People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

  Those who came to the ridge were our brothers, for all were Innuit except the Ejaka who came from the northwest. These were savage and treacherous men—and though they spoke a language that belongs to the Innuit, yet it was different and had many words we do not know. In some ways they were like the Itkilit, the Indians, for they were a dangerous people and their laws were not our laws. They quarreled often and when they were angry they would use their spears on each other and, often enough, on the men from the camps of our People.

  Now all of these strangers came to Akilingnea in such a way that they approached from the south side of the lake—except only the Ejaka. These came always from the north of the hill, and this is how it is that to this day our greeting when we come to a camp is always, “Ai! I come from the right side! From the right side of the ridge!” For in the old days, this was to show that the visitor came from the south side of the ridge Akilingnea, and was not of the Ejaka, the dangerous ones who came in from its north.

  Well, these are but a few of the tales I have heard from my father and Hekwaw. Often enough I have wished I had been a grown man in those times. Then there were great things to do and there were many camps to visit, and in the nights the Innuit of the plains had much time for dancing and singing. Those were wonderful times, and terrible times, at the ridge Akilingnea! Now that place is left alone to the ravens and gulls and there are no camps under its shores any more, for the time of my father is done. His time is done and mine will soon follow, so there is no more to tell you who are of the Kablunait and not of the world that I know.

  19. Last Days of the People

  Toward the end of August we left the Inukshuk to their lonely vigil and turned back to Windy Bay. The forerunners of the herds had already preceded us and Andy’s work at the Deer’s Way was at an end. As for me, the strange lands about Angkuni had told me all they knew, for they could speak only with dead voices. I was ready to return to the living voices of the Ihalmiut.

  The journey home was uneventful, and Ohoto was happy to find that his father’s dire predictions had not yet been fulfilled. The People still lived, though they were hungry for they were without shells. We supplied them with what we could spare—and that was most of what we had, for our time in the land was almost at an end. There was a month still to run. This we spent with the deer and with the People, and, as always when these two are together, the time was happy and there was contentment in the hearts of all men. It is pleasant now to remember that those last days in the land were happy ones...

  In the time when the deer were hurrying south to the forests to evade the impending onslaught of winter, we too made our farewells to the Barrens. The nights had already grown long, the days had grown brief, and the season of Kaila’s wrath was upon us. We saw little of sunlight or starlight. The gray cloud scud raced in from the east and the roof of the world was so close above us that we could stand on the dull moss of the ridges and feel the chill wraiths of the driven mists in our faces. The land was dying, and it was time for us to return to our own world.

  Our canoe, old now with the weight of her journey, lay with her scrofulous sides on the shore. Beside her was the meager pile of supplies which must see us out of the land. It was raining. A fine penetrating haze as cold and dismal as the gray sweat on the face of a corpse hung over us.

  Ohoto and Ootek came to help us stow our sparse dunnage against the rough, splintered ribs of the canoe.

  Ohoto was smoking his little stone pipe, a tiny and shapely object of semi-translucent stone, neatly and artistically bound with the brass from an old cartridge case. I said good-by to him in the white man’s way, and after we had shaken hands he took the pipe from his mouth and, without speaking, handed it to me. It was a trivial gift in farewell. And yet—how trivial was it? I knew how that pipe had come down from a century that is gone, for it was the pipe of Elaitutna, Ohoto’s father. It had seen more of the land and more of the things in the land than any man living had seen or would see. It was to have gone with Ohoto into his grave, to remain with him as a familiar thing in the eternity he sought at the end of his days. Now it would go with me, instead, out of the land, to lie warm and smoldering in the palm of my hand as I remembered the things I needed to say if the voices of the Ihalmiut were to be heard in the world of the Kablunait.

  I think Ootek, my song-cousin, was crying a little, but perhaps it was only the film of moisture which lay over all our faces as the cold east wind drove the spume low over the hills. Why, after all, should he cry? The white men were leaving the land, leaving it to the People. And we would not return, for in the time that can be measured in a handful of years nothing would remain to draw us back to the great plains.

  The current gripped our canoe and as we passed down to the mouth of the river, I looked back. But I saw nothing worth remembering in that last glance. Thick mists obscured the Ghost Hills and the dark crest of the cabin by the shore. So I turned and looked forward as the old canoe made her way down the long arm of the bay and to the open waters of mighty Nueltin.

  For nearly a week we coasted the shores of Nueltin, until we came to a maze of bleak little islands crowding the northernmost bay of the lake. Here, after much searching, we found the contorted passage which leads to the bay of Thlewiaza—the Great Fish River—which flows to the sea. Once on that river we were too busy to think again of the land of the Little Hills. The canoe leapt, shied and started like a frightened beast as she took the first rapid. We shot out at its foot and then paused to still our frightened hearts before we went on down this river that has been run by no more than three or four white men in all time. After the briefest of respites, the rapids roared at us again.

  Thlewiaza is the only river running from the land of the People to the seacoast in the East. It barely tolerates men who try to descend it, and any man who tried to ascend it into the heart of the land would be brutally rebuffed. The river does not flow, but debouches insanely over a landscape which resembles a titanic slag heap spewed out by some tremendous subterranean smelter. It is a world which looks as hell might, if hell’s fires were quenched. The river roars angrily over this chaos and spills its fury almost at will over the land, spreading out to envelop as much of the broken debris as it can reach.

  In five days we covered a hundred miles. We had soon given up any attempt to count the rapids. They were often continuous for many miles at a stretch, and the interludes of calm water were so rare, and therefore so startling, that they impressed us more than the rapids would have done on any other rivers.

  Although the season was too advanced for men in a canoe, we had no choice but to travel, whether through rain or into the hatred of sleet. At first we feared our slim load of food would not be enough, but soon we were thankful that we carried no more weight with us. Many times we were saved from destruction in the shallow violence of the rapids only because the canoe was so light that she could meet the hungry caress of the rocks without feeling their teeth.

  I remember only two things out of that ordeal not connected with the hazardous confusion of rocks and boiling masses of water. The first of these is the memory of two great caribou bucks standing on the summit of a hill and facing each other defiantly with the silent challenge of the rut in their tense attitude. I saw them for only an instant before the ever-present storm scud whipped over our heads and blotted out the images of the two magnificent beasts.

  The second thing I remember was a cairn of rocks on the shore which we mistook for a stone man. During our first five days on the river we had seen no sign that men had ever come down this torrent. When we saw the Inukshuk we fought our way free of the current and landed to inspect it more closely. It was no stone man, but only a little heap of flat stones piled over the grave of a child. Wolves or foxes had nosed aside some of the rocks and the white bones were scattered about in the gravel.

  Only those two memories remain. The rest is a nightmare confusion of black, curling waves; of white,
driven spray, and the half-seen glimpses of evil, dark rocks under the keel of the canoe.

  Thlewiaza brought us out of the Barrens, but it did so with savagery and with the clear warning that it would tolerate no attempt at a return.

  Late in September the canoe, shrunken now by the ponderous swells of Hudson Bay, began feeling the sting of salt spray in her wounds. It was almost the end. There remained a day and a night when we fought with an offshore gale and a blinding snow blizzard and, for a while, held onto the canoe, and to our lives, only because we found a reef and were able to stand waist-deep in the frigid green waters for the long hours until the tide changed and the wind dropped.

  We turned north and at last found refuge behind the long yellow dunes of Eskimo Point. Our night on the reef had made it obvious that we could not hope to navigate a hundred-odd miles south to Churchill in our crippled canoe. After a week at Eskimo Point we were picked up by a wandering Royal Canadian Air Force plane, and then for the last time I looked down on the immutable face of the Barrens and watched it recede from me, carrying with it the People I had known in its depths.

  My journey was over, but I was still tied to the Barrens, not by the simple web of memories alone, but by something more powerful. There was, and is, an abiding affection in my heart for the men and women of the plains who lent me their eyes so that I was privileged to look backward through the dark void of dead years, and to see not only the relics of forgotten times, but also to see into the minds and the thoughts of the men of those times. It was a great gift I had from the People and one that deserved a repayment.

  During the years which followed my return to cities I tried to keep myself informed of the Ihalmiut’s progress. Avidly I searched for the stray scraps of news that trickled out of the Barrens, and I managed to piece these together so that I was able to trace the history of the People after my time. And what I discovered shocked me inexpressibly. When I left the Barrens I had naively believed that the Ihalmiut would know no more black days, nor be left to struggle with their dark fates unaided by us. I was sure that the work done by Franz, by Andy and myself, and our careful reports to the government, would have made it quite impossible for the monumental neglect of half a century to be continued. I was wrong.

  Here is the epilogue to the story of the Ihalmiut.

  During the winter and early spring of 1949–1950, starvation again struck at the People with undiminished ferocity. And that starvation would have been fatal but for one accident. It happened that a freelance photographer and newspaper writer wandered into the northern Barrens in March of 1950, and he found the northern cousins of the Ihalmiut, the Padliermiut, in desperate straits from famine. His story was given screaming headlines in several influential newspapers, and in late April the RCAF was instructed to fly emergency supplies to the Ihalmiut and Padliermiut. Food was taken in, and shortly afterwards news releases from the authorities painted this humanitarian effort so brilliantly that no reader thought to ask why this dramatic rescue had been necessary. No one thought of the long winter when, once more abandoned, the Ihalmiut had struggled with death. No one asked why that agony had been allowed to repeat its brutal pattern once more.

  That it should have been permitted to happen is even more incredible in view of the fact that during the summer of 1949 an epidemic of poliomyelitis struck the Ihalmiut and the authorities belatedly visited the Little Hills country—though not in time to prevent the disease from taking its toll.

  First, the only child born to the People that year, a son of Miki, was dead. Itkut, the youngest wife of Kakumee, was dead. Howmik, the mother of young Inoti, and Hekwaw, the old master hunter, were crippled; and Hekwaw’s son, Ohotuk, was dead. Hekwaw and Howmik were evacuated to Churchill for treatment. They lived; but despite the fact that government agents had seen with their own eyes how bad things were, the Ihalmiut were once more abandoned.

  Then, in the spring of 1950, a commercial fishing company, supplied by air from Churchill, moved to Nueltin Lake. This company needed only one thing to make its fishing venture a success (it had the fish, for Nueltin is an untouched reservoir of gigantic lake trout and whitefish), and that was cheap labor. Now the Canadian government is most anxious to encourage the spread of industries in the arctic, so what was more natural than to help out the new company by turning over to it the remaining Ihalmiut? In the summer the RCMP flew to the Little Hills country, picked up the Ihalmiut, despite their efforts to resist, and delivered them into the benevolent hands of the fish company. A news release pointed out that this was done solely to benefit the Eskimos, who would now be able to protect themselves from future disasters by assisting the white men.

  I have not been able to discover all the details of what followed,* but I know that the fish company failed and that the Ihalmiut, having once more given up their essential struggle with the land, were cast loose in a year’s time to readjust, as best they might, to the old ways again. It was a repetition of the trader-Eskimo relationship of the ’30s, but this time repeated under government sponsorship. In 1951 the Ihalmiut were again—and probably for the final and fatal time—forgotten in the depths of their land.

  * * *

  * The details are recorded in The Desperate People.

  The official government statement covering the first part of this episode is so interesting that I have included it in full.

  STARVING ESKIMOS MAY BE EVACUATED 130 MILES BY AIR

  Ottawa, April 25 (CP)—A band of primitive Eskimos facing starvation in the Lake Ennadai district in the Northwest Territories may be evacuated by air to Lake Nueltin 130 miles away.

  Officials of the Northwest Territories Council in Ottawa said today plans are under consideration for the complete rehabilitation of the small band, believed to be the last surviving remnants of the caribou-eater Eskimos.

  First reports of starvation among the Eskimos, estimated to number slightly more than 30, reached Ottawa a few weeks ago and a plane load of food was flown into the district by the RCAF.

  At Churchill, Man., today, Major ————, army medical officer at Fort Churchill, said the Eskimos are on the verge of starvation. He examined them after being flown into the district to return an Eskimo woman treated at Churchill for illness.

  Major ———— said the Eskimos’ inadequate diet has shown up in various ways, including skin diseases. Lacking the proper facilities to help them get food, he is sending in drugs to the district 300 miles northwest of Churchill as the next best thing.

  The Eskimos are in a hard-to-get-at spot that lacks adequate facilities.

  This report is typical of the publicity white men of this continent have given to our efforts to assist the arctic natives, and as such it deserves close examination. But such an examination quickly dispels the impression of our benevolent zeal as guardians and protectors of the Eskimos. It appears as a shameless effort to avoid the blame for a great and continuing evil, an effort to lay our conscience at rest.

  The second paragraph of the release makes brave reading if you are not aware that the “plans” mentioned were those concerning the fishery at Nueltin... and if you are not aware that these plans came to nothing, and no further attempts to “rehabilitate” the Ihalmiut have been implemented as I write this, in December of 1951.

  The third paragraph is even more startling, for it states that first reports of starvation amongst the Ihalmiut were not received until the spring of 1950. It is difficult to understand how the reports written by Andy and myself, and submitted in 1947 and 1948 directly to the government branch responsible for Eskimo administration, could have been forgotten. Nevertheless they must have been forgotten, as was Franz’s report in the spring of 1947, and as was the action taken by the government itself in that year. Much has evidently been forgotten.

  In the event of these discrepancies coming to light, however, the final paragraph provides an explanation, and an excuse. “The Eskimos are in a ha
rd-to-get-at spot that lacks adequate facilities.” It is not our fault, then, if all our good intentions fail. Our consciences may rest at ease—we’ve done our best.

  Perhaps. But my conscience will not rest. I have spoken of the debt I owe the People, and this debt alone would prevent me from accepting oblivion as the answer to the problem of what fate awaits our native races. Refusing to accept this answer, I have written this book in an attempt to give form and substance to the voices which spoke to me from the graying rock heaps under Kinetua. The People lent me their eyes so that I might see what white men have tried not to see. Now I, in turn, have lent the People my voice so that white men shall hear the words the Ihalmiut cannot speak for themselves.

  It may be that I have spoken too late and so have done no more than to remember the great days of a race which is gone. But the story of the Ihalmiut is not theirs alone, since much of what I have written about them holds true for many thousands of Indians and Eskimos across the whole length and breadth of the continent.

  If I have only succeeded in writing an epitaph for the Ihalmiut, perhaps their tragedy can nevertheless be made to bear fruit—though it be bitter fruit. Perhaps it will help us to look, with a new honesty, into the lives of those who dwell by hidden rivers and by the frozen coasts, and in the depths of forests. If this should come to pass—then I will have paid my debt.

  It is not enough to have chronicled the destruction of certain men. It is not enough to have been harshly critical of my own society and to have described the injustices and the crimes of stupidity and omission which must lie at our door. There remains the question of what can be done so that the tragedy of the Ihalmiut will not become the fatal pattern for all those who dwell within the cold sweep of the North. Solutions to this problem may be complex, but any solution must be based on one primary act.