Facultative Carnivore

That evening when I came home I found that Palaiyak also, as well as Pannigabluk, was sick. Evidently it was the diet that was telling on them. On our journey up river from the sea we had lived on oil straight, and we had eaten so much of it that by the time we reached our camp we had only a pint or two left in a bag of oil that should, under ordinary circumstances, have lasted us for several months. The meat we had was all lean; we had therefore for some time been living on a diet of exclusively lean meat, which had aggravated the diarrhoea from which Ilavinirk suffered and which had now brought down my two companions. 

Evidently, with two invalided out of three, it was not possible for us to proceed farther with our hunt, and we decided to return home. It was not only the illness of my companions that prompted this, but also the belief that Dr. Anderson and Natkusiak must surely have arrived by now, and I felt that with them to help me, the chances of success in the hunt to the south would be immeasurably greater. 

On our return home, however, there was no sign of Anderson, which caused us worry of two sorts ; for something must have gone wrong with him to keep him away so long, and something was likely to go wrong with us, if he did not come back, with only one able hunter to take care of seven people and six dogs in a country which the caribou seemed to have temporarily abandoned. And the tantalizing thing was to feel that the caribou could not be far away and that if we only had one or two able-bodied men to make up a sled party we were sure to overtake them. Inaction was not to be thought of, however, and Ilavinirk , although he was sick, realized this as keenly as I did, so he urged that we make another attempt to hunt upstream , in which he himself and Palaiyak would follow the river, making camps for me, while I hunted the east bank of the river into the Barren Ground, as I had hunted the west bank through the forest on the first attempt made with Pannigabluk and Palaiyak. On December 22d I happened to think that Natkusiak had, two months before, set some dead-fall traps and baited them with pieces of blubber. I now revisited these traps and found that in some of them the blubber bait was still there. I picked these up and brought them home, and that evening all of us had some fat along with our meat, which did us a considerable amount of good.

I did now what I should have done the day before approached the animals directly, got within two hundred and fifty yards and secured them all . They turned out to be two young bulls and a cow with a calf. I did not stop to skin them, but covered them hastily with snow so as to prevent their freezing quickly, and made for the river as fast as I could , hoping to overtake Ilavinirk before he had moved camp far; for we had agreed in the morning before I left that he was to proceed up river on the presumption that I would be unsuccessful in the day's hunt and get as far south as possible, - we thought the farther south we got, the better our prospects. 

Ilavinirk had gone about the programme energetically , and it was only after about ten miles of hard running that I overtook him getting ready to pitch camp in the mouth of a small creek. Daylight was gone and both Ilavinirk and Palaiyak were played out, so that we had to camp where we were and take the chance of wolverines and wolves stealing our precious meat during the night. The next day, when we went to fetch the meat, we found that a wolverine had eaten up a portion of one of the caribou. We shot the wolverine, and as its meat was much fatter and juicier than the caribou meat, it paid us well for the little it had stolen. 

Our hunt had begun well. There is a saying that “well begun is half done.” In our case well begun was four fifths done, for another week of hunting gave us only one caribou, which I shot by moonlight one early morning the only caribou I have ever shot by moon light, although since then I have killed more than one wolf by night. 

This hunt, like the one before, I broke up rather sooner than I otherwise might, with the idea that Anderson must surely have returned by now and that I would get him and Natkusiak to help me. Considering how sick and weak he was, Ilavinirk’s conduct at this time was worthy of the highest admiration , but of course he could not do the work of a well man. We had hunted south about forty miles without finding the caribou there any more numerous than they were near home. Our return journey took us two days, and we got home on the evening of January 5th, to find that Ander son had not yet arrived . 

On the days between December 28, 1909, and January 8, 1910, there are no entries in my diary, for on every one of those days I was off hunting during the hours of daylight and we had no light in the house at night by which diary entries could be written. We had now been nearly a month without oil or fat of any kind, either for food or for light. But on January 8th the women, after gathering together all the old bones and breaking them up, had succeeded in boiling a little tallow out of them, and by its light I made the diary entries for the past ten days from memory, while the women mended clothes and did other sewing they had been unable to do before for want of light. 

Of our entire seven I was now the only one not actually sick , and I felt by no means well . Doing hard work in cold weather on a diet nearly devoid of fat is a most interesting and uncommon experi ment in dietetics, and may therefore be worth describing in some detail. The symptoms that result from a diet of lean meat are practically those of starvation . The caribou on which we had to live had marrow in their bones that was as blood, and in most of them no fat was discernible even behind the eyes or in the tongue. When we had been on a diet of oil straight, a few weeks before, we had found that with a teacupful of oil a day there were no symptoms of hunger ; we grew each day sleepier and more slovenly, and no doubt lost strength gradually , but at the end of our meals of long - haired caribou skin and oil we felt satisfied and at ease. Now with a diet of lean meat everything was different. We had an abundance of it as yet and we would boil up huge quantities and stuff ourselves with it . We ate so much that our stomachs were actually distended much beyond their usual size — so much that it was distinctly noticeable even outside of one's clothes. But with all this gorging we felt continually hungry. Simultaneously we felt like unto bursts ing and also as if we had not had enough to eat . One by one the six Eskimo of the party were taken with diarrhoea. 

By the 10th of January things were getting to look serious indeed. It was apparent not only that we could not go on indefinitely without fat, but it was also clear that even our lean meat would last only a few days longer. We had on December 11th estimated that we had two months' supplies of meat, and now in a month they were gone. Our estimate had not been really wrong, for if we had had a little fat to go with the meat, it would no doubt have lasted at least sixty days, but without the fat we ate such incredible quantities that it threw all our reckoning out of gear. It was not only that we ate só much, but also the dogs. They had been fed more meat than dogs usually get and still they were nothing but skin and bones, for they could not, any more than we, get along on lean meat only. 

The caribou in the neighborhood were increasing in numbers now and I saw them almost every day, but I had the most outrageous luck. One day, for instance, I saw a band in clear, calm weather ; it was one of those deathly still days when the quietest step on the softest snow can be heard by man or beast for several hundred yards. As the animals were quiet I did not dare to attempt approaching them, thinking that the next day might be cloudy or windy or in some way more suitable to deer- stalking, for it is a noticeable fact that even though the day be practically still, the condition of the air when the sky is clouded is such as to muffle any noise and to make the approach to deer within , say , a hundred yards feasible. The next day was windy, but altogether too windy, for it was one of those blind ing blizzards when it is impossible to see more than forty or fifty feet. Because our condition was desperate, I nevertheless hunted that day and walked back and forth over the place where the caribou had been the day before, knowing that it was possible, although unlikely, that I might fall in with the animals. I did not fall in with them , however, and the next day was a blizzard of the same kind and my hunt had the same result. The third day Ilavinirk and I went out together and found the caribou still, strange to say, in the same spot, but a half mile or so before we came up to them a fawn suddenly appeared on the top of a hill near us and saw us. It is the nature of a frightened caribou to run toward any caribou that are in the neighborhood and to frighten them away also, so that there was nothing for us to do but to shoot this fawn, although we knew that the shooting would scare the large band away, which it did. 

January 11th Ilavinirk and I were again out looking for caribou. He used to accompany me in the morning on the chance of our see ing something near home, but as his strength did not allow a long day's hunt he would return early while I went on as much farther as the daylight allowed. On this day we saw simultaneously to the north of us a caribou on top of one hill and three men on top of another hill. These must be Anderson, Natkusiak , and Pikaluk, we thought, and evidently they were hunting the same caribou that we saw. It was one of those still days, however, so that the chance of shooting him was not great for either party. We headed towards the caribou and so did the three men, but the caribou ran away long before we got near it. 

It turned out that these three men were not the ones we had expected, however, but three Eskimo, one of whom, Memoranna, is well known under the name of Jimmie to those who have read Amundsen's account of the Northwest Passage voyage. The others were Okuk, a Baillie Islands man , and a Mackenzie River “boy,” Tannaumirk, who was really about twenty-five years of age but who has an appearance and a disposition that preclude his being considered as grown up. They had come the 200-mile journey from the Baillie Islands to visit us with the hope of being able to get some caribou skins for clothing. They had had no particular luck so far in their hunts, but they had with them a little seal oil which they immediately offered to share with us. That night, therefore, we had lights again in our house and plenty of oil to eat. It was only a matter of two or three days from that time until all of us were in good form again.

Memoranna was unable to tell us anything about Dr. Anderson, and now that our party was in fair health again I decided to go at once in search of him. We also needed to replenish our store of oil somehow , for the supply that Memoranna had brought with him was sufficient for a week or two only. There were three places where we had fat cached away; the nearest was about thirty miles downstream, where we had covered up with stones the fat of three grizzly bears killed in the fall, amounting to about a hundred and twenty-five pounds; ten miles farther, at Langton Bay, was the fat of one grizzly bear, one polar bear, and about half of a bearded seal, all together something over two hundred pounds; while at Cape Parry was the blubber which Dr. Anderson had gone to fetch, consisting of three or four hundred pounds that Captain Cottle had given us from the whale killed on the Banks Island voyage. 

I took with me the boy Palaiyak of our own party and engaged Tannaumirk of Memoranna's party to go with us. In three days we reached our first cache of blubber to find it thoroughly rifled by wolverines. A day farther north we found that at Langton Bay a wolverine had gnawed its way through a two-inch pine plank, had entered our storehouse and eaten all but fifteen or twenty pounds of the blubber. This wolverine had lived so well on our stores that he was the fattest animal of his species I have ever seen killed; his meat was correspondingly good eating.

January 21st we arrived at the cabin built by the wreck of the Alexander, where we had stored our belongings in the fall, and found it occupied by our entire party. It was a great relief to find them all there and a great surprise too, at the time. I never realized until I actually saw them how strong had been my inclination to expect that I would never see them again. But although they were all there, they were by no means well, for Dr. Anderson and Pikaluk were both in bed convalescing from pneumonia. They had had a pretty hard time. Pneumonia is a serious thing under any circumstances and especially in such a place as they were in, for not only was the house unsatisfactory, but the food at their disposal was not such as is suited to sick men. Ever since their convalescence had begun they had been hungering especially for fresh meat, and this was a place where no fresh meat was to be had, except a few foxes, for which Natkusiak trapped energetically. On an average he was getting about one fox per day. A stray caribou had wandered out upon the cape about Christmas time, and Natku siak had secured him also, which was a great help to them. Pika luk had been taken sick first, and Dr. Anderson had nursed him for a week, after which he was himself taken sick. 

It was clear that Dr. Anderson and Pikaluk would not be fit for traveling for a month at least, and there was immediate necessity that a sled go back to our people inland with a supply of blubber for them. I therefore dispatched Natkusiak and Palaiyak at once off inland, for now that I had found Dr. Anderson I did not care to leave him again while he was sick. Tannaumirk also stayed with us, for there was no special reason for his going inland.

This evening was one of the most difficult of my entire expe rience on account of the levelness of the country. Our house stood on an island with a cutbank about a quarter of a mile long and so I knew that if I could hit the neighborhood of the house within an area of not more than a quarter of a mile, there was a fair chance of finding the camp. It was chiefly a chance, no doubt, but as a matter of fact I found the cutbank and got home about four hours after dark, much to the surprise of the Eskimo and also to their delight, seeing that I brought a caribou tongue, which was not only a deli cacy but also an advertisement of the fact that the reign of the tom cod was over . Two days later we moved camp about ten miles southeast to the east end of Langton Bay, from which we hunted caribou with such success that within a week we had seventeen carcasses piled up outside our tent. 

On one of his caribou hunts from this camp, Natkusiak was caught by just such a blizzard as that in which I had been about a week before, and was awayfortwodays. A man fully dressed at this season of the year wears two coats, a thick outer one and an inner one made of thin fawnskin. Natkusiak on this occasion was wearing only the thin fawnskin one, and we were therefore consider ably worried about him; but on the third morning he came home all safe and smiling, saying that he had had the longest and best sleep of the winter. He had been about four miles away from camp, in a little snow hut, the floor of which was not over five feet in diameter and the roof of which was less than four feet high. 

During this time we had good success, not only with caribou but also in the trapping of foxes, the skins of which were valuable both commercially and for scientific purposes. As always at this season of the year, and during other seasons whenever the caribou are poor, we preferred the meat of the foxes to that of the caribou. I find a note in my diary to the effect that we ate all the foxes caught during this time, except one which we found dead from disease, apparently, and there is a complaint set down to the effect that although the skin was in good condition, the flesh was too lean for eating.

We had with us on starting from Langton Bay about two weeks' supplies. These were neither here nor there as provisions for a year's exploration we would have been quite as well off had we started with only two days' supplies. From the outset, therefore, we tried to provide each day food for that day from the animals of the land. In carrying out such a programme for a party of four each bad to do his share. My main reliance was the Alaskan man Natkusiak , and the woman Pannigabluk; the Mackenzie River boy Tannaumirk, a boy in character, though perhaps twenty-five in years, was a cheerful and companionable sort of fellow, but with out initiative and (like many of his countrymen nowadays) not in the best of health. Our general plan was that the three Eskimo took care of the sled, one, usually the woman, walking ahead to pick out a trail through the rough sea ice, and the other two steadying the sled from upsetting too often, and pulling in harness at the same time to help the dogs. If they saw a seal or a bear, one of them would go after him while the other two waited at the sled, cooked a lunch if it was near midday, or made camp if night was approaching. If by camp-time no game had yet been seen, the woman Pannigabluk would stay by the camp to cook supper, while the two men went off in different directions to hunt. That the two should go in different directions was wise, for it doubled the chances of seeing game, but it at times caused unnecessary waste of ammunition and the killing of more meat than was needed. The very first time that both men went out to hunt in this manner, for instance, Natkusiak killed two seven or eight hundred pound bearded seals in one shot, and Tannaumirk a big, fat grizzly bear in four shots. This was meat enough for several weeks if we had (Eskimo fashion) stayed there to eat it up; traveling as we were, heavily loaded through rough ice, we could not take along more than a hundred pounds of meat. 

Although the Eskimo frequently killed an animal or two if they happened on them along the line of march, their chief business was getting the sled load as many miles ahead as convenient during the day, which was seldom over fifteen miles in a working day averaging perhaps eight hours. We were in no hurry, for we had no particular distance to go and no reason to hasten back, but expected to spend the summer wherever it overtook us, and the winter similarly in its turn. 

My companions traveled along the coast, made camp, and cooked, while I took upon myself the main burden of the food-providing. With this in view I used to strike inland about five miles in the morning, starting often a good while before the Eskimo broke camp, and then walking rapidly eastward parallel to the coast. With my snow-shoes I made easy and rapid progress compared to that of the sled along the coast, unless I happened on caribou. These had been in some numbers on the Parry peninsula before we left home. (We called the Langton Bay and Cape Parry district “home” for three years, for, no matter how many hundreds of miles of land and ice separated Dr. Anderson or me from it, we always had at least one Eskimo family there protecting what supplies we had and the scien tific collections already made.) Crossing Darnley Bay on the ice, we had of course seen no caribou; at Cape Lyon the Eskimo saw one yearling, but were unable to get it; and at Point Pierce, five days out from Langton Bay, we were stopped by an easterly blizzard without having yet secured any. The Eskimo, who had “known” all along that we were going into a gameless country, felt sure that the fawn they had seen at Lyon was the most easterly member of the deer species inhabiting the coast; it would, therefore, be wisdom to turn about now, they argued, before the road got too long for the back journey and we got too weak from hunger all this over huge troughs of boiled meat and raw blubber of the seals killed two days before, on which we were gorging ourselves, for much eating was always our chief pastime when delayed by a blizzard that the dogs would not face. As a matter of fact, what my Eskimo really dreaded was not so much hunger as the possibility of our success in the quest of what to me were the scientifically interesting “people who had never seen a white man,” but to them were the dreaded “Nagyuk togmiut, so called because they hook to themselves wives with the antlers of bull caribou; they kill all strangers.” Generally it is only in times of extreme need that one hunts caribou in a blizzard not that nine tenths of the blizzards in the Arctic need keep a healthy man indoors ; it is merely that the drift ing snow (even when you can see as far as two hundred yards) di minishes many times over the chance you have of finding game. If you do find caribou , however, the stronger the gale the better your chance of close approach without being seen, for these animals, though they double their watchfulness in foggy weather, seem to relax it in blizzard . In the present instance my reason for looking for caribou was that I wanted to kill a few for the moral effect it would have on my party; for in the midst of abundance they would be forced to fall back on their fear of the Nagyuktogmiut as the only argu ment for retreat, and this they were a bit ashamed of doing, even among themselves. It was therefore great luck for us, although we were in no immediate need of meat, that after a short hunt through the storm I ran into a band of seven cows and young bulls about five miles inland, southwest from Point Pierce. I came upon them quite without cover, but saw them through the drifting snow at three hundred yards before they saw me — the human eye is a great deal keener than that of the caribou , wolf, or any other animal with which I have had experience. By stepping back a few paces till the drifting snow had hidden the caribou again, and then guardedly circling them to leeward, I found a slight ridge which allowed safe approach to within about two hundred yards of where they had been. The main thing in stalking caribou that are not moving is the ability to keep in mind their location accurately while you are circling and winding about so as to approach them from a new direction behind cover of irregular hills and ridges that are of course unfamiliar to you. In this case my plans came suddenly to naught through the caribou appearing on the sky-line two hundred yards off. I shot three of them, though we could not possibly use more than the meat of one. The moral effect on my Eskimo of having food to throw away would, I knew, be invaluable to me. Had I killed only one, they would not have believed it to be for any reason other than that I was unable to kill more. This was the only time in a period of fourteen months of continuous "living on the country” that I shot more animals than I thought we should need, although I often had to kill a single large animal, such as a polar bear or bearded seal, when I knew we should be unable to haul with us more than a small part of its meat.

The land showed nothing but a white wolf or arctic fox now and then; ptarmigan there were, but they are too small game for a party of four that is going to go a year on nine hundred and sixty rounds of ammunition ; the foxes, too, were beneath our notice, though their meat is excellent; but a wolf that came within two hundred yards seldom got by me, for a fat one weighs a hundred pounds, and all of us preferred them at this season to caribou, except Pannigabluk, who would not taste the meat because it is taboo to her people.