Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

The daily routine of living as practised by an Innuit family is exceedingly simple. The head of the household usually sleeps over night in the kashga, as do all of his peers. His wife in the early morning rolls out of her rude deer-skins, retucks her parka about her hips, and starts up the smouldering fire which she banked with ashes before going to sleep. A little meat or fish is soon half-boiled, and a small kantag of oil is decanted, a handful of dried berries thrown into it, and perhaps she has a modicum of rotten fish-roe to add. This she takes out to her husband in the kashga, rousing him, if he is not awake, with a gentle but firm admonition. A large bowl of fresh water is also brought by her, and then everything is before the husband for his breakfast. She returns to her hut after he has finished, and feeds her children and herself. If she or her husband has a male visitor, he is served in the same way. When the evening meal is ready, sometimes the men go home and dine with their families; but the women and children invariably eat at home, and when they wait upon the males in the town hall they always turn their backs to them while the men are dining, it being considered a gross breach of good manners for a woman to look at a man when he is eating.

After breakfast the male Innuits start out, if the weather permits, to hunt or fish, as the case may be. If a driving storm prevents them, then indoor work is resumed or recourse to sleep again assumed. At some time in the afternoon the fire is usually drawn from the hot stoves on the hearth, the water and a kantag of chamber-lye poured over them, which, arising in dense clouds of vapor, gives notice (by its presence and its horrible ammoniacal odor) to the delighted inmates that the bath is on. The kashga is heated to suffocation, it is full of smoke, and the outside men run in from their huts, with wisps of dry grass for towels, and bunches of alder-twigs to flog their naked bodies. They throw off their garments; they shout and dance and whip themselves into profuse perspiration as they caper in the hot vapor. More of their disgusting substitute for soap is rubbed on, and produces a lather which they rinse off with cold water; and, to cap the full enjoyment of this satanic bath, these naked actors rush out and roll in a snow-bank or plunge into the icy flood of some lake or river adjoining, as the season warrants. This is the most enjoyable occasion of an Innuit’s existence, so he solemnly affirms. Nothing else affords him a tithe of the infinite pleasure which this orgie gives him. To us, however, there is nothing so offensive about him as that stench which such a performance arouses.

When a bath is over, the smoke-hole is reopened (it was closed during the process!), and fresh air descends upon those men who sit around upon the platforms stupefied by that smoke and weak from their profuse perspiration. Slowly these terrible odors leave the kashga, and only the minor ones remain, rendering it quite habitable once more. Night comes on: the huge stone lamps are filled with seal-oil and lighted; the men soon lop down for sleep in their reindeer-skins or parkas, removing their trousers only, which they roll up and use as pillows, tucking the parka snugly over and around their bended knees, which are drawn up tightly to the abdomen. In the morning whoever happens to awake first relights the lamp, if any of the fluid remains over; if not, he goes to his own cache and gets a supply. If he is a bachelor, he attends then to making a fresh fire in the hearth below and prepares his coarse breakfast.

The women assist their husbands in harnessing and unharnessing the dogs; they go out and gather the firewood, and employ themselves in sewing, patching, and making thread from deer-tendons. They plait grass mats and weave grass stockings, because nearly all of the coast Innuits wear socks very skilfully made of dried grass. The boys and girls scatter about the vicinity looking after their snares and traps, or engage, in hilarious groups, playing at ball and leap-frog games, tag, and jumping matches. They harness up the young dogs and the pups, and sport for hours at a time with them.

“Tatlah,” an Innuit Dog.

These people are savages, and not at all affected by the earnest and persistent attempts of the Russian priests to Christianize them. They are even less influenced by the teachings of missionaries than the Siwashes of the Sitkan archipelago, and that is saying a great deal for their hardness of heart. They are a brave race, and have displayed the utmost physical courage in fighting their way up the great rivers, Yukon, Kuskokvim, and Nooshagak, whereby they displaced and destroyed the Indians who once lived there. The Koltchanes, or Ingaleeks of the interior, who disputed that privilege with them, bear cheerful witness to this fact. But all such strife between the two great families is only known to us by legends which they recite of ancient time. No trace of recent war can be found among them.

They have no ear for music; they are not fond of it like the Aleutes, yet they keep perfect time to cultivated tunes and melodies of our own order. The song of an Innuit is essentially like that of his Sitkan relative: it is usually a weird dirge, monotonous, and long-drawn out, accompanied by a regular and rhythmic beating of a rude drum, or a dry stick, or resonant bag. Some of the native Innuit chantings, when rendered intelligible to us, have a plaintive pathos running through them which is attractive and are simple in composition; but such ballads are very, very rare. The majority are tedious and boastful recitations of a singer’s achievements on land or water when engaged in hunting or fishing. Their mythology is the rudest and the least ornate of all savage races, unless it be that perfect vacuum of the Australasians and Terra del Fuegians.

These savages respect the dead, but they fear the sick. When death invades an Innuit family, taking the husband, or the wife, or a child, the survivors eat nothing, after the decease of the relative, but sour or last year’s food, and refrain from going out or from work of any sort for a period of twenty days. They seat themselves in one corner of the hut, or “kahsime,” with their backs toward the door. Every five days they wash themselves, otherwise death would promptly come to them again. The body of the dead native is composed in a sitting position, with its knees drawn up to the stomach and its arms clasped around them. It is placed in one corner, with its head against the wall. The inhabitants of that village where the dead man has lived voluntarily bring to the hut dresses of reindeer-skin, in one of which the corpse is shrouded. A coffin, or box, is prepared at some selected spot outside of the village, set up a few feet from the ground, on four stoutly driven posts, and in it the body is deposited. Near by is planted a square board or smoothly hewn plank, upon which rude figures are painted of the animals that the deceased was most fond of hunting, such as a beaver, a deer, a fish, or seal. A few of his most cherished belongings are laid in the coffin with him, but the balance of his property is divided among his family.[147]

A festival in honor of the spirits of land and sea, and in memory of deceased kinsmen, is celebrated annually in the month of October or November. Lieutenant Zagoskin,[148] who spent five years among these people exploring the Yukon and Kuskokvim Rivers, has given us full details of that strange mummery and capers which characterize Innuit festivals and dances. What he saw between 1842 and 1845, and so graphically narrated, is to be seen substantially the same now everywhere among these people, who are almost wholly unchanged from their primeval habits as they live to-day.