Eskimo

The government family allowances, distributed to the Eskimos by the Hudson's Bay Company, have been precious help, especially to large families, and have been of great assistance in enabling the Eskimo people to bridge the gap created by the change in their economy wrought by the introduction to fox hunting. One deficiency of the allowance system is that it does not encourage Eskimos to teach their children to live off the country wherever possible. If the Eskimo takes his allowance every month or two, he can only obtain such items as fruit, tinned milk, jam, and so forth--things he doesn't particularly care for or need. It is fat, fish, and meat that a man wants in this country. To acquire credit for nets and ammunition an Eskimo must refrain from drawing his allowance until it amounts to forty dollars. Some arrangement should be made that would encourage the Eskimo to hunt, rather than to live on foods that are unsuitable. 

Whatever the deficiencies of the new dispensantion, it is certainly true that the Inuk is less abandoned than he was a year, two years, ten years ago. And this we must applaud, for when we look at certain statistical data we are forced to shudder at what the figures demonstrate of man's inhumanity toward man.

Monez, in the wake of Diamond Genness, estimated the number of Canadian Eskimos to be twenty-two thousand before the arrival of the white man. Some eight thousand were left in 1921, six thousand in 1931, and about five thousand in 1950. 

We are told that the Eskimo population trend has been reversed, that next year, and the year after, there will be more of them.

Will they be the same caliber of Eskimo, energetic, tough, healthy?

Or will they be a people broken in spirit and health, like the Chippewas to the south?

A single glance at the specimens now growing up seems to show that we may be gaining in quantity only what we have irretrievably lost in quality. The answer to this problem is in better government, better medical services, better police work. Only if epidemics are prevented, tuberculosis checked, ignorance ameliorated, and the methods of trade improved will the Eskimo people have a real chance of surviving with their own peculiar usefulness and beauty intact.

Are we white men harbingers of a new and brilliant era, or simply advance agents of destruction?

Do we bring with us anything more than dollar corruption, and the corporal and moral germs that have afflicted our own civilization?

If the future is to provide a satisfactory answer to these thorny problems, it is imperative that all those who work for the Eskimo, in any field or capacity whatsoever (the government, the civilian commercial enterprises, the Christian Churches), dedicate all their endeavors with supreme determination and utter selflessness not only to save the poor Inuk from extermination, but also to assure him a human "modus vivendi" compatible with the unique environment in which Providence wishes him to work out not only his temporal existence, but his eternal salvation. Then, and only then, will the Inuk, out there on the ice, perceive at last the promise of a bright new dawn that will scatter the darkness forever.

At Minto the favorite magician is a woman, one Kinakia. She makes fancy amulets and fingers an Anglican prayer book. She is quite disarming when you talk with her, the soul of courtesy, and I must confess that her charms look more like rag dolls than potent idols.

But according to the people at Minto, Kinakia's medicine is powerful. Last spring a young fellow drowned in three feet of water. I was told that he had laughed at Kinakia and that the sorceress had put the "eye" on him. Another Minto Eskimo, an old man, was rash enough to sneer at Kinakia, telling her that witchcraft was strictly out of date--a thing of the past. She fixed him. One day in summer at high noon he was traveling inland when, all of a sudden, the light disappeared. He was left in total darkness and his dogs were terrified, snapping and lunging at mysterious enemies hidden along the trail. "Kinakia, pigmana ila"..."She is after me," he muttered. After a while the sun returned and the nightmare quality of the spell was gone, though the fear of it remained in the old man's memory. "Please do not say that I told you," he whispered to me. "But maybe you can stop her, eh?"

One day another Eskimo, while eating, plucked a bone arrow out of his leg. Was it a warning from Kinakia?

Another Inuk, on the trail, met a caribou with a man's head, and the monster simply laughed at his bullets, bounding away with a frightening grin on his face.

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.

The greatest scorn is reserved for the Great Eyebrows, the despised Krabloonak. He is less than dirt. Part of this contempt stems from the failure of the whites to recognize the good qualities of the Eskimos, and is justified, but now it is carried to the point of absurdity. "Krabloonak ayortok!" the Eskimo says, summing it up. "The white man is useless. A good for nothing."

Too many times the Inuit have watched the white man starve while they, the Eskimos, were doing nicely. 

Too many times have they seen the Eyebrows, physically softer, not knowing the country, stumble and fall, to die on the trail, while an Inuk would have thought the trip nothing but a pleasant walk.

Too many times have they seen wihte men around them--sailors, Police, traders, missionaries--not even try to hunt, but content themselves with purchases made at the trading store.

Moreover, the Eskimo asks, when the white man travels, can he go alone, as I do? No! He needs a guide! A nurse!

Can the white man build a snowhouse, or harpoon a seal, or speak Eskimo? No.

"Krabloonak ayortok!"...."The White man does not know a thing!"

The wihte man is useless, an incompetent. Then one day the Eskimo sees a prospector looking at rocks or a geologist digging up polygons, and that is the end. The white man is not only useles,s a know nothing. He is crazy.

You say to them, "Now, look here, boy. Who gave you those knives, boats, rifles?"

They will answer, "Well, before that we had our copper knives. Better, maybe. We had our kayaks. You have the material, maybe. But there's a lot we do that you can't do. For you know nothing. You are worthless."

"What about the airplanes? You watch the white man fly in the air, while the Inuit must walk."

"Oh, Falla," they laugh. "We ourselves had medicine men who could fly. This one, and that one. And without wings or engines either."