Grenfell: Knight-Errant of the North Part 13

VI

HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMO

When Dr. Grenfell first sailed his mission boat to the Eskimo settlements, the Eskimo swarmed aboard his little schooner, the _Albert_. They were singing a hymn the Moravian missionaries taught them.

"What do you know about that?" said Sailor Bill to Sailor Jim. "Them fellers certainly can sing!"

"Yes, an' they got a bra.s.s band," answered Jim. "Just hear 'em a-goin'

it, over there on the sh.o.r.e when the wind sets our way. You'd sure think the circus was comin' to town! Hey there, where you goin', young feller?"

The "young feller" was an old Eskimo of about seventy, but Jim couldn't be expected to know that. For he was all done up like a figure from fairy-land--in snow-white jumper, peaked fur cap, and sealskin boots.

The Eskimo only grinned from ear to ear. He seemed ready to laugh at everything. His little bright eyes missed nothing.

"These husky-maws are so bloomin' curious," said Jim. "Just like them husky dogs. Hafta take the lid off 'n' look into everything. The cook says he dasn't turn his back to the stove. Don't you let 'em into the cabin!"

"There's one of 'em in there now!" cried Bill. Out of a port-hole issued the notes of a hymn, which one of the Eskimo was pumping out of a melodeon.

"Come up outa there!" yelled Bill, thrusting his head in at the doorway.

The Eskimo didn't understand the words, but he knew what the tone meant, and meekly turned a smiling face toward the sailor.

Then he jumped up from his seat on the top of a keg and put out his hand. Bill took the pudgy, greasy little fingers. The Eskimo brought from somewhere in his blouse a piece of ivory carved in the likeness of a boat with rowers.

"How much d'ye want for that?" asked Bill.

The Eskimo shook his head.

"Are ye deaf?" cried Bill. "How much d'ye want for the boat?"

"Aw shucks!" exclaimed Jim. "Hollerin' so loud don't do no good. He dunno what you're sayin'. He can't talk English. Show him your clasp-knife. That'll talk to him better'n you can. He wants to swop with ye."

Bill brought out the big knife. The little brown man nodded eagerly.

Then he handed over the ivory boat. It was worth a great deal more than the knife. But not to the Eskimo. That knife would be a precious thing to help him carve meat and cut things out of sealskin and perhaps stab a polar bear.

"So everybody's happy?" laughed a clear and pleasant voice at Bill's shoulder. "You traded about even, did you?"

"Guess so, Doctor. He's got what he wants, and I'm goin' to send the boat to the kiddies in the old country."

That night as the men sat around the cabin lamp with their pipes and a big pail of steaming cocoa, Dr. Grenfell told them something about the strange people they had come among.

He had spent all day ash.o.r.e among them, in various repairs to their bodies, and he had promised to come back to them in the morning.

"They're a nice, jolly, friendly lot," he said. "So different from the old days, before the Moravian missionaries came.

"You know, they always called themselves 'Innuits.' That means 'the people.' They said G.o.d went on making human beings till He made the Eskimo. When He saw them, He was perfectly satisfied, and didn't make any more.

"But the early Nors.e.m.e.n came along, about a thousand years after the time of Christ, and called them 'skrellings.' That means 'weaklings.'

It was the Indians who called them Eskimo. The word means 'eaters of raw meat.'"

"They've sure got some funny ideas about h.e.l.l 'n' the Devil, Doctor!"

put in an old, wise sailor who was sitting deep in the shadows.

"Yes they have!" agreed the Doctor. "Their G.o.d, Tongarsuk, is a good spirit. He rules a lot of lesser spirits, called tongaks, and they run and tell the priests, who are called angekoks, what to do. The angekoks are the medicine-men and the weather-prophets. The Devil isn't he, but she. And she is so dreadful that she hasn't any name, because you're not supposed to talk about her at all.

"The angekoks are awfully busy fellows. They have to keep making journeys to the centre of the earth, the Eskimos believe. Because that's where Tongarsuk the good spirit is, and they have to go and ask him what to do when the little spirits get lazy and won't tell them.

"Anybody who thinks the angekok has an easy time of it on his voyage is mistaken. The journey has to be in winter. It must be at midnight.

The angekok's body is standing alone in the hut--his head tied between his legs, his arms bound behind his back. In the meantime his soul has left the body, and is on the way to heaven or h.e.l.l.

"That's what an ordinary, every-day angekok has to do. But if you want to become an angekok poglit, which is a fat priest (meaning a chief priest), it hurts a lot more, and takes much more time and trouble.

Then you have to let a white bear take your wandering soul and drag it down to the sea by one toe. They don't tell you how a soul comes to have a toe to drag it by.

"When the soul reaches the seaboard, it must be swallowed by a sea-lion--and of course the soul may have to sit there in the cold for quite a while waiting for a sea-lion to come along. After the sea-lion has swallowed it, the same white bear must reappear and swallow it too. Then the white bear must give up the spirit, and let it return to the dark house where the body is waiting for it. All this time the neighbors keep up an infernal racket with a drum and any other musical instruments they may happen to have.

"The Eskimo know very well that once there was a flood--but they cannot say exactly when. The trouble was that the world upset into the sea, and all were drowned except one man who climbed out on a cake of ice. They are sure of what they say, because although the oldest man alive only heard about it from the oldest man when he was a baby, they still find sh.e.l.ls in the crannies of the rocks far beyond the maddest reach of the sea: and somebody once found the remains of a whale at the very top of a high mountain.

"You do not go up to heaven when you die: you go down,--way, way down, to the bottom of the sea, where the best of everything is. There it's summer all the time. To the Eskimo there is no h.e.l.l in being hot--h.e.l.l is terrible cold. Down there where it is summer all the time you don't have to chase reindeer if you want them to pull you about--they come running up to you, obliging as taxicabs, and ask you please to harness them and tell them where you would like to go. And your dinner is ready for you all the time: the seals are swimming about in a kettle of boiling water. The women don't have to spend their time chewing on the sealskins to make them pliable for shoes and garments.

The skins come off, all by themselves, already chewed--as nice and soft as can be, fit to make a bed for an Eskimo baby.

"His boat and his weapons go with the warrior to his grave, so that his spirit may have the use of them in the next world.

"Once, one of the sailors from Newfoundland took something from a grave and hid it in his bunk.

"That night the dead Eskimo came looking for his property.

"It was pitch dark--but one of the crew saw and felt the ghost prowling about in the cabin!

"He yelled, and they lit the lamp.

"The ghost went out at the hatchway instantly.

"They put out the light, and the ghost came back. Then shouts were heard, 'There he is! He's a Eskimo! He's huntin' in Tom's bunk!'

"After that, they kept the lamp lit all night long: and the next day, Tom went back and with trembling fingers restored what he had stolen to the grave.

"There are wide c.h.i.n.ks in the rocky roof of every properly made Eskimo grave. This is not so that prowling sailor-men may reach in: it is so the spirits will have no trouble going in and out.

"You may still find lying in a grave a modern high-powered rifle ready for business, and good steel knives ready to carve those cooked seals down there in Heaven. I've even found pipes all ready filled with tobacco, to save the spirits the trouble of using their fingers to cram the bowl.

"Nowadays sealskins are exchanged for European goods, especially guns, and the Labrador Eskimo have lost much of the art of using their kayaks, the canoes into which they used to bind themselves securely, so that when they turned over in the water it did no harm. They would 'bob up serenely' and go right on, and in contests one man would pa.s.s his boat right over that of a rival without risk of accident.

"The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter enemies. The story of the last fight is, that the Eskimo had their fis.h.i.+ng-huts on an island off the mouth of a river.