
blanket is always a good cloak for us; but take a large butcher’s knife
in your hand, and that of itself will make you an Eskimo without further
additions.
“If you will swallow a chimneyful of smoke, or take a few whiffs of
the fumes of charcoal, you will know something of the Eskimo’s mode of
intoxicating themselves with tobacco, and a tanyard will give you some
idea of the sweetness of their camps. Fat, raw bacon, you will find,
tastes much like whale blubber, and lamp oil, sweetened somewhat, might
pass for seal fat. Rats you will doubtless find equally good to eat at
home as here, though without the musk flavour; but you must get some raw
fish, a little rotten, to enjoy a good Eskimo dinner.
“Fold a large black horse’s tail on the top of your head, and another
on each side of your face, and you will adopt exactly the Arctic lady’s
head-gear; then thrust a knife through the centre of each cheek, and
leave the end of the knife-handle permanently in the hole, and you will
experience the agreeable comfort of the Arctic cheek ornament. After
this, get a dozen railway trucks tackled together, and load them with
large and small tow-boats, scaffold-poles, a marquee, three or four dead
oxen, the contents of a fishmonger’s stall and of a small rag-shop, and
then harness all your family, and draw the trucks on the rails from
Alford to Boston, with a few dogs to help, and thus you will have a very
close resemblance to an Eskimo family travelling in winter with their
effects over the frozen ice. As I have formed one of the haulers on such
an expedition, I speak from personal experience.”
Writing to his brother George, he says:
“Do you know that the Eskimo took me for a son of Cain, probably
Mahujael, for they said on my visit that in the first family in the world
two brothers quarrelled, and the one killed the other, and the murderer
had to wander away, and they concluded that the white men who now came to
meet them were probably sons of the murderer.”
Several years later, referring to these Eskimo, he wrote:
“Both the Rev. Mr. Canham and myself often showed the Eskimo the
_Illustrated London News_, when, on meeting with an elephant, they
would recognize it, apparently by its trunk, exclaiming ‘Kaleh!’ as an
exclamation of surprise. The interpreter, an Eskimo, who speaks English
well, told me that they knew the animal, because, though not now alive in
their country, they thought it was not long since it was so from finding
its body or skeleton. As elephant bodies are known to have been found on
the Siberian coasts, it is still less strange that they should be found
near the Mackenzie, for the current sets eastward from Behring’s Strait.
The bodies might, however, lie embedded in the ice for thousands of years
without decomposition, and may have been floated hither at the time of
the flood.”
Mr. Bompas gives an amusing account of the food he ate, but from the
description, how disagreeable it must have been! Bishop Reeve made a
visit in 1892 to a tribe of Eskimo, known as Huskies, eastward along the
shore of the Mackenzie River.
“The men were all out hunting whales,” he wrote, “but the women and
children soon came around and gazed at the strange white man. In the
evening the men came in. They had had a successful day’s hunt, and
hauled home many whales. The whales they catch here are white whales,
averaging from eight to fifteen feet in length, and very stout. These
they cut up into about six pieces. Then they skin these pieces, and put
the fat or blubber into bags, and hang up the meat to dry, first cutting
it into slices. This is the work of the women. The fins and tails seem to
be considered delicacies, and are eaten raw. Some of the fat and meat is
stowed away in caches for winter use. These caches are small holes in the
ground, about five feet deep, sometimes lined with logs, but generally
without any lining except the frost. The whale meat becomes very strong
after being in these a while in the summer, and then it is ready to eat.
One day, sitting in one of the tents, while the Huskies were having one
of their many meals, I was given a delicious piece of fin—at least, by
the way the natives were devouring it, I thought it must be delicious.
I cut off a very small piece and put it into my mouth. The Huskies were
watching to see how I would like it. I slipped the rest into my pocket,
and after a while slyly got that piece out of my mouth. I suppose they
thought I had eaten some, but I had not, and I nearly lost my dinner in
the bargain. The thought of that delicious whale-fin haunted me for days;
but then it was raw, and had not been pickled in a cache for several
days.”
For a time things went very well with Mr. Bompas, and he was allowed
to move from place to place and teach the simple truths of the Gospel
as far as he was able. But the cruel conjurers, or medicine-men, were
watching him with suspicious eyes. They did not like the man to be in
their midst with the new teaching, and they therefore determined to get
rid of him. Now the Eskimo have a great dread of evil spirits. So one day
the conjurers made the startling announcement that evil spirits were in
the camp, and that the white man was the cause of them. They determined,
therefore, to drive them out, and also to drive out the missionary from
their midst. Mr. Bompas was trying to sleep in one of the houses when the
medicine-men began to dance and conjure about him. Finding it impossible
to get any rest, Mr. Bompas went outside, and there rolled himself up in
his blanket. The conjurers followed him, and continued their diabolical
noise. “Only those,” says Bishop Stringer, “who have seen the Eskimo
conjuring dance can realize how wild and savage it is, and how desolate a
feeling it brings to one not accustomed to it.”
For a while they continued the noise, and several times they jumped upon
the missionary in order to enforce their meaning, but the Heavenly Father
was watching, and delivered His faithful servant. After a while the
medicine-men said they had accomplished their purpose, and would let the
white man live.
But Mr. Bompas did not put much dependence on these words, and knew that
at any time they might turn upon him and tear him to pieces. This they
attempted to do not long after. It happened, when the ice had gone out of
the Mackenzie River, the Eskimo began to move up-stream to trade with the
Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort McPherson, taking the missionary with them.
It was a voyage of 250 miles, and much ice was encountered. For days they
made slow progress, and laboured hard. Then they became angry with one
another, and, stirred by the jealous medicine-men, also cast threatening
glances upon the white man in their midst. They imagined that in some way
he was the cause of all their trouble, and angry glances were followed
by threatening gestures, and Mr. Bompas realized the situation was most
critical. One night, after a day of unusually hard work—when little
progress had been made—the natives became so hostile that Mr. Bompas
feared they would take his life ere morning. But, notwithstanding the
impending danger, the faithful servant committed himself to the Father’s
keeping, and, wearied out, soon fell asleep.
His great friend among the Eskimo was the old chief, Shipataitook by
name, who had at the first invited him to visit them, offered the
missionary the use of his camp, and entertained and fed him with the
greatest kindness and cordiality. He had taken such a fancy to the brave
young white man that he could not see him murdered without making an
effort to save him. He had heard the threatening words, and when the
plotters were about to fall upon their victim, he told them to wait,
as he had something to tell them before they proceeded farther. Then
he began a strange story which, falling upon the ears of the naturally
superstitious natives, had a great effect. He told them he had a
remarkable dream the night before. They had moved up the river, and were
almost at Fort McPherson; and as they approached they saw the banks lined
with the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men and Indians, all armed ready to shoot
them down in the boats if they did not have the white man with them. When
this story was told, all plotting ceased; and in the morning, when Mr.
Bompas awoke, he found no longer angry glances cast upon him, but the
natives were attentive in their care.
On June 14 the ice left them, and the river became clear, and without
more detention they continued on their way, “and arrived safely, by God’s
help,” says Mr. Bompas, “at Peel’s River Fort on June 18, about midnight.”
Here a most hearty welcome was given him by Mr. Andrew Flett, the officer
in charge of the Fur Company’s post, and of him Mr. Bompas wrote in the
following words:
“His influence over the Eskimo, as well as the Indians, has been very
beneficial, for the whole time of his residence among them—now nearly
ten years—and by consistent and honourable conduct, as well as by his
attention to the duties of religion, he has done much to assist the work
of the missionary. Of his personal kindness to myself I have had much
experience during the past twelve months.”
In this beautiful heart-felt testimony to the work and kindness of one
man we see how the missionary was cheered in his great labour by earnest
words of sympathy and an ever-open door of hospitality, where he could
rest from his great journeys. To Mrs. Flett also Mr. Bompas was greatly
indebted, for in the study of the Louchieux language she gave him much
material aid. Upon the lay members of the Church of Christ devolves
a noble work in cheering the hearts and upholding the hands of their
leaders in their strenuous battle against the powers of darkness.
Never again was Mr. Bompas able to visit that band of Eskimo along the
Mackenzie River, but he ever held them in mind, and often his heart went
out to them, and he declared that “there was nothing warmer than the
grasp of a Husky’s hand.”
His visit had not been in vain. He had lived among them, shared their
humble camps, and, though they could not understand him, nor fully
comprehend his message, yet they could understand his love for them, and
long years after they spoke of him in the highest terms.