Carnivore Diet

"Our Daily Bread" -- Arctic Style

It was after the Offertory. The celebrant (your humble servant) was gravely extending his hands toward the lavabo when his altar boy, a wrinkled old Eskimo, late for Mass and quite out of breath, rushed in just in time to catch the cruet. But his mind was obviously not on the ceremony, and while he poured out the water he said, "Falla, tikitoan--ataoserartoame!?..."Father, they have arrived. I got one!"

I was excited myself. For what he meant was that the fish had arrived, the fish of fish, the fish par excellence--Ikraluk, a spotted sea trout with pink flesh, properly called Arctic trout, but here always called salmon. Ikraluk! The name has a cherished sound to the Eskimos, for this fish is their favorite. Fish, of course, is one of the basic foods of the Inuit. They eat it any old way--raw, frozen, dried, or even cooked. It is fed to the dogs, in certain camps, almost as their only food, meat being reserved for humans. 

Naturally, here, as elsewhere, the fishing used to be better. What angler doesn't tell you of the days when the fish in his favorite lake or stream were so plentiful they almost walked out of the water into you arms? 

The Copper Eskimos still talk with dreamy melancholy of the good old days, when the whole camp trekked to the river in the spring, each man, woman, and child carrying his quote of rocks with which to build an artifical shallow in the stream, a little lake easily closed behind the fish, which were swimming upstream. When the trap was filled with salmon, everyone lept into the shallow water, splashing, yelling, striking out with spears and harpoons. It was a real old-fashioned bloody massacre, the kind of thing that would appeal to the Eskimo's temperament. 

Sometimes, instead of building the stone trap, they simply rigged a weir across the river, leaving a few narrow openings through which the fish would be forced to swim. At each opening a man would be waiting, a sharp, three-pronged spear in his hands, and as the salmon, driven by age-old instinct to seek the spawning ground up river, passed through the holes they were slaughtered by the hundreds. And beside the falls--especially at Coppermine, at Bloody Falls--the Eskimos watched the glittering salmon gallantly attempting his final leap. With a catapulting blow of his powerful tail he soared from the spume in a sparkling arc, gaining the swift water above, swimming ecstatically upstream. But not for long. A spear was waiting for him just beyond the falls. 

Here on Victoria Island the Inuit still like to try their skill with the three-pronged harpoon, but when they do it is usually for sport, or in desperation. Habitually, nowadays, the Eskimos use the fish nets of the white man, for nets are more practical and catch more fish faster. 

Right beside the Eskimos, in the streams, along the rapids, and in the sea itself, the missionary spreads his own nets, emulating St. Peter. When the fish are running in true Arctic fashion, each venture to the fishing grounds yields a silver harvest that nearly fills our canoes. On the beach, sharpening their oloos--V-shaped knives much like the old-fashioned curved nut choppers--the women wait. As soon as the catch is ashore they begin, filleting the fish quickly and expertly. Each fish is placed on a wooden board, and a quick slash of the oloo cuts into the flesh at the gills, and in a second, with two flashing movements of the knife, the job is done. All that is left on the broad is the head and entrails of the fish, still attached to the main vertebrae. Blood flows, heads, guts and bones pile up, and long lines of fresh plump fish hang out in the sun to dry. The women bend ot their work, arms and hands streaming with blood, bowels, and offal, pausing only momentarily to lick their fingers or toss into their mouths some choice meat or a handful of fish eggs. During this bloody work the women laugh, loudly and continuously, reminding one of the sanguinary shrews who sat at the food of the guillotine during the French Revolution. 

But I was getting used to the Eskimo diet, of course. It is not as bad as you might think. The all-meat routine becomes natural pretty soon, and after a while one hardly misses other foods, just gorging himself on flesh and fish. The Eskimos do it, why shouldn't we? The only thing I really missed was tobacco, and, perhaps, sugar. As for the rest, when we were hunting seal, we ate seal. Later, there were sea gulls' eggs. And sea gulls too. Also ducks. We were really hungry only during the period when the ocean was breaking up, and that year the process seemed endless. Thus I noted: 

July 6... The ice won't go. It just rots away, and of course there is no hunting. Nothing much to eat but dried seal meat, and that's getting scarce.

July 8... Put out two nets at the mouth of the river. No fish.

July 11...At last, two fish and three ducks in the first net. We didn't even bother with the second net, but devoured the catch without pausing for breath, completely disregarding our shrunken stomachs.

...We finally reached Baillie Island, having eaten nothing during the trip but dried fish dipped in overdone seal oil, aside from one fresh seal we had been able to kill enroute. At Baillie I went ashore and did some shopping--flour, butter, coffee, and all the trimmings, and enjoyed a feast. Next day we started for Tuktuk.

"Nekretoritse!"..."Come and eat!"

Above the snarling voice of the wind that sweeps across the ice, the Eskimo's ear always catches this call, his neighbor's invitiation to come and eat. He is suddenly roused from his winter revery.

"Nekrekroyatigot!" he announces, clambering to his feet. "They are calling us to eat."

The call is an indiscriminate invitation, to himself and everyone else. The Eskimo hostess never has trouble making up a guest list for dinner. A social secretary wouldn't be of much use to her. For when there is food, everyone is asked, without exception, and there aren't any place cards. The whole camp crowds into the host's igloo, the men taking teh best places, sitting on the skins, the women standing in the middle of the snowhouse, half consciously swafing back and forth to set up a rhythm that will keep the babies on their backs asleep, the children backed agaounst the wal,l blowing on their numbed fingers and banging their chilled feet on the floor. 

On a board in front of the lamp is an armful of frozen fish, or a basin of raw caribou meat, or a potful of half-cooked seal meat. If the meat is raw, or frozen, everyone just pitches in. If it is cooked meat, the hostess first squeeezes each piece in her fingers to get rid of the brownish froth, then tosses a chunk of frozen blood into the pot to add piquance to the consomme that will later be consumed as a chaser, after the meal. First she gives her husband his share, then it is every man for himself, and a squadron of filthy hands descends upon the meat pot, closing around the half-cooked food like so many greasy pairs of pincers. It is not a delicate cuisine, and the manners that go with it aren't elegant. The Eskimo takes a huge piece of meat, stuffs it into his mouth, and then, with a quick swipe of the "oloo"--a razor-sharp knife--snips off the part that won't fit in his mouth. All this is done with a surprising nonchalance, and for fifteen years I have been betting with myself, and losing every time, that one of them will miss and leave a piece of nose or chin on the snow.

Fish bones, and other bones they cannot crack and eat, plus inedible bits of gristle or skin, are spat back into the common pot, on top of the rest of the meat, from which you are expected to serve yourself a second helping, if you are so promted.

From time to time, craving a slightly more vibrant flavor, the Eskimo dips a morsel of meat into a rusty tin can filled with rancid seal oil. Another delicacy is meat that has been buried for a few weeks and is nicely overripe, soft and mushy right down to the bone. When the Eskimo gets hold of a piece of such stuff he smacks his lips with delight.

"Mamaronaktok!" he exclaims stuffing his mouth with the spoiled meat. "Now you are talking!"

The missionary, after a few sojourns in Eskimo camps, gets used to the most bizarre items in the Arctic diet and learns to partake of everything with a smile and at least the semblance of gusto, for at stake are both his own reputation and his host's honor. To turn down a choice morsel of rotten meat or a scabrous bit of dried fish would be taken as a mortal insult to the whole Eskimo village and a terrible reflection on the white man's taste.

Most of the time, living as he does, on the trail, in the open, the priest is hungry enough to ignore the smell or unpleasant associaton, and soon learns not only to eat but to relish Eskimo viands. As to quantity, though, he cannot keep up with them.

No one can eat like an Eskimo. The true Inuk eats all day long, everything, and anything, in sight. The poor wihte man, used to eating on schedule, has no chance against such competition. His best bet is to stop after the first course and excuse himself. Then the Eskimos will smile.

"Ah," they will say. "It is true. You Great Eyebrows have a watch in your stomachs."

The Arctic is a dietician's nightmare, and anyone conscious of vitamins or a balanced diet will make himself miserable. Eskimos are almost exclusively carnivorous--at least, they were until very recently. Now they have developed a taste for the white man's flour, sugar, and other soft foods. Their classical food is meat, and they still live on it almost altogether. In the fall, the women and children search for berries, if they don't mind endless hours of labor for a few ounces of food, and they also dig from the ground a root called "Maso," insipid and quite diruretic, but nevertheless appreciated. 

The only green that they eat is half-digested lichen and moss taken from the caribou's stomach--a deep green mush, of a dishonest color, though the taste might not be bad if the origin of the food were unknown. 

But the diet of most people is ruled by prejudice. We French eat snails and love frogs, though both these make the Englishman wince and the American shudder. The Americans love maize--Indian corn--and eat it in season by the armful, while the French regard it as food fit for chickens. The Englishman regales himself on suet pudding, though this shocks everyone else. The Arabs like locusts, preferring them fried, and I'm told that people unknowingly served grasshoppers pronounce them the gastronomic find of the century. I'm sure that if you dished up a nice fat cat, being sure to put it on the menu as rabbit, everyone would smack his lips and eat his fill--until you produced poor Tabb's head. 

So far as the odor and doubtful appearance of some Eskimo food is concerned--well, it is generally known that the best hunters amoung our people prefer their game somewhat high, and certanily connoisseurs of fine cheese maintain that it is best when well ripened. Turkish tobacco, they say, gets its distinctive flavor from being impregnated with the smoke of burning camel dung.

Surely, it is all a matter of taste.

As for myself, I think I can say I have tried every item on the Eskimo menu. I have enjoyed a drink of blood, and, when hungry, eaten meat that was still warm with the life blood of the caribou. I have lived on frozen raw fish, and been thankful for the meat that was almost ready to get up and walk away. I have eatn seal guts braided with blubber--a la mode de Victoria--and sampled all the birds: sea gulls, hawks, owls. Owls, believe me, are very good, and so is the liver of the scorpion fish. 

It is surprising how quickly one revises food prejudices, and what a persuading effect on the taste is worked by a fifty mile soujourn in fifty-below weather. Appetite, as they say, is the best of sauces. And the white man who refuses to follow the customs of the country is apt to go hungry more often than not.

page 213

The Eskimo used to hunt only what he needed--bear, seal, caribou.

The little foxes--Tiriganiak--he despised. In the old days the Copper Eskimo hardly recognized the existence of the fox. If he met one on the trail he might risk an arrow on him, just to try his skill, but never because he wanted the animal. Fox meat makes poor eating, and fox fur is too frail for anything but baby clothes.

But fashionable women in Paris and New York did not share the Inuk's contempt for the fox. They regarded Tiriganiak's silvery fur as a perfect complement to their gleaming shoulders. What women want, men will get, and so the white man came to the Arctic after foxes and dinned into the Eskimo's ear the value of fox pelts.

"Do you want a rifle, eh, Inuk? Ammunition? Then go and get us foxes, plenty of foxes. Plenty of foxes."

The Eskimo wanted the white man's rifle, steel knife, fish net, boat. So he went after foxes. And soon he found he was so busy getting the miserable little animals that he had no time left in which to hunt for real meat--for bear and caribou. Observing the white traders, he saw them eating bread and jam, and tea with sugar. The new food was no good. It had no taste, and certainly didn't stay with one on the trail. But the Inuk wanted to imitate the Krabloonak. He ate the white man's sugar, and soon it became a habit. He found that he could not do without it. 

"Sugar!" he says. "The Eyebrows offered it to us for nothing, just to try, and we threw it away. The taste of that sand was so bad. Now we have got to like it, but they no longer give it to us. They sell it, and dearly. Mamianar! Calamity!"

Systematically, the white traders ensared the Eskimos, making them slaves to commodities of which they had felt no need before the Eyebrows came, unnecessary luxuries such as flour, silk, sugar, even chewing gum. All these things the Inuit paid for--by giving up his healthy, free life in exchange for trivial luxuries. He ceased to be a hunter, in many cases, and became a trapper, a slave to the little foxes he despised. Thus Tiriganiak--the smallest of all--revolutionized the Eskimo's life, at least the lives of those Eskimos close enough to the traders' posts to come under their influence.

Not too long ago, all Eskimos hunted to clothe and feed themselves. Now they go after foxes, with which to buy some jam, or a Micky Mouse watch, or a cheap, tinny-sounding phonograph. They haven't time to hunt fo seal to provide oil for their lamps, so they buy the white man's kerosene. More foxes. There is no caribou meat on hand, so he eats the white man's flour. More foxes. Soon he lives in a vicious circle, like a knifegrinder's dog in his wheel cage.

Thus, in those areas where the traders hold sway, the happy hunter of old has become a kind of clerk. Once fierce and independent, ignoring tomorrow and contemptuous of anyone who mentioned it, now he is always in debt, as badly off as a petty office worker caught in the clutches of the race-track bookmaker. Once his life was diversified--today hunting, tomorrow sealing, the next day fishing--whatever satisifed the whim of the moment. Now he must turn all his energies toward the capture of the fox. And the supreme irony, of which he is aware, is in the fact that he, the Agun, the male, must outstrip himself to satisfy the desires of the scorned Arna--the woman. And the Krabloonak's woman, at that.

Along the coast, noawadays, one often hears from the Eskimos a bitter, disillusioned cry. "Kakertogot taima"..."We are always hungry now."

Of course they were hungry. The Eskimo is a carnivore. His body craves meat--seal, bear, caribou, fish--and the climate and his hard life aren't satisfied by anything else. Half a grapefruit and a couple of pieces of toast are not the breakfast for the Inuk at all, but for another class of people.

Yet the Inuk counts on the little foxes to provide his sustenance all the year round, and sometimes the foxes don't turn up. Then he's in trouble. Then there is famine. And it is usually too late before the Inuit resign themselves to going out on the ice after seals, as they should have done early in the winter. They starve. At Coppermine, in 1948, for example the whole Eskimo colony kept alive only by eating old skins, boots, and other rubbish--and this not fifteen miles from a white man's settlement.

You might blame the traders themselves, and it is true that some are mightily unscrupulous, but it is not the individuals who should be blamed, but the system, and the government that encourages it. I am told that such tragedy is not known among the Eskimos in Greenland, under Danish rule, though it matches the colonial pattern elsewhere--in the sugar islands of the Caribbean, for eample, where the natives were persuaded to forego their food crops in order to plant sugar cane, and where starvation results when the sugar crop is poor or when the market drops and the price breaks. 

The Eskimos have never heard of the seven lean kine. A trapper may bag three hundred foxes in one year and three the next, but it never occurs to him to store provisions against a bad season. Of course, we must blame him for his improvidence. But must we not also blame the white men who profit vilely from the Eskimo's ignorance, who take advantage of a good fox season by importing diamond rings, gold watches, silk dresses, chronometers, and similar goods? Of what use is a diamond ring to a woman who's going to wear it for cutting seal blubber, if she's lucky enough to have a seal to cut up? What good is a chronometer, complete with sweep second hand, to a man who doesn't care a whit for time? Of what use is a silk dress under a greasy caribou parka?

With melancholy one must watch a venal civilization displace the old Eskimo style. The white man is as devious as Sila. He takes much, and gives little. He talks big, and the rewards look inviting, but when the season is over he has the foxes and what has Inuk?

An empty belly. A forlorn view of the future. The precious watch will soon be opened to see what makes it tick and ruined by snow or water. The elegant dress will soon because a greasy snot-stained rag. The diamong ring will not be worn long before it is lost down a seals' hole. Alas!

Can't find even an abstract for this paper.