The Young Ice Whalers

by Winthrop Packard

The vessel now found herself in the middle of the Bering Sea pack ice. Here and there were open leads still, but they were fewer, more narrow, and much less connected. Now and again there were places where contrary winds and currents had crushed the floes together, piling the crumpled cakes high on one another in wild confusion, often to a height of twenty or thirty feet. Joe called these hummocks icebergs, and Harry and he had much friendly controversy as to the correct use of that term. Harry explained that he had learned that icebergs were the product of glaciers alone, that there were no glaciers on the Alaskan coast north of the Aleutians, and that these should properly be called hummocks. In this he was right, but Joe, with the pride of the man who “has been there,” would not concede it. Whatever they were, they totally prevented the progress of the vessel, and when they appeared in the path, the Bowhead was obliged to make a detour to avoid them. Now and then they were obliged to “buck ice” to get from one lead to another, and the process was very exciting. The vessel under a full head of steam would plunge straight at the field of heavy ice, striking it with a thump that entirely stopped progress and shook the structure from stem to stern. The masts would spring under the blow, and at each shock Harry fully expected to see Captain Nickerson jolted from his perch in the crow’s nest, high on the fore-mast. Then the ship would back away again at the captain’s order, leaving a three-cornered dent in the ice. Again and again she would rush at this dent with her great weight under full head of steam, till the floe would split, and leave a narrow crack through which the vessel could crowd her way. Thus for several days they hammered their way on through the pack, until they reached its northwestern edge, where open water gave them free passage to the ice-bound shores of east Siberia. There they came to anchor under a headland, and though it was mid-June and did not seem cold, were greeted by a storm of snow that came scurrying down from the snow-clad hills inland.

BUCKING THE ICE

Next day it cleared, and the skin topeks of a Chuckchis village could be seen on the barren shore. A strip of shore ice still separated them from the land, but the natives came dragging their umiaks across this and then put to sea in them, soon paddling alongside. There were a dozen or more in each boat, men, women, and children, all clad much alike in walrus-hide seal-top boots, sealskin trousers, and a hooded coat of reindeer fur which extended nearly to the knee. Men and women and the older children alike paddled, and the walrus-hide boats made rapid progress over the waves. Once alongside they made fast and came aboard, all hands, smiling and silent, sitting or standing for a time until addressed by some one who was or seemed to be in authority. Then they spoke, and conversation was soon general. It was limited, however. Many of the men know considerable English of the “pigeon” variety, and most of the whalers are familiar with the trade language of the Eskimos of Bering Sea and the straits, which consists of Eskimo, mingled with words and phrases picked up from the whalers and traders, and originating Heaven knows where. Possibly some are Kanaka words transplanted far north. Others are words invented by the sailors on the spur of the moment, which, once applied by the natives, have been adopted into general use.

Each native had a sealskin poke which he carried slung over his shoulder by a rawhide thong, and which consisted of the skin of the ordinary Arctic seal taken off whole, and tanned with the hair on. A slit was cut in the side of this, making a sort of traveling-bag, in which he carried articles which he was to offer for trade. Within these pokes were walrus tusks, plain and carved, some elaborately; walrus teeth carved into grotesque imitations of little animals; “muckalucks,” the trade word for the native skin-boot; “artekas,” or coats of reindeer skin; furs of ermine, mink, otter, and the hair seal; in fact, anything which the mersinker could find at home that he thought the whalemen might fancy. None of these goods were offered on deck, however. Each waited until the captain, sitting in state in his cabin, sent for him; then one by one they went down to trade. After each man had made what bargain he could with Captain Nickerson, he brought what was left to the deck, and there traded freely with the sailors.

As supercargo, Harry sat in the cabin with Captain Nickerson, and kept account of each trade as it was made, having good opportunity to watch the methods of the natives. He found them very clever at barter, Captain Nickerson, Yankee that he was, often meeting his match in some stolid native, who seemed to have a very clear idea of what he wanted, and how to get it. The first day of trading was merely preliminary, however, the natives bringing off their least valuable goods for barter, reserving the best of the ivory, and all the bone, until they found how prices were going, and whether the ship held such supplies as they needed or not. Their first demand seemed to be for hard bread, of which they are very fond. For this they offered, as a rule, the muckaluck, or native boot. Calico, as they had learned to call all forms of cloth, came next; then flour in bags, and later ammunition, rifles, and trade goods. Of brown sugar they were desirous, and chewing tobacco was asked for almost as soon as the hard-tack. This they called kowkow tobacco, or eating tobacco, from their trade word “kowkow,” meaning to eat. Harry made note of the Eskimo words as he heard them used, and picked up a working vocabulary, with the help of his notebook, in a very short time. Before the first day’s trading was over he had begun to understand what was meant, and by the end of the third day he astonished Joe with his fluency. As a matter of fact, his vocabulary thus far consisted of only forty words or so; but as they were the ones in most constant use, it made him seem quite a linguist. From this time forward he took great pains to jot down a new word and its meaning as soon as he heard it, getting many from the officers and crew, and this quick acquisition of the language was to stand him in good stead later on.

At the end of the third day trading had ceased. There were great piles of deerskins, muckalucks, and small furs, several hundred pounds of not very good bone, quite a quantity of ivory, and many trinkets and curios. Harry wondered greatly as to the destination of much of this stuff.

“Are reindeer skins worth much in the States?” he asked Captain Nickerson once, as the pile grew larger at the expense of much flour and calico.

“I don’t think there is any market,” replied the captain, “though it is hard to see why. The fur is very thick and warm, the skin light, and should make most excellent lap robes and carriage robes, just as the buffalo fur once did. We shall trade them again when we meet the Eskimos on the other side of the straits. The caribou is scarce over there, and they gladly exchange fox, ermine, and bear skins for them. These we can dispose of readily in Frisco.”

A good quantity of bone was in hand, but it was only a part of what the natives had taken, as the captain knew. Two whales had been their good fortune as the ice came down the fall before, and a third had come to them that spring as the gift of the orcas. These eat the lip and the soft tongue of the bowhead, leaving the carcass to float ashore. Hence the mersinker looks upon the orca with a sort of veneration as a provider of great and valuable gifts, and has certain ceremonies which he goes through each year as an invocation to him and an expression of gratitude. The mersinker, in fact, is a man of many ceremonials, the reason for which he does not know, but which he follows because his father did the same before him. These three whales had been small ones, but there must have been far more bone from them than the natives brought to the ship for sale. The balance they were keeping back for further trading with other ships, nor was it possible to get them to bring this out, even by offering increased value for it. They held it in reserve, as is their custom, hoping that the next ship would bring goods which they would care for more than those at hand.