Quaint Folk, the Eskimos
I
ASK an average white man to tell you what he knows about the world of the Eskimo and he may give you a somewhat disjointed discourse upon long dark winters, icebergs, igloos, Husky dogs, filthy clothing, blubber, and the trading of wives; he even may mention harpoons and walrus hunting, kayaks, seal lamps, and ivory carvings, or venture the guess that Nanook is the Eskimo name for the polar bear.
Ask an average Southampton Island Eskimo to give you his concept of the white man’s world and you may, in due course, be regaled with a series of practically unpronounceable words and phrases describing very big boats, radios, gramophones, mouth organs, accordions, soap, warm water, razors, airplanes, odd footgear, robed priests, binoculars, and magazines; and sooner or later you will be told that white men spend nearly all their time looking for skins of the white fox.
The Southampton Island Eskimo of to-day has seen a good deal of the white man. Half a century ago he helped the Scottish and American whalers in the waters of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome and Fox Channel. Now that whales are scarce in Hudson Bay, he traps foxes for the fur traders every winter. For years he has used the white man’s firearms and ammunition, worn some of the white man’s garb, and to some extent eaten the white man’s food. He has even added such words as ‘ayah-plen’ to his vocabulary, and knows that ‘Har-lo’ and ‘Goo’ mahni" are fitting words of greeting.
To-day, on Southampton Island, the white man and all his accoutrements are taken for granted. His well-made rifle and shotgun, his motion-picture camera and his binocular, are, like his radio, gaped at for a moment, then promptly appropriated. It is doubtful whether their significance in any other world than the Eskimo’s is even considered. If the white man cannot pull from his pocket, ditty-bag, or trunk some mechanism which will save labor, amuse, or work an unaccountable wonder, or some potion which will heal a bodily ailment, repair anything from a broken needle to a wrecked motor boat, or attract foxes to traps where usual bait fails — then that white man simply is n’t normal.
It is characteristic for an Eskimo to handle and talk of a white man’s possessions as better than his own. This behavior may reflect an honest admiration for good craftsmanship; it may be a sort of courtesy; or it may be subtle dramatics with an ulterior motive, for the Eskimo has learned that the white man is susceptible to flattery. Many a volubly praised rifle eventually finds itself perched on the roof of an igloo. While we were caribou hunting at East Bay, one of the men repeatedly borrowed my six-powered binocular when his own eight-powered pair was actually stronger, simply on the ground that he liked mine better; and his face shone with a childlike delight when I bound his bleeding finger with the portion of one of my handkerchiefs which bore a machine-embroidered initial.
The Eskimo appears to concede that the white man possesses and controls many wonderful tools, toys, and machines. Whether he considers the white man’s brain capable of making these mechanisms, or of using them to the best advantage, is quite another matter. He seems to feel that it is as natural for the white man to have power over huge ships, or so to control the spirits as to bid them carry messages through the air, as it is for the snow to cover Southampton in winter. Accepting the phenomenon, he does not disturb himself further. In fact, the average Eskimo knows and cares so little about the world outside his own that, consistently enough, he thinks it impossible that we of the South should be interested in, or know anything about, the circumpolar region. This racial solipsism expresses itself variously. Paradoxical, is it not, that an Eskimo should marvel at and adopt a rifle which will kill a bear at a hundred times the distance necessary for a harpoon, and at the same time regard the racial mind which invented and produced the rifle as incapable of coping with the problems of the world the Eskimo knows?
One man was amazed at the cleanliness and shapeliness of bird specimens I had prepared: it was not fitting that I should skin a bird as well as or better than he, since these birds were of his world, not mine. So profoundly ignorant was he of our knowledge of the world at large that he wondered whether I had ever seen or heard of an ookpikjuak, a snowy owl. Another man was surprised that I could handle a rowboat without special instruction: it was his world’s water, at present his world’s boat; therefore I, son of the race which gave him that boat, could know nothing of the universal laws of propulsion.
The white man in the arctic has one ability that completely mystifies the Eskimo — he can read Eskimo aloud from a printed page even though he may not possess sufficient knowledge of the language to converse intelligibly. This apparently easy mastery of one import ant feature of the Eskimo world is confusing, incredible, beyond any possible comprehension; it borders upon sorcery. But it has to be accepted as one of the unaccountable white man’s unaccountable gifts. The Eskimo has developed no system of writing. The simple syllabics he sometimes learns to use were introduced by the missionaries. He has no printed literature; his only classics are those of legend and fable, or of narrative song.
Maps, magazines, and books have given the Eskimo some idea of the world and of the relative position of Southampton. But his concept of the daily life of the white man in office or on farm is so hazy that it is hardly a concept. No Eskimo thinks of planting a seed, for there is virtually no soil in the Barren Grounds; therefore, what is a farm to an Eskimo? The one definite idea of the white man’s civilization which every Eskimo appears to have is that the white man needs fox skins. So long has he trapped all winter, brought his pelts in for trade, and been exhorted to hurry back for more, that he has come to think of the arctic fox as a sort of hub about which the Wheel of Civilization moves. It would not surprise me to learn that among the Eskimo synonyms for white man are such titles as ‘He who wears the fox skin,’ or ‘The Cold One.’
It is considered quite normal, therefore, for any white man to go to any extreme in his quest for the fox skin. But when a naturalist comes to Southampton on the annual supply boat, announcing, as I did, that he is interested in lemmings, mushrooms, sculpins, beach birds, moss, and stones just as much as he is in foxes, the Eskimo gulps once or twice, remembers that the white man’s behavior is unaccountable after all, then bends to the task of bringing in everything from blood to sand in the belief that no person fresh from the Outside can have seen any creature indigenous to the boreal world. Birds may be brought in half rotten, crudely skinned, or battered to pieces. Mammals may have had all their legs broken or cut off because of the widespread belief that such treatment of a carcass will assure strength to the hunter in his old age. A fair-sized willow tree may be carried in by komatik for a distance of a hundred miles, and by the time the ‘specimen’ reaches the Post nothing is left but a sort of Harry Lauderesque walking stick — a scarred trunk without most of its bark, without roots, without vestige of twig or branch. Tell an Eskimo that a bloody, mangled specimen cannot be used, and he may decide not to bring anything again; accept what he brings, and he thinks any remnant is a prize. Tell him you particularly want a certain animal, and that creature instantly becomes more valuable to him. Ask him to care for bird specimens more carefully, and he may wrap them up meticulously in a flour sack after neatly nibbling off and eating part of the bill, or chopping off the brightly colored feet. One learns, in this world of the Innuit, to accept what comes, and be glad it is not worse than it is.
II
The Eskimo is so accustomed to sitting stolidly for hour upon hour during stormy periods of the tedious winter, with little to do but eat, smoke, and talk, that he delights in watching a white man at work. The preparation of natural-history specimens assumes theatrical proportions. While I am skinning birds in my workroom, a silent man may sit or stand near by absorbed in every detail of the process. When I measure a lemming’s tail or hind foot with brass dividers and metric tape, he may whisper a rapt 'Wah kudlunga!’ — which is, so far as I can ascertain, almost precisely the equivalent of Virgil’s ‘Mirahile dicla!’ My careful examination of stomach contents interests and amuses him, though my failure to nibble at this and munch at that as I proceed may mystify him.
During February and March I painted a good many water-color portraits of arctic birds. Thinking that the Eskimos might better understand my need of specimens after seeing the pictures, I took some of them downstairs one evening, laid them on the table, and bade my friends inspect them. Approbation was comically noisy. Groan followed groan; grunt followed grunt. ‘Why-ee, why-ee,’ sounded in many voices. The Eskimos handled the sheets almost reverently, touched the delineation of cloud, rock, or feather as if to make certain the object were not actual, — what compliment could be more subtle? — and constantly grunted and groaned. Finally Shoo Fly, who was queen of our Island by popular consent, but who probably had never before found it necessary to assume the role of art critic, delivered her ultimatum: ‘You are not human. You are more like a camera. But I want to see you making one.’ Here, indeed, was a skeptic!
When next I turned to painting, I sent for Shoo Fly. I had already completed a background which showed a pale sky, snowy ridge, and frozen lake. The figure of a white gyrfalcon in the foreground I had not yet completed. In Shoo Fly’s presence I stroked in some brown rocks, a little gray barring on the white plumage, and a tinge of blue on the hooked feet. At her first opportunity, she picked up the sheet of paper, groaned, clucked, and redelivered her remark of the evening before. Then, inundated by a wave of enthusiasm, and before I could prevent her, she swept her greasy hand across that pale sky, smiled at me benignly, and departed. I spent the rest of the day trying to erase, bury under paint, or scrape out the record of her attentions — the stamp of her approval, as it were. The picture was ruined, quite; but Shoo Fly was convinced that my drawings had not been cut out of a magazine, developed in a dark room, or powwowed out of the ether.
The Eskimo makes a gesture of genuflexion to the white man; but a gesture may be only a gesture. In his heart he knows that the Eskimo in Eskimo land is superior. The Innuit are the inheritors of the earth. We come to see and live with them because we need their environment, their philosophy, or their religion; because we need their fox skins; or because we want to paint pictures of their birds. We bring them our choicest possessions for the most desirable of the world’s treasures. They may learn a convenient amount of our language, adopt our religion nominally and externally, or use the products of our civilization as they wish; but in their hearts they are unalterably Eskimos with a deeply imbedded sort of contempt for the visitor, the impostor, in the arctic.
The Eskimo is nearly always friendly; but I am not convinced that there is much altruism in his friendliness. He realizes through experience that he will receive useful gifts in return for companionship, work, specimens, or native objets d’art. He may appear to admire a white man’s ability as hunter, trapper, or craftsman; or he may compliment him upon his courage and endurance. But in his heart he has reservations: to him the white man on the Eskimo’s tundra is out of place; his body is too tall and awkward, his nose too narrow and pointed, his hands too white and smooth, his clothes too eternally clean. One Eskimo defined the white man as someone who ‘wipes his face all the time with water.'
And who am I to assert that the Eskimo is inferior to me? In my own native land he would certainly be wretched, sick, lonesome, and helpless. But here, where no limousine draws up to any curb, where no electric sign flashes, where no milk is delivered, and where for months only frozen, rotten walrus meat may have to serve as food for dog and man, filthy clothing may, in some mysterious way, be actually warmer and more comfortable than clean; vermin on the body may, for all I know, afford an occasional entertaining interlude as well as an unmentionable hors d’œuvre; flat noses are assuredly better suited than aquiline to fifty-degree-below temperatures; a short man of a given diameter certainly is less of a burden on the komatik than a longer man of the same diameter. The Eskimo is right — the white man on Southampton is only an exotic creature, like a hurricane-blown bird of the tropics, in a world he does not know.
While my world has developed an obsession for inventing, discovering, conquering, for ‘being somebody,’the Eskimo has evolved the ability not alone to endure, but to enjoy, the ‘unspeakable tedium’ of the long winter. He seems to have learned far better than I, in my world, to be content. This sort of contentment in my world is held to be mental, even physical sluggishness; but the Eskimo sees no need for effort not connected with the pursuit of daily food, so he smokes and eats, and eats and smokes, and tells tales. Whether, fluring his silent moments, he is thinking, I cannot say.
When we of the South are shut in, we turn avidly to our printed literature. A year’s output of our books, magazines, and catalogues might alone cover Southampton’s nineteen-thousand-square-mile expanse at least one sheet of paper deep; yet why is not the spoken fable of the Bunting and the Snowy Owl enough for the soul whose great ambition is to kill a walrus or caribou, to keep comparatively comfortable in tupek or igloo, or to drive the dog team properly? And why should the Eskimo have a greater ambition than this, so long as he is happy?
The average Eskimo, as I have hinted, is scarcely even curious about the Outside World. At the Post he looks at a map for a moment, but prefers to gaze at the wall, listening to the radio. He inspects a magazine, gapes admiringly at a full-page corset advertisement, finds, with satisfaction, the picture of a woman clad in white fur, asks a question about a horse or cow, recognizes a Sealyham terrier as a dog in spite of its aberrances, informs us that the Eskimos could make an igloo as high as a skyscraper if they wanted to, murmurs a self-satisfied ‘motah khah as he gazes at a pictured automobile, asks whether bananas grow in the sea, stares long at drawings illustrating some comical situation but does not smile, laughs uproariously at a Jeritza costumed for her part in Turandot, is happy to recognize an Eskimo-smoked brand of cigarette, cuts — with our permission — a square of red paper from the cover design, closes the journal carelessly, and is done.
He boards the supply ship in August, shakes hands with everybody, slops up a pan of meat and biscuits from the galley, dives madly here and there for candies thrown at random, stares at the officials in their bright uniforms, says ‘Goo’-bye,’and is gone.
He attends services at the Mission, hears an organ, learns hymns which have been translated into his language, hears discourses and rituals which include such words as Magnificat, looks through a stereoscope at pictures illustrating the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and leaves, wondering, perhaps, whether or not he is good.
He plays cards — five hundred, casino, poker, hearts, or snap. He listens to lectures, weather forecasts, sermons, and music from the radio. He trades his fox skins, his bear hides, his whalebone, or his sealskin boots for food, ammunition, and clothing at the store, and then, sitting silently on his komatik, makes his way back to his camp, perhaps a hundred miles away, where he becomes an aboriginal once more.
As he journeys across the tundra, what does he think about? The dogs know the way across the purple-gray expanse, and for long periods may need scarcely a word of direction. Does he muse upon the beauty of the sky above him — the round moon, the sharply twinkling stars? Is the weighted curtain of the aurora borealis a mystery to him? Does he say over to himself the tribal legends he has learned? Does he compose poems about himself, songs of his hunting experiences or of his love affairs? Does he dream of becoming, one day, an angekok, a leading man in his tribe? Does he ponder upon his catch of foxes and decide whether he got enough ‘in trade’ for them? Does he think of and wonder about the white man and the white man’s world?
It is not possible for me to answer these questions, for I am not an Eskimo. I have traveled with the Eskimos on their komatiks and have lived with them in tupek and in igloo. I have learned to like them greatly. But of their thought processes I know next to nothing. My guess is that the Eskimo has learned long since that there are limes for thinking and times (as Gertrude Stein would put it) for not-thinking; and that the long hours of solitude on the komatik or at the seal hole are not hours of loneliness or tedium because they are not-thinking hours.
III
Occasionally — though only occasionally — an Eskimo becomes really interested in the doings of the Outside World. Such a man is Amaulik Audlanat, whom we usually call John Ell; stalwart, industrious, dependable, goodnatured, lucky John Ell — full-blooded Aivilik who has associated with white men nearly all his life, but who is, nevertheless, a good Eskimo.
John’s curiosity is without limit. He wants to see the shipbuilders upon a great, steel-plated S. S. Nascopie. He wants to solve the mystery of the binocular which brings Nanook, the bear, so much closer to him. He is not convinced that tiny people are responsible for the music when the needle scratches the revolving gramophone record. He has doubts about the ability of the spirits to carry messages through the air. He has perceived that a rifle was made by someone, that it was not found growing on a bush. He is sometimes half sick with curiosity. His ignorance clouds his sky.
John and I, lying on caribou skins in the igloo, have talked about many matters. We have talked about New York City. I have told him that the white-skinned people are innumerable as mosquitoes; that there are endless, indescribably tiresome noise and confusion; that the igloojuaks (big houses, other than snow houses) really are large and high, seeming to touch the sky even more than they do in the pictures he has seen; that locomotives drawing trains of cars, automobiles, and airplanes are to be seen every day; that there are dishonest people who will cheat, unfriendly people who will not understand him or even care to learn that he is an important man in the land of the Innuit — and to all this John listens quietly, his eyes half closed as he smokes, as if trying to find himself somewhere in this bewilderingly crowded picture.
I have begged him not to come to a world so different from his own. I have told him of the heat and dust — such heat and dust as were never dreamed of on Southampton’s clean, windswept tundra. But he nods his head and continues to see himself as a foreign prince commanding the wonders of a great city, for he has saved a good deal of money through the years. I tell him that he will be exceedingly lonesome, since no one can talk to him in his own language; that he may become sick; and that even though he may wish, with all his heart, to return to his homeland, he may not be able to do so.
He answers in his childlike way that he is never lonesome though he may wait all day by himself alongside a seal hole in the frozen bay, and that he has never been sick, so far as he can remember. How can I make him understand, through mere words, that unless he has an influential friend constantly at his side he will be slammed and whacked about by the efficient and unscrupulous employees of stores, railway systems, and restaurants of the busy white man’s world; that his bed in a hotel will make his soul sick for his caribou-skin sleeping bag back in the tupek; that the sight of food everlastingly served on plates will revolt him; that he will be lonely, friendless, hot, and weary — that he may even want to die; that his money will all be gone before he has begun to count how much remains; that he will return to his beautiful arctic island, if indeed he fives to return, not a powerful, competent hunter, but a disillusioned, perhaps frightfully sick sort of pariah; that he will solve for himself some of the mysteries and see some of the world he is so eager to see, but that the price will be paid not alone in money, but in muscle, bone, blood, and soul?
But if John does, one day, come to the white man’s land, I hope I may see him. I want to remember a few words to say to him in his own tongue. I want to call a cab for him and be whisked about through traffic in the shadow of the skyscrapers; to clatter down flights of stairs and board that most impersonal of trains, the subway; to walk with fitting decorum into the plush-and-gilt silence of a motion-picture palace; to visit a great museum with polar bears mounted on an artificial iceberg; to inspect a great refrigeration plant; to go to a college fraternity house, there to perceive the latest in clothes and manners, and to hear the boys sing; to attend a football game, heaven of raccoons and chrysanthemums; to peer in at crooners making big eyes and narrow eyes and pressing hands to hearts at a microphone; to watch the making of a great daily paper; to order some raw meat at a restaurant, and watch the head waiter gulp and blink, quite Eskimo-wise, and look omnipotent; to attend a formal dance where jazz orchestra, backless gowns, and some white fox fur are in evidence. Yes, I want John to see the best the White Man’s World has to offer, even as he wanted me to see Southampton’s seething ice floe and walrus herds, the huddled bands of caribou, glorious Nanook on his wild crag. I want him, while he is with me, to have no time for not-thinking. And I will hope that, when he returns once more to Southampton, he will remember me as a creature of my world with as much admiration as I remember him in his.