The Native Races [of the Pacific states], Volume 1, Wild Tribes. Hubert Howe Bancroft

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      In mid-winter, while the land is enveloped in darkness, the Eskimo dozes torpidly in his den. Early in September the musk-oxen and reindeer retreat southward, and the fish are confined beneath the frozen covering of the rivers. It is during the short summer, when food is abundant, that they who would not perish must lay up a supply for the winter. When spring opens, and the rivers are cleared of ice, the natives follow the fish, which at that time ascend the streams to spawn, and spear them at the falls and rapids that impede their progress. Small wooden fish are sometimes made and thrown into holes in the ice for a decoy; salmon are taken in a whalebone seine. At this season also reindeer are captured on their way to the coast, whither they resort in the spring to drop their young. Multitudes of geese, ducks, and swans visit the ocean during the same period to breed.45

      August and September are the months for whales. When a whale is discovered rolling on the water, a boat starts out, and from the distance of a few feet a weapon is plunged into its blubbery carcass. The harpoons are so constructed that when this blow is given, the shaft becomes disengaged from the barbed ivory point. To this point a seal-skin buoy or bladder is attached by means of a cord. The blows are repeated; the buoys encumber the monster in diving or swimming, and the ingenious Eskimo is soon able to tow the carcass to the shore. A successful chase secures an abundance of food for the winter.46 Seals are caught during the winter, and considerable skill is required in taking them. Being a warm-blooded respiratory animal, they are obliged to have air, and in order to obtain it, while the surface of the water is undergoing the freezing process, they keep open a breathing-hole by constantly gnawing away the ice. They produce their young in March, and soon afterward the natives abandon their villages and set out on the ice in pursuit of them. Seals, like whales, are also killed with a harpoon to which is attached a bladder. The seal, when struck, may draw the float under water for a time, but is soon obliged to rise to the surface from exhaustion and for air, when he is again attacked and soon obliged to yield.

      The Eskimos are no less ingenious in catching wild-fowl, which they accomplish by means of a sling or net made of woven sinews, with ivory balls attached. They also snare birds by means of whalebone nooses, round which fine gravel is scattered as a bait. They manœuvre reindeer to near the edge of a cliff, and, driving them into the sea, kill them from canoes. They also waylay them at the narrow passes, and capture them in great numbers. They construct large reindeer pounds, and set up two diverging rows of turf so as to represent men; the outer extremities of the line being sometimes two miles apart, and narrowing to a small enclosure. Into this trap the unsuspecting animals are driven, when they are easily speared.47

      To overcome the formidable polar bear the natives have two strategems. One is by imitating the seal, upon which the bear principally feeds, and thereby enticing it within gunshot. Another is by bending a piece of stiff whalebone, encasing it in a ball of blubber, and freezing the ball, which then holds firm the bent whalebone. Armed with these frozen blubber balls, the natives approach their victim, and, with a discharge of arrows, open the engagement. The bear, smarting with pain, turns upon his tormentors, who, taking to their heels, drop now and then a blubber ball. Bruin, as fond of food as of revenge, pauses for a moment, hastily swallows one, then another, and another. Soon a strange sensation is felt within. The thawing blubber, melted by the heat of the animal's stomach, releases the pent-up whalebone, which, springing into place, plays havoc with the intestines, and brings the bear to a painful and ignominious end. To vegetables, the natives are rather indifferent; berries, acid sorrel leaves, and certain roots, are used as a relish. There is no native intoxicating liquor, but in eating they get gluttonously stupid.

      Notwithstanding his long, frigid, biting winter, the Eskimo never suffers from the cold so long as he has an abundance of food. As we have seen, a whale or a moose supplies him with food, shelter, and raiment. With an internal fire, fed by his oily and animal food, glowing in his stomach, his blood at fever heat, he burrows comfortably in ice and snow and frozen ground, without necessity for wood or coal.48 Nor are those passions which are supposed to develop most fully under a milder temperature, wanting in the half-frozen Hyperborean.49 One of the chief difficulties of the Eskimo during the winter is to obtain water, and the women spend a large portion of their time in melting snow over oil-lamps. In the Arctic regions, eating snow is attended with serious consequences. Ice or snow, touched to the lips or tongue, blisters like caustic. Fire is obtained by striking sparks from iron pyrites with quartz. It is a singular fact that in the coldest climate inhabited by man, fire is less used than anywhere else in the world, equatorial regions perhaps excepted. Caloric for the body is supplied by food and supplemented by furs. Snow houses, from their nature, prohibit the use of fire; but cooking with the Eskimo is a luxury, not a necessity. He well understands how to utilize every part of the animals so essential to his existence. With their skins he clothes himself, makes houses, boats, and oil-bags; their flesh and fat he eats. He even devours the contents of the intestines, and with the skin makes water-proof clothing. Knives, arrow-points, house, boat, and sledge frames, fish-hooks, domestic utensils, ice-chisels, and in fact almost all their implements, are made from the horns and bones of the deer, whale, and seal. Bowstrings are made of the sinews of musk-oxen, and ropes of seal-skin.50 The Eskimo's arms are not very formidable. Backed by his ingenuity, they nevertheless prove sufficient for practical purposes; and while his neighbor possesses none better, all are on an equal footing in war. Their most powerful as well as most artistic weapon is the bow. It is made of beech or spruce, in three pieces curving in opposite directions and ingeniously bound by twisted sinews, so as to give the greatest possible strength. Richardson affirms that "in the hands of a native hunter it will propel an arrow with sufficient force to pierce the heart of a musk-ox, or break the leg of a reindeer." Arrows, as well as spears, lances, and darts, are of white spruce, and pointed with bone, ivory, flint, and slate.51 East of the Mackenzie, copper enters largely into the composition of Eskimo utensils.52 Before the introduction of iron by Europeans, stone hatchets were common.53

      The Hyperboreans surpass all American nations in their facilities for locomotion, both upon land and water. In their skin boats, the natives of the Alaskan seaboard from Point Barrow to Mount St Elias, made long voyages, crossing the strait and sea of Bering, and held commercial intercourse with the people of Asia. Sixty miles is an ordinary day's journey for sledges, while Indians on snow-shoes have been known to run down and capture deer. Throughout this entire border, including the Aleutian Islands, boats are made wholly of the skins of seals or sea-lions, excepting the frame of wood or whale-ribs. In the interior, as well as on the coast immediately below Mount St Elias, skin boats disappear, and canoes or wooden boats are used.

      Two kinds of skin boats are employed by the natives of the Alaskan coast, a large and a small one. The former is called by the natives oomiak, and by the Russians baidar. This is a large, flat-bottomed, open boat; the skeleton of wood or whale-ribs, fastened with seal-skin thongs or whale's sinews, and covered with oiled seal or sea-lion skins, which are first sewed together and then stretched over the frame. The baidar is usually about thirty feet in length, six feet in extreme breadth, and three feet in depth. It is propelled by oars, and will carry fifteen or twenty persons, but its capacity is greatly increased by lashing inflated seal-skins to the outside. In storms at sea, two or three baidars are sometimes tied together.54 The small boat is called by the natives kyak, and by the Russians baidarka. It is constructed of the same material and in the same manner as the baidar, except that it is entirely covered with skins, top as well as bottom, save one hole left in the deck, which is filled by the navigator. After taking his seat, and thereby filling this hole, the occupant puts on a water-proof over-dress, the bottom of which is so secured СКАЧАТЬ