People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

  One night we heard that the old woman, the mother of Angleyalak, had gone from her igloo and had not returned in the morning. It was our duty to mourn. My wife went to the igloo of Angleyalak and when she returned she told me the wife of that man was sick nearly to death, with the evil which lies in the lungs.

  The sickness of death was not far from us all. In our igloo, the boy Elaitutna sat as still as his grandfather, and neither spoke when I came in, nor went from the igloo. Young Aljut still had life enough to help me dig under the snow for old bones that might have some strength left upon them.

  Nanuk had grown desperate for the lives of her children and on a day she whispered to me that we must kill the old man, my father, and so have food for the starving bellies of ourselves and the children. I could not bring myself to agree to her plan, for Elaitutna had been a good hunter all the days of his life and he had given freely of his strength and his years to me and my family in the days that were gone. But Nanuk was desperate as only a woman can be, and so she spoke directly into the ears of the old man, who sat on a far part of the high sleeping ledge, his wrinkled eyes closed. Elaitutna did not open his eyes as she spoke, and for a long time it seemed he had not heard the urgent voice of my wife. Then at last he slowly nodded his head and we knew he was willing that we should take what little of life remained in his heart.

  I would not help, and when Nanuk got the rawhide and tried to tie the noose in its end, her fingers shook so that she could not tie the knot. At last she flung the cord from her and threw herself, weeping, on the ledge between her two children. So Elaitutna lived a while longer.

  It was more than three weeks since we had eaten meat, and we lived only on scraps of old bones and on the dog and human excreta found near the camps. At last Ootek and Owliktuk came to my igloo and Ootek told us that in the summer he had heard of a white man who was said to have built a log igloo on a lake many days to the east of our camp. He and Owliktuk had decided to abandon their igloos, and journey east out of the land of the Little Hills, to seek the white man. I agreed to go with them for it was certain death to remain. But when we asked Angleyalak to come with us, he refused, saying his woman was dying and he would not leave her to die by herself.

  There were three living dogs in our igloos and these we killed and ate, even to their guts and their skin; and so we had enough strength to start out on our journey.

  The bright sun brought the first warmth of spring on the day we set out. We walked slowly and the men, being strongest, carried a few skins to make shelters, and they also carried the children. The women and old ones carried only themselves—and that was enough.

  When we came to Halo Lake we found only the families of Halo, Miki and Yaha. Hekwaw and Katelo had gone with their surviving families, leaving behind in their igloos the bodies of their wives, Eepuk and Oquinuk. Hekwaw and Katelo had fled out into the plains, hoping to reach a far valley where they believed some deer might have wintered. But no one at Halo Lake ever expected to see any of these people again in his life—though before spring they returned, having found and killed a few deer.

  In this place we heard news of the camps on Kakumee Lake, and we heard that Kakumee and all of his people were living and had enough meat to eat. Yet we knew there was no use traveling there to ask him for food, for being an evil man he would have turned us away and set devils against us.

  We spoke to the three families who remained by Halo Kumanik of our plans to go eastward for help, and these people decided to join us, for they too lived with the dead and with the presence of death and they had but little hope for their lives.

  It was a good thing for us that they came, for Miki owned a spit-rifle [a .22] whose bullets are as small as a bee and can kill ptarmigan or hares, though they can seldom kill deer. Miki also had some of the little bullets, a present from Franz in the early days of the winter.

  We traveled for two days before we were out of sight of the hills of our land, a distance a strong man could have walked in half a day. But we had no strength, and we had to stop every few feet while the women and old people rested their thin bodies on hummocks of snow, and tried not to complain of the dull pain in their bellies.

  On the fourth day we came to the edge of the forests and here by good luck we found the corpse of a deer the wolves had killed and half eaten. Enough still remained for us, who were more hungry than wolves. We cracked all the bones and in a tin pot that Yaha had brought we made a good soup, for now we were in a land where the little trees are and there was wood to burn.

  We stayed for two days in that place, until the deer that Amow the wolf had given to us was gone to the last shred of sinew which had clung to the skull. Our strength was a little renewed and we pushed on into the thin forests for another three days before we knew that we could not go any further. There was no food where we halted, not even a ptarmigan to be seen, but nevertheless we put up our shelters, for at least we had wood and we could keep warm by the fires. We melted snow and drank great quantities of warm water to still the agony of the teeth that gnawed at our bellies.

  On the second day at that camp, we had luck once again. Ootek had borrowed the spit-rifle of Miki and gone hunting alone, for Miki did not have the strength to walk in the deep snow of the forests. Ootek came suddenly on a hare, and by falling on his knees in the snow he managed to aim, and to kill the hare as it watched him from the edge of the woods.

  Now when he brought the hare into camp, I thought the women would be frantic to eat it, for the women had much reason to eat. Ootek’s wife carried only dry breasts to feed her young child and she also carried a new child who starved in her womb. My own wife should have snatched at the hare to give life to Elaitutna and Aljut, and the others of the women should have fought for the meat.

  But this did not happen. The women decided that the three men whose bodies had suffered the least damage from famine alone should eat of the hare, in order that its flesh would enable these men to travel on to the trader and bring his help back to all the others of our party who could push on no further.

  So we took the hare into the bush, Ootek, Owliktuk and I, where the smell of the cooking could not reach the noses of those who had given up their share of the food. Though it was a terrible torture to wait while it cooked, we had to cook the meat, for our bellies would have retched it up had we eaten it raw. I wolfed down my portion and did not let myself think of the children who lay in the shelter at the camp. Then with the sharp pangs of food in our stomachs, we three set out down the course of a small frozen river to find the place of the trader.

  It was a two-day march, though we traveled fast, before we came to the shores of a lake, and across it we saw the walls of a log igloo which could only belong to a white man. It was the trader. Surely it was a great thing that we had found him in all of the land there was to search. We hurried over the lake, and the white man’s dogs heard us and howled as we came near.

  We knew then that the famine was done—done with and gone. Already I found myself beginning to forget what had happened in the camps of the People under the Little Hills. There was no longer any need for the strength which does not come from the muscles but from the spirit. My legs gave way beneath me and I fell in the snow, yet I did not care for I knew we were safe.

  The trader, a short little man, came out of his igloo and looked at us as we sat and lay in the snow. We laughed with embarrassment when he saw us, for we were ashamed of our weakness, and we were ashamed that we could not speak his language.

  We got to our feet and stood there not sure what we should do. At last Ootek pointed to the hollows that lay on his cheeks, and showed how his ribs stuck out from his belly. I lay down again in the snow and closed my eyes like a dead man so that the Kabluna—the white man—would know how it was at the camps.

  And the trader—did not understand!

  He went to his cabin and brought back a fox pelt, holding it up with o
ne hand, and stretching the other hand out to us. Then a great sickness filled me, for we had no fox pelts to trade. Starving men cannot trap fox pelts and I saw that if pelts were demanded there could be no help for the People.

  When we showed him we had no foxes, the white man suddenly grew very angry and I thought that perhaps he had not understood why we came. Again and again we tried to show what our need was, and again and again we lifted our parkas so he could see the bones of our bodies. But something was wrong, and he did not understand.

  As I think back on it now I know the trader could not have understood what we tried so hard to tell him, for no man who has food will turn away one who is hungry. We knew this man had food, for his dogs were fat and well fed, and we would have been glad for some of that dog food, if he had only not misunderstood what we said.

  Perhaps he was afraid of us three, for Ootek still carried the rifle of Miki, and perhaps this strange white man was afraid. I know he went back to his cabin and when he came to the door he had a deer rifle in his right hand, and in his left hand a sack of flour, but so small a sack that it could have been carried by a child. He flung us the flour and slammed the door shut—and we never saw him again.

  I had a wild thought that I should take Miki’s rifle and shoot this man, so we could take what we needed out of his little log store. But the thought was born only in the memory of the boy Elaitutna, who was dead now, whether he still breathed or not. The thought flickered and passed. And we three turned away and went back to the west to the camps of those whose lives were in our hands.

  There were no words between us—all words were dead. We ate none of the flour, and so in our weakness it took us four days to return, and I crawled the last little way to the fire.

  Elaitutna, my father, was finished. He was still sitting by the door of the shelter, but frozen and stiff with his eyes closed as they had been at the end of his life. I was afraid Nanuk would speak and demand that we eat the flesh of the dead, but she was too weak to speak and the body of my father sat there where it was.

  The flour we brought from the white man was enough for a single small meal for each one who lived in the camp. Many could not retain the raw flour, but it did not matter for it could only hold off the devils of death for a day.

  In the tent of Owliktuk, his wife held a dead child to her breasts, and this child was Oktilohok. Owliktuk could not make her release it, so it too stayed in the tent.

  So also in the tent of Ootek and Howmik. One child lay dead on a scrap of deerhide, the other near death in her womb.

  Then it was my turn to mourn for the death of a child. Elaitutna did not wake to my calling, and his small hands were frozen by the frost which is colder than ice. After him Aljut, the son of my wife, died and was gone. Death meant nothing to us in that place. There was no weeping, and no woman cried out the laments of the dead. Death meant nothing to us in that place...

  But those were terrible days, days I do not wish to remember. Let them be forgotten in your ears and your heart. I will say nothing more of that time.

  Two days after our return from the place of the white man, Tuktu came at last and so the rest of us lived. It was the deer in the end, the deer who alone in all of the world know the needs of the People, who took pity on us in our camp by the edge of the forest when there was no pity in all of our land. Tuktoriak—the Spirit who lives in the deer—sent a great buck into our camp and made him stand so close and so foolishly by the fire of Ootek, that Ootek was able to kill the deer with the tiny bullets of Miki’s rifle.

  That was in the spring of the year. Late in the spring we returned to Ootek Kumanik, there to find the wolverine-scattered bones of Angleyalak, his wife and his daughter. These bones we buried, as we had buried our dead in the foreign lands of the forest. But for a long time we thought the devils had taken Kunee and Anoteelik and we were very glad in our hearts when we heard they were safe.

  So ends Ohoto’s memory of the spring of the year 1947—a year that belongs to the present—a year that took twelve lives from the twoscore people who were the last survivors of the thousands of men who roamed the plains country only a few decades ago.

  9. These Are Their Days

  The present still holds varying moods for the Ihalmiut, and many are pleasant. These are the moods the people exploit and enjoy, and as for the others—they are put out of mind in the times when their presence is not felt in the flesh.

  One day in the fall there was a frost at Windy Cabin, and I began to look over my supplies of winter clothing. I had checked them over rather carefully before Andy and I left Churchill, but that had been several months earlier, and since that time I had looked at many things, and my eyes were beginning to see with the vision of my foster folk. Now I looked again at my long woolly underwear, three or four thick woolen sweaters, and my heavy blanket capote. These things no longer seemed to offer the warmth and protection for which they were intended.

  After a while I put them all back in a box and hunted up Ootek, my song-cousin.

  “Nipello aqako!” Ootek remarked as I came up to him. Snow tomorrow! Yes, I believed him, and it was that forthcoming snow which had brought me to him. It was a delicate problem. I did not like to ask Ootek outright for skin clothes for he would probably have disrobed on the spot and, while we were song-cousins, my intimacy with the man had not extended to the point where I wanted to wear the clothes he had been living in all summer. I tried to be subtle.

  “Ootek,” I said, “I am told your mother is the finest maker of clothes in all the camps. Is that so?”

  Ootek did not take the bait. His natural modesty evidently extended to the work of his mother as well. He looked at me sadly.

  “The old woman makes clothes that would fit well on a muskox! Who told you this monstrous lie?”

  I tried a different tack. “The snow will be here tomorrow, just as you say,” I told him. “And that may be all right for you—but we poor white men who do not know how to dress in this land will probably freeze.” I shivered with appropriate emphasis, and glanced at Ootek to see how he was taking it all.

  He was beaming. The text of his reply cannot be quoted, but the gist of it was that I had no need to fear from the cold, for Howmik, his wife, would be delighted to take care of the problem, and that care did not entail the making of clothes.

  This time I nearly gave up; but I decided on a last try. I pulled out a plug of tobacco and said bluntly:

  “How many plugs for a suit of new winter furs?”

  I expected Ootek to look hurt, but he beamed even more and told me the clothes would be ready in two weeks if the snow came that night. (Work on winter clothes may not be begun until after the first snow has fallen.) Two plugs of tobacco would be about right, and they would go to his mother, the one who made clothes which might fit a muskox but hardly a man. Ootek measured me on the spot, taking a length of rawhide line and, with it, measuring waist, height and arms. For each measurement he tied a knot in the cord, and when he was through, we set off for his camp to put in the order.

  Fall days in the camp under the Little Hills were short, for the sun was losing its place in the sky as winter approached. At Ootek’s camp the white pavement of ancient deer bones was carpeted with the fall-killed hides of buck deer. Perhaps fifty of these were staked out or held stretched with stones at their edges, and the bluish tint of fresh skins was fading into the gray-white of dried hides. The scars of warble flies dotted the skins like smallpox eruptions, but the little pockets of larvae which began to swell in the fall had been carefully scraped away along with the remnants of fat and tissue. Howmik came from her tent and selected one of the hides which was nearly dry. She examined it with great care, testing the hair to make sure it was firm in the skin. Then she took it back to the tent and squatting by the smoke of the fire made ready to tan it. The tanning of hide for clothes is simple. All that Howmik had to do with the stiff, untreat
ed skin was to work it between her hard hands until it grew soft. Then it could be cut to the pattern by Ootek’s mother and made part of a new winter outfit.

  All tanning is not quite so simple. The boots of the People must be made of caribou hide, and for boots, the hide from the neck of the buck deer is the thickest and best. This hide must be soaked in water for a long time until the hair rots from the skin and the skin itself can be scraped with the curved woman’s knife until it is as thin as good parchment. For the sole of the boot the skin from the forehead of the deer is the toughest, though it is not nearly so tough as the sealskin soles the coast people use.

  Boots and clothes are still sewn with the fine sinews which lie in a broad band along the back of the deer, and Howmik still does her sewing with delicate needles carved and filed from the shoulder blades of the deer. Her stitching is a miracle to behold. In order that the summer boots shall be waterproof, she must make the seams perfectly tight solely by virtue of her sewing. The stitches are often so fine they cannot be counted at all with the naked eye, and how Howmik makes them is something that no man can say.

  Not all boots are made in the same manner as these summer ones I have mentioned. For winter use there are boots made with fur soles turned down so that a man will find a good grip on the ice. There are others fur-lined throughout, and there are the fine and delicate slippers of fawn or of hare to wear next to the skin.

  All this cleaning and preparing of hides, this making of boots and of clothes, is the work of the women; and in its season is the work of their days. I have spoken only of a few of the things they must make. The full list is almost endless. Bags, buckets, ornaments, clothing, tents, kayak covers and robes are but a few of the many things the woman must make from Tuktu the deer. There is no lack of work to make the days full when the deer hides are prime.