ESKIMO IN KAYAK
Since 1891 I had been living and working with these people, gaining their absolute confidence, making them my debtors for things given them, earning their gratitude by saving, time after time, the lives of their wives and children by supplying them with food when they were on the verge of starvation. For eighteen years I had been training them in my methods; or, to put it another way, teaching them how to modify and concentrate their wonderful ice technic and endurance, so as to make them useful for my purposes. I had studied their individual characters, as any man studies the human tools with which he expects to accomplish results, until I knew just which ones to select for a quick, courageous dash, and just which dogged, unswerving ones would, if necessary, walk straight through hell for the object I had placed before them.
I know every man, woman, and child in the tribe, from Cape York to Etah. Prior to 1891 they had never been farther north than their own habitat. Eighteen years ago I went to these people, and my first work was from their country as a base.
Much nonsense has been told by travelers in remote lands about the aborigines' regarding as gods the white men who come to them, but I have never placed much credence in these stories. My own experience has been that the average aborigine is just as content with his own way as we are with ours, just as convinced of his own superior knowledge, and that he adjusts himself with his knowledge in regard to things in the same way that we do. The Eskimos are not brutes; they are just as human as Caucasians. They know that I am their friend, and they have abundantly proved themselves my friends.
When I went ashore at Cape York I found there four or five families, living in their summer tupiks, or skin tents, From them I learned what had happened in the tribe in the last two years; who had died, in what families children had been born, where this family and that family were then living—that is, the distribution of the tribe for that particular summer. I thus learned where to find the other men I wanted.
It was about seven o'clock in the morning when we arrived at Cape York. I selected the few men needed from that place, told them that when the sun reached a certain point in the heavens that evening the ship would sail, and that they and their families and possessions must be aboard the ship. As hunting is the only industry in these Eskimo villages, and as their goods are of an easily portable character, consisting mainly of tents, dogs and sledges, a few skins, pots and pans, they were able to transport themselves to the Roosevelt in our boats without much loss of time. As soon as they were on board we started north again.
There was no question of their willingness to follow me; they were only too glad to go. These men knew from past experience that, once enrolled as members of my expedition, there was no danger that their wives or children would suffer from hunger; and they knew also that at the end of the journey, when we brought them back to their homes, I would turn over to them the remaining supplies and equipment of the expedition, which would ensure living for another year in absolute plenty, that, in comparison with the other members of their tribe, they would indeed be multi-millionaires.
An intense and restless curiosity is one of the peculiar characteristics of these people. As an illustration, one winter, years ago, when Mrs. Peary was in Greenland with me, an old woman of the tribe walked a hundred miles from her village to our winter quarters in order that she might see a white woman.