David goes to Greenland

by David Binney Putnam

We also took from Thule a native girl called Nette, who has been studying to be a nurse and is going back to Denmark to complete her education, living with Mrs. Rasmussen there. We will take them to Holsteinsborg where they will get a steamer for Denmark.

Hans Nielsen is Rasmussen’s manager and he of course is very pleased at the chance to get away. He brought his own kayak on [[102]]the Morrissey so that he can help us in hunting.

While in Thule, early in the morning, Dad, Dan, Bob Peary and I went out in the motor boat with two Eskimos to look for seal. We went up the fjord about five miles inland to the foot of a glacier and saw about six, but couldn’t get near enough to shoot them. We took several long shots, without success.

We had to go back then, for as soon as Nielsen and Nette were ready we were leaving for Whale Sound. During that morning while they were packing up we had quite a dance outside in front of Mr. Nielsen’s house. Kel took movies of the party. We had a pail of candy and when it was passed around the Eskimos would dig in with both hands. But really they are most awfully polite and these nice people in the North never take anything without being asked first. And I think they never steal. It’s interesting to know what Mr. Rasmussen tells me, [[103]]that in the Eskimo language there are no swear words. They just don’t use bad language. The worst thing to call a man is to say he is lazy or a bad hunter.

From Thule we took a bunch of Eskimos, including one older man who had been with Peary and was very sick. He said to Cap’n Bob: “I wish for the good days of Pearyarkshua when we had plenty to eat and to wear.”

Of course the Captain knew him well and told me that he used to be about the strongest Eskimo of the whole lot they had and one of the very best hunters. His name is Ahngmalokto. Doctor Heinbecker gave him some medicine, and the skipper gave him tea and bread and jam, but he wasn’t able even to eat that. It was very sad.

Thule itself is at the head of North Star Bay, on a rocky beach that sweeps around like a crescent. Out at the sea end, on one side, is a huge hill with a flat table-like top with steep walls at the top then sloping [[104]]down evenly in great rock slides which are called talus slopes. It’s a lot like a mesa or tableland in our own west. The name of this queer mountain is Oomunui. There are four frame buildings, the trading station, the furthest north in the world. And about a mile away, across the rock peninsula, is the native settlement, a scattered lot of tupiks, the summer skin houses of the Eskimos, with the stone winter houses nearby along the shore. I suppose there are about forty people.

Since 1910 Rasmussen has run this trading station. It is to help these northern Eskimos, called the Smith Sound tribe. They are the furthest north people in the world. Before, they never had any regular chance to get things, or to trade their skins, except to whalers once in a while, or explorers. Before Peary commenced coming about thirty years ago they had no guns or steel or anything else except what they made and found themselves. They used to make arrow heads [[105]]out of meteorite chips, and made fire from flint they found. And about all their weapons and knives were made from ivory. The walrus tusk is very fine for this sort of thing.

Even today they have very little, compared with the poorest people of the world we know. But they are healthy and happy and very good natured and kind. And of course they are great hunters. They have to be, to live.

At Thule Rasmussen, and the Danish committee which works with him in running the thing, have a regular kingdom. Dad calls it a benevolent dictatorship, which means that Rasmussen is just about a king, but runs everything for the good of the people. They have money of their own, round pieces with holes in the middle, of three different values. The Station pays with these for the furs, and then the Eskimos use them in getting supplies from the store. Goods are sold at very low figures and the idea is, Mr. Rasmussen says, to make the [[106]]Station just pay its own way. As I have said in another chapter, we brought up a lot of stores from New York. And now we are taking back the fox skins of the winter’s catch.