Carnivore Diet

Suddenly I heard a shot and at the same moment I saw Antoine fly like the wind over to something in the snow and madly pounce upon it. Now what under Heaven! Up on top of the esker, whom should I see but Jonas, standing there, his crutch in one hand, his gun in the other. With a long and difficult shot he had felled the hare at the very moment Antoine had chased it from cover. How Jonas had ever managed to come out to this place of ours was a puzzle to me, until I saw his tracks in the snow. From the tent to the top of the esker I discovered a deep furrow carved through the yard-deep snow. That plucky little devil, he had dragged himself along on his belly! 

Twilight had begun to fall and we turned back to the tent, where we prepared the hare and waited for the caribou-hunters to return. Later in the evening they appeared. The result of their hunt was one ptarmigan. So, after all, we had a Christmas Eve spread and this fact gave us much pleasure. With painful care we divided the food equally amongst ourselves and swallowed, as it were, all but the skin and the feathers. But Christmas Eve was no grand affair for the dogs. 

Next morning, when we were ready to strike camp, Johnny found that he had lost all but one of his dogs. He had been careless enough to allow them to run loose during the night, and now they were unquestionably roaming the wastes in search of some game of their own. The chances that they would find their way back to the tent were certainly not great, but we decided to wait over a day, in any event, to see if they might not turn up. Johnny scraped up sticks of wood from near and far and made a little fire up on a hilltop so that the dogs might catch scent of the smoke. There he sat, half-frozen, all day long and half the night, in his endeavor to keep his fire burning. Along toward morning the dogs, tired and footsore, came trotting into camp. 

Before we again broke camp, Antoine had a surprise for us. He dragged out a caribou stomach half-filled with blood and inner organs, which he had hidden away during an earlier hunt. He could not have given us a handsomer Christmas present. It was frozen as hard as a rock, but we chopped it up into fine bits with the ax and threw these into the large pot, which we then filled half-full of snow-water. The result was a greenish mess, but we drank it down greedily. Scraps of the skin of the stomach were dealt out equally and these we chewed carefully and swallowed bite by bite. 

This proved to be our last meal for some time. We continued east for three days without food. A couple of times we experimented with some black lichens thoroughly boiled in water. They didn't taste at all bad, but they were not in the least degree filling. Aside from this it was tea, morning, noon, and night. We made enormous quantities of it and drank it scalding hot. 

None of us were particularly spry as we tramped along on our snowshoes. It was a question of sparing the dogs as much as possible, so it was a rare occasion indeed when we could hop onto the load and ride. Gradually our gnawing hunger gave way to a feeling of general flaccidity. We felt the cold keenly at night, and in the daytime it was just as bad, for the icy snow of the Barrens would find its way in through the minutest rift in our clothing. The cold remained constant day after day and I am sure the temperature never rose above 40° below zero. 

Nevertheless, the hardships which we ourselves endured were nothing compared with those which afflicted the dogs. It was a week now since they had eaten anything resembling a square meal, though they worked faithfully in the traces from morning till night, none the less. Their tails drooped and there was no longer the old pulling-power in their gait, but they moved along somehow. It is unbelievable what these dogs of the Northland can endure in the way of toil and deprivation, and inspiring is their patient willingness to work until their last ounce of strength is gone and they drop in the traces. 

We crossed the divide, a conspicuous elevation in the terrain off to the northwest, and thereafter all the streams flowed east towards Hudson Bay. The third day after our meal of frozen caribou stomach we sighted some stunted spruces along a river course in a small valley. There we pitched our tent and held a general council to decide on the best course for us to pursue. Even the Indians could see that it would be dangerous to continue on our present course. Not a fresh caribou trail to be seen, and the wastes to the east of us gave promise of nothing. Hence we agreed to turn due south on the following morning. Everything considered, that must be the direction in which the caribou were holding themselves; hunting was the one matter which concerned us now. Along the way, too, we might cross the sled-trail of some white trapper who had a cabin somewhere along the edge of the forest. The Indians had heard about this cabin, but none knew its exact location. 

I should like to mention in this place that not once, either then or on later occasions when we were suffering from hunger, did I ever hear the Indians mention the possibility of eating the dogs. This was due to an old superstition to the effect that dogs are cannibalistic and therefore unclean, a belief I shall treat later. It has happened on occasion that white trappers have eaten their dogs, but amongst Indians I have never heard of such an occurence.

The conversation turns to hunting, and Tijon tells about the caribou. He was a little boy when he shot his first game, with a bow and arrow; since then he has shot many. He talks at length of the Caribou-Eaters who starved to death a good many years ago and advises me to eat reindeer moss whenever there is danger of going with an empty belly. Then he goes back to " the old days " when the Caribou-  Eaters were a powerful people who made long expeditions up into the land of the Eskimo after musk-oxen. " There were many many sleds in those days," he says. " And when musk-ox die and the hunters hold a feast, you see many tepees, like big forest, in the Land without Trees. But now — ! " He makes a disparaging gesture in the direction of his fellow-Indians. The Eskimos he wants nothing at all to do with. In the past he has occasionally come across one of their ancient camps and found there the skin of an animal he has never seen alive (the seal). It also happened, that he has seen the tracks of " big snowshoe " in the snow and strange men far off in the distance. Aside from this, he has but one thing to say about his northern neighbor: " Husky nezonilly (Eskimo bad man)! " 

Johnny begins to discuss dogs. He prefaces his remarks by reporting how excellent his own dogs are, then mysteriously hints about what happens to certain kinds of dogs when they get up into foreign country — the Barren Land. I sound him out, and he replies that such dogs never return to the woodland. He cites the example of a certain white trapper's dogs, nearly all of which were consumed. I cautiously suggest that perhaps they ran off after the caribou and got lost, or that they had had thin coats of fur and had frozen to death. But Johnny shakes his head in the negative; there is but one explanation: the foreign land gobbled them up! 

The Indian's ability to orient himself in the wilderness has always been a source of amazement to me, and, in order to keep the conversation going, I begin speaking about the compass. I have lost mine long ago, but I take out my watch and illustrate as well as I can. The Indians look on with smiles on their faces and conclude that I am talking nonsense. Just when I am all wound up and stumped for words to explain the action of the needle's magnetic attraction for north and south, Tijon takes me by the arm and says: " Come, you see! " Together we leave the tent. The sky is bespangled with stars, and beneath them, over the woods, flame the Northern Lights. Tijon points to the Great Bear, the North Star, and the Pleiades. I cannot follow him through all the figures he draws, with strange descriptions, in the heavens, but I understand very well that he is explaining his compass to me. Then he directs my attention to the aurora and says: " Good clock." He points at the northern wall of the tent and describes an arc over to the east. " Morning early, you see," he says. 

"But," I ask, " what do you do when there are no stars, no Northern Lights? " Then he points to the tall snow-drifts and makes it clear to me that those who have eyes in their heads after a storm can guide themselves along by these, and he explains how one can tell north from south from the bark and the limbs of the trees. At length he adds: " Maybe big wind in Land without Trees, maybe nothing see, but Indian always know way, here! " Smilingly he touches the tip of his finger to his forehead

Once again we resumed our journey southward. It was extremely difficult going, no less because of the cold, which was so intense that one could not remain still an instant without beginning to grow stiff. We floundered along for quite some time, ever on the look-out for the caribou herd and the white trappers' cabin. About us lay the snow-fields devoid of any sign of life, and we encountered one disappointment after another. We did manage to shoot a pair of lone caribou, but their meat did not go far with our hungry band. At length we were snowed in tight for two days during a blizzard; then it was that our spirits reached their lowest ebb. 

But at last one evening, just as we were on the point of pitching camp, Isep discovered the faint trail of a toboggan in the snow. We did not dare risk the possibility that drift snow might obliterate the trail, so, after a brief halt, we loaded all our stuff back on the sleds and continued on our way throughout a long moonlight night, with frequent rests out of deference to the dogs, which every now and then would drop in the traces. Countless times we lost the trail. Then we would spread in formation out over the plain and would search high and low, now and then creeping about on all fours as we felt in the snow for signs of the trail. Thus we proceeded until sunrise, when we glimpsed the forest's first outposts — rows of dwarf spruce growing in the lee of each elevation. In a snug hollow we built ourselves a mighty fire, poured scalding tea into ourselves, and continued to follow the sled-trail down the length of a long, narrow lake. Just as we were rounding a jut of land, we spied smoke curling up from a clump of spruce, and a log cabin cosily situated in amongst the trees. 

Jonas was the first to pull up in front of the door. Two dumfounded trappers came forward, wondering for all they were worth who in blazes had managed to find his way out into this part of the country. Their amazement hardly diminished when they saw a tattered Indian limp out of the sled with his crutch, lay his hand on his belly and say: "Long time, misu dowte (Long time, no food)." This mixture of English, Cree, and his own Chipewyan language was the very best that Jonas could do in the way of speaking a foreign language. 

Hospitality is the law of the land, but to provide for a starving band like ourselves was a problem in itself. Old McKay and Clark didn't know what they could find to offer us, for they had barely enough to scrape through the rest of the winter themselves. Mac presented me with a large slab of dried back-fat left over from the autumn hunt; this slab was two inches thick. I shall never forget him for that. I was tempted sorely to swallow the whole thing down just as fast as ever I could, but luckily I had common sense enough to refrain from doing that. I cut it up into small bits and stuffed my pockets with these, went about like a living warehouse and nibbled fat for over a week. The dogs also received their share, and it was amazing how this braced them up. To get along on little and to recuperate quickly are second nature to these animals. 

We learned that the caribou had gone on strike in this part of the country as well. After the autumn trek had passed in October, the herds had become sparse and few in number. McKay and Clark had been forced to use all their time hunting food for themselves and their dogs. Trapping had had to go by the board. Thus they had wasted a year, and no combination of toil and saving had amounted to anything. To begin with, there had been their autumn journey through the wilderness from Fitzgerald, following a canoe route of nearly four hundred and fifty miles, with fifty portages; then there had been their daily struggle for food through a long winter of cold and storm in the Barren Lands. After all this they would find themselves poorer than they were the day they had set out through the wilderness and would have to go in debt to " Hudson Bay " in order to buy their next year's equipment. But, even so, Clark and old Mac had nothing but good humor to express. Good luck or bad — why, great Heaven, it is the gamble that makes the life of a trapper such an interesting adventure! One must always take the bitter with the sweet. 

We remained with our hosts for three days, then set out in a northwesterly direction and kept going until we crossed the trail we had made on the way out. Thereafter we made for the camp of the Caribou-Eaters at the rapid pace always chosen by Indian hunters when they are returning home to their wives and children. We drove as often at night as during the day and, in the darkness, took many rash chances as we traveled over steep rough country or over river rapids where the ice gave way beneath us and the water splashed about our carioles. Crossing the larger lakes, we would lie in our sleds and sleep. We did not once pitch our tent; instead, we slept beside an open camp-fire wherever possible and then only long enough to allow the dogs to recover their strength. 

After we had been driving for three days, we encountered the main body of the caribou! Herds numbering thousands came grazing along toward the east. It was indeed ironical to see the plains now literally alive with the very hosts we had talked of and dreamed of so many times on the way out, when the plains had lain cold and lifeless. And bitter was the thought that, had we made our journey but a few weeks later, we should have lived on the fat of the land and, in addition to this, reaped a golden harvest of white-fox pelts on the banks of the Thelon.

Their society is based upon unwritten laws: in case of a dispute, the eldest member of each family group decides the issue, or, during the large summer gatherings, their common chief. However, there are remarkably few cases of friction in their society. Each problem which arises seems to have an obvious solution. He who has obtained authority to hunt in a certain territory can insist upon having his rights respected. He who first sights the game has the first right to shoot it, a rule which does not apply, however, when there is a shortage of food. The hunter who fells an animal, upon division of the meat, is entitled to the head, the layer of fat about the entrails, and, in spring and autumn, the back-fat. When working together at a common task, each man seems to know in advance exactly what his duties are to be, according to his age and social standing. If a man borrows a sled, he is in duty bound to return it, but is not responsible for damage during the time he is using it. In making an exchange, each party must take his own risk; he has no recourse in the event of future dissatisfaction. This rule applies, for example, in the case of swapping a dog which later reveals a tendency to bite itself out of the harness at every opportunity, a condition which renders the animal worthless, though it be excellent in every other respect. The rules governing property rights come seldom into use amongst these people who own practically nothing, aside from the bare essentials of life. The fact that furs now bring high prices has altered the situation but little. No lasting profits accrue, so far as the Indians are concerned, for most of the moneys they receive are immediately spent for foolish purchases. In spite of their splendid harvests of pelts, the majority of the Indians are in debt to the traders. Their obligations are treated almost with nonchalance ; they will pay a certain amount on account whenever it is necessary to do so to maintain their credit, but they have no compunctions against running into debt with one trader and selling their pelts to another. When a red hunter dies, his debt is regarded as having died with him. 

Naturally, it may occasionally come to pass that these unwritten laws of the tribe are broken, but this does not often occur. Stealing, for example, is an exceedingly rare occurrence. Two or three instances have been recorded of Indians' having robbed white men, but these cases are the exception. For my own part, I have left pelts hanging in my tent for weeks whilst I myself was out hunting, and have yet to miss a single skin, though a number of passing Indians stopped in to spend the night there. Amongst the Indians themselves I know of but one example of stealing, and in that case kleptomania was involved. 

Law-breaking, where the natives are concerned, knows no punishment in the formal sense that we understand the term. Sometimes the person outraged may give way to righteous indignation and take the law into his own hands to the extent of administering a sound thrashing, but ordinarily the fact that the culprit is considered as an outcast by the others of his tribe constitutes sufficient punishment.

Two normal men volunteered to live solely on meat for one year, which gave us an unusual opportunity of studying the effects of this diet. The term “meat,” as used by us, included both the lean and the fat portions of animals. The subjects derived most of their calories from fat and the diet was quite different from what one, who uses the term “meat” as including chiefly lean muscle, would expect. Rubner called attention to the fact that a man cannot live on meat alone because of the physical limitation of the apparatus of mastication. He was evidently considering only lean meat as fat offers little difficulty. It is well known that the Eskimos have lived on an almost exclusive meat diet for generat.ions. Certain explorers in the North also have subsisted for long periods on meat. Dr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson in particular has demonstrated that it is feasible for travelers in the arctic region to “live off the country,” which means living on meat alone. The experiences of Stefansson and his companions have been given in his book “The Friendly Arctic”. He spent over 11 years in arctic exploration, during 9 years of which he lived almost exclusively on meat. Stimulated by this experience, Stefansson and Andersen, the latter a member of one of the expeditions, voluntarily agreed to eat nothing but meat for 1 year while they continued their usual activities in the temperate climate of New York.