Part 8
Few plants that are of any service to man grow in this region. The willows, ŭ´kpĭk, of various species, which near the coast are nothing but creeping vines, are sometimes used as fuel, especially along the rivers, where they grow into shrubs 5 or 6 feet high. Their catkins are used for tinder and the moss, mû´nĭk, furnishes wicks for the lamps. We could find no fruit that could be eaten. A cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idæa) occurs, but produced no fruit either season. No use is made of the different species of grass, which are especially luxuriant around the houses at Utkiavwĭñ, where the ground is richly manured with various sorts of refuse,[N92] though the species of mosses and lichens furnish the reindeer with food easily reached in the winter through the light covering of snow. Little attention is paid to the numerous, and sometimes showy, flowering plants. We learned but two names of flowers, the one mentioned above, tûkĭlû´kica, tûkĭlûkĭdja´ksûn, which seemed to be applied to all striking yellow or white flowers, such as Papaver, Ranunculus, and Draba, and mai´sun, the bright pink Pedicularis. All the wood used in this region, except the ready-made woodenware and the willow poles obtained from the Nunatañmiun, comes from the drift on the beach. Most of this on the beach west of Point Barrow appears to come from the southwest, as the prevailing current along this shore is to the northeast, and may be derived from the large rivers flowing into Kotzebue Sound, since it shows signs of having been long in the water. The driftwood, which is reported to be abundant east of Point Barrow, probably comes from the great rivers emptying into the Arctic Ocean. This wood is sufficiently abundant to furnish the natives with all they need for fuel and other purposes, and consists chiefly of pine, spruce, and cottonwood, mostly in the form of water-worn logs, often of large size. Of late years, also, much wood of the different kinds used in shipbuilding has drifted ashore from wrecks.
[Footnote N92: “The oil had acted as a manure on the soil, and produced a luxuriant crop of grass from 1 to 2 feet high” (village at Point Atkinson, east of the Mackenzie). Richardson Searching Exp., vol. 1, p. 254.]
MINERALS.
The people of this region are acquainted with few mineral substances, excluding the metals which they obtain from the whites. The most important are flint, slate, soapstone, jade, and a peculiar form of massive pectolite, first described by Prof. F. W. Clarke[N93] from specimens brought home by our party. Flint, ánma, was formerly in great demand for arrow and spear heads and other implements, and according to Dr. Simpson[N94] was obtained from the Nunatañmiun. It is generally black or a slightly translucent gray, but we collected a number of arrowheads, etc., made of jasper, red or variegated. A few crystals of transparent quartz, sometimes smoky, were also seen, and appeared to be used as amulets. Slate, ulu´ksɐ, “material for a round knife,” was used, as its name imports, for making the woman’s round knife, and for harpoon blades, etc. It is a smooth clay slate, varying in hardness, and light green, red, purple, dark gray, or black in color. All the pieces of soft gray soapstone, tună´ktɐ, which are so common at both villages, are probably fragments of the lamps and kettles obtained in former years from the eastern natives. The jade is often very beautiful, varying from a pale or bright translucent green to a dark olive, almost black, and was formerly used for making adzes, whetstones, and occasionally other implements. The pectolite, generally of a pale greenish or bluish color, was only found in the form of oblong, more or less cylindrical masses, used as hammerheads. Both of these minerals were called kau´dlo, and were said to come “from the east, a long way off,” from high rocky ground, but all that we could learn was very indefinite. Dr. Simpson was informed[N95] that the stones for making whetstones were brought from the Kuwûk River, so that this jade is probably the same as that which is said to form Jade Mountain, in that region.
[Footnote N93: U.S. Geol. Surv., Bull. 9, p. 9, 1884.]
[Footnote N94: Op. cit., p. 266.]
[Footnote N95: Op. cit., p. 266.]
Bits of porphyry, syenite, and similar rocks are used for making labrets, and large pebbles are used as hammers and net sinkers. They have also a little iron pyrites, both massive and in the form of spherical concretions. The latter were said to come from the mouth of the Colville, and are believed by the natives to have fallen from the sky. Two other kinds of stone are brought from the neighborhood of Nu´ɐsŭknan, partly, it appears, as curiosities, and partly with some ill defined mystical notions. The first are botryoidal masses of brown limonite, resembling bog iron ore, and the other sort curious concretions, looking like the familiar “clay stones,” but very heavy, and apparently containing a great deal of iron pyrites. White gypsum, used for rubbing the flesh side of deerskins, is obtained on the seashore at a place called Tû´tyĕ, “one sleep” east from Point Barrow.
Bituminous coal, alu´a, is well known, though not used for fuel. Many small fragments, which come perhaps from the vein at Cape Beaufort,[N96] are picked up on the beach. Shaly, very bituminous coal, broken into small square fragments, is rather abundant on the bars of Kulugrua, whence specimens were brought by Capt. Herendeen. A native of Wainwright Inlet gave us to understand that coal existed in a regular vein near that place, and told a story of a burning hill in that region. This may be a coal bed on fire, or possibly “smoking cliffs,” like those seen by the _Investigator_ in Franklin Bay.[N97] We also heard a story of a lake of tar or bitumen, ádngun, said to be situated on an island a day’s sail east of the point. Blacklead, mĭ´ñun, and red ocher are abundant and used as pigments, but we did not learn where they were obtained. Pieces of amber are sometimes found on the beach and are carried as amulets or (rarely) made into beads. Amber is called aúmɐ, a word that in other Eskimo dialects, and probably in this also, means “a live coal.” Its application to a lump of amber is quite a striking figure of speech.
[Footnote N96: Hooper found coal on the beach at Nuwŭk in 1849, showing that this coal has not necessarily been thrown over from ships. Tents of the Tuski, p. 221.]
[Footnote N97: Discovery of the Northwest Passage, p. 100.]
CULTURE.
MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE.
FOOD.
_Substances used for food._--The food of these people consists almost entirely of animal substances. The staple article of food is the flesh of the rough seal, of which they obtain more than of any other meat. Next in importance is the venison of the reindeer, though this is looked upon as a kind of dainty.[N98] Many well developed fœtal reindeer are brought home from the spring deer hunt and are said to be excellent eating, though we never saw them eaten. They also eat the flesh of the other three species of seal, the walrus, the polar bear, the “bowhead” whale, the white whale, and all the larger kinds of birds, geese, ducks, gulls, and grouse. All the different kinds of fish appear to be eaten, with the possible exception of the two species of Lycodes (only a few of these were caught, and all were purchased for our collection) and very little of a fish is wasted except the hardest parts. Walrus hide is sometimes cooked and eaten in times of scarcity. Mollusks of any kind are rarely eaten, as it is difficult to procure them. After a heavy gale in the autumn of 1881, when the beach was covered with marine animals, mostly lamellibranch mollusks with their shells and softer parts broken off by the violence of the surf, we saw one woman collect a lapful of these “clam-heads,” which she said she was going to eat. The “blackskin” (epidermis) of the whale is considered a great delicacy by them, as by all the other Eskimo who are able to procure it, and they are also very fond of the tough white skin or gum round the roots of the whalebone.[N99]
[Footnote N98: The Eskimo of Iglulik “prefer venison to any kind of meat.” Parry, 2d Voyage, p. 510.]
[Footnote N99: Compare Hooper, Tents, etc. “This, which the Tuski call their sugar,” p. 174; and Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 132 (Baffin Land).]
We saw and heard nothing of the habit so generally noticed among other Eskimo and in Siberia of eating the half-digested contents of the stomach of the reindeer, but we found that they were fond of the fæces taken from the rectum of the deer. I find that this curious habit has been noticed among Eskimo only in two other places--Greenland in former times and Boothia Felix. The Greenlanders ate “the Dung of the Rein-deer, taken out of the Guts when they clean them; the Entrails of Partridges and the like Out-cast, pass for Dainties with them.”[N100] The dung of the musk ox and reindeer when fresh were considered a delicacy by the Boothians, according to J. C. Ross.[N101] The entrails of fowls are also considered a great delicacy and are carefully cooked as a separate dish.[N102]
[Footnote N100: Egede, Greenland, p. 136.]
[Footnote N101: Appendix to Ross’s 2d Voyage, p. xix.]
[Footnote N102: Compare the passage from Egede, just quoted, and also Kumlien, Contributions, etc., p. 20, at Cumberland Gulf.]
As far as our observations go these people eat little, if any, more fat than civilized man, and, as a rule, not by itself. Fat may occasionally be eaten (they are fond of the fat on the inside of duck skins), but they do not habitually eat the great quantities of blubber spoken of in some other places[N103] or drink oil, as the Hudson Bay Eskimo are said to do by Hall, or use it as a sauce for dry food, like the natives of Norton Sound. It is usually supposed and generally stated in the popular accounts of the Eskimo that it is a physiological necessity for them to eat enormous quantities of blubber in order to obtain a sufficient amount of carbon to enable them to maintain their animal heat in the cold climate which they inhabit. A careful comparison, however, of the reports of actual observers[N104] shows that an excessive eating of fat is not the rule, and is perhaps confined to the territory near Boothia Felix.
[Footnote N103: For instance, Schwatka says that the Nĕtcĭlĭk of King William Land devour enormous quantities of seal blubber, “noticeably more in summer than the other tribes,” viz, those of the western shores of Hudson’s Bay (Science, vol. 4, p. 544). Parry speaks of the natives of the Savage Islands, Hudson’s Strait, eating raw blubber and sucking the oil remaining on the skins they had emptied (2d Voyage, p. 14).]
[Footnote N104: See for example Egede’s Greenland, p. 134; Crantz, History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 144; Dall, Alaska, passim; Hooper, Tents of the Tuski, p. 170; Nordenskiöld, Vega, p. 110.]
Eggs of all kinds, except, of course, the smallest, are eagerly sought for, but the smaller birds are seldom eaten, as it is a waste of time and ammunition to pursue them. We saw this people eat no vegetable substances, though they informed us that the buds of the willow were sometimes eaten. Of late years they have acquired a fondness for many kinds of civilized food, especially bread of any kind, flour, sugar, and molasses, and some of them are learning to like salt. They were very glad to purchase from us corn-meal “mush” and the broken victuals from the table. These were, however, considered as special dainties and eaten as luncheons or as a dessert after the regular meal. The children and even some of the women were always on the watch for the cook’s slop bucket to be brought out, and vied with the ubiquitous dogs in searching for scraps of food. Meat which epicures would call rather “high” is eaten with relish, but they seem to prefer fresh meat when they can get it.
_Means of preparing food._--Food is generally cooked, except, perhaps, whale-skin and whale gum, which usually seem to be eaten as soon as obtained, without waiting for a fire. Meat of all kinds is generally boiled in abundance of water over a fire of driftwood, and the broth thus made is drunk hot before eating the meat. Fowls are prepared for boiling by skinning them. Fish are also boiled, but are often eaten raw, especially in winter at the deer-hunting camps, when they are frozen hard. Meat is sometimes eaten raw or frozen. Lieut. Ray found one family in camp on Kulugrua who had no fire of any kind, and were eating everything raw. They had run out of oil some time before and did not like to spend time in going to the coast for more while deer were plentiful.
When traveling in winter, according to Lieut. Ray, they prefer frozen fish or a sort of pemmican made as follows: The marrow is extracted from reindeer bones by boiling, and to a quantity of this is added 2 or 3 pounds of crushed seal or whale blubber, and the whole beaten up with the hands in a large wooden bowl to the consistency of frozen cream. Into this they stir bits of boiled venison, generally the poorer portions of the meat scraped off the bone, and chewed up small by all the women and children of the family, “each using some cabalistic word as they cast in their mouthful.”[N105] The mass is made up into 2-pound balls and carried in little sealskin bags. Flour, when obtained, is made into a sort of porridge, of which they are very fond. Cooking is mostly done outside of the dwelling, in the open air in summer, or in kitchens opening out of the passageway in winter. Little messes only, like an occasional dish of soup or porridge, are cooked over the lamps in the house. This habit, of course, comes from the abundant supply of firewood, while the Eskimo most frequently described live in a country where wood is very scarce, and are obliged to depend on oil for fuel.
[Footnote N105: Lieut. Ray’s MS. notes.]
_Time and frequency of eating._--When these people are living in the winter houses they do not, as far as we could learn, have any regular time for meals, but eat whenever they are hungry and have leisure. The women seem to keep a supply of cooked food on hand ready for any one to eat. When the men are working in the kû´dyĭgi, or “club house,” or when a number of them are encamped together in tents, as at the whaling camp in 1883, or the regular summer camp at Pe´rnyû, the women at intervals through the day prepare dishes of meat, which the men eat by themselves. When in the deer-hunting camps, according to Lieut. Ray, they eat but little in the morning, and can really be said to take no more than one full meal a day, which is eaten at night when the day’s work is done.[N106] When on the march they usually take a few mouthfuls of the pemmican above described before they start out in the morning, and rarely touch food again till they go into camp at night.
[Footnote N106: “They have no set Time for Meals, but every one eats when he is hungry, except when they go to sea, and then their chief Repast is a supper after they are come home in the Evening.” (Egede, Greenland, p. 135. Compare also, Crantz, vol. 1, p. 145.)]
When a family returns from the spring deer hunt with plenty of venison they usually keep open house for a day or two. The women of the household, with sometimes the assistance of a neighbor or two, keep the pot continually boiling, sending in dishes of meat at intervals, while the house is full of guests who stay for a short time, eating, smoking, and chatting, and then retire to make room for others. Messes are sometimes sent out to invalids who can not come to the feast. One household in the spring of 1883 consumed in this way two whole reindeer in 24 hours. They use only their hands and a knife in eating meat, usually filling the mouth and cutting or biting off the mouthful. They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time when they have plenty, but we never saw them gorge themselves in the manner described by Dr. Kane (2d Grinnell Exp., passim) and other writers.
Their habits of hospitality prevent their laying up any large supply of meat, though blubber is carefully saved for commercial use, and they depend for subsistence, almost from day to day, on their success in hunting. When encamped, however, in small parties in the summer they often take more seals than they can consume. The carcasses of these, stripped of their skins and blubber, are buried in the gravel close to the camp, and dug up and brought home when meat becomes scarce in the winter.
DRINKS.
The habitual drink is water, which these people consume in great quantities when they can obtain it, and like to have very cold. In the winter there is always a lump of clean snow on a rack close to the lamp, with a tub under it to catch the water that drips from it. This is replaced in the summer by a bucket of fresh water from some pond or lake. When the men are sitting in their open air clubs at the summer camps there is always a bucket of fresh water in the middle of the circle, with a dipper to drink from. Hardly a native ever passed the station without stopping for a drink of water, often drinking a quart of cold water at a time. When tramping about in the winter they eat large quantities of ice and snow, and on the march the women carry small canteens of sealskin, which they fill with snow and carry inside of their jackets, where the heat of the body melts the snow and keeps it liquid. This great fondness for plenty of cold water has been often noticed among the Eskimo elsewhere, and appears to be quite characteristic of the race.[N107] They have acquired a taste for liquor, and like to get enough to produce intoxication. As well as we could judge, they are easily affected by alcohol. Some of them during our stay learned to be very fond of coffee, “ka´fe,” but tea they are hardly acquainted with, though they will drink it. I have noticed that they sometimes drank the water produced by the melting of the sea ice along the beach, and pronounced it excellent when it was so brackish that I found it quite undrinkable.
[Footnote N107: See, for instance, Egede: “Their Drink is nothing but Water” (Greenland, p. 134), and, “Furthermore, they put great Lumps of Ice and Snow into the Water they drink, to make it cooler for to quench their Thirst” (p. 135). “Their drink is clear water, which stands in the house in a great copper vessel, or in a wooden tub. * * * They bring in a supply of fresh water every day * * * and that their water may be cool they choose to lay a piece of ice or a little snow in it” * * * (Crantz, vol. 1, p. 144). Compare, also, Parry, 2d voy., p. 506, where the natives of Iglulik are said to drink a great deal of water, which they get by melting snow, and like very cold. The same fondness for water was observed by Nordenskiöld in Siberia (Vega, vol. 2, p. 114).]
NARCOTICS.
The only narcotic in use among these people is tobacco, which they obtain directly or indirectly from the whites, and which has been in use among them from the earliest time when we have any knowledge of them. When Mr. Elson, in the _Blossom’s_ barge, visited Point Barrow, in 1826, he found tobacco in general use and the most marketable article.[N108] This undoubtedly came from the Russians by way of Siberia and Bering Strait, as Kotzebue found the natives of the sound which bears his name, who were in communication with the Asiatic coast by way of the Diomedes, already addicted to the use of tobacco in 1816. It is not probable that tobacco was introduced on the Arctic coast by way of the Russian settlements in Alaska. There were no Russian posts north of Bristol Bay until 1833, when St. Michael’s Redoubt was built. When Capt. Cook visited Bristol Bay, in 1778, he found that tobacco was not used there,[N109] while in Norton Sound, the same year, the natives “had no dislike to tobacco.”[N110] Neither was it introduced from the English posts in the east, as Franklin found the “Kûñmû´dlĭñ” not in the habit of using it--“The western Esquimaux use tobacco, and some of our visitors had smoked it, but thought the flavor very disagreeable,”[N111]--nor had they adopted the habit in 1837.[N112]
[Footnote N108: Beechey, Voyage, p. 308.]
[Footnote N109: Third Voyage, vol. 2, p. 437.]
[Footnote N110: Ibid, 2, p. 479.]
[Footnote N111: Second Exp., p. 130.]
[Footnote N112: See T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 156.]
When the _Plover_ wintered at Point Barrow, according to Dr. Simpson’s account,[N113] all the tobacco, except a little obtained from the English discovery ships, came from Asia and was brought by the Nunatañmiun. At present the latter bring very little if any tobacco, and the supply is obtained directly from the ships, though a little occasionally finds its way up the coast from the southwest.
[Footnote N113: Op. cit., pp. 235, 236, 266.]
They use all kinds of tobacco, but readily distinguish and desire the sorts considered better by the whites. For instance, they were eager to get the excellent quality of “Navy” tobacco furnished by the Commissary Department, while one of our party who had a large quantity of exceedingly bad fine-cut tobacco could hardly give it away. A little of the strong yellow “Circassian” tobacco used by the Russians for trading is occasionally brought up from the southwest, and perhaps also by the Nunatañmiun, and is very highly prized, probably because it was in this form that they first saw tobacco. Snuff seems to be unknown; tobacco is used only for chewing and smoking. The habit of chewing tobacco is almost universal. Men, women, and even children, though the latter be but 2 or 3 years old and unweaned,[N114] when tobacco is to be obtained, keep a “chew,” often of enormous size, constantly in the mouth. The juice is not spit out, but swallowed with the saliva, without producing any signs of nausea. The tobacco is chewed by itself and not sweetened with sugar, as was observed by Hooper and Nordenskiöld among the “Chukches.”[N115] I knew but two adult Eskimo in Utkiavwĭñ who did not chew tobacco, and one of these adopted the habit to a certain extent while we were there.
[Footnote N114: Compare J. Simpson, op. cit., p. 250, and Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.]
[Footnote N115: Tents, etc., p. 83; Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.]
Tobacco is smoked in pipes of a peculiar pattern called kui´nyɐ, of which the collection contains a series of ten specimens.
Of these, No. 89288 [705],[N116] figured in Ray’s Point Barrow Report, Ethnology, Pl. I, Fig. 1, will serve as a type. The bowl is of brass, neatly inlaid on the upper surface with a narrow ring of copper close to the edge, from which run four converging lines, 90° apart, nearly to the center. Round the under surface are also three concentric rings of copper. The wooden stem appears to be willow or birch, and is in two longitudinal sections, held together by the lashing of sealskin thong which serves to attach the bowl to the stem. This lashing was evidently put on wet and allowed to shrink on, and the ends are secured by tucking under the turns. The whipping at the mouthpiece is of fine sinew thread. A picker of steel for cleaning out the bowl is attached to the stem by a piece of seal thong, the end of which is wedged under the turns of the lashing. The remaining pipes are all of the same general pattern, but vary in the material of the bowl and in details of execution. The stems are always of the same material and put together in the same way, but are sometimes lozenge-shaped instead of elliptical in section. The lashing is sometimes of three-ply sinew braid. The bowl shows the greatest variation, both in form and material.
[Footnote N116: The numbers first given are those of the National Museum; the numbers in brackets are those of the collector.]