David goes to Greenland

by David Binney Putnam

We spent most of the night at Karnah, visiting and getting narwhal skulls, while the hunters were out. It was decided that Rasmussen would take Bob Peary and the big dory with the Johnson engine and go up the fjord to try and get a couple of narwhal.

Later I learned that just after Dad had turned in at three-thirty two hunters got their narwhal near by. In the morning when I came on deck there was a fine big narwhal with a tusk. He was fifteen feet long, not counting the tusk, which was about seven or eight feet long. Later a small female was brought in, about nine feet long.

All day Fred and Harry worked on these [[112]]narwhal. Because the narwhal were so heavy, to get them on board we had to use the two throat halyards. Fred took plaster casts of the heads and tails and fins. Photos were taken from all angles, and measurements and strips of skin were taken, so that a whole narwhal model can be constructed at the Museum. After this work was done we started in to clean the meat off the bones. Most of us wore rubber boots so as not to mind walking in the blood, but the Eskimos didn’t mind at all. They, of course, get the meat for themselves. While we would flounder around and have to cut two or three times the Eskimos would go ahead very quickly and skillfully, as they have done this sort of thing so many times. The skeletons were completely stripped in a few hours.

Kakutia of Karnah, the Eskimo Artist who Made the Sketches Used in this Book while on the Morrissey in Whale Sound

From Karnah we took with us six hunters with their kayaks to help us get walrus. Four of them used to be with Peary and their names are Etukashuk, Pooadloona, Kudluktoo [[113]]and Kesingwah. The last named was one of the Eskimos who came back with Captain Bob from 87 degrees 47 minutes north, only a few miles from the North Pole when he was with Peary in 1909, who went on to the Pole itself.

They are all fine looking men and although they speak very little English they catch on to things very quickly and are awfully nice people to be with.

Two Blond Eskimos! David and Nils.

There are two fine boys. One is Pooadloona’s son, Matak. The other is Nils, who is sixteen. He has very light hair, about the color of mine, and blue eyes. He comes from South Greenland, and his father, I guess, is a Dane. He is awfully good in a kayak and built solid all around. While three years older than I am he doesn’t come quite to my shoulder. Of course all these people are very small. Very few of the men, I think, are over five feet five inches, but they are built like oxes usually with short legs and [[114]]thick bodies and a little fat although hard. This boy Nils has killed seal and narwhal all by himself.