Dismissed in this cool manner Kak went bounding back to his own camp.
“Look! Look!” he cried, as he threw his mess of fish on the floor. “I’ve seen the most marvelous thing!” And he began to tell in excited gasps about the nets. “All these the boy took by merely putting his hand into the water. We must have a net! We must buy a net right away.”
Taptuna shook his head, and Guninana laughed.
“I guess the old way will do us, son,” she said. “The way your fathers did is a good enough way, don’t you think? And you such a wonder at it, too!”
But Kak was not to be silenced with compliments. “This is so quick,” he insisted. “The fish swim into it while you sleep, and in the morning you get them. It is no trouble at all.”
“There’s plenty of work about setting a fish net,” his father objected.
And Okak added: “Where there are several sharing together, look out for quarrels.”
But Kak would not be satisfied till Taptuna promised to go after breakfast and watch the village clearing the nets. It really was watching the village, for the whole place, all the men and nearly all the women, turned out together. Their day’s job consisted in dragging the nets and emptying them. Some worked in groups and some in families, while hundreds of fish were piled and scattered on the beach, coldly reflecting the wan sunlight struggling through a thick white fog. Taptuna saw it all and was certainly impressed. But seeing and doing are entirely different things with an Eskimo. They are what we call a conservative people; that is, they stick to their old habits. They are terribly conservative; Kak’s father was terribly conservative here.
“This is an easy way,” he said, “but it looks to me common and stupid. There is no skill about it. We cannot store fish on our travels; and we will be able to provide with our spears all we need to eat.”
Kak felt bitterly disappointed. He had hoped his father would trade for a fish net and allow him to use it at Dease River. There was a sneaking desire in his heart to show off before the Kabluna. However, at that moment Kommana passed with a couple of dogs hitched to a sled and turned his mind into other channels.