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CHAPTER XVIII
The Creatures of the Wild
Bear hunting, again, is pursued by the Eskimo with no less zest than that of the seal or deer. It forms quite a subject by itself, and calls for some description of its own customs, methods, and superstitions.
The bear is much respected by the Eskimo for his intelligence and cunning, and his strength. Indeed, they consider him second only, among the creatures of the wild, to man himself. It is for this reason that they so often choose for their “tongak,” or guardian familiar, the spirit of a bear.
One very curious belief about the animal is that the bear himself has a tongak (quite distinct from his Tarngnil or soul), and that when this spirit requires any new commodity, such as a new seal warp or line, which is represented by the black skin round the mouth of its protégé, this tongak causes the bear to fall in the hunter’s way and be killed. The hunter spares the black skin, and refrains from cutting it when flaying the carcase, as an offering to the spirit. A further offering of the sort is made by transfixing various portions of the beast’s body and entrails on a stake or spear, together with a man’s implement—[[253]]such as a knife, if the bear were a male, or a woman’s implement, such as a needle or skin scraper, if it were a female—and exposing the gift for three days. At the end of that time it is thrown into the sea.
In bear hunting, the rule is for the skin to go to the first hunter who sights the prey (not necessarily the first to kill it.) The best part of the body goes to him who deals the fatal blow.
The arctic bear is not an hibernating animal, for it is only the female who sleeps through the winter. The pair hunt together until the approach of winter, when the female, fat, and in the pink of condition after the summer months of good feeding, searches for a suitable place in which to retire and bear her cubs. She generally chooses a sheltered spot on land, where the snow lies deeply drifted. The two partners scratch out a comfortable cave in this, and the female then enters and rolls herself up to sleep. The male bear blocks up the entrance, and the next fall or drift of snow effectively completes his task, and obliterates all traces of the animal’s activities. He takes himself off, to roam about at his own sweet will, and attend to nobody’s appetite but his own for the next few months, returning to the female only in the spring, when she emerges from her hiding place, gaunt and hungry, and accompanied by the cubs. The male is always the safer creature to hunt at such a season, since the female is then thoroughly out of condition and very savage.
Bears are particularly fond of and feed upon the [[254]]blubber of seal and walrus, and resort to many tricks in order to procure it. The older generation of hunters studied the habits of the arctic creatures more carefully than do the Eskimo of to-day, and affirm many interesting things as to the bear’s tactics when on the prowl for food. They—the bears—know just as much about seal hunting as the tribesmen know, i.e., that these creatures lie about on the ice in the frozen bays, but are so wary of danger that they plunge out of sight in an instant through their “agloes” or seal holes at the slightest alarm. The bear goes nowhere near the sealing ground at first, but makes his way up any slight hill or eminence in the neighbourhood from which he can view the seals, and their adjacent holes. He impresses some sort of a map of it all, and of the safest route towards it, on his mind, and then makes the best haste he can towards the broken ice along-shore. He slides down the snow on his haunches like a tobogganist, carefully avoiding any rocks and obstacles projecting themselves in his path. After that, he creeps along with extraordinary caution towards the first sleeping seal he has marked down. He is all but invisible against the white background, and he is absolutely silent. He just glides towards his victim, and then at the last, when sufficiently close, he rushes forward and kills it with a single blow of his paw.