The boys were quickly on shore, running around with their cameras among the savages. They found the Huskies, as they always were called, a much more imposing tribe than any of the Indians they had seen. The men were taller and more robust, more fearless and self-respecting, even arrogant in their deportment. The women were a strapping lot. Some of them wore the blue line tattoo on the lower lip, showing them to be married women; others, young girls not uncomely to look upon. All were clad in the fur garments of the North, even though it now was summer-time, the date of their arrival being July 8th. Over the fur garments most of them wore a dirty cotton covering, supposedly to keep their fur garments clean. The women usually slipped their arms out of the sleeves of their loose, chemise-like jackets, so that with their double coverings it was sometimes difficult to tell where they kept their hands.
To the surprise of the boys, the Eskimos insisted on receiving money or presents of some kind before they would allow themselves to be photographed. They were willing to trade, but, as their Uncle Dick had warned them, they proved to be most avaricious traders. A “labret” of ivory or even of wood they valued at four or five dollars—or asked so much as that at first. A bone-handled drill, made of a piece of seal rib with a nail for a point to the drill, was priced accordingly. A pair of mukluks, or native seal boots, was difficult to find at all, while as for the furs with which their boats were crowded they professed indifference whether or not any one purchased them.
“Wait awhile,” said Uncle Dick. “Be as indifferent as they are. About the time the boat turns around to go back south again you’ll see them begin to trade. I might have bought my bluestone pipe if I’d had time.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jesse. “That big fellow down there—I call him Simon—he’s got one of those bluestone pipe bowls that you told about. He says it’s old, and he wants ten dollars for it. They understand what a dollar is; they don’t trade in skins like these other tribes.”
“Well, you see,” said Uncle Dick, “these men all have met the whale-boats which come around through Bering Sea. They know more about the white men’s ways than the inland tribes. As you see, they are a much superior class of people.”
“That’s so,” said Rob, who was just back from photographing among the Loucheux villages located on top of the hill, timidly remote from the Eskimos. “Those people up on the hill are about starving, and so ragged and dirty I don’t see how they live at all.”
“They’ve got religion, just the same,” said John. “I’ve been down making a picture of the mission church. I bought two hymn-books for one ‘skin’ each of the native preacher. Here they are, all in the native language, don’t you see? And I bought a Book of Common Prayer, printed in Loucheux, too.”
“Well, I’ve got three bone fish-hooks and a drill,” said Jesse, triumphantly. “I don’t know whether I’ll have any money left before long. You see, it’s hard to wait till the boat starts back, because some one else might get these things before we do.”
“Is any one going out?” asked Rob.
“Yes, the inspector of the Mounted Police and one man are going out—the first time in two years,” replied Jesse, proud of his information. “Two new men that came with us are going up to Herschel Island. There is a four-man post up here, with the barracks beyond the trader’s house. They have to travel a hundred miles or so in the winter-time, and it’s more than a hundred miles by boat from here to Herschel Island. The Inspector of Police who is going down there told me he was going to hire one of these Huskies to take him down in his whale-boat.”