Part 29
_Snow-goggles._--The wooden goggles worn to protect the eyes from snow-blindness may be considered as accessories to hunting, as they are worn chiefly by those engaged in hunting or fishing, especially when deer-hunting in the spring on the snow-covered tundra or when in the whaleboats among the ice. They are simply a wooden cover for the eyes, admitting the light by a narrow horizontal slit, which allows only a small amount of light to reach the eye and at the same time gives sufficient range of vision. Such goggles are universally employed by the Eskimos everywhere[N361] except in Siberia, where they use a simple shade for the eyes.[N362]
[Footnote N361: See Parry, 2d Voyage, p. 547, Iglulik and Hudson Strait, pl. opposite p. 548, Fig. 4, and pl. opposite p. 14; Crantz, History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 234; Dall, Alaska, p. 195, figure (Norton Sound); also MacFarlane, MS., No. 2929 (Anderson River).]
[Footnote N362: Nordenskiöld, Vega, Vol. 2, p. 99.]
We brought home four pairs of these goggles (í´dyĭgûñ), of which No. 89894 [1708], Fig. 259, represents the common form. These are of pine wood, 5.8 inches long and 1.1 inches broad, and deeply excavated on the inside, with a narrow horizontal slit with thin edges on each side of the middle. In the middle are two notches to fit the nose, the one in the lower edge deep and rounded, the upper very shallow. The two holes in each end are for strings of sinew braid to pass round the head. They are neatly made and the outside is scraped smooth and shows traces of a coat of red ocher.
The history of this particular pair of goggles is peculiarly interesting. Though differing in no important respect from those used at the present day, they were found on the site of the ancient village of Isû´tkwa, where our station stood, buried at a depth of 27 feet in undisturbed frozen ground, and were uncovered in digging the shaft sunk by Lieut. Ray for obtaining earth temperatures.[N363] The layer in which they were found was evidently an old sea beach, consisting of sand and gravel mixed with broken shells, among which Mya truncata was recognized. The amount of the superincumbent gravel and similar material above this object does not necessarily indicate any very great length of time since they were first buried, as will be readily understood from what I have said above (p. 28) about the rapidity with which high hummocks of gravel are pushed up by the ice. The unbroken layer of turf, however, nearly a foot thick, with which the ground was covered at this point, shows that a considerable period must have elapsed since the gravel had reached nearly to its present level.
[Footnote N363: Report U.S. International Polar Expedition to Point Barrow, p. 37.]
The pattern of these goggles is to my mind a very decided proof that at that early date this region was inhabited by Eskimo not essentially different from its present inhabitants. Goggles worn at the present day are almost always of the shape of these, though I remember seeing one pair made in two pieces joined by short strings of beads across the nose. They are, I think, universally painted with red ocher on the outside and blackened inside. They were not always made of wood, as there are two specimens in the collection made of a piece of antler, following the natural curve of the beam, divided longitudinally, with the softer inside tissue hollowed out.
Fig. 260 (No. 89701 [763], from Utkiavwĭñ) represents one of these specimens. I do not recollect ever seeing goggles of this material in actual use. No. 89703 [754], Fig. 261, is an unusual pattern, having along the top a horizontal brim about one-half inch high, which serves for an additional shade to the eyes. Above this are two oblique holes opening into the cavity inside, which are probably for the purpose of ventilation, to prevent the moisture from the skin from being deposited as frost on the inside of the goggles or on the eyelashes. I do not remember having seen such goggles worn. Dall figures a similar pair from Norton Sound, and those brought by Mr. Turner from Ungava have a similar brim and ventilating holes. The snow goggles mentioned in Parry’s Second Voyage (p. 547) as occasionally seen at Iglulik, but more common in Hudson’s Strait, appear to have resembled these, but had a brim 3 or 4 inches deep.
_Meat-cache markers._--We purchased a couple of little ivory rods, each with a little bunch of feathers tied to one end, which we were told were used by the deer hunters to mark the place where they had buried the flesh of a deer in the snow. This implement is called tû´kusia.
Fig. 262, represents one of these (No. 89531 [978] from Nuwŭk). It is a flat, slender rod of white walrus ivory, 11½ inches long, and evidently broken off at the tip. The other end is cut into ornamental notches, and ornamented with an incised pattern colored with red ocher, consisting of conventional lines and the figure of a reindeer on each face, a buck on one face and a doe on the other. Tied by a bit of sinew to the uppermost notch are four legs and three wing tips (three or four primaries, with the skin at the base) of the buff-breasted sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis). This was evidently longer when new and perhaps was originally used for a seal indicator (which see above). Fig. 263 (No. 89453 [1581] from Utkiavwĭñ) is a similar rod, the tip of which has been brought to an edge so that it can be used as a “feather-setter” in feathering arrows. The remains of two wing tips of some small bird are tied to one of the notches at the upper end.
METHODS OF HUNTING.
Having now described in detail all the weapons and other implements used in hunting, I am prepared to give an account of the time and methods of pursuing the different kinds of game.
_The polar bear._--Bears are occasionally met with in the winter by the seal hunters, roaming about the ice fields at some distance from the shore. They usually run from a man and often do not make a stand even when wounded. Occasionally, however, a bear rendered bold by hunger comes in from the sea and makes an attack on some native’s storehouse of seal meat even in the midst of the village. Of course, in such a case he has very little chance of escape, as the natives all turn out with their rifles and cut off his retreat. Two bears were killed in this way at Utkiavwĭñ in the winter of 1882-’83. The bear is always attacked with the rifle, often with the help of dogs to bring him to bay. The umiaks when walrus hunting sometimes meet with bears among the loose ice. If the bear is caught in the water, there is very little difficulty in paddling up close enough to him to shoot him.
_The wolf._--The wolf can hardly be considered a regular object of pursuit. Wolves are often seen and occasionally shot by deer hunters in the winter, and one family in the summer of 1883 managed to catch a couple of young wolf cubs alive, somewhere between Point Barrow and the Colville. These they brought home with them and kept them picketed on the tundra just outside of the village, with a little kennel of snow to shelter them, carefully feeding them till winter, when their fur had grown long enough for use in trimming hoods. They were then killed with a stone-headed arrow, which we were told was necessary for the purpose, and their skins dressed and cut into strips which were sold around the village. Superstition required that the man who killed these wolves should sleep outside of the house in a tent or snow hut for “one moon” after killing them. We did not learn the reason for this practice beyond that it would be “bad” to do otherwise.
_The fox._--Foxes are sometimes shot, but are generally taken in the traps described above, which are usually set some distance from the village so as to avoid catching prowling dogs. Though generally exceedingly shy, the fox is sometimes rendered careless by hunger. One of the women at the deer-hunters’ camp in the spring of 1882 caught one in the little snow house built to store the meat and killed him with a stick.
_The reindeer._--Reindeer are comparatively scarce within the radius of a day’s march from Point Barrow, though solitary animals and small parties are to be seen almost any day in the winter a few miles inland from the seacoast. In the autumn, which is the rutting season, they occasionally wander down to the lagoons back of the beach. Nearly every day in the autumn and winter, when the weather is not stormy, one or more natives are out looking for reindeer, usually traveling on snowshoes and carrying their rifles slung on their backs. The deer are generally very wild and often perceive a man and begin to run at a distance of a mile or two, though a rutting buck will sometimes fancy that a skin-clad Eskimo is a rival buck, and come toward him, especially if the hunter crouches down and keeps perfectly still.
The usual method of hunting is to walk off inland until a deer is sighted, when the hunter moves directly toward him at a rapid pace, without regard to the wind or attempting to conceal himself, which would be almost hopeless in such open country. As soon as the deer starts to run, the hunter quickens his pace--to a run, if he has “wind” enough--and follows the game as long as he can keep it in sight, trusting that the well known curiosity of the deer will induce it to “circle” round, in order to see what it is that is following him with such pertinacity. Should the deer turn, as often happens, especially if there is more than one of them, the hunter alters his course so as to head him off, and as soon as he gets within long rifle range opens fire, and keeps it up till the animal is hit or escapes out of range. Strange as it may seem, a number of deer are killed every winter in this way.
If a deer be killed, the hunter usually “butchers” him on the spot, and brings in as much of the meat as he can carry on his back, leaving the rest, carefully covered with slabs of snow to protect it from the foxes, to be brought in as soon as convenient by a dog sled, which follows the hunter’s tracks to the place.
During the spring the deer retire some distance from the Point, and the does then drop their fawns. At this season nearly all the natives are busily engaged in the whale fishery, and pay little attention to the reindeer, so that we did not learn where they went to. When the fawns are perhaps a month old a small party, say a young man and his wife, sometimes makes a short journey to the eastward to procure fawn skins for clothing. They say that the fawns at this age can be caught by running them down. During the summer again the deer come down to the coast in small numbers, taking to the water in the lagoons, or even in the sea, when the flies become troublesome.
Sometimes in warm, calm weather the flies are so numerous that the deer is driven perfectly frantic, and runs along without looking where he is going, so that, as the natives say, a hunter who places himself in the deer’s path has no difficulty in shooting him. Flies were unusually scarce both summers that we were at the station, so that we never had an opportunity of seeing this done. When a deer is seen swimming he is pursued with the kaiak and lanced in the manner already described. In July, 1883, one man from Utkiavwĭñ made a short journey inland, “carrying” his kaiak from lake to lake, and killed two deer in this way without firing a shot. I believe this method of hunting is frequently practiced by the parties who go east for trading in the summer, and those who visit the rivers for the purpose of hunting.
The natives seemed to expect deer in summer at the lagoons, as along the isthmus between Imê´kpûñ and Imêkpûnĭglu they had set up a range of stakes, evidently intended to turn the deer up the beach where he would be seen from the camp at Pernijû. Only one deer, however, came down either summer, and he escaped without being seen. This contrivance of setting up stakes to guide the deer in a certain direction is very commonly used by the Eskimo. Egede gives a curious description of the practice in Greenland in his day: They “chase them [i.e., the reindeer] by Clap-hunting, setting upon them on all sides and surrounding them with all their Women and Children to force them into Defiles and Narrow Passages, where the Men armed lay in wait for them and kill them. And when they have not People enough to surround them, then they put up white Poles (to make up the Number that is wanted) with Pieces of Turf to head them, which frightens the Deer and hinders it from escaping.”[N364] Pl. 4, of the same work, is a very curious illustration of this style of hunting.
[Footnote N364: Greenland, p. 62.]
A similar method is practiced at the Coppermine River, where the deer are led by ranges of turf toward the spot where the archer is hidden.[N365] Franklin also noticed between the Mackenzie and the Colville similar ranges of driftwood stumps leading across the plain to two cairns on a hill,[N366] and Thomas Simpson mentions a similar range near Herschel Island,[N367] and double rows of turf to represent men leading down to a small lake near Point Pitt, for the purpose of driving the deer into the water where they could be speared.[N368] This is similar to the practice described by Schwatka[N369] among the “Netschilluk” of King William’s Land, where a line of cairns as high as a man and 50 to 100 yards apart is built along a ridge running obliquely to the water. When deer are seen feeding near the water the men form a skirmish line from the last cairn to the water and advance slowly. The deer mistake the cairns for men and take to the water, where they are easily speared.
[Footnote N365: Franklin, 1st Exped., vol. 2, p. 181.]
[Footnote N366: 2d Exped., p. 137.]
[Footnote N367: Narrative, p. 114.]
[Footnote N368: Ibid., p. 138.]
[Footnote N369: Science, vol. 4, 9, pp. 543-544.]
The most important deer hunt takes place in the late fall and early spring, when the natives go inland 50 or 75 miles to the upper waters of Kuaru and Kulugrua, where the deer are exceedingly plentiful at this season. Capt. Herendeen, who went inland with the deer hunters in the autumn of 1882, reports that the bottom lands of Kulugrua “looked like a cattle yard,” from the tracks of the reindeer. They start as soon as it is possible to travel across the country with sledges, usually about the first of October, taking guns, ammunition, fishing tackle, and the necessary household utensils for themselves and their families, and stay till the daylight gets too short for hunting. In 1882, many parties got home about October 27 or 28. At this season there is seldom snow enough to build snow huts, so they generally live in tents, always close to the rivers from which they procure water for household use. The men spend their time hunting the deer, while the women bring in the game, attend to drying the skins and the household work, and catch whitefish and burbot through the ice of the rivers, which are now frozen hard enough for this purpose. Some of the old men and those who have not a supply of ammunition engage in the same pursuit.
A comparatively small number of the people go out to this fall deer hunt, which appears to be a new custom, adopted since Dr. Simpson’s time. It was probably not worth while to go out after deer at seasons when there was not enough snow for digging pitfalls, since they depended chiefly on these for the capture of the reindeer before the introduction of firearms. Fully half of each village go out on the spring deer hunt, as they did in Maguire’s time, the first parties starting out with the return of the sun, about January 23, and the others following in the course of two or three weeks, and remain out till about the middle of April, when it is time to come back for the whale fishery. The people of Utkiavwĭñ always travel to the hunting grounds by a regular road, which is the same as that followed by Lieut. Ray in his exploring trips. They travel along the coast on the ice wherever it is smooth enough till they reach Sĭ´ñaru, and then strike across country, crossing Kuaru and reaching Kulugrua near the hill Nuasu´knan. (See map, Pl. II.)
The people from Nuwŭk travel straight across Elson Bay to the south till they reach nearly the same region. Some parties from Nuwŭk also hunt in the rough country between Kulugrua and Ikpĭkpûñ. As the sledges are heavily laden with camp equipage, provisions and oil for the lamps, they travel slowly, taking four or five days for the journey, stopping for the night with tolerable regularity at certain stations where the first party that travels over the trail build snow huts, which are used by those who follow them. At the rivers they are scattered in small camps of four or five families, about a day’s journey apart. As well as we could learn these camps are in regularly established places, where the same people return every year, if they hunt at all. It even seemed as if these localities were considered the property of certain influential families, who could allow any others they pleased to join their parties.[N370] It is certain, at all events, that the people of Utkiavwĭñ did not hunt on the Ikpĭkpûñ with the men of Nuwŭk. At this season they live entirely in snow huts, often excavated in the deep drifts under the river bluffs, and the men hunt deer while the women, as before, catch fish in Kuaru and Kulugrua. None are taken in Ikpĭkpûñ. (See above, p. 58.)
[Footnote N370: Dr. Richardson believes that the hunting grounds of families are kept sacred among the Eskimo. Searching Expedition, vol. 1, pp. 244, 351. See also, the same author’s paper, New Philosophical Journal, vol. 52, p. 323.]
Deer are generally very plentiful at this season, though sometimes, as happened in February, 1883, there comes a warm southerly wind which makes them all retreat farther inland for a few days. They are generally hunted by chasing them on snowshoes, in the manner already described, but with much better chances of success, since when a number of hunters are out in the same region the deer are kept moving, so that a herd started by one hunter is very apt to run within gunshot of another. The natives have generally very good success in this spring hunt. Two men who were hunting on shares for the station killed upward of ninety reindeer in the season of 1883. A great deal of the meat is, of course, consumed on the spot, but a good many deer are brought home frozen. They are skinned and brought home whole, only the heads and legs being cut off. The latter are disjointed at the knee and elbow. These frozen carcasses are usually cut up with a saw for cooking. At this season the does are pregnant, and many good-sized fetuses are brought home frozen. We were told that these were excellent food, though we never saw them eaten. For the first two or three days after the return of the deer hunters to the village all the little boys are playing with these fetuses, which they set up as targets for their blunt arrows.
Before starting for the deer hunt the hunters generally take the movable property which they do not mean to carry with them out of the house and bury it in the snow for safe keeping, apparently thinking that while a dishonest person might help himself to small articles left around the house, he could hardly go to work and dig up a cache without attracting the attention of the neighbors. If both families from a house go deer hunting, they either close it up entirely or else get some family who have no house of their own to take care of it during their absence. During the season, small parties, traveling light, with very little baggage, make flying trips to the village, usually to get a fresh supply of ammunition or oil, and at the end of the season a lucky hunter almost always sends in to borrow extra dogs and hire women and children to help bring in his game. The skins, which at this season are very thick and heavy, suitable only for blankets, heavy stockings, etc., are simply rough dried in the open air, and brought in stacked up on a flat sled. Lieut. Ray met a Nuwŭk party returning in 1882 with a pile of these skins that looked like a load of hay. With such heavy loads they, of course, travel very slowly. A few natives, especially when short of ammunition, still use at this season the snow pitfalls mentioned by Capt. Maguire.[N371]
[Footnote N371: Northwest Passage, Appendix, p. 387.]
The following is the description of those seen by Lieut. Ray in 1883: A round hole is dug in the drifted snow, along the bank of a stream or lake. This is about 5 feet in diameter and 5 or 6 feet deep, and is brought up to within 2 or 3 inches of the surface, where there is only a small hole, through which the snow was removed. This is carefully closed with a thin slab of snow and baited by strewing reindeer moss and bunches of grass over the thin surface, through which the deer breaks as soon as he steps on it. The natives say that they sometimes get two deer at once.
This method of hunting the reindeer appears uncommon among the Eskimo. I find no mention of it except at Repulse Bay,[N372] and among the Netsillingmiut, where dogs’ urine is said to be sprinkled on the snow as a bait to attract the deer by its “Salzgehalt.”[N373] Lieut. Ray was informed by the natives that the “Nunatañmiun” also captured deer by means of a rawhide noose set across a regular deer path, when they discovered such. The noose is held up and spread by a couple of sticks, and the end staked to the ground with a piece of antler. A similar method was practiced by the natives of Norton Sound.[N374] A few parties visit the rivers in summer for the purpose of hunting reindeer, but most of the natives are either off on the trading expeditions previously mentioned or else settled in the small camps along the coast, 3 or 4 miles apart, whence they occasionally go a short distance inland in search of reindeer.
[Footnote N372: Rae, Narratives, etc., p. 135.]
[Footnote N373: Klutschak, “Als Eskimo,” etc., p. 131.]
[Footnote N374: Dall, Alaska, p. 147.]
_The seal._--The flesh of the smaller seals forms such a staple of food, and their blubber and skin serve so many important purposes, that their capture is one of the most necessary pursuits at Point Barrow, and is carried on at all seasons of the year and in many different methods. During the season of open water many seals are shot from the umiaks engaged in whaling and walrus hunting or caught in nets set along the shore at Elson Bay. This is also the only season when seals can be captured with the small kaiak darts.