The Eskimos of the Little Hills

by FARLEY MOWAT

1

SUMMER, which follows spring so closely that the two are almost one, was upon us before it was possible to travel to the shores Ootek’s Lake and meet the People. I had arranged with Franz to take me there, while his brother Hans and the children were to remain at Windy Bay to feed the dogs we left behind and to care for the camp.

As Franz and I prepared for the journey north, I was excited and at the same time depressed. Much as I wished to meet the Ihalmiut in their own land, the fragmentary glimpses of their lives that I had from Franz had left me with a strong feeling of unease at the prospect of meeting them face to face. I wondered if they would have any conception as to how much of their tragedy they owed to men of my color, and I wondered if, like the northern Indians, they would be a morose and sullen lot, resentful of my presence, suspicious and uncommunicative.

Even if they welcomed me into their homes, I was still afraid of my own reactions. The prospect of seeing and living with a people who knew starvation as intimately as I knew plenty, the idea of seeing with my own eyes this disintegrating remnant of a dying race, left me with a sensation closely akin to fear.

We could not make the journey northward by canoe, for the raging streams which had cut across the Barrens only a few weeks before were now reduced to tiny creeks whose courses were interrupted by jumbled barriers of rock. No major rivers flowed the way we wished to go, and so the water routes were useless to us. Since the only alternative was a trek overland, we prepared to go on foot, as the Ihalmiut do.

But there was a difference. The Ihalmiut travel light, and a man of the People crossing the open plains in summer carries little more than his knife, a pipe, and perhaps a spare pair of skin boots called kamik. He eats when he finds something to eat. There are usually suckers in the shrunken streams, and these can sometimes be caught with the hands. Or if the suckers are too hard to find, the traveler can take a length of rawhide line and snare the orange-colored ground squirrels on the sandy esker slopes. In early summer there are always eggs or flightless birds, and if the eggs are nearly at the hatching point, so much the better.

Franz and I, on the other hand, traveled in white man’s style. We were accompanied by five dogs and to each dog we fastened a miniature Indian travois — two long thin poles that stretched behind to support a foot-square platform on which we could load nearly thirty pounds of gear that included bedrolls, ammunition, cooking tools, and presents of flour and tobacco for the Eskimos. With this equipment we were also able to carry a little tent, and food for the dogs and ourselves: deer meat for them, and flour, tea, and baking powder for us. Equipped with pack dogs, it took us better than a week to cover the same sixty miles that the Ihalmiut cross in two days and a night.

On the last day Franz was in the lead, followed by three dogs, while I trailed a half mile behind. I heard him call and when I looked ahead I saw him on the crest of a ridge with two other men, all three gesticulating and shouting at me down the slope. When I reached the crest, one of the strangers was manipulating a little drill which looked rather like a bow and arrow, with the arrow pointed down into a piece of wood upon the ground, while the bow, with its string wound twice around the arrow’s shank, was being pushed back and forth parallel to the ground. From the spinning tip of the drill rose a little curl of yellow smoke and I realized that the fur-clad man was making fire.

Our matches had long since been ruined when the top of the can that they were carried in came off during a river crossing. For three days we had had neither a smoke nor a mug of tea. Now I watched an Eskimo casually producing fire as our distant ancestors had produced it. The man looked up at me and smiled, a transfiguring smile which spread like the light of fire itself over his face.

Franz motioned me to sit down while he got out the pail and the packet of sodden tea. Now the second Eskimo, a short and solid figure of a man. stepped forward, took the pail, and wilh a broad grin ran down the slope to fetch us water from a tundra pool. Franz nodded his head after the watergetter.

“Ohoto,” he said. “One of the best of them. And this one over here is Hekwaw, the biggest hunter of the bunch.”

It was a succinct introduction, typical of Franz. Both Eskimos were dressed in holiktuk — parkas — of autumn deerskin with the fur side turned out. The parka of Hekwaw the firemaker was decorated with insets of pure white fur about the shoulders and by a fringe of thin strips of hide around the bottom edge. Ohoto’s was even more dressy, for it had a bead-embroidered neck and cuffs. But despite the beads and insets, the general appearance of both men was positively scruffy, Great patches of hair were worn off the garments, and rents and tears had been imperfectly mended. Food juices and fat drippings had matted the thick hair that remained, and dirt had caked broad patches of the fur.

My first reaction as I saw and smelled these men was one of revulsion. I felt the instinctive surge of white man’s ego as I wondered why the devil they couldn’t find clean clothes to wear. That was, of course, the superficial thought of one who had no knowledge, but it typifies the conclusions drawn by most white men, particularly missionaries, when they view the “savage in his abhorrent state of nature.”

Hekwaw — the Bear, the others called him — was a mountain of a man, but a scaled-down mountain. His muscles bulged and flowed under the loose sleeves of his old parka, and the rhythm of ihe spinning fire drill was reflected in the pulse of tendons in his short and massive neck. Sweat beaded up steadily under his lank black hair; then, growing into drops, it rolled down the oblique slant of his low forehead, ran along the deep seams of his skin until it found an outlet, and, by-passing the broad planes about his half-hidden eyes, fell clear from the sprawling nostrils of his flattened nose. His broad and sensuous mouth with its wide, swollen lips worked in the same rhythm as the drill, and the half-dozen grizzled hairs that were his beard wagged to the same quick tempo.

It was a parody of a face, a contorted parody which was meant for comedy but which had a wild essential quality that restrained my desire to laugh. There was a deep intelligence where one might expect to see only brute instinct, and there was humor and good nature that belied the weathered hide crinkling, apelike, on the brow and on the flat-planed cheeks.

Hekwaw removed the drill and shook a little pinch of smoldering ash from the fire board onto a pile of dry and brittle moss. Then he knelt before it and his cheeks swelled while his eyes disappeared altogether under their taut folds of skin. He blew, and the fire caught, giving birth to a minute greenish flame.

Ohoto returned with the water. His was a young face, still rounded and without the crevassed wrinkling of old Hekwaw’s. His hair had been roughly cut so that it hung like ihe uncouth tonsure of some pagan priest, and it was as coarse as the hair of the deer. The cut hair disclosed a high, broad forehead, and the eyes below it had not yet retreated into caves to escape the glare of winter snows. They were black and very bright, with the alert curiosity of a muskrat. Ohoto had an empty stone pipe clenched betlween his immense and regular while teeth, and I was not too slow to take the hint. I pulled out a bit of plug, damp and covered with debris, and when Ohoto saw it, he beamed.

2

WE DRANK our tea on the crest of the hill, then packed up and started down into the Ihalmiut land. The two Eskimos led the way, and their bounding agility over the rough rocks would have put a caribou to shame. We followed painfully a long way behind, and at last came to the low shores of Ootek’s Lake.

Across the water we could clearly see the three tents, blending so well with the weathered gravel ridge behind that they might have grown from the hills. People and dogs were running aimlessly about among the tents, and two new fires had been lighted, for the distant vision of the People had shown them that strangers were approaching, and it is mandatory that all strangers must be fed as soon as they arrive.

I was to learn later that the camps of the People were arranged in little groups of two or three tents on the shores of several lakes, for there is not enough willow scrub in the land to support the cooking fires of more than three families at any single spot. Within a radius of three miles of each other dwelt all the living People in a land which stretches for five hundred miles from south to north, and three hundred miles from east to west. It was the most ancient camp of the Ihalmiut, and it was also the last. And I was the first outlander to come upon it in all the centuries that tents had stood beside the Little Lakes.

The foreshore sloping to the lake was not composed of rocks, but almost exclusively of bones. This was an ancient site and the piles of whitened caribou bones had mounted with the years until they had reached staggering proportions, for in the Barrens neither wood nor bone ever seems to rot or pass away. Dogs and the weather had broken up the larger pieces of bone and spread them evenly around until they formed a pavement all about the camp. But neither dogs nor weather had greatly affected the skulls, and these, with their huge antlers, formed a dead forest of while snags, baler on I counted over two hundred skulls within a hundred yards of an Ihalmiut tent, and these represented only a fraction of the total number of beasts whose remains lay in that place, for only the heads of kills made close at hand are ever brought to camp.

The three tents stood on a sloping ledge where they would catch whatever breeze might blow, for the breeze serves as the sole protection from the flies. Near each tent was a rough stone hearth and beside each fire a tremendous mound of willow twigs. These were, of course, quite green and the little fires were giving out great rolling coils of smoke. On the nearest fireplace was a huge iron pot looking ridiculously like the pots that cannibals seem to favor in our magazine cartoons.

Franz and I stopped about a hundred yards short of the nearest tent and the three men, Ootek, Hekwaw, and Ohoto, came out to welcome us formally into their homes. Ohoto and Hekwaw acted as if they were meeting us for the first time. They were very correct and very solemn as they gravely touched our fingertips. Then, with the formal greeting over, Ootek produced a stone pipe, loaded with atamojak — the dried leaves of a low, bushv plant which make an inadequate substitute for tobacco — and offered me a smoke. Together we walked to Ootek’s tent, while the women and children watched us with unconcealed anticipation. We had been welcomed formally, so that it was now permissible to give way to curiosity, a thing one must not do until a visitor is sett1ed, lest you embarrass him.

All the children, women, and old people from the entire camp crowded closely into Ootek’s tent behind us, and collectively they produced an overpowering odor — which, however, was canceled out by the obvious good nature and good feeling which also emanated from these People.

While I was getting my bearing, Franz produced a plug of trade tobacco, which is nearly as vile as the Ihalmiut product, and it went the rounds. I noticed with great interest that Ootek, after filling his pipe with the precious stuff, passed it to his wife so that she might have the first smoke. In fact, she smoked most of it before returning it to Ootek. A small gesture this, but one that I was to find was typical of the eonsideration and affection with which the Ihalmiut men treated their wives.

There was a tremendous amount of talk while we sat about the tent waiting for supper, most of it between Franz and the three Eskimo men. The rest listened avidly and interjected comments and bursts of laughter. Franz translated a little of what was being said and the conversation was, as always, mostly about the deer. Where were they? Had we seen any fresh tracks? How long did we think it would be before the deer came from the north? It was an engrossing subject and I wanted to be in on it, but only by begging Franz to tell me what was going on could I get the gist at all.

3

I SAT down, or rather squatted down, to eat my first meal with the People. Howmik, Hekwaw’s wife, placed a great tray on the floor of the lent and we men grouped ourselves around it. That tray was a magnificent piece of work, nearly four feet long by two feet wide, with upcurved ends and sides. It had been constructed, with what must have been heartbreaking labor, from little planks hand-hewn from the tiny dwarf spruce of the southern Barrens. At least thirty small sections of wood had been meticulously fitted together and bound in place with mortised joints and pegs of deer horn. The seams had been tightly sewn with sinew, so that the whole tray was waterproof.

The tray was magnificent, but its contents were even more impressive. Half a dozen parboiled legs of deer were spread out in a thick gravy which seemed to be composed of equal parts of fat and deer hairs. Bobbing about in the debris were a dozen tongues and, like a cage holding the lesser cuts of meat, there was an entire boiled rib basket of deer.

There were side dishes too, for Howmik made a trip to a cache outside and returned with a skin sack, full of flakes of dry meat, which she unceremoniously dumped on the cluttered floor beside me. Nor was that all, for Hekwaw’s wife fetched a smoking bundle of marrowbones as her contribution to the feast. These had been neatly cracked so that we would have no trouble extracting the succulent marrow.

It wasn’t long before I was too full to tackle even one more marrowbone. Franz felt the same, but the other men continued their attack on the heaping mound of meal until it was all gone, to the last drop of gravy. Then, while they sat back and burped with prolonged fervor, Howmik took the tray away, refilled it, and the women ate.

Five times each day we sat down to a new meal, and in between we had light lunches. While there is food in the Ihalmiut camps, five meals a day is considered barely adequate, though on the trail a man must manage to subsist on three.

The cooking varied somewhat, but the food did not. The rule was meat at every meal and nothing else but meat, unless you could count a few wellrotted duck eggs which served as appetizers. To satisfy my curiosity I tried to estimate the quantity of meat Hekwaw put away. I discovered he could handle ten to fifteen pounds a day when he was really hungry — though otherwise he probably subsisted on less.

Undoubtedly the most important item of Ihalmiut food is fat. Among the coastal Eskimos the supply of fat is limited only by the number of sea mammals that are killed, and blubber — that grossly overworked arctic word — is obtained in immense quantities from seals, walrus, narwhales, and other aquatic mammals who build thick blankets of fat as an insulation against the cold of the arctic seas. The coastal people have so much fat and oil available that they can meet all their dietary needs and have enough left over to heat and light their igloos, and to cook upon. Well, they are lucky. The inland people of the plains must depend for fats on what they can obtain from the deer, and the caribou is no substitute for a seal as a source of oil. It takes a great many fat buck deer to equal one seal in the production of oils.

During the fall hunt the Ihalmiut must collect sufficient fat to meet the year’s needs, but there is never enough to provide fuel, food, and light together. As a result the winter igloos generally remain entirely unheated, and almost without artificial light during the interminable winter darkness. Yet the People manage to survive temperatures of fifty degrees below zero in their winter homes because fat is being burned — within their bodies. Each man is his own furnace, and as long as there are enough blocks of deer fat to last until spring, the People manage to slay alive under conditions which seem completely inimical to the maintenance of human life. Enough fat is the answer, and the sole answer, to winter survival in the Barrens.

Of course the Ihalmiut have always been aware of this, and it is their custom, winter or summer, to eat not less than a mouthful of fat for every three of lean meat. This is the ideal proportion, but it is not always possible to maintain it, and when fat becomes scarce the Ihalmiut appear most susceptible to disease and show other symptoms of a greatly lowered resistance.

4

THE barrier of language was frustrating, and it was clear that I could never hope to delve into the memories and minds of the Ihalmiut unless I could learn their tongue. One day, in complete exasperation at some impasse that had arisen between Ootek and myself, I took the bull by the horns and made it clear to the man that I was damn well going to learn the language of his People.

The unadorned fact that I, a white man and a stranger, should voluntarily wish to step across the barriers of blood that lay between us, and ask the People to teach me their tongue, instead of expecting them to learn mine, was the key to their hearts. When they saw that I was anxious to exert myself in trying to understand their way of life, their response was instant, enthusiastic, and almost overwhelming. Both Ootek and Ohoto, who was called in to assist in the task, abruptly ceased to treat me with the usual deference they extend to white strangers. They devoted themselves to the problem I had set them with the strength of fanatics.

For the space of two days they discussed the problem from all angles. At last I grew impatient and seized the initiative by asking the names of objects about me, and by acting out verbs. This, though I did not know it, was what they had planned, though they preferred to let me believe I was setting the pace. One or the other and usually both of my two mentors would attend my efforts with such serious concentration that sometimes we all tried too hard, and finished up the pursuit of a simple word by becoming so completely confused that nothing short of an outburst of laughter could destroy the impasse. Nevertheless I learned quickly — so quickly that I thought the tales I had heard of the difficulties of the Eskimo language were, like so many popular misconceptions about the Innuit, absolute nonsense.

In a month’s time I was able to make myself understood and I could understand most of what was said to me. I became pretty cocky, and started to consider myself something of a linguist. It was not until nearly a year had gone by that I discovered the true reason for my quick progress.

The secret lay, of course, with Ootek and Ohoto, who, with the coöperation of the rest of the People, had devised a special method of teaching me a language that is, in reality, a most difficult one. In effect, they developed a specialized “basic” Eskimo entirely for my use, and they themselves learned to use it, not only when talking to me, but when talking to each other within my hearing. So I learned an Innuit vocabulary, and I was tirelessly drilled by Ohoto and Ootek until I mastered all the subtle sounds of their words. I found I was able to speak about quite abstract subjects, and incidentally give the lie to those who say that these “natives” are unable to think, or express themselves, in abstract terms.

As I grew to know the People, my respect for their intelligence and ingenuity increased. Yet it was a long time before I could reconcile my feelings of respect with the poor, shoddy dwelling places that they constructed. As with most Eskimos, the winter homes of the Ihalmiut are the snow-built domes we call igloos, but unlike most other Innuit, the Ihalmiut make snowhouses which are cramped, miserable shelters. I think the People acquired the art of igloo construction quite recently in their history and from the coast Eskimos.

Certainly they have no love for their igloos, and prefer the skin tents. This preference is related to the problem of fuel. The Ihalmiul can ill afford to squander the precious fat of the deer, and they dare to burn only one tiny lamp for light. Willow must serve as fuel; and while willow burns well enough in a tent open at the peak to allow the smoke to escape, when it is burned in a snow igloo, the choking smoke leaves no place for human occupants.

So the tent with its warm little fire is a more desirable place than the snowhouse with no fire at all. At least the man in the lent can have a hot bowl of soup once in a while, but after life in the igloos begins, almost all food must be oaten frozen to the hardness of rocks. Men sometimes take skin bags full of ice into the beds so that they can have water to drink, melted by the beat of their bodies.

In fact, the tent and the igloo are really only auxiliary shelters. The real home of the Ihalmio is much like that of the turtle, for it is what he carries about on his back. In truth it is the only house that can enable men to survive on the merciless plains of the Barrens. It has central heating from the fat furnace of the body; its walls are insulated to a degree of perfection that we white men have not been able to surpass, or even emulate. It is complete, light in weight, easy to make, and easy to keep in repair. It costs nothing, for it is a gift of the land, through the deer.

Primarily the house consists of two suits of fur, worn one over the other, and each carefully tailored to the owner’s dimensions. The inner suit is worn with the hair of the hides facing inward and touching the skin while the outer suit has its hair turned out to the weather. Each suit consists of a pullover parka with a hood, a pair of fur trousers, fur gloves, and fur boots. The double motif is extended to the tips of the fingers, to the top of the head, and to the soles of the feel, where soft slippers of harehide are worn next to the skin.

The high winter boots may be tied just above the knee so that they leave no entry for the cold blasts of the wind. But full ventilation is provided by the design of the parka. Both inner and outer parkas hang slackly to at least the knees of the wearer, and they are not belted in winter. Cold air does not rise, so no drafts can move up under the parkas to reach the bare flesh, but the heavy, moisture-laden air from close to the body sinks through the gap between parka and trousers and is carried away. Even in times of great physical exertion, when the Ihalmio sweats freely, he is never in any danger of soaking his clothing and so inviting quick death from frost afterwards. The hides are not in contact with the body at all, but are held away from the flesh by the soft resiliency of the deer hairs that line them, and in the space, between the tips of the hair and the hide of the parka there is a constantly moving layer of warm air which absorbs all the sweat and carries it off.

Dressed for a day in the winter, the Ihalmio has this protection over all parts of his body, except for a narrow oval in front of his face — and even this is well protected by a long silken fringe of wolverine fur, the one fur to which the moisture of breathing will not adhere and freeze.

Most while men Irving to live in the winter Arctic load their bodies with at least twenty-five pounds of clothing, while the complete deerskin home of the Innuit weighs about seven pounds. This, of course, makes a great difference in the mobility of the wearers. A man wearing tightfitting and too bulky clothes is almost as helpless as a man in a diver’s suit. But besides their light weight, the Ihalmiul clothes are tailored so that they are slack wherever muscles must work freely beneath them. There is ample space in this house for the occupant to move and to breathe, for there are no partitions a nd walls to limit his motions, and the man is almost as free in his movements as if he were naked. If he must sleep out, without shelter, and it is fifty below, he has but to draw his arms into his parka, and he sleeps nearly as well as he would in a double-weight eiderdown bag.

5

AS I became more competent with the language, I discovered that the talk of the People was largely devoted to times past. It almost seemed as if the Ihalmiut were making a deliberate effort to relive those dead days, as if they wished me to see them, not as they are, but as they had once been. Slowly and carefully they used words to rebuild the old shattered pattern of life as it had been lived in the Barrens, so that I might also live with them in those happier times. And it was not long before their efforts began to have the desired effect, and I could see, in my mind’s eye, something of the richness and vigor of the life the People had led in those vanished years when a man might stand on a hill and though he looked to the east, to the west, to the north, or to the south, he would not know where the land was, for all he could see was the deer. All he could hear was the sound of their feet. All he could smell was the sweet scent of the deer.

But the way of things now is so bitter that it was hard for me to persuade the People to speak of the present. For a while I knew no more about it than I could see for myself or had picked up from Franz. Then little by little I began to gather odd fragments of tales from the recent past.

The story was told to me — mainly by Ohoto —

in a series of short incidents spread over a year in time. But let Ohoto speak for himself.

In the time of my father we of the People exchanged our spears and our bows for the rifles of white men, and in the early years of my youth the rifles gave us meat when we had need, and though the old ways had changed a little, life in this land was still a pleasant thing.

When the white men first came to the edge of our land and told us of the virtues of guns, we believed them. When they told us to put by the ancient deer hunts of our People and turn to the killing of foxes instead, wo did what they wished and for a time all was well, and while there were shells for our rifles we prospered.

Now, often enough, there are no shells for the rifles, and I cannot tell why, for I still trap many foxes as the white men wished me to do; yet when I take my catch to the wooden igloo in the South, there is no one to greet me but Hikik the squirrel. It was that way first on a winter many years before you came into the land, and I remember the winter well, for the traders told us they must have many foxes that year. They were so anxious that we gave up the great fall hunt of the deer and used all of our skill and our strength to trap foxes, believing we could trade them for food at the place of the white man and so we would have little need of deer meat. But when, in midwinter, we took our pelts south, the white man had gone, leaving only the smell which lingered for many long years. Only dead things lay in his camp. The boxes were empty and there was no food in the place and no shells for our guns, so we could not even hunt meat for ourselves.

Indeed I remember that winter, though I wish it would go from my memory. Epeetna, who was my first wife, died during that time and my two children died with her. Nor was I alone in hunger and sorrow, for in the camps of the People only one out of live lived to see spring.

Some of those who survived tried to return to the old way of living given us by Tuktu the deer, but it was lound that we did not have the old skills we needed. Some hoped and believed the white man would return and so, stubbornly, clung to their fox traps. These are gone. Only those remained who tried to return to the deer, and few of these are still alive.

Then five winters after the first white man went away, another came in his place. Once again we threw away the pursuit of the deer, for we felt that this time the white man would surely remain. Once more we had shells for our guns, and all things seemed well, yet last winter the white man again left the land, and again we had nothing to eat but the skins of the foxes we had trapped for the trade.

Why is it you white men should come for a time, stay for a time, and then suddenly vanish when we are most in need of your help? Why is it? Why can we not take our fox pelts to the trader and have shells for our guns in return, for this is what the trader taught us to do? This mystery I cannot understand. . . .

Here is the epilogue to Ohoto’s story .

During the winter and early spring of 1949-1950, starvation again struck at the People with undiminished ferocity. And that starvation would have been fatal but for one accident. It happened that a free-lance photographer and newspaper writer wandered into the northern Barrens in March of 1950, and he found the northern cousins of the Ihalmiut, the Padliemiut, in desperate straits from famine. His story was given screaming headlines in several influential newspapers, and in late April the R.C.A.F. was instructed to fly emergency supplies to the Ihalmiut and Padliemiut. Food was taken in, and shortly afterwards news releases from the authorities painted this humanitarian effort so brilliantly that no reader thought to ask why this dramatic rescue had been necessary. No one thought of the long winter when, once more abandoned, the lhalmiut had struggled with death.

That it should have been permitted to happen is even more incredible in view of the fact that during the summer of 1949 an epidemic of poliomyelitis struck the Ihalmiut and the authorities belatedly visited the Little Hills country — though not in time to prevent the disease from taking its toll.

The only child born to the People that year was dead. And Ohoto was dead. Howmik, the mother of young Inoti, and Hekwaw, the gray old masterhunter, were hopelessly crippled. These two were eventually evacuated to Winnipeg for treatment, and the last time I had news from them, no hope was held out for their recovery. As for the rest of the People, the disease had only struck them with a glancing blow, so that their crippled arms, twisled legs, and paralyzed muscles were not permanently destroyed. But all of them were the victims of the winter starvation — though it was disease which look the actual toll.

By the middle of 1950 the Ihalmiut were a dead race, for they had lost two of the four remaining women capable of childbearing. They had lost their last chance for survival.

The story of the Ihalmiut is not theirs alone, since much of what I have written holds true for many thousands of Indians and Eskimos across the whole breadth of the continent. If I have only succeeded in writing an epitaph for the Ihalmiut, perhaps their tragedy can nevertheless be made to bear fruit — though it be bitter fruit. Perhaps their story will help us to look with a new honesty into the lives of those who dwell by hidden rivers and the frozen coasts, and in the depths of forests.

(The End)