We drank our tea on the crest of the hill, then packed up and started down into the Ihalmiut land. The two Eskimos led the way, and their bounding agility over the rough rocks would have put a caribou to shame. We followed painfully a long way behind, and at last came to the low shores of Ootek’s Lake.
Across the water we could clearly see the three tents, blending so well with the weathered gravel ridge behind that they might have grown from the hills. People and dogs were running aimlessly about amongst the tents and two new fires had been lighted, for the distant vision of the People had shown them that strangers were approaching, and it is mandatory that all strangers must be fed as soon as they arrive.
I was to learn later that the camps of the People were arranged in little groups of two or three tents on the shores of several lakes, for there is not enough willow scrub in the land to support the cooking fires of more than three families at any single spot. Here at Ootek Kumanik were the tents of Hekwaw, Ootek and Ohoto, and a few miles eastward on Halo Kumanik were the tree tents of Halo, Yaha and Miki. On Kakumee Kumanik there were three separate camps, Katelo and Alekahaw having their tents at one spot, Owliktuk and Onekwaw at a second, while the two tents of old Kakumee stood alone on the far side of the lake.
Thus, within a radius of three miles of each other, dwelt all the living People in a land which stretches for five hundred miles from south to north, and three hundred miles from east to west. It was the most ancient camp of the Ihalmiut, and it was also the last. And I was the first outlander to come upon it in all the centuries that tents had stood beside the Little Lakes. Yet if that thought filled me with excitement, the prospect of meeting a white man for the first time in their lives was filling the women and children from the tents ahead with equal excitement.
We rounded the lake and came up toward the camp. Here the foreshore sloping to the lake was not composed of rocks, but almost exclusively of bones. This was an ancient site and the piles of whitened caribou bones had mounted with the years until they had reached staggering proportions, for in the Barrens neither wood nor bone ever seems to rot or pass away. Dogs and the weather had broken up the larger pieces of bone and spread them evenly around until they formed a pavement all about the camp. But neither dogs nor weather had greatly affected the skulls, and these, with their huge antlers, formed a dead forest of white snags. Later on I counted over two hundred skulls within a hundred yards of an Ihalmiut tent, and these represented only a fraction of the total number of beasts whose remains lay in that place, for only the heads of kills made close at hand are ever brought to camp.
The three tents stood on a sloping ledge where they would catch whatever breeze might blow, for the breeze serves as the sole protection from the flies. Near each tent was a rough stone hearth and beside each fire a tremendous mound of willow twigs. These were, of course, quite green and the little fires were giving out great rolling coils of smoke. On the nearest fireplace was a huge iron pot looking ridiculously like the pots that cannibals seem to favor in our magazine cartoons.
As for the tents themselves, each was a cone about fifteen feet in diameter at its base and perhaps ten feet high. They were patchwork affairs composed of roughly scraped deer hides hung on a wooden frame. The hides had been stitched together while they were still green and, as they dried, the seams had pulled apart so that broad cracks outlined the position of each hide. Around the bottom of the tent a ring of boulders acted as an anchor. In that land you do not drive wooden pegs, even if you have them, for if the rocks did not prevent you, then the perpetual frost which often lies only a few inches below the surface of the ground would shatter the peg before it got a grip. The doorways faced the north, the direction from which the returning deer would come. The doors themselves were made of single hides, untanned, and dried to the hardness of wood.
In a way the Ihalmiut camp seemed only to accentuate the apparent desolation and emptiness of the arctic plains, and yet in the immediate vicinity of the tents was this little pocket of life in the center of the human vacuum that otherwise possessed the Barrens. We felt that we could breathe easily here, for we were no longer entirely alone, though I was still a little afraid of our reception.
It was a foolish fear. Hekwaw and Ohoto had run on ahead, shouting loudly as they went, but their warning was superfluous, for every man, woman and child was out about the fires, driven to a kind of ecstatic fury by the approach of strangers. One old woman, bent and beaten as if by the rocks of the land, frenziedly blew at the coals of a fire and heaped fresh twigs upon it until she smothered it completely. Ootek’s wife, Howmik, was wrestling with the hindquarters of a deer, still dripping wet, which she had hauled out of the cold storage of the frigid lake for supper. Between snatching furtive glances at us and trying to cut off chunks of meat with her curved ulu, or woman’s knife, she was in imminent danger of slicing off her fingers too. Her wooden hair ornaments swung and jumped like live things as she hurried, and her child, Kalak, who lived in the back of her parka, screamed with pleasure as he batted at her flying braids.
Even the dogs caught the excitement. Three pups simultaneously began to chase their tails while a pair of older dogs joined noisy battle. Children hustled among the dogs, kicking them lightly in their exposed bellies either to drive them off, or just to have something to do as we approached.
Franz and I stopped about a hundred yards short of the nearest tent and the three men, Ootek, Hekwaw and Ohoto, came out to welcome us formally into their homes. Ohoto and Hekwaw acted as if they were meeting us for the first time. They were very correct and very solemn as they gravely touched our fingertips. Then, with the formal greeting over, Ootek produced a stone pipe, loaded with atamojak—the dried leaves of a low, bushy plant which make an inadequate substitute for tobacco—and offered me a smoke. Together we walked to Ootek’s tent while the women and children ceased their frenetic labors and watched us with unconcealed anticipation. We had been welcomed formally, so that it was now good manners to give way to curiosity, a thing one must not do until a visitor is settled, lest you embarrass him thereby.
All the children, women and old people from the entire camp crowded closely into Ootek’s tent behind us, and collectively they produced an overpowering odor—which, however, was canceled out by the obvious good nature and good feeling which also emanated from these People.
Ootek bade us sit down on the sleeping platform, and while his wife was organizing the other women in preparation for a feast, I had a good look at this home of the Ihalmiut. The tent was not even vaguely weathertight. Great streaks of sky showed along the joints between the skins. Under those portions of the tent which were more or less whole were the belongings of the family, and these possessions were simple almost to the point of nonexistence.
Along one half of the enclosed circle was the low sleeping bench of willow twigs and lichens, covered with a haphazard mattress of tanned deer hides. This was the communal bed where the entire family slept together under a robe or two of softened skins. The rest of the floor space was given over to an amazing litter of half-eaten, ready-to-be-eaten and never-to-be-eaten bits of caribou. I saw an entire boiled head that had been pretty well chewed over, and a pile of leg bones which had been cracked for marrow and then boiled to extract the last precious drop of oil. On one side of the tent was a more or less complete brisket, with skin attached, of a deer that obviously should have been eaten long ago. Later I discovered this was a sort of snack bar where hungry visitors could slice off a bit of raw, but well-tenderized, meat while waiting for mealtime.
Around the inner surface of the tent, suspended from the dozen precious poles, were the odd bits of clothing not required for the moment. A few pairs of kamik, stiff and dry and half transparent, waited for their owners’ feet. Nearby lay a couple of inner parkas, called ateegie, and some children’s overalls that are one-piece garments of fawn hide. Pushed under one pole was a huge wad of dried sphagnum moss waiting the need
s of the young child Kalak, for diapers are not used in the Barrens, where nature has provided a more efficient sponge.
And that about completed the furnishings of Ootek’s tent, except for an ancient wooden chest which held the treasures of the family: the amulet belt of Ootek, the sewing kit of Howmik with its bone needles and hank of caribou sinew thread, half a dozen empty .44-40 brass cartridge cases which someday might ornament the bowls of stone pipes, a bow drill, a muskox horn comb and some children’s toys.
While I was getting my bearing, Franz produced a plug of trade tobacco, which is nearly as vile as the Ihalmiut product, and it went the rounds. I noticed with great interest that Ootek, after filling his pipe with the precious stuff, passed it to his wife so that she might have the first smoke. In fact, she smoked most of it before returning it to Ootek. A small gesture, this, but one that I was to find was typical of the consideration and affection with which the Ihalmiut men treated their wives.
There was a tremendous amount of talk while we sat about the tent waiting for supper, most of it between Franz and the three Eskimo men, while the rest listened avidly and interjected comments and bursts of laughter. Franz translated a little of what was being said and the conversation was, as always, mostly about the deer. Where were they? Had we seen any fresh tracks? How long did we think it would be before Tuktu—the deer—came from the north? It was an engrossing subject and I wanted to be in on it, but only by begging Franz to tell me what was going on could I get the gist at all. I began to get bored after a while, feeling left out, for Franz was soon too interested to waste time translating for me. To occupy myself I got out my notebook and began idly to sketch a caribou. The talk rose and fell about me and with no conscious thought I sketched a pipe in my caribou’s mouth and gave the beast a self-satisfied and human leer.
I had not realized that I was being closely watched. Hekwaw, who sat a little behind me, had been peering intently over my shoulder. At first he was baffled, but suddenly the full humor of a caribou that smoked a pipe struck him with the force of a physical blow, and before I knew what was happening, he had rolled off the bench, quite literally, and was in the grip of a first-class attack of hysterics.
Startled, I thought he had gone mad or had had a seizure. Both Franz and I jumped to our feet in real consternation. The little notebook fell face upward on the floor, where it was pounced on by Ohoto, who took one quick look and burst into wild guffaws. The book was snatched from his hand and passed around the circle of eager faces, and with the rapidity of chain lightning the laughter spread and grew wilder until it engulfed the tent in one insane pandemonium.
Very slowly it dawned on me that this was neither a war dance nor a mass attack of zaniness, but a tribute to my wit. I grinned self-consciously at those about me who were shrieking and weeping with completely uninhibited mirth. Then I rescued my book, which was about to disappear out the door in the hands of a howling small child. I looked at my drawing. Oddly enough it struck me, too, as being hilariously funny, and with no regard for propriety I began to bellow with laughter at my own feeble joke. The thing was now quite out of control. Hekwaw had a choking fit and someone hauled him outside for treatment. One old crone lost her balance and fell against the tent. The taut skin burst with a great boom and she sprawled, still shrieking like a demented thing, on the sharp rocks outside.
I began to worry. Really, I knew I couldn’t have been as funny as all that. But mass hysteria had seized the People, and nothing seemed capable of stopping it. Nothing, that is, except food.
Howmik appeared in the doorway, looking properly curious and bearing a big wooden tray heaped high with steaming chunks of deer meat. The steam struck the roisterers and as if by magic the rich aroma quelled their mirth. Hekwaw, still a little shaky, came back into the tent, followed by the old woman, and everyone sat down and stared expectantly at the meat tray.
6. Feast and Famine
I sat down, or rather squatted down, to eat my first meal with the People. Howmik placed the great tray on the floor of the tent and we five men grouped ourselves around it. That tray was a magnificent piece of work, nearly four feet long by two feet wide with upcurved ends and sides. It had been constructed, with what must have been heartbreaking labor, from little planks hand-hewn from the tiny dwarf spruce of the southern Barrens. At least thirty small sections of wood had been meticulously fitted together and bound in place with mortised joints and pegs of deerhorn. The seams had then been tightly sewn with sinew so that the whole tray was waterproof.
The tray was magnificent, but its contents were even more impressive. Half a dozen parboiled legs of deer were spread out in a thick gravy which seemed to be composed of equal parts of fat and deer hairs. Bobbing about in the debris were a dozen tongues and, like a cage holding the lesser cuts of meat, there was an entire boiled rib basket of a deer.
There were side dishes too, for Howmik made a trip to a cache outside and returned with a skin sack, full of flakes of dry meat, which she unceremoniously dumped on the cluttered floor beside me. Nor was that all, for Hekwaw’s wife fetched a smoking bundle of marrowbones as her contribution to the feast. These had been neatly cracked so that we would have no trouble extracting the succulent marrow.
I was very hungry, yet the sight of this vast array of meat left me a trifle weak. But it was evident that I was the only one to suffer any qualms of stomach. The others were waiting impatiently for me, as the major guest, to make the first move. The etiquette of the situation eluded me. I took my sheath knife and cautiously sawed off a good-sized chunk of leg meat, scraped the encrustation of hairs from it, and cuddled it in my lap since there was nothing else that could serve as a plate.
Now Franz and the three Ihalmiut men tusked in—I use that word advisedly—and Ohoto seized an entire leg. Sucking the gravy from it with appreciative lips, he sank his teeth into the tough muscle while with his left hand he held the joint away from his face, and with his right hand made a quick slash at the meat with his knife. I watched in horrified fascination. The sharp blade no more than cleared the tip of his broad nose, and he made his cut without even bothering to look where it was going. But the nose survived; the mouthful of meat was severed at the joint and was chewed a time or two and quickly swallowed.
Hekwaw seemed to prefer the soup. He dipped his cupped hands in it and then sucked up the greasy fluid with gusty relish, taking time out now and again to chew at a deer’s tongue which he dropped back into the soup to keep warm between bites.
It struck me that I was being a little prissy. So I put my knife back in its sheath, took a deep breath and, seizing my meat in both hands, began to gnaw away on it. It was delicious.
Then Ootek, beaming with the pride of a good host, pressed me to try a marrowbone and showed me how to tap it with a little rock so that the long, jelly-like piece of marrow dropped out intact. I know I was in no position to be an epicurean judge, and you can doubt me if you wish when I tell you that I have never tasted anything quite as good as that hot marrow. Fat, but not oily, it did not compare at all with the insipid beef marrow we know. In fact it beggars all description, and it was wonderful!
By this time I had begun to understand why the Ihalmiut parkas were so badly matted, for they were pressed into service as table napkins and as bibs. A steady stream of juice and gravy trickled from Hekwaw’s massive chin and was absorbed by the fur of his holiktuk. Try as I might, I couldn’t entirely restrain a minor stream that was quickly saturating my flannel shirt. After a while I thought, “The devil with it!” and gave up any efforts to divert the flood.
Howmik, who seemed to be constantly on the run, now reappeared lugging the great iron cooking pot I had seen outside. Only it was no longer filled with meat. The dinner having been cooked, the pot was now doing duty as a tea “billy,” without benefit of an intervening washing. We supplied the tea, of course, and the canny Ihalmiut had sought out the biggest vessel they owned to brew it in.
Had there been a bathtub handy the tea would have been brewed in it, for if the People have one uncontrollable vice, it is tea drinking.
That tea was blacker and solider than any I have ever seen and it was also fortified with the inevitable scum of deer hair and with odd bits of meat. But it was popular enough. Ootek, who is a rather little man, filled and drank three pint mugs of it, stopping only for a burp or two between mugfuls. Then he ate a tongue and drank three more pint mugs of tea.
Everyone else was just as thirsty and the big pot only lasted about twenty minutes before it was sent back for a refill, with the old tea leaves left in it to help strengthen the new brew.
Naturally such a tremendous fluid intake had its inevitable results and the dinner guests were constantly leaping to their feet and dashing out behind the tent—all save Hekwaw, who was too old and dignified a man to dash on such a trivial errand. He solved the problem by making use of a large can standing near the bed. He simply reached for it when it was needed. As it grew full—and it did frequently—his elderly wife removed and emptied it.
It wasn’t long before I was too full to tackle even one more marrowbone. Franz felt the same, but the other men continued their attack on the heaping mound of meat until it was all gone, to the last drop of gravy. Then while they sat back and burped with prolonged fervor, Howmik took the tray away, refilled it, and the women had their meal.
That was my first dinner with the Eskimos but not, as may have seemed inevitable, my last. Five times each day we sat down to a new meal, and in between we had light lunches. While there is food in the Ihalmiut camps, five meals a day is considered barely adequate, though on the trail a man must manage to subsist on three.
The cooking varied somewhat, but the food did not. The rule was meat at every meal and nothing else but meat, unless you could count a few well-rotted duck eggs which served as appetizers. To satisfy my curiosity I tried to estimate the quantity of meat Hekwaw put away each day. I discovered he could handle ten to fifteen pounds when he was really hungry—though otherwise he probably subsisted on somewhat less.