Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

THE SEA-LION PEN

Method of corralling Sea-lions at Novastoshnah, St. Paul’s Island, while the Natives are getting a Drove together for driving to the Village

If at the moment of surprise seevitchie are sleeping with their heads pointed toward the water, as they rise up in fright they charge straight on in that direction, right over the men themselves; but those which have been resting at this instant, when startled, pointed landward, up they rise and follow that course just as desperately, and nothing will turn them either one way or the other. These sea-lions which charged for the water are lost, of course;[144] but the natives promptly follow up the land-turned animal with a rare combination of horrible noises and demoniacal gesticulations until the first frenzied spurt and exertions of the terrified creatures so completely exhaust them that they fall panting, gasping, prone upon the earth, extended in spite of their bulk and powerful muscles, helpless, and at the mercy of their cunning captors, who, however, instead of slaying them as they lie, rudely rouse them up again and urge the herd along to the house in which they have been keeping watch during the several days past.

Here at this point is a curious stage in such proceeding. The natives drive up to that “Webster’s” house those twenty-five or thirty or forty sea-lions, as the case may be, which they have just captured—they seldom get more at any one time—and keep them in a corral or pen close by the barrabora, on the flattened surface of a sand-ridge, in the following comical manner: When they have huddled up the “pod,” they thrust stakes down around it at intervals of ten to twenty feet, to which strips of cotton cloth are fluttering as flags, and a line or two of sinew-rope or thong of hide is strung from pole to pole around the group, making a circular cage, as it were. Within this flimsy circuit the stupid sea-lions are securely imprisoned, and, though they are incessantly watched by two or three men, the whole period of caging and penning which I observed, extending over nine or ten days and nights, passed without a single effort being made by the “seevitchie” to break out of their flimsy bonds, and it was passed by these animals, not in stupid quiescence, but in alert watchfulness, roaring, writhing, twisting, turning one upon and over the other.

By this method of procedure, after the lapse usually of two or three weeks, a succession of favorable nights will have occurred: then the natives secure their full quota, which, as I have said before, is expressed by a herd of two or three hundred of these animals.

The Sea-lion Caravan.

[Natives driving a drove over the plain of Polavina, en route from Northeast Point to St. Paul.]

When that complement is filled, the natives prepare to drive their herd back to the village over the grassy and mossy uplands and intervening stretches of sand-dune tracts, fully eleven miles: preferring thus to take the trouble of prodding such clumsy brutes, wayward and obstinate as they are, rather than to pack their heavy hides in and out of boats, making in this way each sea-lion carry its own skin and blubber down to the doors of their houses in the village. If the weather is normally wet and cold, this drive or caravan of sea-lions can be driven to its point of destination in five or six days; but should it be dry and warmer than usual, three weeks, and even longer, will elapse before the circuit is traversed.