CHAPTER XXI.
CLOSING INCIDENTS OF THE IMPRISONMENT.
HANS had his story of adventure while at Etah. But the most important item in his estimation, and that which might prove far reaching in its results, was the fact that a young daughter of Sunghu appointed herself his nurse during his sickness, bestowing upon him care, sympathy, and bewitching smiles. She had evidently done what Godfrey tried in vain to do—she had entrapped him, at the expense, too, of a young Esquimo lady at Upernavik.
Hans had been successful in the hunt, and, besides what he had sent by Godfrey, had deposited some walrus at Littleton Island. He was at once sent after this, and intrusted at the same time with an important commission. Dr. Kane had been for some time meditating another trip toward the polar sea. To do this he desired more dogs. The Esquimo had been reducing their stock to keep away starvation, but Kalutunah had retained four. These, and such others as he could find, Hans was authorized to buy or hire, at almost any price. This northern trip made, the next move might be toward the abandonment of the "Advance." She could never float, it was plain, for now, late in April, the open water was eighty miles south.
While Hans was gone, the sick, yet numbering two thirds of the whole, and in a measure all of the other third, except the commander, were without fresh food, as they had been for several days. Yet the sunshine and the occasional supplies had put them all on the improving list. They could sit up, sew or job a little, making themselves useful, and keeping up good spirits. But, hark! what sound is that breaking on the still, clear air. It comes nearer. Bim, bim, bim, sounds upon the deck. It is Hans, whose coming is ever like the coming of the morning. A rabbit-stew and walrus liver follow his arrival, and over such royal dainties good cheer pervades the family circle.
Hans brought Metek with him, and Metek's young nephew, Paulik, a boy of fourteen. Metek and Hans spoke sadly of the condition of the Esquimo settlements. We have seen that the escaping party found those of the south flying northward from starvation. The report now was that they had huddled together at Northumberland Island until that yielded to the famine, and now they had come farther north. It was a sad sight to see men, women, and children fleeing over the icy desert before their relentless foe. Yet, says Hans, they sung as they went, careless of present want, and thoughtless of the morrow. Many had died, and thus year by year these few, scattered, improvident people decline, giving earnest that in a few years all will be gone.
Though light-hearted, death did bring its sorrows to these benighted heathen. Kalutunah lost a sister; her body was sewed up in skins, not in a sitting posture but extended, and her husband, unattended, carried it out to burial, and, with his own hand, placed upon it stone after stone, making at once a grave and a monument. A blubber lamp was burning outside the hut while he was gone, and when he returned his friends were waiting to listen to his rehearsal of the praises of the dead, and to hear the expressions of his sorrow, while they showed their grief by dismal chantings.
If sorrow did not keep the deceased in the memory of the living, imposed self-denials did. The Angekok, or medicine man, as our Indians would call him, determines the penance of the mourner, who is sometimes forbidden to eat the meat of a certain bird or beast, under the idea that the spirit of the departed has entered into it; at another time the mourner must not draw on his hood, but go with uncovered head; or he may be forbidden to go on the bear or walrus hunt. The length of time of these penances may be a few months or a year. The reader will recollect the widow with her birds, who appeared so often in the narrative of the escaping party.
Though thus mourning for the dead, these Esquimo do not hold life as a very sacred trust. The drones and the useless are sometimes harpooned in the back merely to get rid of them. Infants are put out of the way when they greatly annoy their parents. Hans, on one of his returns from Etah, had a story to tell illustrative of this. Awahtok, a young man of twenty-two, had a pretty wife—pretty as Esquimo beauty goes—sister of Kalutunah, and about eighteen years old. Dr. Kane had regarded this couple with some interest, and the husband "stuck to him as a plaster." Their first-born was a fine little girl. Well, Hans reported with becoming disgust and indignation that they had buried it alive under a pile of stones! When Dr. Kane next visited Etah he inquired of his friends Awahtok and his wife after the health of the baby, affecting not to have heard about its hard fate. They pointed with both hands earthward, but did not even shed the cheap, customary tear. The only reason reported for this murder was, that certain of its habits, common to all infants, were disagreeable to them!
Such is the mildest heathenism without Christianity. These and other similar gross sins were common among the South Greenland Esquimo, but have disappeared before the teachings of the Moravian missionaries.