TRIBE OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY NATIVES BUSILY BEGIN PREPARATIONS FOR THE POLAR DASH—EXCITING HUNTS FOR THE UNICORN AND OTHER GAME FROM ANNOATOK TO CAPE YORK—EVERY ANIMAL CAUGHT BEARING UPON THE SUCCESS OF THE VENTURE—THE GREY-GREEN GLOOM OF TWILIGHT IN WHICH THE ESKIMO WOMEN COMMUNICATE WITH THE SOULS OF THE DEAD
VI
The Sunset of 1907
Winter, long-lasting, dark and dismal, approached. To me it was to be a season of feverish labor in which every hand at work and every hour employed counted in the problem of success. While the hands of the entire tribe would be busy, and while I should direct and help in the making of sleds, catching of game, preparing of meat, I knew that my mind would find continual excitement in dreams of my quest, in anticipating and solving its difficulties, in feeling the bounding pulse of the dash over the ice of the Polar sea, with dogs joyously barking, whips cracking the air, and the reappearing sun paving our pathway with liquid gold. In the labor of the long winter which I began to map out I knew I should find ceaseless zest, for the pursuit of every narwhal, every walrus, every fox I should regard with abated suspense, each one bearing upon my chances; in the employment of every pair of hands I should hang with an eager interest, the expediency and excellence of the work making for success or failure. From this time onward everything of my life, every native, every occurrence began to have some bearing upon the dominating task to which I had set myself.
With the advance of winter, storms of frightful ferocity began to arise. Inasmuch as we had stored meat and blubber in large quantities about our camp, it was not necessary at these times to venture out to dig up supplies from great depths of snow drift. During these periods hands were employed busily inside the igloos. Although a large quantity of animals and furs had been gathered by the hunters before our arrival, we now unexpectedly discovered that the supply was inadequate. According to my plans, a large party of picked natives would accompany me to land's end and somewhat beyond on the Polar sea when I started for my dash in the coming spring. As spring is the best hunting season, it was therefore imperative to secure sufficient advance provisions for the families of these men in addition to preparing requisites for my expedition. So the early days of the winter would have to be busily occupied by the men in a ceaseless hunt for game, and later, even when the darkness had fully fallen, the moonlight days and nights would thus have to be utilized also.
In the Polar cycle of the seasons there are peculiar conditions which apply to circumstances and movements. As the word, seasons, is ordinarily understood, there are but two, a winter season and a summer season—a winter season of nine months and a summer of three months.
But, for more convenient division of the yearly periods, it is best to retain the usual cycle of four seasons. Eskimos call the winter "ookiah," which also means year, and the summer "onsah." Days are "sleeps." The months are moons, and the periods are named in accord with the movements of various creatures of the chase.
In early September at Annoatok the sun dips considerably under the northern horizon. There is no night. At sunset and at sunrise storm clouds hide the bursts of color which are the glory of twilight, and the electric afterglow is generally lost in a dull gray.
The gloom of the coming winter night now thickens. The splendor of the summer day has gone. A day of six months and a night of six months is often ascribed to the Polar regions as a whole, but this is only true of a very small area about the Pole.
As we come south, the sun slips under the horizon for an ever-increasing part of each twenty-four hours. Preceding and following the night, as we come from the Pole, there is a period of day and night which lengthens with the descent of latitude.
It is this period which enables us to retain the names of the usual seasons—summer for the double days, fall for the period of the setting sun. This season begins when the sun first dips under the ice at midnight for a few moments. These moments increase rapidly, yet one hardly appreciates that the sun is departing until day and night are of equal length, for the night remains light, though not cheerful. Then the day rapidly shortens and darkens, and the sun sinks until at last there is but a mere glimmer of the glory of day. Winter is limited to the long night, and spring applies to the days of the rising sun, a period corresponding to the autumn days of the setting sun.
At Annoatok the midnight sun is first seen on April 23. It dips in the sea on August 19. It thus encircles the horizon, giving summer and continuous day for one hundred and eighteen days. It sets at midday on October 24, and is absent a period of prolonged night corresponding to the day, and it rises on February 19. The Arctic air, with its low temperature and its charge of frosted humidity, so distorts the sun's rays that when low it is frequently lifted one or two diameters; therefore, the exact day or hour for sunrise or sunset does not correspond to mathematical calculations. Then follow days of spring.
In the fall, when the harmonizing influence of the sun is withdrawn, there begins a battle of the elements which continues until stilled by the hopeless frost of early night.
At this time, although field work was painful, the needs of our venture forced us to persistent action in the chase of walrus, seal, narwhal and white whale. We thus harvested food and fuel.
Before winter ice spread over the sea, ptarmigan, hare and reindeer were sought on land to supply the table during the long night with delicacies, while bear and fox pleased the palates of the Eskimos, and their pelts clothed all.
Many long journeys were undertaken to secure an important supply of grass to pad boots and mittens and also to secure moss, which serves as wick for the Eskimo lamp. During the months of September and October, along the entire Greenland coast, the Eskimos were engaged in a feverish quest for reserve supplies. Shortly after my arrival, word had been carried from village to village that I was at Annoatok, and, intending to make a dash for the "Big Nail," desired the help of the entire tribe. Intense and spontaneous activity followed. Knowing the demands of the North, and of such work as I planned, the natives, without specific instructions from me and with only a brief outline of the planned Polar campaign which was sent from village to village, immediately got busy gathering the needed things. They knew better than I where to go for certain game, and where certain desirable things were obtainable. This relieved me of a great responsibility. Each local group of natives was to perform some important duty, suited to its available resources, in gathering the tremendous amount of material required for our trip. Each village had its peculiar game advantages.
In some places foxes and hares, the skins of which were necessary for coats and stockings, were abundant, and the Eskimos must not only gather the greatest number possible, but prepare the skins and make them into properly fitting garments. In other places reindeer were plentiful. The skin of these was needed for sleeping bags, while the sinew was required for thread. In still other places seal was the luck of the chase; its skin was one of our most important needs. Of it boots were made, and an immense amount of line and lashings prepared.
Thus, in one way or another, every man and woman and most of the children of this tribe of two hundred and fifty people were kept busy in the service of the expedition. The work was well done, and with much better knowledge of the fitness of things than could have been possessed by any possible gathering of alien white men.
The quest of the walrus and the narwhal came in our own immediate plan of adventure, although the narwhal, called by whale fishers the unicorn, does not often come under the eye of the white man. It afforded for a brief spell good results in sport and useful material. Its blubber is the pride of every housekeeper, for it gives a long, hot flame to the lamp, with no smoke to spot the igloo finery. The skin is regarded as quite a delicacy. Cut into squares, it looks and tastes like scallops, with only a slight aroma of train oil. The meat dries easily, and is thus prized as an appetizer or as a lunch to be eaten en route in sled or kayak. In this shape it was an extremely useful thing for us, for it took the place of pemmican on our less urgent journeys.
Narwhals played in schools, far off shore, and usually along the edges of some large ice field, their long ivory tusks rising under spouts of breath and spray. Whenever this glad sight was noted, every kayak about camp was manned, and the skin canoes went flittering like birds over the water. Some of the Eskimos climbed to the ice fields and delivered their harpoons from a secure footing. Others hid behind floating fragments of heavy ice and made a sudden rush as the animals passed. Still others came up in the rear, for the narwhal cannot easily see backward, and does not often turn to watch its enemies, its speed being so fast that it can easily keep ahead of them.
In these exciting hunts I participated with eager delight, and by proxy mentally engaged in every encounter. For, in this sea game, existed food supplies which, instead of entirely confining myself to pemmican, I planned also to use on my Polar journey. As the skin boats, like bugs, sped over the water, I felt the movement of them surge in my brain; with the upraising of each swift-darting native's arm I felt, as it were, my heart stop with bated suspense. With every failure I experienced a throb of dismay. With the hauling in of each slimy beast I felt, as it were, nearer my goal.
Narwhal hunting, in itself, and without the added spur of personal interest, which I had, is brimful of thrilling sport. The harpoon is always delivered at close range. Whenever the dragging float marks the end of the line in tow of the frightened creature, the line of skin canoes follows. Timid by nature and fearing to rise for breath, the narwhal plunges along until nearly strangled. When he does come up, there are likely to be several Eskimos near with drawn lances, which inflict deep gashes.
Again the narwhal plunges deep down, with but one breath, and hurries along as best it can. But its speed slackens and a line of crimson marks its hidden path. Loss of blood and want of air do not give it a chance to fight. Again it comes up with a spout. Again the lances are hurled.
The battle continues for several hours, with many exciting adventures, but in the end the narwhal always succumbs, offering a prize of several thousands of pounds of meat and blubber. Victory as a rule is not gained until the hunters are far from home, and also far from the shore line. But the Eskimo is a courageous hunter and an intelligent seaman.
To the huge carcass frail kayaks are hitched in a long line. Towing is slow, wind and sea combining to make the task difficult and dangerous. One sees nothing of the narwhal and very little of the kayak, for dashing seas wash over the little craft, but the double-bladed paddles see-saw with the regularity of a pendulum. Homecoming takes many hours and demands a prodigious amount of hard work, but there is energy to spare, for a wealth of meat and fat is the culmination of all Eskimo ambition.
Seven of these ponderous animals were brought in during five days, making a heap of more than forty thousand pounds of food and fuel. The sight of this tremulous, blubbering mass filled my heart with joy. Our success was not too soon, for now the narwhals suddenly disappeared, and we saw no more of them. About this time three white whales were also obtained at Etah by a similar method of hunting.
With the advent of actual winter, storms swept over the land and sea with such fury that it was no longer safe to venture out on the water in kayaks. After the catching of several walruses from boats, sea hunting now was confined to the quest of seal through young ice. As such hunting would soon be limited to only a few open spaces near prominent headlands, an industrious pursuit was feverishly engaged in at every village from Annoatok to Cape York, and hour by hour, day by day, until the hunt of necessity changed from sea to land, the husky natives engaged in seal catching. As yet we had no caribou meat, and the little auks, which had been gathered in nets during the summer, with the eider-duck bagged later, soon disappeared as a steady diet. We must now procure such available land game as hare, ptarmigan and reindeer, for we had not yet learned to eat with a relish the fishy, liver-like substance which is characteristic of all marine mammals.
Guns and ammunition were now distributed, and when the winds were easy enough to allow one to venture out, every Eskimo sought the neighboring hills. Francke also took his exercise with a gun on his shoulder.
The combined efforts resulted in a long line of ptarmigan, two reindeer and sixteen hares. As snow covered the upper slopes, the game was forced down near the sea, where we could still hope to hunt in the feeble light of the early part of the night.
With a larder fairly stocked and good prospects for other tasty meats, we were spared the anxiety of a winter without supplies. Francke was an ideal chef in the preparation of this game to good effect, for he had a delightful way of making our primitive provisions quite appetizing.
In the middle of October fox skins were prime, and then new steel traps were distributed and set near the many caches. By this time all the Eskimos had abandoned their sealskin tents and were snugly settled in their winter igloos. The ground was covered with snow, and the sea was almost entirely frozen.
Everybody was busy preparing for the coming cold and night. The temperature was about 20° below zero. Severe storms were becoming less frequent, and the air, though colder, was less humid and less disagreeable. An ice-foot was formed by the tides along shore, and over this the winter sledging was begun by short excursions to bait the fox traps and gather the foxes.
Our life now resolved itself into a systematic routine of work, which was practically followed throughout the succeeding long winter night. About the box-house in which Francke and I lived were igloos housing eight to twelve families. The tribe of two hundred and fifty was distributed in a range of villages along the coast, an average of four families constituting a community. Early each morning Koo-loo-ting-wah would bang at my door, enter, and I would drowsily awaken while he freshened the fire. Rising, we would prepare hot coffee and partake of breakfast with biscuits. By seven o'clock—according to our standard of time—five or six of the natives would arrive, and, after a liberal libation of coffee, begin work. I taught them to help me in the making of my hickory sleds. Some I taught to use modern carpentering instruments, which I had with me. Another group was schooled in bending the resilient but tough hickory. This was done by wrapping old cloths about the wood and steeping it in hot water. Others engaged, as the days went by, in making dog harness, articles of winter clothing, and drying meat. Not an hour was lost during the day. At noon we paused for a bite of frozen meat and hot tea. Then we fell to work again without respite until five or six o'clock.
Meanwhile, beginning in the early morning of our steadily darkening days, other male members of the tribe pursued game. Others again followed a routine of scouring of the villages and collecting all the furs and game which had been caught. The women of the tribe, in almost every dimly lighted igloo, were no less industrious. To them fell the task of assisting in drying the fur skins, preparing dried meat and making our clothing. Throughout the entire days they sat in their snow and stone houses, masses of ill-smelling furs before them, cutting the skins and sewing them into serviceable garments. This work I often watched, passing from igloo to igloo, with an interest that verged on anxiety; for upon the strength, thickness and durability of these depended my life, and that of the companions I should choose, on the frigid days which would inevitably come on my journey Poleward. But these broad-faced, patient women did their work well. Their skill is quite remarkable. They took my measurements, for instance, by roughly sizing up my old garments and by measuring me by sight. Garments were made to fit snugly after the preliminary making by cutting out or inserting patches of fur. Needles among the natives are indeed precious. So valuable are they that if a point or eye is broken, with infinite skill and patience the broken end is heated and flattened, and by means of a bow drill a new eye is bored. A new point is with equal skill shaped on local stones. With marvelous patience they make their own thread by drying and stripping caribou or narwhale sinews.
Were it not for their extraordinary eyesight, such work, under such conditions, would be impossible. But in the dark the natives can espy things invisible to white men. This owl-sight enables them to hunt, if necessary, in almost pitch darkness, and to perform tedious feats of hand skill which, in such dim light, an alien would bungle. I noticed, with much curiosity, that when the natives inspected any photograph or object which I gave them they always held it upside down. All objects, as is well known, are reflected in the retina thus, and it is our familiarity with the size and comparative relations of things which enables the brain to visualize an object or scene at its proper angle. This strange, instinctive act of the natives might form an interesting chapter in optics.
Meanwhile, busy and interested in the beginning of our various pursuits, the great crust which was to hold down the sea for so many months, closed and thickened.
During the last days of brief sunshine the weather cleared, and at noon on October 24 everybody sought the open for a last glimpse of the dying day. There was a charm of color and glitter, but no one seemed quite happy as the sun sank under the southern ice, for it was not to rise again for one hundred and eighteen days.
Just prior to the falling of darkness, with that instinctive and forced hilarity with which aboriginal beings seek to ward off an impending calamity, the Eskimos engaged in their annual sporting event. It is a curious sight, indeed, to behold a number of excited, laughing Eskimos gathering about two champion dogs which are to fight. Although the zest of betting is unknown, the natives regard dog fights with much the same eager excitement as a certain type of sporting man does a cock encounter. Sometimes the dogs do not fight fairly, a number of the animals bunching together and attacking a single dog. Dogs selected for the fight are, of course, the best of the teams. A dog which maintains his fighting supremacy becomes a king dog, and when beaten becomes a first lieutenant to the king.
After the forced enthusiasm of this brief period of excitement, the Eskimos begin to succumb to the inevitable melancholia of nature, when the sun, the source of natural life, disappears and darkness descends. A gloom descends heavily upon their spirits. A subtle sadness tinctures their life, and they are possessed by an impulse to weep. At this season, hour by hour, the darkness thickens; the cold increases and chills their igloos; the wind, exultant while the sun shines, now whines and sobs dolorously—there is something gruesome, uncanny, supernatural, in its siren sorrow. Outside, the snow falls, the sea closes. Its clamant beat of waves is silenced. Sea animals mostly disappear; land animals are rare. Their source of physical supply vanished, the Eskimos unconsciously feel the grim hand of want, of starvation, which means death, upon them. The psychology of this period of depression partly lies, undoubtedly, in this instinctive dread of death from lack of food and the natural depression of unrelieved gloom. Moreover, there is a grief, born of the native superstition that, when the sea freezes, the souls of all who have perished in the waters are imprisoned during the long night. Too fierce is the struggle of these people with the elemental forces to permit them, like many other aboriginal peoples to be obsessed greatly with superstitions. Although their religion is a very primitive and native one, it is usually only at the inception of night that they feel the appalling nearness of a world that is supernatural. As the last rim of the sun sank over the southern ice, the natives entered upon a formal period of melancholy, during which the bereavements of each family, and the discomforts and disasters of the year, were memoralized.
I shall never forget that long, sad evening, which lasted many normal days. The sun had descended. A sepulchral, gray-green curtain of gloom hung over the chilled earth. In the dim semi-darkness could be vaguely seen the outlines of the igloos, of the heaving curvatures of snow-covered land, and the blacker, snake-like twistings of open lanes of water, where the sea had not yet frozen. Sitting in my box-house, I was startled suddenly by a sound that made my flesh for the instant creep. I walked to the door and threw it open. Over the bluish, snow-covered land, formed by the indentures and hollows, stretched dark-purplish shapes—Titan shadows, sepulchral and ominous, some with shrouded heads, others with spectral arms threateningly upraised. Nebulous and gruesome shreds of blue-fog like wraiths shifted over the sea. Out of the sombre, heavy air began to issue a sound as of many women sobbing. From the indistinct distance came moaning, crooning voices. Sometimes hysterical wails of anguish rent the air, and now and then frantic choruses shrieked some heart-aching despair. My impression was that I was in a land of the sorrowful dead, some mid-strata of the spirit world, where, in this gray-green twilight, formless things in the distance moved to and fro.
There is, I believe, in the heart of every man, an instinctive respect for sorrow. With muffled steps, I left the igloo and paced the dreariness of ice, treading slowly, lest, in the darkness, I slip into some unseen crevasse of the open sea. A strange and eerie sight confronted me. Along the seashore, bending over the lapping black water, or standing here and there by inky, open leads in the severed ice, many Eskimo women were gathered. Some stood in groups of two or three. Bowed and disconsolate, her arms about them, with almost every hundred steps, I saw a weeping mother and her children. Standing rigid and stark, motionless graven images of despair, or frantically writhing to and fro, others stood far apart in desolate places, alone.
The dull, opaque air was tinged with a strange phosphorescent green, suggestive of a place of dead things; and now, like the flutterings of huge death-lamps, along the horizon, where the sun had sunk, gashes of crimson here and there fitfully glowed blood-red in the pall-like sky.
To the left, as I walked along, I recognized Tung-wingwah, with a child on her back and a bag of moss in her hand. She stood behind a cheerless rock, with her face toward the faint red flushes of the sun. She stood motionless. Big tears rolled from her eyes, but not a sound was uttered. To my low queries she made no response. I invited her to the camp to have a cup of tea, thinking to change her sad thoughts and loosen her tongue. But still her eyes did not leave that last distant line of open water. From another, I later learned that in the previous April her daughter of five, while playing on the ice-foot, slipped and was lost in the sea. The mother now mourned because the ice would bury her little one's soul.
A little farther along was Al-leek-ah, a woman of middle age, with two young children by her side. She was hysterical in her grief, now laughing with a weird giggle, now crying and groaning as if in great pain, and again dancing with emotions of madness. I learned her story from a chatter that ran through all her anguish. Towanah, her first husband, had been drawn under the ice, by the harpoon line, twenty years ago. And though she had been married three times since, she was trying to keep alive the memory of her first love. I went on, marveling at a primitive fidelity so long enduring.
Still farther along towards the steep slopes of the main coast, I saw Ahwynet, all alone in the gloomy shadow of great cliffs. Her story was told in chants and moans. Her husband and all her children had been swept by an avalanche into the stormy seas. There was a kind of wild poetry in the song of her bereavement. Tears came to my eyes. The rush of the avalanche, the hiss of the wind, the pounding of the seas, were all indicated. And then, in heart-breaking tones, came "blood of her blood, flesh of her flesh, under the frozen waters," and other sentiments which I could not catch in the undertone of sobs.
Cold shivers began to run up my spine, and I turned to retreat to camp. Here was a scene that perhaps a Dante might adequately write about. I cannot. I felt that I, an alien, was intruding into the realm of some strange and mystic sorrow. I felt the sombre thrill of a borderland world not human. These women were communicating with the souls of their dead. To those who had perished in the sea they were telling, ere the gates of ice closed above them, all the news of the past year—things of interest and personal, and even of years before, as far back as they could remember. Almost every family each year loses someone in the sea; almost every family was represented by these weeping women, overburdened with their own naive sorrow, and who yet strangely sought to cheer the souls of the disconsolate and desolate dead.
Meanwhile, while the women were weeping and giving their parting messages to the dead, the male members of the tribe, in chants and dramatic dances, were celebrating, in the igloos, the important events of the past year.
Inside, the igloos were dimly lighted with stone blubber lamps. These, during the entire winter, furnish light and heat. The lamp consists of a crescent-shaped stone with a concavity, in which there is animal oil and a line of crushed moss as a wick. Lighted early in the season, for an entire winter, these lamps cast a faint, perpetual, flickering light. Shadows dance grotesquely about on the rounded walls. An oily stench pervades the unventilated enclosure. In this weird, yellow-blackish radiance the men engage in their fantastic dances. Moving the central parts of their bodies to and fro, they utter weird sing-song chants. They recite, in jerky, curious singing, the history of the big events of the year; of successful chases; of notable storms; of everything that means much in their simple lives. As they dance, their voices rise to a high pitch of excitement. Their eyes flash like smoldering coals. Their arms move frantically. Some begin to sob uncontrollably. A hysteria of laughter seizes others. Finally the dance ends; exhausted, they pass into a brief lethargy, from which they revive, their melancholia departed. The women return from the shores of the sea; they wipe their tears, and, with native spontaneity, forget their depression and smile again.
While I was interested in the curious spectacles presented, the sunset of 1907 to me was inspiration for the final work in directing the completion of the outfit with which to begin the conquest of the Pole at sunrise of 1908. Fortunately, I was not handicapped by the company of the usual novices taken on Polar expeditions. There were only two of us white men, and white men, at the best, must be regarded as amateurs compared with the expert efficiency of Eskimos in their own environment. Our food supply contained only the prime factors of primitive nourishment. Special foods and laboratory concoctions and canned delicacies did not fill an important space in our larder. Nor had we balloons, automobiles, motor sleds or other freak devices. We did, however, I have said, have what was of utmost importance, an abundance of the best hickory and metal for the making of the sleds upon which our destinies were vitally to depend.
