by Farley Mowat
It has been nearly one hundred years now since the Idthen Eldeli began to starve. Starvation first came to them when they began to exist on a winter diet which now consists of 80 per cent white flour, with a very little lard and baking powder, and in summer almost nothing but straight fish. The Idthen people now get little of the red meat and white fat of the deer, once their sole food. Three generations have been born and lived—or died—upon a diet of flour bannocks and fish eaten three times a day and washed down with tea. Each of these generations has been weaker and had less “immunity” to disease than the last. Some of the people died from outright hunger, with their bodies shrunken into hard bundles of dry skin, and with bones which showed startlingly clear through the parchment tissues. But most of them died coughing blood, or with festering membranes clogging their throats, or with huge sores upon the surfaces of their thin bodies. They also were the victims of that long starvation.
Before the opening of the trading posts, the people lived, as the Ihalmiut do, upon the deer. After Brochet was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company as a “meat post”—that is, as a point of supply where deer meat could be made into pemmican and sent out onto the prairies where the buffalo had already been destroyed and meat was scarce—the Idthen people began to change their diet.
They were encouraged by the traders to forgo the summer trips out into the Barrens to live with, and on, the deer, and they learned to live instead on fish and on the handouts of flour given them on credit so that they would remain tied in the infamous “debt system” which was, and is, the white man’s way of trading with the natives. They were encouraged to slaughter the deer not for their own use but for the meat trade, and on such a scale that the deer inevitably began to follow the buffalo. The Idthen Eldeli were discouraged from eating the meat they killed, for there was no profit in that for the traders. There was profit in flour at $75 a sack. There was profit in sugar, baking powder, and in an array of useless knickknacks, but there was no profit in the deer as food for the people.
And so today disease, the fatal apathy which prevents men from looking into the uncertain future, and weakness of body which prevents a man from defending himself against the approach of death—these three are present in the land, and they have one name, and the name is starvation.
The Idthen people who have been tricked and bribed into abandoning the gift of the deer are passing quickly from the high forests. Each year the energy of men grows less and the hunters catch less fur. Each year more women cough their life’s blood onto the filthy dirt floors of the wooden hogpens which their ancestors would have scorned. In the winter tents, with the subzero cold passing at will through the shoddy cloth of trade clothes instead of being kept out by warm caribou skin garments, the women mix flour and baking powder to feed the children who may live till spring. In the summer the men lift the nets they have been taught to use and the people eat fish each day, and when fall comes they are impotent beings against the night of winter. It is true—such people as these cannot acquire our immunities, for starving bodies have no strength to repulse the onslaughts of disease.
The Idthen people, who are but one of the many tribes in similar condition across the Territories, are dying of starvation.
Nor is it far from the silent campsites of the Idthen Indians to the tent of Ootek, where I sat down to feast upon the meal he set before me, amidst the laughter and strength of people who have not yet reached the poverty of spirit and of mind which is now the birthright of the Idthen Eldeli. The Ihalmiut still have a little way to go, for as yet the starvation they have known is only the direct death of famine and though it has thinned their ranks, the hidden starvation that has come to the Indians has not yet destroyed the hearts of the Ihalmiut. Now that we have made our decision to aid the few surviving inland Eskimos, no doubt it will not be very long before they are brought to the same pass as those other Eaters of the Deer, for then there will be no eaters of the deer, and in a little while, no People of the Deer.
Remember that I am talking in terms of the present, and not of the past. When I was in the forests amongst Indians, I met a doctor who is sent in twice yearly by the authorities, and I spoke to him of the number of Indians who were dying of tuberculosis in that area. He replied by telling me he could do little for them. The hospitals were full and, anyway, the Indians did not seem to respond to treatment. But he pointed out with righteous pride that the government was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building hospitals to cure the natives of their ailments across the North.
Surely there is but one way to cure a man of the diseases which are the products of three generations of starvation, and that is to feed him. It is so simple an idea that I suppose it cannot possibly have real validity—or else it would have been tried long before this. But it does not greatly matter any more, for soon there will be no mouths to feed. These disintegrating men, contemporary Indians, are not God’s creations, as the missionaries would insist, but were created at our hands. They will not need great hospitals, for it is quite true after all, they are incapable of building up immunity—against starvation.
7. Of Houses and Tongues
During the summer of 1947 I remained at the Little Lakes only long enough to develop my overmastering curiosity about them. Franz had shown increasing impatience as our stay by the Little Lakes lengthened out. Superficially he appeared to be worried about the dogs he had left at Windy Camp, under the care of Hans and the two Eskimo children. But the real reason why he was impatient to leave the Ihalmiut tents was to be found in his poorly concealed anxiety for Kunee, the child he had adopted, and who was all that Franz knew of love.
So I went back with him, over the muskegs and the hills, all the time wishing I had the strength of character to throw in my lot with the People. But the baffling limitation imposed by the barrier of tongues was one I did not think I could surmount alone. As it was, even with Franz’s aid as interpreter, it had been hard enough to establish any spoken contact.
We returned to Windy Bay, where Franz received the ecstatic welcome of Kunee and Anoteelik and the stolid welcome of his brother Hans. Things were in a bad state at the cabin. The nets, which should have provided the dogs with plenty of fish, were rotted and torn and had become nearly useless. The dogs were almost starving, and for ten days Franz and I were so occupied in replenishing the supply of dog feed that I had no time to dwell upon my regrets at leaving the camps of the People. Before I could begin to deplore my lost opportunities they were partially restored to me by the arrival of several Eskimos who had come to repay my visit. They built travel camps on the hills near our cabin and succeeding groups of Innuit visitors made these camps their home until well into the fall. But again I was denied full opportunity to increase my intimacy with the People, for the last month of summer had to be devoted to accompanying Franz on a six-hundred-mile canoe trip south to Brochet and then back to Windy Bay. This was a matter of urgent necessity since not only was the camp nearly out of food, but Franz still had to dispose of his previous year’s fur catch, and bring back his winter stock of supplies.
That long and arduous voyage in an ancient freight canoe is not part of this book, except that at Brochet—the trading settlement on Reindeer Lake—I met a very old white man who had traded on the north edge of the forests when the Ihalmiut were still a great and numerous people. From him I heard stories about those almost forgotten days, and much later I was to hear many of these stories again from the lips of the People themselves. When I first heard them at Brochet they served to inflame further my desire to return to the Barrens, but I already knew I could not realize these desires in 1947. At Brochet I had been given a radio message that came from the distant southlands I had almost forgotten. The message momentarily shattered my dream, for it demanded an early return to distant Toronto. At the same time I was informed that Johnny Bourasso was missing in the Western Barrens. This meant I would have to get out of the plains by my own efforts.
<
br /> Because Franz could not undertake his homeward journey alone, I returned with him to Windy Cabin; but with the understanding that he would help me to leave the Barrens after our freighting trip was completed.
In late September I reluctantly said good-by to the land and we two traveled east by canoe. Six long weeks later we reached Churchill, where I took the Muskeg Special, southward through the forests. After a few days at Churchill, Franz returned by aircraft to Windy Bay, but he was not destined to remain there for long. He had met his father at Churchill and the old man had lifted the exile of his sons. Franz was instructed to close up Windy Cabin as soon as he could and to make his way back, by dog team, to Churchill, where more lucrative work awaited him as a laborer on a construction gang. Franz’s father had decided that the rewarding days of trappers and traders in the Barrens were at an end. It was a reasonable conclusion, for he knew the Ihalmiut were doomed, and had perhaps known it for some time. There was no more wealth to be made from the handful of surviving Eskimos, particularly since the market for white fox pelts had slumped to a new low.
By the beginning of the new year the Barrenlands were empty of all intruders, and once again the door of Windy Cabin swung in the wind, and there was no welcome—and no succor—for the Ihalmiut hunters who made their way south to the place of the white men. Franz and his brother had rejoined the family at Churchill, taking with them the two Eskimo children. None of these would ever again return to Nueltin Lake. The white men were done with the land of the River of Men and had fled from it forever. But behind them, in the still depths of the land, there remained the People who could not flee, for there was no haven for them except under rock graves by the shores of the river.
Those whose interests in the land were measured in dollars and cents had abandoned both it and its People. My interest was nothing so tangible, and when the winter of 1947–1948 was near its end I again traveled north, but this time I had a companion. Andrew Lawrie, a student of zoology who shared my restless curiosity, and who had also fallen under the ephemeral spell of the North during an arctic tour with the Canadian Navy, had chosen to accompany me back to the Barrens. It was our ambition to spend a year in the study of Tuktu so that we might be able to provide the data on which an effective conservation plan could be based.
In 1948 there was no sturdy Anson aircraft waiting to help us bridge the space between Churchill and Nueltin Lake. Johnny Bourasso had flown his old plane through the uncertain skies of the North for the last time, and her burned-out fuselage now lay forgotten in the muskegs far to the west. But again John Ingerbritson came to our rescue. Gunnar, one of his sons, had used his airforce training to establish an independent “Airline,” operating out of Churchill with one small aircraft. It was in this cramped little plane that Andy and I crossed the void to the west, and I came once again to the half-hidden outline of Windy Cabin, lying under its mantle of drifts.
We arrived much earlier in the season than on my first visit, and winter had not yet begun to show signs of releasing the land to spring. After the plane had left us, Andy and I began to make our way over the ice to the shanty, and it was so cold the frost from my breath prevented me from seeing that this time we were to be met and welcomed at Windy Cabin. Andy caught my arm suddenly and pointed to the snow-shrouded shore, and I saw the dark shape of a man running swiftly toward us.
We waited, and on the glare ice of the bay, with the wind moaning its dirge from the Ghost Hills, we were confronted by the man Ootek. He stood before us and on his gaunt face a smile spread and grew until it could not contain the wild laughter, born of relief, that sprang from his throat. It was indeed a most happy meeting for Ootek. When the three of us had reached the cabin and burrowed through the drifts to its dubious shelter, Ootek explained with signs and gestures that he had come from the Little Hills in the forlorn belief that white men might have returned to Windy Bay. Starvation had driven him to this place, though he knew it was deserted and had been so for much of the winter. A hope, kept alive by old memories, brought him south, and it did not die even when he saw the unmarked snow in front of the cabin. Stubbornly he stayed on for two days without food, and with only the blind hope that help might come from the skies to sustain him. On the third day he had begun his dark journey homeward when he heard the miraculous roar of Konetaiv—the wings of the white men.
Ootek remained with us only long enough for a meal and to receive some ammunition for his rifle. The forerunners of the deer herds were already in the plains and so, now with shells for his gun, the spring famine was at an end for Ootek. Yet had we not come, or had we come a month later, the evil spring when Kunee and Anoteelik were orphaned would have been repeated. It appeared that the recognition so tardily extended to the Ihalmiut by the government had been only temporary, and had been withdrawn again.
During the next month Andy and I spent most of our time near Windy Bay studying the returning herds of the deer. We were not lonely, since only four days after Ootek left us he returned accompanied by all the men of the Ihalmiut. Those were cheerful and pleasant days, for the Innuit were as delighted to welcome us as if we had been benevolent Gods. Ootek and his fellows could not do enough to show their joy at our arrival. When there was wood or water to get, the Ihalmiut jumped at the opportunity to serve us. They made special hunting trips over the hills to find for us the few rare deer that were fat, and to bring us deer tongues. At night they crowded into the cabin and stayed until we were so exhausted we had politely to pack them off to bed. Hekwaw and Owliktuk had arrived with white fox pelts, and these they gave to us as tokens of friendship, accepting our return gifts with deep gratitude.
Unfortunately all this popularity had its drawbacks. Andy and I were not traders and we had brought with us only sufficient supplies for our own needs. By the time we had also met the urgent needs of the Ihalmiut we were running short of many things, including the most precious item of all, ammunition for our .30-30 rifles. We had to become parsimonious with our gifts, and this seemed inexplicable to the Ihalmiut, who were willing and anxious to give us anything and everything they possessed. They believed, not without reason, that white men could call on unlimited sources of supply. I made strenuous efforts to explain that we were not traders and were in effect only poor men endowed with nothing of greater value than big curiosities. But it didn’t go over.
The barrier of language which had bothered me the preceding year now seemed even more formidable and frustrating, for it was impossible to convey our explanations in sign language alone. I missed Franz, though his interpreting had always been sketchy and he had never been very willing to act as my tongue with the People. Yet without him I found myself in a growing web of confusion, and it was clear that, as things stood, I could never hope to delve into the memories and minds of the Ihalmiut. Unless I could learn the Ihalmiut tongue I would leave the Barrens in as great ignorance of its People as when I came. But I had been led to believe by “old Northern hands” that learning an Eskimo language entailed many years of hard labor, and I was loath to begin a task that could not come to anything in time to be of service to me. So for a month Andy and I blundered about like deaf men whose eyes could not tell us the things our ears needed to know. Then 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.
I don’t know quite what I expected his reaction to be. Disinterest, perhaps, or reluctance. Or even worse, the attitude of one who is presented with an infantile demand and who treats it carelessly and without thought.
But I got none of these responses from the Ihalmiut. 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—this was the key to their hearts. When they saw that I was anxious to exert mysel
f 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. To begin with, Ootek taught me the meaning of the word “Ihalmiut.” When I had mastered its meaning by the aid of devious drawings executed in sand, Ootek stood Ohoto in one place, then placed me a few feet away to the south. Now he pointed to Ohoto, and repeated “Ihalmiut” over and over again with a remarkable excess of emotion in his voice as he spoke. At last he came over, took me by the arm, and led me to the side of Ohoto. Both men now beamed at me with the anxious expressions of people who hope their acts have been understood, and fortunately I did not disappoint them. I understood. I was no longer a stranger; I was now a man of the Ihalmiut, of the People who dwell under the slopes of the Little Hills.
It was an initiation so informal, so lacking in the dramatic gestures, that for a little while its deep significance was not clear to me. It was some time before I discovered that this simple ceremony of Ootek and Ohoto had not only made me an adopted man of the land, but had also given me a relationship with both men. I became their song-cousin, a difficult relationship to define, but one that is only extended on the most complete and comprehensive basis of friendship. If I wished, I might have shared all things that Ootek and Ohoto possessed, even to their wives, though this honor was not thrust upon me. As a song-cousin I was a counterpart of each man who had adopted me. I was his reflected image, yet cloaked in the full flesh of reality.