People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

  It was old Kala, Ootek’s mother, who made my suit of furs, my “winter house.” And she made them without seeing me from the time she began until she was done. Yet when Ootek brought them to me, they fitted well. At two plugs of tobacco, she did not overcharge, for to show me her skill, she had inserted pure white inserts of belly skin over the whole of the outside parka, in a pattern which combined grace and beauty with the most remarkable blending of fur.

  The days in the camp of Ootek held room for a great many skills as fine as those displayed by old Kala. The family was a well-regulated one and work did not seem a burden even to those who had the most to do. For one thing, it was the particular task of Kala, as the eldest one of the family, to keep the cook fire in fuel. Daily the old woman walked out from the camps, and sometimes her search took her ten miles over the land before she found a willow thicket which met with her needs. Then she would cut, and tie up, a tremendous bundle of twigs and carry this bundle home on her back. Yet what was a twenty-mile walk for old Kala? There was plenty to enjoy on the way. There—a herd of fat does grazing high on the slope of a hill, fine beasts, with sleek velvet coats... Or Uh-ala, the long-tailed duck, calling its woman’s gossip loudly from the edge of a pond... Perhaps Kala might flush a ptarmigan from its well-hidden nest, and the half-developed eggs made her a welcome snack during the walk.

  Often, if there was no fuel close at hand, the camp’s children went with her. Atnalik, the orphaned son of Ootek’s sister, would carry his little toy sling, and stubbornly chase the alert birds of the ridges, the snow buntings and longspurs, and sometimes he would come proudly back to old Kala, with his tiny catch held high in his hand.

  If she went alone to her search, there were memories enough to keep Kala happy. Rich memories, those of old Kala—she who had known three husbands and a dozen children in her time, had seen Tyrrell, the first white man, come to the river, and knew all the tales of three generations of men.

  Kala gathered the fuel, sewed clothes for her son, kept the fires burning and, not least of her tasks, made acid comments on the way her son and his wife ran their lives. That is an old woman’s privilege, one the Ihalmiut do not refuse to the old. Perhaps one day Ootek fails to bring in fresh meat when it is needed and so he must accept the tongue-lashing of this old crone. Nor will he grow angry at her, but he will laugh a little bit sheepishly, shake his head, and reply, “Mother, I shall do better tomorrow—and you shall have a fine fresh marrowbone to worry away at with your old teeth.”

  In the camps of the People the days of an old woman are full—in the summer. And though she works she is not driven as old people may often be in other lands. She has her time to gossip and to visit the nearby camps and she has both the right and the freedom to speak out against the ways of her children, and of their children too, while she lives.

  Well, her days are as they should be. For with the coming of winter the old woman’s life is a pawn without value. If the winter be hard, and famine comes to the family, then the old one must die. It is something that all people know, but that is never spoken aloud. In summer the old ones live their lives free of much of the restraint which lies on the younger ones of the People. In winter youth may turn to age and call on it to walk into the night and never return.

  For Howmik too, life can be pleasant enough. In the summer of 1947 she bore a child—Kalak—and it was a great happiness to her that this child was born. Three other children, small heaps of rocks over their bones, had not seen the end of their first year in the land. But surely Kalak would live and do well. A fine healthy child, she would eat and grow fat, for Howmik was certain that in the winter ahead there would be much good meat laid by in the caches about the camps.

  There was enough for Howmik to do in the summer, and yet she had ample time for the pleasures of living. Although there was no clothing to make until fall, there were many pounds of nipku, dry meat, to attend to out on the hills. When the sun shone, the meat had to be turned before the flies quite possessed it, and when rain threatened, the widespread slices of meat had to be quickly gathered and stored safely away.

  There were five meals a day to prepare for those of her tent and perhaps two or three visitors from the tents of Ohoto or Hekwaw—all these had to be fed. Soup three or four times a day, with plenty of fat and bone marrow melted in it, and cold roasts or boiled meat for the other two meals—this was enough to keep everyone happy.

  The dogs were also in Howmik’s charge during the summer. But they were light work, for there were only three of the beasts, and these had been obtained by Ootek only that spring, for none of his own dogs had survived the starvation of the previous year. These three were young dogs not yet broken to work with the sled, and so they still had the freedom of camp. Despite the trouble they made for Howmik, being great thieves, nevertheless they were never tied. The Ihalmiut look upon dogs much as they look upon people. The time of hardship and of bitter labor comes soon enough both to men and to man’s beasts. The Ihalmiut say, “While they are young, while life here is easy, let them find what joys they may. Let them be as free as all young things should be.” So the dogs have no labors except when Atnalik hitches a model sled behind one or the other of them and makes the dog drag the sled in imitation of the real work it must soon learn to do.

  The dogs were well fed, fat animals of infinite good nature. It was not unusual to see one of them lying on its back while the naked child, Kalak, sprawled on the dog’s belly, pummeling it with small hands, or pouring fistfuls of sand and grit into the gaping red mouth. Things would soon change for these dogs, but now they lived free lives, subject only to the sibilant hiss with which Ootek warned them when they trespassed too far over the bounds.

  Howmik’s main labor was for the child she had borne. Each day she devoted long hours to Kalak, amusing the child, feeding her from her breasts at the first sign of hunger, bathing her with wet lumps of moss, or simply talking to her as all women talk to their young.

  In the camps of the People the child is king, for childhood is short and tragedy often comes after. As it is with the dogs, so the early years of a child are made free of compulsion and of hard labors, for these years must always remain in the child’s memory to alleviate the agonies which come with mature years.

  It has been said by people who should know better that Eskimos treat their children well only so the children will in turn treat their parents well when old age is upon them and their time of usefulness is at an end. In point of fact, the People treat their children with great sympathy and forbearance because they know so much of humanity.

  I remember once when Ootek, who had agreed to stay with us for a couple of weeks, left Windy Camp to walk sixty miles over the tundra simply to assure himself that Kalak was well and happy. Then he turned and retraced the sixty miles, arriving back at our camp five days after he left it. When he arrived back, he was contrite that he had been forced to leave Andy and me, and he apologized because he had been so weak in his concern for his child. Again, I remember one day when I was talking to him about children and I expressed surprise that no Ihalmiut child knows corporal punishment even when the provocation is great. I spoke casually, but Ootek replied with vehemence, for it seemed he was honestly puzzled that I should not know why a child is never beaten.

  “Who but a madman would raise his hand against blood of his blood?” he asked me. “Who but a madman would, in his man’s strength, stoop to strike against the weakness of a child? Be sure that I am not mad, nor yet is Howmik afflicted with madness!”

  There was something that might have been contempt in his voice as he spoke, and I never again raised that question.

  So the children live their lives free of all restraint except that which they themselves impose; and they are at least as well behaved as any child anywhere. For three years after birth a child is suckled and by the time it has been weaned it is already aware of the general pattern of its life. I told you of
Kunee, who, at the age of five, was already an accomplished woman of the People, yet Kunee had never been taught what she must do. She was simply observant and imitative, as most children are, and she saw what others did and longed to do as well by herself.

  The children’s work is also their play. At night, when the adults are asleep or resting on the ledge, no voice is raised to chide the girl children, who remain active until the dawn, keeping the fire alive under the cooking pot and concocting broths and stews, not with toy things, but with the real equipment which will be theirs in maturity. No regimen or hard routine is laid upon them. When they are sleepy, they sleep. When they are hungry, they may always eat, if there is food. If they wish to play, no one will halt them and give them petty tasks to do, for in their play they learn more of life than can be taught by tongues and by training.

  Suppose a youth, a ten-year-old boy, decides he will become a great hunter overnight. He is not scolded and sent sulkily to bed for his foolish presumption, nor do his parents condescend to his childish fantasy. Instead his father gravely spends the evening preparing a miniature bow which is not a toy, but an efficient weapon on a reduced scale. The bow is made with love and then it is given to the boy and he sets out for his distant hunting ground—a ridge, perhaps a hundred yards away—with the time-honored words of luck ringing in his ears, which are the same words spoken by the People to their mightiest hunter when he sets out on the two-month trip northward for muskox. There is no distinction, and this lack of distinction is not a pretense, it is perfectly real. The boy will be a hunter? Very well then, he shall be a hunter—not a boy with a toy bow.

  If the child is brave enough he may search the ridges and valleys through the hours of summer twilight which span the interval from dusk till dawn. When he returns at last with hunger gnawing at his stomach, he is greeted as gravely as if he were his father. The whole camp wishes to hear of his hunt, and he can expect the same ridicule at failure, or the same praise if he managed to kill a little bird, which would come upon a full-grown man. So he plays, and learns, under no shadow of parental disapproval, and under no restraint of fear.

  The evenings are the best times in the summer camps. The men return from hunting over the plains, from building a new kayak, or perhaps from spearing lake trout at the rapids on the river. Hunger is satisfied. The old ones sit in the place of honor about the fires with the willow sleeping mats beneath their bony hams. Husbands and wives speak of the day’s events. The children drift in from the outlying shadows hoping to hear the tales that may be told of other times.

  Here is Atnalik, who has learned a new “string-figure”—“cat’s cradle,” we should call it—during the day, and now he must show it to his family. He fumbles it, knots the string by accident, and joins in the general good-natured laughter at his clumsiness. But everyone has caught the infection now and lengths of sinew appear in everyone’s hands. The space about the fire becomes a flashing spiderweb of thin gut strings as young and old hands play at the ancient game. Now Howmik makes the figure of the Two Fighting Wolverines. All the rest of the company stops to watch the battle of the two wolverines in the figure and Ootek provides a realistic two-way sound effect to make the fight all the more vivid. At last a loop collapses, one of the figures vanishes, and the victorious wolverine slides down the string and also disappears.

  Ootek goes on to relate the story of the Ground Squirrel That Slept as it is recorded in the stylistic figures of the shapes he weaves from string. Even old Kala bends her stiff fingers painfully to create the figure of Kumanik Angkuni, the Great Lake. The figures go on endlessly, and there is shouting when a new one appears, and laughter when an old one is fumbled.

  Suddenly the three dogs that have been watching the proceedings with puzzled interest break into high-pitched and puppyish howls, announcing the coming of old Hekwaw. Howmik stirs up the fire so the soup will heat, for a visitor, even if he comes only from the next tent, must always be fed at once.

  It is a rare night when someone does not come to visit. Often the entire population crowds around one fire and at such a time perhaps Hekwaw will heed the patient pleading in the black eyes of silent children and will begin a tale:

  This is Kiviok I will tell you about, and Kiviok was a wandering man. He was the grandson of Tuktoriak, the Spirit of the deer, and that is why he was a wandering man.

  It is told that Kiviok once lived far to the west of here, somewhere by a great lake that even I have never seen. Kiviok was a young man then, and he lived with his parents, but one day when Kiviok was away hunting muskox, Ejaka, the half-men from the Northwest, came on the camp and cut the life from his mother and father and left him alone in the land.

  So Kiviok took his kayak and paddled south down the shores of the lake until he came to a channel between two great mountains. When he drew close, he saw that these were not mountains but the two jaws of a gigantic bear, and the jaws opened and shut without ceasing, and the crash of the enormous white teeth was as loud as the thunder of Kaila. But Kiviok was not afraid, and he waited until the jaws just started to open, then he dashed his kayak through the channel. The big jaws of the bear closed at once and they chopped off the stem part of the kayak, but Kiviok escaped.

  Now Kiviok came to a new land in the South and there he found a tent with a woman and her daughter Ularik. Kiviok slept with the daughter and she was his wife and for a time all went well. But it came about that the old woman grew jealous and wished Kiviok was her husband. She waited until Kiviok had gone off on a hunt. Then she offered to braid her daughter’s hair. She pretended to fix the tuglee, the wooden ornaments, in the hair of her daughter, but instead she wound the hair around the girl’s throat and choked her to death. Then she took her sharp ulu and skinned the girl’s face, and pulled the skin right over her own ancient head.

  When Kiviok came home from his hunt he went to bed with the old woman, thinking she was his wife, but as it happened he had got wet during the day, and the moisture shrunk the false skin on the old woman’s face so that it all split and came off. When Kiviok saw how he had been tricked, he jumped into his kayak and fled.

  He came to a place where there was a muskox who talked like a man, and the muskox offered Kiviok his daughter, if the man would stay with him and defend the muskox from the wolves. But Kiviok said, “Your daughter is too hairy to come into my bed!” And he fled away in his kayak again.

  Kiviok traveled on and many strange things happened to him and he saw many strange things, but all at once he found himself back on the great lake where his parents had lived, and he saw that a party of Ejaka stood on the shore waiting for him to land so they could kill him.

  Kiviok stayed in the kayak and he called out, “Hey there! You half-men! Come into the water and fight!”

  The Ejaka were so angry that they swam out into the lake, but Kiviok dived into the water and swam underneath them, stabbing them all in the bellies so that they died.

  That is the story of Kiviok the wandering man, and of his fight with the Ejaka. I don’t know any more about him.

  After Hekwaw has finished, there will be other tales by other people. Old Kala may tell her favorite story, of the man who had five wives who turned into lemmings one winter night... And so it goes, for there are hundreds of these tales in the minds of the People and, though they have been told many times, the listeners never grow weary of hearing them yet again.

  If several visitors come of an evening, then Ootek will take his great hoop-drum down from the poles of the tent, and after holding it over the fire so that the gut will be stretched taut by the heat, he will offer it to one of the visiting men. The men are modest and the drum will be passed from one to the other until at last one of them, Ohoto perhaps, will take it. He gets up from the squatting circle of People and walks to the center of the group, hard by the fire.

  For a while he stands there, embarrassed, and the audience shouts and argues about what song he sh
ould sing. At last Ohoto says, “Very well then, all you with big noisy voices, I will sing my own song, the one I composed in honor of myself as a hunter.”

  He holds the drum by a handle and twirls it around and around, striking it lightly along the edge of the hoop with a stick. The tempo begins as a slow rhythmic beat, and Ohoto begins to shuffle about looking like a trained bear at a circus. He bends sharply forward from the waist and suddenly he begins singing his song. It goes something like this:

  Oh indeed I am a mighty hunter of deer!

  Out on the plains where the rocks are.

  But with my little eyes, like the lemming’s,

  I can hardly tell the deer from the rocks.

  And with my weak arms, like a snowbird’s,

  I cannot shoot an arrow straight from my bow,

  Out on the plains where the rocks are.

  Nevertheless I go out on the plains,

  Out on the plains where the rocks are.

  And I shoot my arrows into the rocks,

  For someday one of the rocks may be a deer.

  Then indeed will I be a great hunter,

  Out on the plains where the rocks are.

  At the end of each verse the audience takes up the time-honored chorus, and the listeners sway in their places with their eyes tightly shut as they cry out the chant:

  Ai-yai-ya-ya ai-ya-ya ai-ya-ya-ya...

  Ohoto shuffles about more and more quickly. The sweat pours from his face as the dim glow of the little fire sends his distorted shadow slithering in and out among the rocks by the fireplace. The tempo increases and when all the verses of the song have been sung, Ohoto collapses limply in his place and the drum is taken up by another.

  The songs go on for hours. Most are songs of self-derision or perhaps sarcastic songs directed at a notorious coward or a lazy hunter. No man praises himself, and when he sings of himself, he always appears in the song as a fool, or as a man who is inadequate in the ways and skills of a hunter, or of a lover. Even ten-year-old Atnalik has invented his own song and he is encouraged to sing it, while his elders chant the chorus with particular gusto, and loudly applaud him when he is done.