Beginning to Build a Snow House.
The first tier of snow blocks.
When at last all the tribes have assembled, the elders hold a general meeting and decide upon the direction and the details of the prospective hunt. As soon as this important business is settled the people give themselves up en masse to a few days’ holiday-making.
It is the height of arctic summer; food abounds; and friends meet each other once again after a year of separation. The people are care-free and happy. No danger threatens from any direction. So that Eskimo good spirits attain their highest pitch, and for a short time the people abandon themselves to their every hospitable and sociable instinct, to their love of jollity and fun, to sports all day, to singing, entertainments, feasting and story-telling of an evening and well into the night.
The sports are inter-tribal. There are running and wrestling matches, too, races and competitions of all sorts. The youth are keenly aware of being watched by the bright, sloe-eyed, laughing girls, and of being criticised or applauded by the elders. As true a sporting spirit of emulation, good temper and fair play obtains [[241]]in this far-away arctic festival as on the famous “playing fields of Eton,” and as many a romance comes of it as well. For this is an immensely important social and fashionable function among these primitive folk, and men and maidens meet and strike many a match of their own.
There are contests with the bow and arrow. Poles are fixed in the ground with skins suspended from them to represent deer and seals. The vital spot, of course, is the Eskimo idea of the bull’s eye. The spear-throwing competition calls for a high degree of skill. From the top of a fixed, inclined pole, a line is carried to the earth, having an ivory ring tied in it half way down. This ring is carefully concealed by fringes of hide, and the spear throwers, stationed at a recognised distance away, have to cast their weapons deftly through it. The attempt demands the greatest accuracy of vision and training of the hand. The contests are very keen, and great éclat awaits those who distinguish themselves. Their names become household words round the igloo lamps all during the succeeding winter, much as those of crack footballers become familiar to the sporting manhood of this country.
In the evening come the singing contests—quite one of the most important features of the annual festival. Ethnologists generally are agreed that the Eskimo excel in poetry and music. Improvisation with them is a recognised art. Every man is something of a composer, and is called upon whenever festivities are [[242]]in progress to contribute a number of his own to the improvised concert. The form of these songs is quite strict, and the melodies, even to unaccustomed European ears, may be reduced to accepted notation. Travellers who have but a superficial acquaintance with the arctic folk, distinguish little in the extempore contests of the Kagge or of the Sedna ceremony but sheer barbaric cacophony—yowlings, yells, and monotonous and seemingly endless repetition. But there are some to whom Gregorian chant itself conveys but little more!
These Eskimo songs deal with any and every subject which may occur to the singer, those of a satirical or personal or topical character proving the most popular. The contests give rise to untold amusement and delight. Nothing is more appreciated in the whole round of the programme. As a rule, the competitors are only men. The “ptarmigans” (i.e., those born at the end of winter or beginning of spring) challenge the “ducks” (or those born in the summer). Each side extols its own prowess in hunting, its natal advantages, etc., etc., to the detriment of the other. All sorts of ridicule is poured upon the opposite party, causing the wildest merriment among the auditors, who shriek with laughter at each successful or witty sally, clap their hands, and vociferate over the comedian who wins the contest. The Eskimo have a very lively sense of fun, and appreciate each home thrust and happy skit every bit as keenly as a Cockney music-hall audience. [[243]]
The Kagge, or singing house, of the summer deer-hunt is, like that of the Sedna ceremony, a big round house, similarly tenanted by the people in circles around the walls. The summer Kagge is built of sod and stones. The women wear skin gloves—the backs black and the palms white—and take their station behind everybody else, with the children. The men come next, and the Angakooeet, as judges, sit in the front circle. The centre of the house is left vacant for the performers.
The first part of the entertainment consists of songs describing the exploits of the dead and gone heroes and hunters of the tribe, each song having a refrain which is taken up by the women, who sway their bodies from side to side as they sing, so raising and lowering their arms as to show first a circle of waving white and then a circle of waving black hands. Many of these songs are old-established favourites, extemporised at first by some individual as his own contribution to some occasion, which “caught on” and became part of the tribe’s collective musical tradition.