Part 47

On the other hand most of the wealthier people appear to take pride in being neatly clad, and, except when actually engaged in some dirty work, always have their faces and hands, at least, scrupulously clean and their hair neatly combed. Even the whole person is sometimes washed in spite of the scarcity of water. Many are glad to get soap (íɐkăkun) and use it freely. Lieut. Ray says that his two guides, Mû´ñialu and Apaidyào, at the end of a day’s march would never sit down to supper without washing their faces and hands with soap and water, and combing their hair, and I recollect that once, when I went over to the village to get a young man to start with Lieut. Ray on a boat journey, he would not start until he had hunted up a piece of soap and washed his face and hands. These people, of course, practice the usual Eskimo habit of washing themselves with freshly passed urine. This custom arises not only from the scarcity of water and the difficulty of heating it, but from the fact that the ammonia of the urine is an excellent substitute for soap in removing the grease with which the skin necessarily becomes soiled.[N570] This fact is well known to our whalemen, who are in the habit of saving their urine to wash the oily clothes with. The same habit is practiced by the “Chukches” of eastern Siberia.[N571] All, however, get more or less shabby and dirty in the summer, when they are living in tents and boats. All are more or less infested with lice, and they are in the habit of searching each others’ heads for these, which they eat, after the fashion of so many other savages. They have also another filthy habit--that of eating the mucus from the nostrils. A similar practice was noticed in Greenland by Egede,[N572] who goes on quaintly to say: “Thus they make good the old proverb, ‘What drips from the nose falls into the mouth, that nothing may be lost.’”

[Footnote N570: Compare Dall, Alaska, p. 20.]

[Footnote N571: See Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 104.]

[Footnote N572: Greenland, p. 127.]

_Salutation._--We had no opportunity of witnessing any meeting between these people and strange Eskimo, so that it is impossible to tell whether they practice any particular form of salutation on such occasions. We saw nothing of the kind among themselves. White men are saluted with shouts of “Nakurúk!” (good), and some Eskimo have learned to shake hands. They no longer practice the common Eskimo salutation of rubbing noses, but say that they once did. Sergt. Middleton Smith, of our party, informs me that he once saw a couple of natives in Capt. Herendeen’s trading store give an exhibition of the way this salutation was formerly practiced.

This custom was perhaps falling into disuse as early as 1837, since Thomas Simpson,[N573] in describing his reception at Point Barrow, says: “We were not, however, either upon this or any other occasion, favored with the kooniks or nose-rubbing salutations that have so annoyed other travelers.” Mr. Elson, however, expressly states that the people, probably Utkiavwĭñmiun, whom he met at Refuge Inlet eleven years before, rubbed noses and cheeks with him[N574] and Maguire[N575] narrates how the head of the party of visitors from Point Hope saluted him. He says: “He fixed his forehead against mine and used it as a fulcrum to rub noses several times.”

[Footnote N573: Narrative, p. 155.]

[Footnote N574: Beechy’s Voyage p. 312.]

[Footnote N575: N. W. Passage, p. 385.]

_Healing._--As is the case with Eskimo generally, these people rely for curing disease chiefly upon the efforts of certain persons who have the power of exorcising the supernatural beings by whom the disease is caused. A large number of men and, I believe, some women were supposed to have this power and exercise it in cases of sickness, in some instances, at least, upon the payment of a fee. These people correspond closely to the angekut of the Greenlanders and Eastern Eskimo, and the so-called “shamans” of southern Alaska, but, as far as we could see, do not possess the power and influence usually elsewhere ascribed to this class.

It was exceedingly difficult to obtain any definite information concerning these people, and we only discovered casually that such and such a person was a “doctor” by hearing that he had been employed in a certain case of sickness, or to perform some ceremony of incantation. We did not even succeed in learning the name of this class of people, who, in talking with us, would call themselves “tûktĕ,” as they did our surgeon. On one occasion some of the party happened to visit the house of a sick man where one of these “doctors” was at work. He sat facing the entrance of the house, beating his drum at intervals, and making a babbling noise with his lips, followed by long speeches addressed to something down the trapdoor, bidding it “go!” We were given to understand that these speeches were addressed to a tuɐña or supernatural being.[N576] Their only idea of direct treatment of disease is apparently to apply a counterirritant by scarification of the surface of the part affected.

[Footnote N576: Dr. Simpson says (op. cit., p. 275): “Diseases are also considered to be turn´gaks.”]

We know of one case where a sufferer from some liver complaint had inflicted on himself, or had had inflicted upon him, quite a considerable cut on the right side with a view of relieving the pain. We also know of several cases where the patients had themselves cut on the scalp or back to relieve headache or rheumatism, and one case where the latter disorder, I believe, had been treated by a severe cut on the side of the knee. A similar practice has been observed at Plover Bay, Siberia, by Hooper,[N577] who also mentions the use of a kind of seton for the relief of headache.

[Footnote N577: Tents, etc., p. 185.]

They also practice a sort of rough-and-ready surgery, as in the case of the man already mentioned, whose feet had both been amputated. One of the men who lost the tip of his forefinger by the explosion of a cartridge was left with a stump of bone protruding at the end of the finger. Our surgeon attempted to treat this, but after two unsuccessful trials to etherize the patient he was obliged to give it up. When, however, the young man’s father-in-law, who was a noted “doctor,” came home he said at once that the stump must come off, and the patient had to submit to the operation without ether. The “doctor” tried to borrow Dr. Oldmixon’s bone forceps, and when these were refused him cut the bone off, I believe, with a chisel. They appear to have no cure for blindness. We heard nothing of the curious process of “couching” described by Egede in Greenland, p. 121. We had no opportunity of observing their methods of treating wounds or other external injuries. Sufferers were very glad to be treated by our surgeon, and eagerly accepted his medicines, though he had considerable difficulty in making them obey his directions about taking care of themselves.

After they had been in the habit of receiving the surgeon’s medicine for some time, one of the Utkiavwĭñ natives gave Capt. Herendeen what he said was their own medicine. It is a tiny bit of turf which they called nuna kĭñmölq, and which, therefore, probably came from the highland of the upper Meade River, which region bears the name of Kĭñmölq. We were able to get very little information about this substance, but my impression is that it was said to be administered internally, and I believe was specially recommended for bleeding at the lungs. Possibly this is the same as “the black moss that grows on the mountain,” which, according to Crantz[N578] was eaten by the Greenlanders to stop blood-spitting.

[Footnote N578: Vol. 1, p. 235.]

CUSTOMS CONCERNING THE DEAD.

_Abstentions._--From the fact that we did not hear of any of the deaths until after their occurrence, we were able to learn very few of their customs concerning the dead. The few observations we were able to make agree in the main with those made elsewhere. For instance, we learned with tolerable certainty that the relatives of the dead, at least, must abstain from working on wood with an ax or hammer for a certain period--I believe, four or five days. According to Dall,[N579] in the region about Norton Sound the men can not cut wood with an ax for five days after a death has occurred. In Greenland the household of the deceased were obliged to abstain for a while from certain kinds of food and work.[N580]

[Footnote N579: Alaska, p. 146.]

[Footnote N580: Egede, Greenland, p. 150.]

A woman from Utkiavwĭñ, who came over to the station one day in the autumn of 1881, declined to sew on clothing, even at our house, because, as she told Lieut. Ray, there was a dead man in the village who had not yet been carried out to the cemetery and “he would see her.” After consulting with her husband, however, she concluded she could protect herself from him by tracing a circle about her on the floor with a snow-knife. In this circle she did the sewing required, and was careful to keep all her work inside of it.

One of the natives informed me that when a man died his labrets were taken out and thrown away. I remember, however, seeing a young man wearing a plug labret of syenite, which he said had belonged to an old man who died early in the winter of 1881-’82. It was perhaps removed before he actually died.

_Manner of disposing of the dead._--The corpse is wrapped up in a piece of sailcloth (deerskin was formerly used), laid upon a flat sled, and dragged out by a small party of people--perhaps the immediate relatives of the deceased, though we never happened to see one of these funeral processions except from a distance--to the cemetery, the place where “they sleep on the ground.” This place at Utkiavwĭñ is a rising ground about a mile and a half east of the village, near the head of the southwest branch of the Isûtkwa lagoon. At Nuwŭk the main cemetery is at “Nexeurá,” between the village and Pernyû. The bodies are laid out upon the ground without any regular arrangement apparently, though it is difficult to be sure of this, as most of the remains have been broken up and scattered by dogs and foxes. With a freshly wrapped body it is almost impossible to tell which is the head and which the feet. We unfortunately never noticed whether the heads were laid toward any particular point of the compass, as has been observed in other localities. Dr. Simpson says that the head is laid to the east at Point Barrow.

Various implements belonging to the deceased are broken and laid beside the corpse, and the sled is sometimes broken and laid over it. Sometimes, however, the latter is withdrawn a short distance from the cemetery and left on the tundra for one moon, after which it is brought back to the village. Most people do not seem to be troubled at having the bodies of their relatives disturbed by the dogs or other animals,[N581] but we know of one case where the parents of two children who died very nearly at the same time, finding that the dogs were getting at the bodies, raised them on stages of driftwood about 4 or 5 feet high. Similar stages were observed by Hooper at Plover Bay;[N582] but this method of disposing of the dead appears to have gone out of use at the present day, since Dall[N583] describes the ordinary Siberian method of laying out the dead in ovals of stone as in use at Plover Bay at the time of his visit.

[Footnote N581: Compare Lyon, Journal, p. 269.]

[Footnote N582: Tents, etc., p. 88.]

[Footnote N583: Alaska, p. 382.]

The cemetery at Utkiavwĭñ is not confined to the spot I have mentioned, though most of the bodies are exposed there. A few bodies are also exposed on the other side of the lagoon, and one body, that of a man, was laid out at the edge of the higher tundra, about a mile due east from the station. The body was covered with canvas, staked down all round with broken paddles, and over it was laid a flat sledge with one runner broken.[N584] At one end of the body lay a wooden dish, and under the edge of the canvas were broken seal-darts and other spears. The body lay in an east and west line, but we could not tell which end was the head. All sorts of objects were scattered round the cemetery--tools, dishes, and even a few guns--though we saw none that appeared to have been serviceable when exposed, except one Snider rifle. If, as is the case among Eskimo in a good many other places, all the personal property of the deceased is supposed to become unclean and must be exposed with him, it is probable that his friends manage to remove the more valuable articles before he is actually dead.[N585]

[Footnote N584: Compare Samoyed grave described and figured by Nordenskiöld (Vega, vol. 1, p. 98), where a broken sledge was laid upside down by the grave.]

[Footnote N585: Compare Holm, Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, p. 98: “kun Kostbarheder, saasom Knive eller lignende Jærnsager beholde den afdødes efterladte.”--East Greenland.]

The method of disposing of the dead varies slightly among the Eskimo in different localities, but the weapons or other implements belonging to the deceased are always laid beside the corpse. The custom at Smith Sound, as described by Bessels,[N586] is remarkably like that at Point Barrow. The corpse was wrapped in furs, placed on a sledge, and dragged out and buried in the snow with the face to the west. The sledge was laid over the body and the weapons of the deceased were deposited beside it. Unlike the Point Barrow natives, however, they usually cover the body with stones. In the same passage Dr. Bessels describes a peculiar symbol of mourning, not employed, so far as I can learn, elsewhere. The male mourners plugged up the right nostril with hay and the females the left, and these plugs were worn for several days. The custom of covering the body with stones appears to be universally prevalent east of the Mackenzie region.[N587]

[Footnote N586: Naturalist, vol. 18, pt. 9, p. 877.]

[Footnote N587: See the passage quoted from Bessels, for Smith Sound; Egede, Greenland, p. 148; Crantz’s History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 237; East Greenland, Holm, Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, p. 98, and Scoresby, Voyage to Northern Whalefishery, p. 213 (where he speaks of finding on the east coast of Greenland graves _dug_ and covered with slabs of stone. _Digging_ graves is very unusual among the Eskimo, as the nature of the ground on which they live usually forbids it. Parry mentions something similar at Iglulik: “The body was laid in a regular, but shallow grave, * * * covered with flat pieces of limestone” (Second Voyage, p. 551); Lyon, Journal, p. 268 (Iglulik); Kumlien, Contribution, p. 44 (Cumberland Gulf); Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 124 (Baffin Land); Rae Narrative, pp. 22 and 187 (northwest shore of Hudson Bay), and Ellis, Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, p. 148 (Marble Island). I myself have noticed the same custom at the old Eskimo cemetery near the Hudson Bay post of Rigolette, Hamilton Inlet, on the Labrador coast. Chappel, however, saw a body “closely wrapt in skins and laid in a sort of a gully,” Hudson’s Bay, p. 113 (north shore Hudson Strait), and Davis’s account of what he saw in Greenland is as follows: “We found on shore three dead people, and two of them had their staues lying by them and their olde skins wrapped about them.” Hakluyt, Voyages, 1589, p. 788.]

The bodies seen by Dr. Richardson in the delta of the Mackenzie were wrapped in skins and loosely covered with driftwood,[N588] and a similar arrangement was noticed at Kotzebue Sound by Beechey, who figures[N589] a sort of little wigwam of driftwood built over the dead man. At Port Clarence Nordenskiöld[N590] saw two corpses “laid on the ground, fully clothed, without protection of any coffin, but surrounded by a close fence consisting of a number of tent-poles driven crosswise into the ground. Alongside one of the corpses lay a _kayak_ with oars, a loaded double-barreled gun with locks at half-cock and caps on, various other weapons, clothes, tinder-box, snowshoes, drinking-vessels, two masks, * * * and strangely shaped animal figures.” On the Siberian coast the dead are sometimes burned.[N591]

[Footnote N588: Franklin, Second Expedition, p. 192.]

[Footnote N589: Voyage, pl. opposite p. 332.]

[Footnote N590: Vega, vol. 2, p. 238, and figure of grave on p. 239.]

[Footnote N591: See Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 88, and Dall, Alaska, p. 382.]

Nordenskiöld believes that the coast Chukches have perhaps begun to abandon the custom of burning the dead, but I am rather inclined to think that is a custom of the “deermen,” which the people of the coast of pure or mixed Eskimo blood never fully adopted. Dall, indeed, was explicitly informed that the custom was only used with the bodies of “good” men, and at the time of Nordenskiöld’s visit he found it “at least certain that the people of Pitlekaj exclusively bury their dead by laying them out on the tundra.” The body is surrounded by an oval of stones, but apparently not covered with them as in the east.[N592] The Krause brothers observed by the bodies, besides “die erwähnten Geräthschaften” [Lanzen, Bogen und Pfeile für die Männer, Koch- und Hausgeräthe für die Weiber], “unter einen kleinen Steinhaufen ein Hunde-, Renthier-, Bären- oder Walross-Schädel.” This custom shows a curious resemblance to that described by Egede[N593] in Greenland: “When little Children die and are buried, they put the Head of a Dog near the Grave, fancying that Children, having no Understanding, they can not by themselves find the Way, but the Dog must guide them to the Land of the Souls.” The body is usually laid out at full length upon the ground. Among the ancient Greenlanders,[N594] however, and in the Yukon region the body was doubled up. In the latter region the body was laid on its side in a box of planks four feet long and raised on four supports[N595] or wrapped up in mats and covered with rocks or driftwood.[N596] The custom of inclosing the dead in a short coffin, to judge from the figures given by the latter writer in P1. VI. of his report, appears also to prevail at the mouth of the Kuskokwim. In the island of Kadiak, according to Dall and Lisiansky,[N597] the dead were buried.

[Footnote N592: See Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, pp. 88-9 (Pitlekaj), and 225 (St. Lawrence Bay); Krause Bros., Geographische Blätter, vol. 5, p. 18 (St. Lawrence Bay, East Cape, Indian Point, and Plover Bay) and Dall, Alaska, p. 382.]

[Footnote N593: Greenland, p. 151. See also Crantz, vol. 1, p. 237.]

[Footnote N594: Egede, Greenland, p. 149, and Crantz, vol. 1, p. 287.]

[Footnote N595: Dall, Alaska, pp. 19, 145, and 227.]

[Footnote N596: Petroff, Report, p. 127.]

[Footnote N597: Alaska, p. 403, and Voyage, p. 200.]

GOVERNMENT.

_In the family._--I can hardly do better than quote Dr. Simpson’s words, already referred to (op. cit. page 252), on this subject: “A man seems to have unlimited authority in his own hut.” Nevertheless, his rule seems to be founded on respect and mutual agreement, rather than on despotic authority. The wife appears to be consulted, as already stated, on all important occasions, and, to quote Dr. Simpson again (ibid.): “Seniority gives precedence when there are several women in one hut, and the sway of the elder in the direction of everything connected with her duties seems never disputed.” When more than one family inhabit the same house the head of each family appears to have authority over his own relatives, while the relations between the two are governed solely by mutual agreement.

_In the village._--These people have no established form of government nor any chiefs in the ordinary sense of the word, but appear to be ruled by a strong public opinion, combined with a certain amount of respect for the opinions of the elder people, both men and women, and by a large number of traditional observances like those concerning the whale fishery, the deceased, etc., already described. In the ordinary relations of life a person, as a rule, avoids doing anything to his neighbor which he would not wish to have done to himself, and affairs which concern the community as a whole, as for instance their relations with us at the station, are settled by a general and apparently informal discussion, when the opinion of the majority carries the day. The majority appears to have no means, short of individual violence, of enforcing obedience to its decisions, but, as far as we could see, the matter is left to the good sense of the parties concerned. Respect for the opinions of elders is so great that the people may be said to be practically under what is called “simple elder rule.”[N598] Public opinion has formulated certain rules in regard to some kinds of property and the division of game, which are remarkably like those noticed among Eskimo elsewhere, and which may be supposed to have grown up among the ancestors of the Eskimo, before their separation.

[Footnote N598: Compare, among other instances, Capt. Holm’s observations in East Greenland: “Som Overhoved i Huset [which is the village] fungerer den ældeste Mand, naar han er en god Fanger, etc.” (Geogr. Tids., vol. 8, p. 90.)]

For instance, in Greenland,[N599] “Anyone picking up pieces of driftwood or goods lost at sea or on land was considered the rightful owner of them; and to make good his possession he had only to carry them up above high-water mark and put stones upon them, no matter where his homestead might be.” Now, at Point Barrow we often saw the natives dragging driftwood up to the high-water mark, and the owner seemed perfectly able to prove his claim. Lieut. Ray informs me that he has seen men mark such sticks of timber by cutting them with their adzes and that sticks so marked were respected by the other natives. On one occasion, when he was about to have a large piece of drift-timber dragged up to the station, a woman came up and proved that the timber belonged to her by pointing out the freshly cut mark. I have myself seen a native claim a barrel which had been washed ashore, by setting it up on end.

[Footnote N599: Rink, Tales and Traditions, p. 28. Compare also Crantz, vol. 1, p. 181.]

As far as we could learn, the smaller animals, as for instance, birds, the smaller seals, reindeer, etc., are the property of the hunter, instead of being divided as in some other localities, for example at Smith Sound.[N600] The larger seals and walruses appeared to be divided among the boat’s crew, the owner of the boat apparently keeping the tusks of the walrus and perhaps the skin. A bear, however, both flesh and skin, is equally divided among all who in any way had a hand in the killing. We learned this with certainty from having to purchase the skin of a bear killed at the village, where a number of men had been engaged in the hunt. When a whale is taken, as I have already said, the whalebone is equally divided among the crews of all the boats in sight at the time of killing. All comers, however, have a right to all the flesh, blubber, and blackskin that they can cut off.[N601]

[Footnote N600: Bessels, Naturalist, vol. 23, pt. p. 873.]