Minds of Winter

by Ed O’Loughlin

  We went back to our sledges and drove off some bears that had been feeding on the dead seals. We could easily have killed some of them, but Koodloo and I had already got much more meat than we could carry away, so we butchered the dead bear and cut up several of the fatter seals and put the best meat on our sledges. Last of all, to propitiate the bear’s spirit, we inflated its bladder and fixed it to a pole which we tied to my sledge.

  When we neared our camp the people came running out to greet us, because they could see the bear’s bladder and knew that there would be a feast. And before they could come up to us I turned to Koodloo and said something that had been on my mind for much of the journey. I told him that it would be as well if we didn’t tell our friends where we had killed these seals, as there was a taboo on visiting Lok’s Land and they might shun us or attack us for breaking the taboo. Nor should we tell them about the cairn, and what we had done to it, because surely it had been left there by the old ones who lived here before us. And then Koodloo was angry at me, saying I had led him first into breaking a taboo and now into a lie, and that both crimes would surely be punished.

  Koodloo agreed to stay silent, but he was never friendly towards me again. In fact, he disappeared several weeks later, leaving his new rifle on his sledge. His dogs came back without him.

  There was a feast that night and for several days afterwards. When Taqulittuq came back from her journey she was very pleased with my success in the hunt and my good service to Hall. She told me that at last she was pregnant. After that, we spent much of our time in her tupik and Hall didn’t disturb us.

  Taqulittuq gave birth to Tukerliktu, our first son, while Hall was off exploring Frobisher Bay. When he returned he was very pleased because he had found many proofs that Martin Frobisher had been there lifetimes before. He was also delighted to see the healthy little boy carried in his mother’s hood. He called him ‘Little Butterfly’, which was the English for his name.

  True to his promise, when he went back to New York, Hall took all three of us with him. There I was given another English name: ‘Eskimo Joe’. That was what they wrote on the posters for Barnum’s Museum. Hall had asked us to attend lectures and circuses and stand in our sealskins with our harpoons and implements and also some dogs we brought from Baffin Island. People would pay to look at us and touch us and ask us questions. And although it was very hot in the summer in our sealskins, and although the dogs were sick because of the wrong food and the heat and the noise and made a horrible stink with their shit and their vomit, until eventually they died, we did this for Captain Hall. He said that he needed the money to go back into the north to Qiqiktaq, which the English call King William Island – where we are now. He was still anxious to look for news of the famous Lord Franklin, who had been missing then for twenty years already. And he told us that when he went to look for Franklin we would go with him as his guides. This suited Taqulittuq and I, as we still had a desire to travel and to see places we had never been before.

  On the the circus posters in New York and Boston our Little Butterfly was called ‘Eskimo Johnny’. I made a toy harpoon for him, although my son was not yet two years old. But he got sick during the circus tour because of the heat and the people, and he died. They buried him at Groton in Connecticut, where we lived near Captain Budington. I believe it was his Inuk name which they put on the gravestone, or something quite like it.

  Taqulittuq was very bad for a long time after Butterfly went. She wouldn’t eat, and wanted only to die so she could be with little Johnny. We put his harpoon and all his toys on his grave and she went to visit it every day to watch over him. People used to come and look at her as she sat by the graveside. One man told me that he was surprised to see her there, as he had read in a book that Eskimos were hard people and didn’t grieve for their lost children. One day, just as she was getting a little better, she saw that someone had stolen from the grave a little tin bucket, painted bright red, that Captain Budington had given Johnny. That made her very bad again. If Captain Hall hadn’t taken us away to Repulse Bay I think she would have died at that time. It would have been her wish.

  Our second son was born during our first winter at Repulse Bay. Captain Hall told us to call the boy ‘King William’ for good luck, as we were trying to get to King William Island to look for Franklin. We decided we would choose our own secret name for the child, but that this time, to be prudent, we wouldn’t share it with the white man. Even among ourselves we never called him anything but King William, or Little King William, to keep his real name hidden. In that way we hoped to keep him alive.

  In the spring we set off across the Barren Lands towards King William Island. But we soon met a big storm of sleet and rain, such as I have never encountered so early in the year. Afterwards Little King William fell sick. The angakkuq who accompanied us, Nukershu, performed a divination, and saw that Taqulittuq had secretly been giving the child medicine which she got from Captain Hall. The angakkuq made her promise to stop this.

  We continued on our way and every day the child grew worse. Then Nukershu suggested another well-known cure, that the child should be given to another couple who were travelling with us so they could change his name and raise him as their own. This was done so that any curse that was following his mother and I wouldn’t know where to find him. Yet the child grew even worse, and Captain Hall said that he would die without his mother’s milk. So she took him back and carried him in her own arms.

  When the baby went quiet she wouldn’t put him down. She carried him on for a day before Captain Hall and Nukershu could make her understand that we must leave him there. I made a small inuksuk, like a stone child, to stand over his grave, and Captain Hall was pleased because, as he had done on Lok’s Land, he wrongly assumed that the thing was a cross. He wrote a note on a piece of paper and left it in the stones, saying that the note would inform anyone who might read it what the child’s name had been and the names of its parents. But even he did not know the child’s name.

  We walked on a few days more until we met some of the people who lived at Pelly Bay. They traded with Captain Hall for many things that were left in the tundra by Franklin’s men, such as spoons and buttons and the like. They also had stories from their old people, who had found two wooden ships deserted off King William Island, and many bones of white men on the mainland nearby, who had died where they fell or eaten each other.

  Hall wanted to press on to the island itself, but the people warned us of a strange band that had been seen in that area, whom no one dared to approach or to talk with, but who were said to have made several people disappear. Nukershu decided to turn back, and Captain Hall had no choice but to return to Repulse Bay in the hope of coming back the following year.

  On the way back, Taqulittuq wanted to see Little King William again, but the snow had since thawed and the land was flooded and confused, and even I could find no trace of his grave.

  Our third child we called Panik, which means only ‘daughter’, because we wanted to be cautious. Her mother was one of our friends from Repulse Bay. I gave her a sled and some shirts so that Taqulittuq and I could have our own child. That is how I became a stepfather.

  Captain Hall said we must name our new child Silvia, which was the name of the daughter of Mr Grinnell, the rich man in New York who had paid for our travels. Later, when she went to school in Groton, her written name was Silvia Ebierbing, but people heard us call her Panik, and so she became Punny at school and then at home.

  Some whaling ships arrived in Repulse Bay shortly after we returned there, and now Hall had the idea of hiring white men to stay through the winter and act as his helpers. In the summer, when the ships returned, they would hunt whales again.

  The five Americans were called Frank and Pat and Peter, and I don’t remember the other two. Pat was their leader, but only Frank was any use for travelling or hunting, so it was he who came away with Hall and Taqulittuq and Punny and I when we
travelled north in the spring. The others stayed behind to mind our camp and to cure the caribou and musk oxen that had been cached over the winter.

  This time Hall did not wish to go west to King William Island, but north, to the country of Igloolik. The summer before he had heard stories about strangely shaped inuksuks that had been found in that region and about a party of silent Europeans seen passing in the night some years before. Hall believed these might be the last of Franklin’s men, and that he should go north in search of them.

  We didn’t find them. But I came across an old tent site in which the anchor stones had been laid in a square, as only the white men do, and Hall said this was a sign that Franklin’s men had been there recently. But I saw from the way the stones were settled in the turf that they had been there for many years. The people at Igloolik told me that parties of white men had passed that way safely several times before us, and even before Franklin’s time, and so these stones could have been left by any of them.

  But I didn’t tell Hall this. I thought, What does it matter to me what he believes? If any of Franklin’s men had survived in this region, they would have reached Repulse Bay many years ago and been rescued by the whalers. What curse could hold living men prisoner in an open country, free to wander and hunt yet detained for ever from their homes and their families? It seemed to me that Captain Hall was looking for ghosts, and that Hall knew this himself but would not admit it. As he brooded upon their fate he became closer to them and withdrew from his friends, and I became worried, because only an angakkuq should have dealings with spirits.

  One morning when our Igloolik friends were slow in breaking camp Hall got even angrier than usual and showed them his revolver. After that I called Taqulittuq aside and suggested that we should leave Hall and take our child back to Repulse Bay: if Hall attempted violence against our escorts they would be obliged to kill him, and us too. Instead Taqulittuq went and talked to Hall alone in his tent, and when she came out again she handed me the gun and said that Hall had asked me to keep it until we returned to Repulse Bay.

  While we were away the American sailors had heard a story that was new to us: it was that the captain of the lost English ships, Lord Franklin, had been buried ashore in a little house made of a liquid which turned into stone. By this I suppose they meant concrete, which I have seen poured and set hard in half of a day. In another such house nearby, the people said, the English had left papers and instruments, and when they were all dead and the Netsilik people tried to break into this cache it proved too strong for them to open.

  Pat, who was the sailors’ leader because he was a harpooner by trade, was very pleased with this story. As soon as we returned he told it to Captain Hall. But instead of praising him, Hall became abusive and accused Pat of gossiping. This dispute took place at the entrance to the sailors’ tent with the other men standing close by. The people of Repulse Bay, who were camped within earshot, came a short way towards us, standing and watching.

  Hall shouted at Pat that he had a mind to box Pat for his insolence and for trying to steal stories which belonged to Hall alone. And Pat shook his fist in Hall’s face and said he was as good a man as he was and had as much right to talk to the Eskimos. If he wished to tell his own stories when he got back to America then it was his own business to do so. If Hall struck him, he said, he would quickly regret it.

  Now Hall turned away and went back to his own tent. I went over to talk to Pat and the Americans, who were laughing together at Hall’s embarrassment. Then Hall returned, and before Pat could even raise his hands Hall shot him in the chest.

  Well, everyone ran away then, apart from Hall and Taqulittuq and myself and the baby. I too would have run had Taqulittuq not stayed. The Repulse Bay people immediately broke camp and moved to a lake a day’s march inland. The American sailors went with them for a few days then came back to the beach one by one, because they were frightened of missing their ships. They were all there on the beach when Pat died; the bullet had missed his heart and only nicked his lung, and although the wound went bad it was two weeks before it killed him. He was a big man and young and strong.

  It was Hall who nursed Pat and who talked to him and prayed with him, demanding his forgiveness and offering forgiveness in turn. Forgiveness: what sort of kindness is that? If Hall had wanted to help Pat he should have shot him again right away.

  Pat was awake most of the time and talked of his home and his mother. Towards the end, when his veins turned green and his mind was fevered and he was in great pain, he spoke of Hall as his friend.

  The other Americans, deprived of Pat’s leadership, followed Hall around and competed for his favour. They agreed that they had wronged him and that Pat had been about to attack him when Hall had been forced to fire his shot. They were like a team of dogs whose leader has been bested by a rival. Yet when the first topsail of summer appeared on the horizon every one of them deserted. We never saw them again.

  Later, after we returned to America, Hall tried to give his account of the killing. He sent letters to the American government, since Hall and Pat were both Americans, and to the English, who were said to give the law in Repulse Bay, though I never saw them there. The Americans said the English should decide whether Hall should be punished. The English said the Americans should do it. Nothing was done in the end.

  But it is my belief that Hall couldn’t rest easy after that. He had lived among our people long enough to know that it is a very big thing to kill a person, even a rival or an enemy; that it is not enough to say, as the whites do, that if the act is not condemned by others then you may walk clean away from it. Hall should have atoned for Pat’s death, yet his own laws denied him this, and of course he wouldn’t follow the Inuit customs. He should have sought out Pat’s relatives and bared himself to them, offering reparations, and he should have performed the necessary acts of self-mortification until he knew that he’d been released from his crime. Or he should have been killed for his crime there and then. Either way, he should have thrown away that pistol, because it is a great mistake to keep a gun that has killed a man, or to feed your family with meat taken by such a weapon.

  Hall spent that summer persuading the people of Repulse Bay that he had committed no crime and that they shouldn’t be afraid to help him. He had decided that he would not go home yet and risk being punished for murder but would stay another winter and make one last effort to reach King William Island.

  And that is what we did. This time the spring weather was as fine as you could wish for – cold enough for the sleds to run well, yet not so cold that we or the dogs grew tired and sluggish. We sped across the Barren Lands and when we reached the further sea the ice was smooth and sound.

  Captain Hall was at first delighted when he set foot here, because King William Island had been his only goal for many years. We found numerous signs of the lost ships, even about here, this little bay where we are talking now, and also bones of the missing men. Wherever he found these bones Captain Hall stopped to bury them and say prayers. Yet we couldn’t find the stone house which was Franklin’s grave, or the other stone house with the ships’ papers in it.

  Hall became gloomy again. He was also angered by a story we heard from the Netsilik people, that many years before some of their elders had met a band of starving white men dragging a heavy boat across the gravel. Instead of helping them, the Inuit had run away in the night, having only enough food for themselves. Hall was now convinced that all of the English sailors were dead and that our people were to blame.

  It was in this black mood, I believe, that Hall conceived the idea which was to prove the death of him, the desire to go into the far north, further north than anyone had ever been before, where the sun doesn’t show itself for half the year. Maybe this was to be his atonement. He hoped to find a secret there, an open sea with warm waters and many whales, and in that sea a deeper secret, one which he never discussed with me, though once or twice I hea
rd him hint at it in private talks with Mr Grinnell. If my English had been better perhaps I would have understood.

  Hall took us back to Groton in Connecticut, close to Captain Budington and his wife. Taqulittuq and I did farm work to pay for our keep. We didn’t like the farm, as the work was hard and boring and didn’t pay well. It was no kind of living for a hunter and his wife.

  Sometimes Hall still brought us with him on his lecture tours to demonstrate our clothes and our implements. We went to New York, where we stayed with Mr Grinnell, and to Washington, where we attended the White House and shook hands with President Grant. After that we went to Cincinnati, which was Hall’s home, though he seldom ever went there. It was there that we met the famous Lady Franklin.

  She had come all the way from England to ask Hall what he had learned the summer before on King William Island. The people of Cincinnati were very pleased to have her visit their city, as she had become very famous for her efforts to find the lost ships. Our meeting took place at the Burnet House hotel on the evening she arrived. As we waited in the lobby we could hear the crowd cheering her carriage. English and American flags hung together from the street lamps, and there was a line of soldiers outside doing tricks with their rifles. A band played the English and American songs, and also another pretty tune which I have heard the whalers whistle whenever they slip moorings.

  When at last Lady Franklin and Hall came into the lobby the mayor was with them in his gold chain and there were lots of other fine-looking ladies and gentlemen, and with all the big hats and tall, stout people crowding into the lobby Taqulittuq and I had to climb halfway up the stairs so we could see Lady Franklin. She was a small lady and very old and round. Her clothes were very bright – a green dress and a red shawl. She was a cheerful sight among all those important men in grey and black. They jostled her so much, shouting and waving at her, that her lady companion, who held her by the elbow, had to push them all away from her and take her to her room.