Carnivore Diet

The aboriginal diet of the Arctic Eskimo, which consisted mainly of land and sea mammals and fish, is analyzed with respect to its capacity to provide the nutrients now regarded as essential for nutritional health. It is concluded that, despite its remarkably restricted composition, the native diet is capable of furnishing all the essential nutritional elements when prepared and consumed according to traditional customs. However, its low carbohydrate and high protein content necessitated major metabolic adaptations in energy and nitrogen metabolism. Erosion of the traditional diet culture and life style has been accompanied by a decline in nutritional status. [Eskimo, diet, nutrition]

A natural association between the “B complex” vitamins and proteins in the enzyme systems of animal tissues provides strong assurance against a deficiency of these vitamins in a diet high in animal protein. There is no history among Eskimos of the epidemic vitamin deficiency diseases which afflicted some cereal-based food cultures. The oils of fish and marine mammals are rich in the fat-soluble vitamin A and D. A high meat diet also provides adequate amounts of vitamin K. The vitamin E nutriture of Eskimos is of particular interest, since this vitamin is ordinarily derived mainly from cereal oils. A recent investigation of the vitamin E status of Alaskan Eskimos revealed that their blood levels are fully comparable to those of populations consuming a mixed diet (Wo and Draper 1975). This finding is attributable to the fact that nearly all of the vitamin E in animal tissues is present in its most active form (a-tocopherol), whereas in cereals it is present primarily as a less active isomer (7-tocopherol).

Stefansson’s appraisal of the ascorbic acid nutriture of the Eskimo has successfully withstood 40 years of critical evaluation, namely “. . . that if you have some fresh meat in your diet every day, and don’t overcook it, there will be enough C from that source alone to prevent scurvy” (Stefansson 1935-36). The Eskimo practice of eating their food in the raw, frozen, or lightly cooked state was a critical factor in preserving the small amounts of vitamin C necessary to prevent scurvy (less than 10 milligrams per day).

The predominant feature of the Eskimo native diet from an adaptational standpoint is its remarkably low carbohydrate content. The all-meat diet typically provides about 10 grams of glucose in the form of glycogen per 2,500 calories.

A subject of frequent speculation concerning the energy metabolism of Eskimos is whether they relied on ketone bodies as a significant source of metabolic fuel. It is difficult to estimate how frequently conditions conducive to ketogenesis prevailed in Eskimo dietary experience, but it seems likely that there were times when the supply of protein was inadequate to meet the amino acid requirements for glucose synthesis as well as for protein synthesis. Further, it has been estimated that the capacity of the liver to convert amino acids to glucose is limited to about half the total energy requirement. Four of the 20 amino acids supplied by dietary protein are ketogenic as well as glycogenic and anQther (leucine) is specifically ketogenic. An abrupt change from a mixed diet to a meat diet leads to asymptomatic ketafis and ketonuria, but these conditions gradually diminish as a result of biochemical adaptation to the use of ketone bodies for energy. Whether Eskimos have unusual adaptational capabilities in this regard is unknown.

Their high-protein diet imposed on Eskimos a need to dispose of an unusually large metabolic load of urea, a potentially toxic nitrogenous compound formed during the conversion of amino acids to glucose. Animals fed high-protein diets exhibit diuresis and an increase in water consumption, and it is of interest that early explorers commented on the high water intake of Eskimos. A feedback mechanism acts to prevent uremia under conditions of high protein intake by stimulating water consumption and thereby enhancing the dilution and excretion of urea. The need for efficient urea clearance implies that renal disease in Eskimos consuming the native diet has unusually serious clinical implications. The all-meat diet is also distinctive with respect to its lack of “fiber,” a composite of plant materials which is resistant to digestion and therefore passes relatively unchanged into the feces. Such materials normally exert several physiological effects, including an enhancement of food transit through the gut, an increase in fecal bulk, alterations in bacterial activity, and a sequestering of cholesterol and bile salts. The decline in the fiber content of the general U.S. dietary in recent decades has been implicated as a factor in the incidence of a number of intestinal diseases (constipation, diverticulosis, colonic cancer) which may be increased by food stasis and putrefaction in the lower intestine. Medical records are too fragmentary to indicate whether these diseases are unusually prevalent in Eskimos habituated to the native diet.

The modem Eskimo has for the first time the opportunity to make significant food choices. Presented with an array of exotic new foods which he is not equipped by personal experience or education to evaluate, he tends to choose badly. In general, the items he selects are below the average quality of the U.S. mixed diet and of the foods they replace in his native diet. His nutritional status is deteriorating, in terms of both undernutrition and overnutrition, in direct relation to the proportion of processed foods in his total diet. In the subarctic, where dietary acculturation is extensive, the Eskimo has the full complement of diet-related diseases that are characteristic of other segments of the U.S. population of low socioeconomic status: obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and tooth decay.

Acknowledgment. This paper was presented at a symposium on Human Adaptability in Relation to Regional Ecosystems held under the auspices of the International Biological Program at the 141st annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York City, 26-31 January 1974. The author gratefully acknowledges the collaboration of the following: R. Raines Bell, J. G. Bergan, Catherine C. K. Wei Wo, G. V. Mann, L. M. Hursh, M. J. Colbert, and Christine A. Heller.

This book is a study of the ecology of Man, as his environment has changed with (relatively) lightning-like rapidity from prehistorical to modern times, and to delineate the effect these changes have had on nutrition. An attempt will be made to answer the question: "Is modern Man actually better or worse off nutritionally than was his Stone Age forbear?"

Writing this book has indeed been fun. While collecting material for the early chapters I was able to add greatly to my knowledge of comparative anatomy and physiology, how all various sorts of animals are constructed, and how their digestive tracts function. Later chapters led me into a fascinating world of the past, of anthropology and archaeology, which I embraced enthusiastically though amateurishly. Finally I ventured into the shadowy sphere of philosophy, explored some aspects of future food production, and have set down the dire predictions of population ecologists for the arrival of the 21st century. It has been thrilling to see how each bit of scientific data from such widely separated disciplines fitted together into a mosaic of such undeniable clarity that the aphorism: "That contrary to Nature cannot be fact"-was again verified, this time in the field of human dietetics and nutrition.

​

WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT

Of course you are’ a human being! Everybody is. But did you know that you are also an animal–a carnivorous animal? All humans are. Did anybody ever tell you that your ancestors were exclusively carnivores for at least two and possibly twenty million years? Were you aware that ancestral man first departed slightly from a strictly carnivorous diet a mere ten thousand years ago? Well, he was and he did, and discussion of these salient points relevant to man’s diet will be the first task of this book. Over the next 9,950 years Man continued to make minor changes in his victuals as new plant substances were discovered and cultivated. These changes contributed nothing nutritionally but a more abundant supply of calories. They did promote cultural progress from feeding to eating. However, few if any of the novelties introduced to his palate during thc following centuries of dietary experimentation were sufficiently indigestible, or eaten in so great a quantity, as to incite rebellion by his digestive tract. As a consequence, man continued to nibble at them and experiment cautiously with still newer foods. He actually even grew to like some of them, especially when he was hungry and there was no meat in the larder. The low carbohydrate diet is an old diet. It was the choice of man for two million Stone Age years. He first departed from his meat-fat diet only a few thousand years ago. This was partly because of an increasing population. More important were climatic changes which decimated the large game animals, his chief source of food. Strictly from hunger, man began to eat some plant substances which were, of course, carbohydrate.

The Dog

Since it is easier to begin any task with its simplest component, a comparison of man’s digestive tract with that of the meat eater and that of the grazing animal, respectively, we will begin with the former, a carnivorous animal: the dog. The digestive tracts of all carnivores are remarkably similar in structure and function. If one could be plucked from its nest in the abdomen and stretched out full length, one could see that it was rather short, being only about six times the animal’s body length. >It is composed of an uninterrupted tube, enlarged in certain areas, to which are appended certain solid organs, the glands of digestion. The dimensions of this tube will of course vary with the size of the animal. Since we plan to make comparison eventually with man, a carnivorous animal of relative size will be described. Such an animal would be a large dog-a Great Dane or a Saint Bernard-which frequently attains a weight of 150 pounds, and has other measurements comparable to a human.

Let us start with the mouth. First we would encounter the jaws, set with incisor, canine, and molar teeth. The dog possesses incisor teeth in both upper and lower jaws. Thc jaw movements are up and down which, together with the ridged character of the molar teeth, indicate a tearing or crushing function rather than that of grinding or mastication. The salivary glands do not have an important digestive function in the dog, serving merely to lubricate the chunks of meat this animal normally “wolfs,” or swallows whole. >Food, when swallowed, enters the esophagus, a tube-like structure which extends from the mouth through the chest to the stomach. When distended with food, peristaltic waves are set up in the esophagus which gradually “milk” the food into the stomach. The Great Dane’s stomach is rather small, having a capacity of only two quarts or less. It is the only bulbous enlargement encountered along the alimentary way. When distended it has somewhat the shope of a small football, and its size indicates the amount of food the animal can ingest at one time without discomfort. The chief functions of the carnivorous stomach are:

1) to serve as a reservoir; and

2) to dissolve the aliment (ingested food), which grently facilitates its complete and rapid digestion as it passes down the intestine. The reservoir function allows the animal to eat a fairly large volume of food at one time. Since the food of these animals is normally meat and fat-highly concentrated foods of small bulk-sufficient amounts may be ingested at intervals of once daily to serve their nutritional needs. Dissolving the meat and fat in the stomach is possible because this organ has the ability to manufacture and secrete into its lumen a strong mineral acid called hydrochloric acid. This same material, under the name of muriatic acid, is used widely in industry 8S a solvent of many substances, including metals, minerals, and organic material. Foodstuffs are held back in the stomach until solution has occurred. The solubility of different materials varies widely and as a consequence, some foods leave the stomach quickly, while others are retained for a longer period.Some insoluble substances, such as cellulose, large pieces of bone and cartilage, or raw vegetable material, if it should be ingested, are eventually emptied into the small intestine and pass through the remainder of the tract unchanged. If they are too large to pass through the exit from the stomach they are vomited. The carnivorous stomach, which has been filled with its normnl ration of meat and fat, wilt be able to dissolve the entire meal and evacuate it into lhe small intestine within three hours. The stomach then enters a period of rest until the next meal is eaten.The dissolved food, called “chyme” is fed into the upper end of the small intestine in a series of small suprts under the control of the pylorus, a muscular valve separating the stomach from the intestine. Very little actual digestion of food occurs in the carnivorous stomach. There is some slight brenking down of highly emulsified fats, such as cream, and insignificant digestion of some protein by the pepsin of the gastric juice. In the carnivore the stomach is not a vital organ; the animal get” along quite well even though much, or even all, of its functions has been lost through disease or surgical removal. Food leaving the stomach enters the small intestine and begins a most eventful journey through the remainder of the digestive tract.

The diameter of the small instestine is similar to that of the esophagus–about the size of a garden hose. Its length is difficult to determine with accuracy, since this dimension depends largely upon the state of its contraction or relaxation. If the small bowel (or intestine) is completely relaxed, as after death, it may he stretched out for thirty feet. Contrariwise, if a rubber tube is fed through the small intestine of a living animal, the leading tip of the tube will have traversed its entire length by the time scarcely ten feet of the tube have entered the mouth. The true functional length of our dog’s small bowel is thought by most anatomists to be about twenty feet. However, this is a most important twenty feet, for it is during transit through this portion of the tract that virtually all digestion and absorption of food must occur. The small intestine is a vital organ, for no carnivore can live without it.

Several inches from the stomach a duct or tube enters the small intestine from the side. About an inch from its point of entry into the bowel, this tube branches; the shorter branch lends to the pancreas, and the longer leads to the liver. There are the digestive glands which furnish the digestive juices to the alimentary tract. They are of vital importance to the carnivore. The gallbladder is a sac-like structure attached to and communicating with the tube leading from the liver to the intestine (bile duct). The gallbladder is well-developed and functions strongly in all carnivores. The presence of the first few spurts of chyme in the duodenum, or first division of the small intestine, alerts chemical sensors or hormones. These stimulate the production of digestive enzymes by the pancreas, which are in turn emptied into the intestine through the pancreatic duct. There they mingle with the chyme and immediately begin to break it down into its component parts. These chemical processes are continued, the chyme moves down the digestive tract, so that by the time it has reached the distal end of the small bowel, virtually all the material that can be digested has been absorbed from the digestive tube, leaving only a small indigestible residue to be emptied as a liquid suspension into the colon or large intestine for disposal as waste. The process of digesting the food by pancreatic juice is most important because meat, fat, or carbohydrate cannot be absorbed by the small intestine as such. First they must be broken down into their basic components, the only forms in which they can be assimilated.

Proteins are broken down into a variety of amino acids, fats to fatty acids and glycerol, and digestible carbohydrates to glucose. The action of the pancreatic juice and a few weak and inconstant intestinal enzymes, constitute the entire digestive potential of the carnivorous animal. These enzymes are all produced by the animal itself. This point is of great importance, as will be seen when tho carnivorous and herbivorous digestive mechanisms are compared. Meanwhile, back in the duodenum, other activities have taken place. Certain other hormones are produced which increase the muscular activities of the intestine, and produce mixing and churning movements which facilitate digestion by the enzymes. Since digestion by enzymes takes place on the surfnce of the material, the process is greatly facilitated if the size of the food particles are reduced by chewing, grinding, powdering, or-most ideally of all-by actually dissolving it. Thus, the stomach’s function of dissolving food before it enters the intestine, makes chewing or other processing of the normal carnivorous diet of ment and fat virtually unnecessary. The digestion of fat requires some special handling by the alimentary system. It has heen shown that digestion occurs efficiently only when the aliment has been dissolved before being exposed to the assault of the enzymes. Fat, however, will not dissolve in water. Bile, which is manufactured by the liver, contains certain substances called bile salts, which act very much like modern industry detergent to render fats soluble in the watery chyme, and thus render them susceptible to the action of fat-digesting enzymes. Fat in the carnivorous diet is present in large amounts on occasions and, since the need for bile is limited to times when there is considerable fat in the diet, the bile is not allowed to drain off, to be wasted during the interdigestive periods (between meals) of the carnivorous animals. Instead it is diverted to the gallbladder, where it can be stored until the presence of fat in the intestine again signals the need for its presence, whereupon a hormone, produced by the presence of fat in the intestine, causes the gallbladder to contract strongly and deliver great amounts of concentrated bile to the intestine. Digestion and absorption of the normal carnivorous diet-protein and fat with but little carbohydrate-is remarkably efficient. If “balance studies” are accomplished, which will merely measure the amount of a certain nutriment administered in the diet, and then determine how much of that same material appears in the animal’s excreta, it is found that the healthy animal never loses more than 4% of the ingested fat and only a trace of dietary protein. The distal end of the dog’s small intestine terminates by emptying into the large intestine, or colon. This connection between the two is of an “end to side” sort; that is, they join each other at a right angle. In the dog there is here a blind pouch, or cul-de-sac, which is two or three inches in length and is called the cecum. While the cecum is functionless in carnivores, it would be well to keep one’s eye on this area of the colon, for differences in it, and also the stomach, constitute two of the major points of variation between carnivorous and herbivorous design. The length of the colon, like that of the small intestine, is subject to considerable variation, according to different authorities. In a large dog it is generally considered to be about four feet. The colon terminates in the globular rectum, which is the area where fecal material is stored until enough has accumulated to make expelling it worthwhile. The opening of the rectum to the outside is called the anus. The volume of the rectum is about that of a baseball. Since digestion of food is complete by the time the small intestinal contents are emptied into the colon, the latter organ has no digestive function. The indigestible residue of the carnivorous diet is small; therefore the colon of these animals is short, of small capacity, and with a physiological activity confined to the transport of indigestible waste to the outside and reabsorption of water and a few minerals from it.

The contents of the small intestine are emptied into the colon as a water suspension. As this material is slowly moved along the colon the water is absorbed; its consistency becomes more firm and its volume smaller. By the time it reaches the rectum this waste material has become a small firm mass, possibly about the size of an egg or tennis ball. When expelled, this material constitutes the bowel movement. When on a nonnal diet of meat and fat, the dog’s stool is firm and practically odorless. Evacuation of the rectum occurs once in each twenty-four to forty-eight hours. In the carnivore the colon is by no means a vital organ; carnivorous animals get along well (albeit with less conveence) after the entire large bowel has been removed. The healthy carnivorous digestive tract furnishes residence for relatively few bacteria and no microprotozoa. These are microscopic-sized organisms; the former are plant material, while the latter are animalcules. The strong ocid of the stomach guarantees that most microorganisms swallowed with the food or otherwise will be killed, or at least be attenuated and not allowed to multiply in that area. Those escaping the stomach are rarely able to withstand the digestive activity of the small intestine. However, toward the lower end of the small intestine, where digestive activity has almost disappeared, a few surviving bacteria are to be found. But in the large intestine, myriad organisms thrive and serve some function in forming certain vitamins: pyridoxine, biotin, folic aeid, Vitamin K, and possibly others. The bacteria of the carnivorous colon are of the putrefactive type; they nourish in on alkaline medium. The digestive tract we have been considering is practically sterile (devoid of organisms) except in the large intesline. The coefficient of digestion is the percentage of ingested food thut is digested, absorbed, and utilized by the animal. It is a measure of nutritive efficiency and, in the carnivore eating its normal diet of meat and fat, the coefficient approaches 100%.

This, then, is the carnivorous digestive tract. It is simple, short, and of small capacity. A small variety of concentrated food is ingested at infrequent intervals. Food is digested only by enzymes which are manufactured by the animal itself. The meat-eating animals have no dependence upon microorganisms to assist in digesting the food. The food is almost completely digested and absorbed, leaving but little excretory bulk. Digestion is rapid, complete, and intermittent. The entire alimentnry canal functions for a few hours, then enters upon an interdigestive period of rest. Significant digestive activity is confined to the small intestine. The carnivore is able to maintain life even after losing both stomach and colon, but cannot survive a loss of the small intestine.

And A Man

To describe the structure and function of a human digestive tract would be mercly repetitious, for it is practically identical with that of the dog already delineated. The sole difference between the two is the presence in man of a rudimentary structure springing from a functionless cecum; this is called the appendix. This organ hos long been considered lo be a degenerated structure and is often cited as evidence that man was originally herbivorous and then became carnivorous. Supposedly, as this dietary change occurred, he gradually lost the use of his cecum, since he was no longer digesting vegetable material, and it gradually shriveled into the vestige we know today. Others, however, suggest that man might not be losing his appendix at all, but is attempting to gain a functioning cecum. This would suggest that he was an original carnivore and that centuries of increasing plant food consumption caused this adaptive change in his digestive tract, in an effort to afford greater digestive capability for his civilized diet. Since this is a purely philosophical matter which will not be solved in less thnn another ten thousand years, it is pointless to pursue it further.

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ARCTIC MEAT

When I first went to stay with Inuit, for weeks and often for months, I had misgivings about living on meat alone. It was not what my culture considered a "balanced diet." Yet common sense told me that since the Inuit were healthy I, too, would be healthy if I ate the meat in their fashion, some cooked, some raw. This turned out to be true, and hunger quickly took care of my ingrained cultural aversion to eating raw meat. 

Explorers died in droves of scurvy in regions where Inuit had prospered for thousands of years. The reason was diet: the Europeans lived on salt beef, and its lack of vitamins eventually killed them. The Inuit thrived on fresh meat. Many of their favorite animal parts are rich in vitamins: liver contains high amounts of vitamins A and D (polar-bear liver is so rich in vitamin A it is poisonous; if one eats it, one can die of hypervitaminosis); muktuk, the skin of whales, is very rich in vitamin C, richer per unit of weight than oranges. 

But meat, raw or boiled, is bland. The Inuit found salt disgusting; their words for salt and bitter sea water are synonymous. So, to add Tip to their diet, they fermented meat, a habit that horrified southerners, who reported with disgust that Inuit ate "rotten" meat. Actually the relationship between rotten meat and fermented meat is roughly that between spoiled milk and cheese. And properly ripened meat tastes very much like cheese. A favorite after-dinner delicacy of the Bathurst Inlet people with whom I lived was ingaluawinik, caribou mesentery fat, pressed into a pouch and fermented for months until it tasted like Danish blue cheese - only more so. 

The Inuit of Little Diomede Island in Bering Strait keep most of their food in meat holes - spacious, stone-lined caverns, some of great age, dug deep into the frozen mountainside. Their diet when I first lived with them in 1975 was still largely traditional, and the people were healthy. The main food was boiled seal or walrus meat. Blubber, aged until it was saffron-yellow and then marinated in seal oil, was eaten as a zesty condiment with the bland meat, or with kauk, boiled walrus skin, which is best after it has aged in a meat hole for about a year. 

The real masters in the art of fermenting meat are the Polar Inuit. They use ancient stone caches in which the meat slowly ripens, and they are as finicky and concerned about these caches as the people of Roquefort are about the drafts and temperature in the ancient limestone caves in which their famous cheeses mature. 

The result of this process is such delicacies as iterssorag, year-old narwhal tail, slowly fermented in a blubber-lined rock cache, the skin bright green, the blubber olive green, the meat black and greenishly marbled, with the taste of the different parts ranging roughly from Brie to Roquefort to old Stilton; and, best loved by all, kiviaq, unplucked dovekies placed into blubber-lined sealskin bags and aged under rocks, untouched by direct sunlight, for about a year, until they have the pungent smell and flavor of old Gorgonzola. 

In fall, I moved from Inerssussat up Inglefield Bay to the ancient narwhal hunting camp at Kangerdlugssuaq to live with a famous hunter; Ululik Duneq, and his family. As a gift, I took along from Qaanaaq a big chunk of very potent cheese. "Ah!" exclaimed Ululik as he tasted the cheese, "just like kiviaq!"

The Diomeders are known for belligerence and reckless daring and have been called "the Vikings of the Arctic Sea," " a reputation they rather cherish. One day, two boat crews were in the Alaskan mainland village of Wales and saw a film about Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde, with violence and pillage aplenty. Back on Little Diomede, they were asked by a visiting biologist how they had liked the film. One man grinned and said: "Nothing special. Just a bunch of Diomeders on horseback!" 

The walrus hunters in my boat slept soundly, oblivious to the storm. Slowly the wind abated, the sky cleared, the pack spread out, the morning was pure magic. We launched the boat and purred smoothly along dark lanes among the floes, through a fantasy-land of shimmering, wind-and-wave sculptured ice. The ice glowed in the soft opalescence of morning, in delicate lilac, rose, and cool green, and bone-white icicles hung in grottoes of the deepest blue. Thousands of murres and auklets, like dark toy birds, lay scattered upon the satin sea. 

Far in the pack we heard the walruses, drifting north upon the Aloes from the Bering to the Chukchi Sea, all 200,000 funneling through Bering Strait on their annual spring migration. We approached them slowly, cautiously. Masses of madder-brown walruses lay sound asleep in chummy heaps upon brown, dung- smeared floes. 

Tom throttled the motor back, the men readied rifles and harpoons. They spoke in whispers; excitement and tension filled the boat. We drifted close to a pan loaded with sleeping animals, and suddenly, upon a low command from Tom, the eleven hunters fired, and fired again and again, a rapid, deadly fusillade. One moment it had been very quiet and then came carnage and chaos. 

Dead walruses lay on the floe, fountains of blood spurting and bubbling from the wounds. Others, in fear and fury, poured off the floe like a brown avalanche, rallied and attacked the boat, bellowing with rage, their eyes bloodshot. The men shot onto the water, into the walruses at top speed; most walruses turned and fled. A huge bull, bleeding from many wounds, dived, then shot up and hacked into the boat, and water rushed in through the gash. The hunters were prepared. They stuffed a large piece of blubber into the hole to staunch the leak. Ice and water were red with blood. They shot and killed the wounded walruses and tried to harpoon them before they sank. 

Ten walruses were dead. The men pulled the umiak onto the floe, patched the hole, and with amazing speed and precision cut up the 2-ton (1.8-tonne) carcasses. Blood flowed everywhere; piles of steaming guts lay on the ice; men with axes cut heavy-boned skulls to remove the precious ivory tusks. Ivory and a sea of blood; it seemed the essence of the hunt. We loaded the boat to the gunwales with meat, fat, and ivory, and headed for Diomede. The weather was changing fast. Ragged storm clouds raced across the sky. Gray fog oozed over sea and ice and enwrapped us like a clammy shroud. The wind increased; the heavily laden boat pitched and lurched in the rising waves. They raised the yard-broad waistcloth, furled against the gunwales in calm seas, on paddles and poles around the boat and lashed it securely as a guard against the wind-whipped spray. 

The day dragged on toward a dark and evil night. One man stood in the bow to watch for the ice floes that surged suddenly out of the murk and spume and vanished again into the dark-gray void that surrounded us. Tommy and I sat on the food box, lolling against each other with the wildly yawing motion of the boat, shivering and chilled to the core. Toward midnight, when the storm was at its peak, flinging sheets of spray across the waistcloth, and icy water soaked us to the skin, one of the men crept toward us, from thwart to thwart like a huge dark crab, took off his great parka, wrapped it tightly around the boy, gave us an encouraging grin, and crawled back to his seat, now dressed only in shirt and pullover. 

We reached Diomede in the morning and unloaded the boat. I walked slowly up to my shack, made tea and drank it very hot, and fell exhausted on my cot, blood-spattered and reeking of blood and blubber. Two hours later, Tom banged on my shack, I put on my sea-soaked parka, and we were off again. 

Days and nights merged. We hunted in fair weather and in foul (mostly foul, Bering Strait is notorious for its storms and fogs). The great racks on Diomede were loaded with drying meat; the ancient meat holes, the deep freezers of Diomede, were crammed with walrus meat and fat. The women worked nearly as hard as the men. Mary, Tom's wife, split walrus skins to be used as umiak covers with her razor-sharp ulu. Their daughter, Eva, eighteen years old and just back from a mainland high school, cut blubber off the walrus skins, and sliced meat and hauled it to the meat holes. Her sister, Etta, a charming, round-faced three-year-old, sat on a rock and copied her mother, Mary, pretending to split a piece of walrus skin with a can lid in lieu of an ulu. 

Suddenly, near the end of June, the hunt was over. The last walruses had passed to the north. The four Diomede umiaks had brought back much of the meat and all the ivory of 700 walruses ample food and relative prosperity, though much of that would be spent on liquor. The men caught auklets with long-handled nets, just as the Polar Inuit catch dovekies. I went with Albert Iyahuk to collect greens on the mountainside; he showed me the many roots, corms, and leaves Diomeders preserve in seal oil and eat with meat. 

Tom left to work on the pipeline in northern Alaska. Other men followed, some to the pipeline, some to Anchorage or to "the lower forty-eight." Most went to jobs, some went to jails, usually for brawling in bars. "I spend so much time in the Nome jail, I use it as my home address," one man joked. The Diomeders love to travel, but in fall all flock back to their lonely rock set in an icy sea. 

John lyapana was going with his umiak to the mainland and offered to take me along. Once, in a drunken rage at "whites," he had threatened to kill me. Two days later, sober, he asked me over for supper and was a delightful host, generous, amiable, with an enormous fund of stories about olden times on Diomede. Many villagers were on the beach when we pushed off. "Come back," they called, "come back and bring your family."

FISHING, CLAMMING, CRABBING 

It is almost as though the Inuit in former days were following God's injunction to Noah that "every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you," and caught, killed, and ate anything, from 2-ounce (56-g) lemmings to 60-ton (54-tonne) bowhead whales. 

By far the most important animals to them, however, were seals and caribou, the sine qua non of their life in the Arctic. Had God created the world with only these two animals, the Inuit would have been content, for seals and caribou supplied them with most of their food and clothing. 

Some groups specialized: the people of Little Diomede Island in Bering Strait are primarily walrus hunters. The Inuit of the Mackenzie Delta region hunted white whales, and still do. The inland Inuit had no seals; they lived mainly on caribou and fish, and obtained durable sealskins (for boot soles) and seal oil (for their stone lamps) in trade from coastal people. 

There were no caribou in a few Arctic regions. They died out on the Belcher Islands in Hudson Bay in the 1880s when an abnormal winter rain was followed by heavy frost and the islands were covered with a hard, glittering carapace of ice. The caribou could not dig through it for food, and all starved to death. Deprived of caribou pelts for winter clothing, the ingenious Inuit made them from cider-duck skins. A mirvin, an eider-duck parka, was as warm as a caribou parka, but not as lasting. 

In addition to vital seal and caribou, nearly all Inuit caught fish, from small, bony sculpins to huge Greenland sharks, whose toxic meat could be eaten only by people who knew how to prepare it. The Inuit had nets: in the Bering Sea region they used large nets of seal or walrus thong to capture seals, and even whales. In Greenland, the English explorer John Davis saw in 1586 nets made of baleen: "They (the Inuit] make nets to take their fish of the finne of the whale." (Siberia's Chukchi, close neighbors of the Inuit, wove their nets of nettle fibers.) The most common way, though, to capture fish was with hook and line, or with leisters. 

The most important, most delicious fish was char, once infinitely numerous in lakes and rivers and the sea. Unlike its close cousin, the salmon, the char does not jump. Taking advantage of this, Inuit built sapotit across rivers, often in rocky rapids, with an entrance sluice leading to a central, rock-surrounded basin. Once the basin was swarming with ascending fish, the Inuit closed the low stone weir, jumped into the icy water, and speared the char with three- pronged leisters. It was numbingly cold, but wildly exciting: the women screaming on shore, the children jumping on the rocks, and then great feasts of fish, and rocks covered with blood-red split char, drying for the coming winter. 

Octave Sivanertok of Repulse Bay, on the northwest coast of Hudson Bay, took me along in spring to fish for char and lake trout. He drove his powerful snowmobile with speed and consummate skill. The long sled, pulled by ropes, rattled and hammered over rock-hard snow and ice ridges, and often slewed wildly. I got a merciless pounding and had to hang on like a limpet to avoid being tossed off when the sled caromed off ice blocks. With the snowmobile, Arctic travel gained in speed but lost most of its romance and comfort. Traveling by dog team, leisurely and silent, was usually a pleasure. One was aware of land and frozen sea, and felt as one with it. But it was slow. Octave covered in hours what would have taken days with a dog team. 

We stopped for the night near a frozen lake. Octave built an igloo, wind-proof and much warmer than a tent. He chiseled a hole through the 6-foot (2-m)-thick ice of the lake, built a windbreak of snow blocks, and jigged for lake trout. I went for a long walk to relax my battered bottom. When I returned, the last rays of the setting sun slanted across land and lake and flecked the snow with nacre and gold. Octave, endlessly patient, still jigged for trout. A row of speckled, bronze-glistening fish lay near him. 

Next day we crossed Tesserssuaq, the big lake, and finally came to Sapotit Lake, really a series of lakes connected by shallow, fast- flowing rivers. Dark water welled up and poured in milky-turquoise streamers across the ice. Here, in summers long ago, men caught char at sapotit. Many of the ancient stone weirs still existed, but were breached to let the migrating fish pass. Now many Inuit had come, like us, from Repulse Bay to spear fish with leisters. They kneeled at the edge of the ice, jigged metal lures with metronome regularity (in former days the lures were of carved ivory or polished bone), held leisters poised, and peered intently into the crystal-clear water for the golden flash of trout or the silver and rose of char. A lightning thrust, and the fish, held firmly by the leister prongs, was pulled onto the ice. Some leisters were still made of musk-ox horn, the best traditional material, strong and flexible. New leister tines were carved from the strong, thick plastic used for the counters of butcher shops. Sapotit and leisters are among mankind's oldest inventions. Magdalenian hunters used them 30,000 years ago during the final Paleolithic culture in western Europe. 

Clams, where available, are a favorite food for Inuit. Some come already collected and even a bit predigested. At Little Diomede Island in Bering Strait, walrus hunters took 50 pounds (22.5 kg) and more of recently shucked clams from the stomach of each walrus they killed. Masses of these clams were eaten fresh, raw or cooked, and more were slipped onto strings and air-dried for future use. In 1975, when I first lived on Little Diomede, I tried to improve on this by making clam chowder and invited Inuit friends to my shack for supper. But the clams, soaked in walrus gastric juices, curdled the milk, and the chowder, like nearly all my cooking, was a disaster. When I returned fifteen years later to live again on Little Diomede, it was still remembered. "Have you come back to make more chowder?" someone asked. 

At Aberdeen Bay on the north shore of Hudson Strait, which the Inuit call Taksertoot, the place of fogs, we had to dig our own clams. Inuit from the settlements of Lake Harbour and Cape Dorset also gather at this remote bay to quarry with pickaxes, chisels, sledgehammers, and crowbars the distinctive jade-green soapstone for which their superb carvings are famous. 

Hunting in Inuit society is man's work. Both men and women fish. But clam digging, berry picking, and egg collecting are usually family affairs, and Inuit often make it into a joyous outing. Matthew Kellypallik of Cape Dorset saw me on the beach and called: "You want to come along?" (I had dropped broad hints in camp that I wanted to go on a clamming trip), and we were off, a large canoe full of happy people, two pet dogs, and lots of zinc and plastic pails. We drove to a far bay and, as the tide (here more than 30 feet [9 m] high) receded, walked out onto the great mud flats and dug for clams with spoons, forks, knives, or sticks, most soon bent or broken. Some clams were huge - hand-long and perhaps forty or fifty years old. There are few walruses on this coast, and humans rarely visit; most clams can grow and age in peace. An earnest little boy, shy but keen to teach, took me in tow and showed me the telltale bubbles of retracting siphons and how to dig out the clams. Before the tide returned our pails were full, and a huge pot of clams was boiling on the pressure stove. We returned late in the evening, mud-smeared, full of clams and pleasantly tired. On the broad camping beach, a dozen tents, lit by pressure lamps, glowed yellow in the deep-blue dusk. 

We passed an elegant cabin cruiser. Its owner, a world-famous Inuk carver, leaned over the railing and recognized me. ' "Killiktee [an old Inuk at whose camp I had lived for several months] says Hallo!' " he called. "He says you eat our food just like an Inuk. Come eat with us tomorrow. We shot some seals. We ate in the main cabin of the cruiser, paneled in warm mahogany, the brass fittings shining, the deep-pile carpet burgundy red. The Inuit spread cut cardboard boxes on the carpet and upon them laid the seal, our supper. The host slit it open from throat to hind flippers, and we ate it, kneeling around the carcass and observing the ancient, traditional meat division of this region: the women ate the heart, the men the liver, the women took ribs and meat from the ventral region, men vertebrae and the dorsal meat, eating the lean, dark, blood-rich meat together with snippets of blubber. We washed our hands, drank lots of very sweet tea, and talked of hunting and carving. Big chunks of soapstone, my host explained, are called "bank stones.' "Why?" I asked. He laughed: "Because only banks can afford to pay for the large carvings made from them."

 In a few places in Alaska, Inuit not only catch a lot of fish, but also capture crabs by a simple yet ingenious method. At Little Diomede Island in late winter and spring, women, children, and some men spend patient hours "crabbing" at holes chiseled through the ice, catching crabs that measure, including spindly legs, about 2 feet (60 cm) in diameter (northern cousins of the famous king crabs). A stone sinker and two chunks of fish as bait are lowered on a thin line to the sea bottom. A feeding crab, loath to lose food, hangs on as it is pulled gently upward. Only when it is nearly at the surface does the crab seem nervous and loosen its grip, but that hesitation is fatal: the fisherman gaffs it or grabs it and throws it on the ice. The most patient crabbers caught twenty or thirty crabs in a day, enough for several delicious meals, and carried them home in burlap bags. 

Sculpins, say the Little Diomeders, are attracted by anything red. In former days, the bait was the bright orange-red skin flap near the base of the bill of crested auklets, small seabirds which the islanders scooped out of the air with long-handled nets. Now they use bits of red plastic as sculpin bait, or chips of ivory tinted red with Mercurochrome. 

Some fish catches are wholly fortuitous. Masautsiaq Eipe, Sofie Arnapalãq, their grandson, and I were on our way from Qaanaaq, main village of Greenland's Polar Inuit, to the floe edge 60 miles (96 km) away to hunt seals and whales. A lead, sealed by new- formed ice and covered with snow, stopped us. Masautsiaq tested the ice with a steel-tipped pole; when the ice broke, he called out in happy surprise. The lead was filled with dead Greenland halibut, flat, flounder-like, clay-colored fish, 2 feet (60 cm) long and delicious when fresh. The Inuit used to catch them with long lines made of bowhead-whale baleen and catch them now with nylon lines armed with many hooks. Most fish in the lead had been swept there by currents and were far from fresh. The best ones were for us, the rest were excellent dog food. Huskies are not fussy. Masautsiaq, prepared for most eventualities, carried several large sealskins and a huge sheet of plastic on his sled. With these he now fashioned a boat-shaped container on the sled, we filled it with fish, covered the slippery load - perhaps 600 pounds (270 kg) - with more sealskins, piled our bed robes and possessions on top, lashed all securely with thong, and, perched high on the sled and now amply provided with food for us and the dogs, traveled on to the floe edge.