Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos

Front matter

Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–24 THE DANISH EXPEDITION TO ARCTIC NORTH AMERICA IN CHARGE OF KNUD RASMUSSEN, PH. D. VOL. VII. NO. 1.

INTELLECTUAL CULTURE OF THE IGLULIK ESKIMOS

BY KNUD RASMUSSEN

General Plan and Methods of Work

The work of the Fifth Thule Expedition was divided up between us so that Kaj Birket-Smith and Therkel Mathiassen dealt with the material aspects of the Eskimo culture, while I took the intellectual side. My principal objects of study under this head comprised:

The natives in the vicinity of our headquarters at Danish Island, or in other words, the Aivilingmiut, Iglulingmiut and the immigrant Netsilingmiut. The Aivilingmiut and Iglulingmiut constitute, together with the Tununermiut at Ponds Inlet, the Iglulik group.

The Inland Eskimos of the Barren Grounds, which we have agreed to call the Caribou Eskimos.

The Netsilingmiut, Ilivilermiut and Utkuhikjalingmiut, who are akin by intermarriage, and occupy, roughly speaking, the region between Bellot Strait, Back River and Adelaide Peninsula.

The Umingmaktôrmiut, between Kent Peninsula and Bathurst Inlet.

The Mackenzie Eskimos.

The Alaskan Eskimos, especially comprising the inland tribes between Colville and Noatak River, Point Hope, Nome, the islands in the Bering Strait and finally the fairly isolated population on Nunivak, south of the Yukon Delta.

It may be as well here further to explain that the terms used for the various tribes and settlements are to be understood as follows:

Iglulingmiut, plural of Iglulingmio, a man or woman from Iglulik, an island in Fury and Hecla Strait.

Amitjormiut, plural of Amitjormio, one living at Amitjoq (sometimes also pronounced Amitsoq), a name for Melville Peninsula. The territory here more particularly concerned is that between Usugárjuk and Lyon Inlet. They are part of the Iglulik tribe in the wider sense of the word.

Aivilingmiut, plural of Aivilingmio, one living at Aivilik, the old name for the region round Repulse Bay.

Netsilingmiut, plural of Netsilingmio, one living at Netsilik, the original name for the great lakes of Boothia Isthmus. The term Netsilingmiut however is now used for all coming from the eastern part of the Northwest Passage territory, many of these having for several generations taken up their quarters at various points between Lyon Inlet and Chesterfield Inlet.

Saglermiut, plural of Saglermio, one living on the island of Sagleq, i. e. Southampton Island. These are for the most part former members of the Aivilingmiut, and a few Iglulingmiut, who, attracted by the favourable conditions for hunting, settled here early in the 20th century, after the original Saglermiut had become extinct.

Finally may be mentioned the Igluligârjungmiut, or dwellers at Igluligârjuk, the native name for Chesterfield. These are not a tribe but consist of a mixture of the groups already mentioned with a further contingent of Inland Eskimos from Baker Lake and Kazan River.

There is no very marked difference between the Aivilingmiut and the Iglulingmiut. The dialects are so alike that it is difficult for a stranger to tell the difference. There is a more pronounced dissimilarity, however, between these dialects on the one hand and that of the Netsilingmiut on the other, the latter having a more emphatic sibilant than the former. The pronunciation of the Greenland "s" sound itself, however, which sometimes becomes h, sometimes j, is often so much a matter of accident and individual peculiarity, that it is hard to lay down any thoroughly consistent method of spelling for words in which the letter occurs. Reference may here be made, for further information, to Birket-Smith's Five Hundred Eskimo Words Vol. III, No. 3 of this series.

The above-mentioned distribution of our work among our party whereby Mathiassen and Birket-Smith took the entire material culture and I attended to the intellectual has, of course, the advantage — which indeed was the reason for the arrangement — that it gave each one more time to go into details than would have been the case had one had to consider both aspects together. On the other hand, I feel obliged to point out one difficulty involved by such an arrangement, in keeping the intellectual culture distinct from the material. It will always be natural for an explorer first to describe the geographical environment of any particular tribe or people, and the material culture whereby they maintain themselves in the struggle for existence, the two being closely connected; and with these factors to start from, one can then later endeavour to show forth the manner of their intellectual life and its manifestations.

It seemed to me therefore that it might be helpful to the general understanding of the position if I were to give, by way of introduction, a few brief sketches of the conditions under which I first encountered the people whom I shall endeavour in the following pages to describe. These brief sketches should thus give their views of everyday life and their attitude towards life and destiny. I hope that such an introduction may contribute towards a more intimate appreciation of the material and problems subsequently to be dealt with.

It was necessary for me first of all to gain the complete confidence of my Eskimo collaborators before I could begin the work at all. And this was only to be achieved by sharing their daily life, living with them under precisely the same conditions as they themselves. That I was able to do so with complete success was due to the fact that I could speak their language, and, from my knowledge of their kinsfolk in Greenland, was already familiar with their ideas and habit of mind.

And it has always been one of my main objects, in the portrayal of primitive culture, to get the natives' own views of life and its problems, their own ideas expressed in their own fashion. This was often quite as important to me as eliciting new elements in their religious and spiritual life.

I therefore think it will not be out of place to commence this book with an account of my method of work and the manner in which I first gained the confidence of my Eskimo collaborators.

Chapter 1

Our first encounter with these natives took place on the 4th of December 1921. More than two months had passed since our arrival at Danish Island, and up to now we had not set eyes on a single human being of the tribes we had come all this way to visit. Work of various kinds had kept us busy at headquarters, and the state of the ice had hitherto precluded excursions of any length. By the end of November, however, all the fjords were frozen hard enough for us to set out for Repulse Bay, where we knew there should be one of the Hudson Bay Company's trading stations. We could there obtain information as to the distribution of the population between Iglulik and Chesterfield Inlet.

Peter Freuchen, the Polar Eskimo Nasaitsordluarssuk and I were at last on our way to the north-west in search of natives. We had followed the northern coast of Vansittart Island through the mouth of Gore Bay, and making a wide detour where the strength of the current prevented the formation of winter ice, had gone overland. past the south-western coast of Melville Peninsula; we were now on the sea ice in Haviland Bay. We had had an accident to one of the sledges, which had suffered damage among the pressure ridges, and Freuchen and Nasaitsordluarssuk were consequently a little way behind.

It was about noon, the red of the sun tinged the horizon out towards Rowe's Welcome. The sky was perfectly clear, and it was bitterly cold. A faint breeze blowing right in my face stung so that I could hardly keep my head to the front as I drove. It was fine, level fjord ice underfoot; we were some distance from the edge of the ice, which was just visible with its pressure ridges to the south, and as the way was clear ahead, I had turned my back to the wind for a moment, to thaw my face. I had only been sitting like this for a moment, when I started up at a sudden sound. I had heard it quite distinctly, and the dogs too must have noticed; they began to sniff eagerly about, and I was thus sure I had made no mistake. The sound I had heard was that of a shot fired not far off; there was no mistaking it. I glanced back towards my companions, thinking they had fired as a signal to me to wait. I soon descried them, but they were driving up at a good pace, and as far as I could see, overtaking me; it could not be from them. I then looked out ahead, and perceived, some four kilometres distant, a black line extending across the ice midway out in the bay. It could not be bare rock. I stopped the team at once and got out my glass; and now I could plainly distinguish a whole line of sledges with a great number of dogs. They had halted, as I myself had done, and were watching me intently. One man broke away from the rest, and came running across the ice at right angles to the line I was following. I realised that he was making for me, and with the excitement natural to a first meeting with human beings in these wilds, I at once jumped on the sledge and gave my dogs the signal for full speed. It was not long before they too sighted the man as he ran, and regarding him as game in flight, set off in chase. In a few minutes I had come up with him, and the dogs, themselves excited by the strange smell of him, and his unfamiliar dress, would have attacked him had I not shouted to him to stand still. I stopped the team at the same moment, cracked my whip over their heads, and leaped clear of the sledge in front of the dogs, so as to place myself between them and the stranger. I had made a long jump, and with such impetus that to avoid knocking him over I was obliged to throw my arms round his neck. So there we stood, laughing and shaking each other, while the dogs, crestfallen, lay down on the ice, as if ashamed at having mistaken a friend for an enemy.

The first thing that struck me when I had recovered a little was that the man understood all I said; and I understood him in turn when he spoke. He was a tall, well-built fellow, his face and long hair covered with rime after his run, which had made him so hot that his cheeks were literally steaming. He explained that his name. was Papik ("Tail feather") and he had his autumn quarters by Nivfâvik, which I later ascertained was up at the head of Lyon Inlet. I was so eager to get into touch with the natives that I did not wait for my companions to come up, but went across at once to the group, now quite near. The men came forward to meet us without hesitation, but the women and children remained lying by the sledges, stretched. at their ease in the sun, as if there were no such thing as cold. Several of the women were nursing half-naked infants at the breast. The light fell on their brown smiling faces, and my first impression was that they must be uncommonly hardy folk. I considered myself fairly accustomed to the climate of these latitudes, but only a moment ago I had suffered so from the icy wind that I had been forced to turn and let my face thaw. Yet here were these women and children sitting about as if altogether unaffected by the cold.

These, then, were the people whom the Greenlanders called Akilinermiut ("those who dwell in the land beyond the great sea"); the people I had heard about ever since, as a boy, I had first begun to listen to the Eskimo folk tales. I could not have found a more picturesque setting for a first impression. Here was a whole caravan out in the midst of the ice, men and women in curious dresses of skins, like living illustrations to the Greenland story-tellers' tales of the terrible. "inland folk". Every stitch of their clothing was of caribou skin, fine. short-haired skins of animals killed at the opening of the autumn hunting season. The dresses of the women especially rendered them altogether shapeless — very wide in the upper part, with a big fur hood falling from the shoulders down over the back, and long loose coat tails coming down over the breeches before and behind, edged with white skin. The footwear also was peculiar, the actual boots. being apparently covered with an outer envelope, commencing in a long tongue right up on the thigh, and terminating just below the calf in a sort of bag; a most comical arrangement, serving as far as could be seen no useful purpose whatever.

The curious fur dresses of the men were as if made for running: they were not so long as those of the women, but had the same tail fashioning front and back. The tails were either of equal length, divided up the thigh, or comparatively short in front with a longer tail behind.

Many different impressions passed rapidly through my mind at this first meeting, but there was one thing which moved me beyond. all else, and almost at once made a bond between us, as if we had been old acquaintances, and that was the language. True, I had always known that the natives here spoke the same tongue, but I had never imagined there would be so little difference that we could enter into converse at once without the slightest hindrance. Owing to the similarity of language, they took us at first for distant tribal kinsmen from Baffin Land. They themselves had just started off with their loads on the sledges, on the way to their snow huts a few days' journey away. But like all Eskimos, they were so swayed by the impulse of the moment that all thought of proceeding on their way was abandoned for the present. As soon as they saw we were friendly folk, as interesting to them as they were to us, they went wild with delight. There was a shouting and laughing and cracking of jokes which further raised their spirits, and as there happened to be some big deep snowdrifts close at hand, we moved over to them at once to set about building snow huts, where we could spend the rest of the day and the night in improving our acquaintance and celebrating the occasion. This frank, spontaneous friendliness was a great pleasure to me, for I realised that among such people I should find no difficulty in learning from them, later on, all they could tell about themselves and their past.

Meeting an unknown tribe is rather like travelling through unknown country; one is, so to speak, prepared for surprises. And so it was with us. The surprises were not wanting. The faculty of observation is of course most alert at the first meeting. The common, everyday business of building a snow hut, which we ourselves had had to do hundreds of times, was now something extraordinary; and quite exciting to watch. Never had we seen a house spring up so rapidly out of the snow as under the snow-knives of our new friends here. Among the Polar Eskimos of North Greenland, the building of a fair-sized snow hut is reckoned a good hour's work for two men. One cuts the blocks from a snowdrift lying outside the ground plan of the house, and hands them, unless there happens to be a third man on the job, to the one who is building the hut. Here however, one man cut the blocks and built the hut at the same time. Selecting a portion of a snowdrift where the snow was of the right degree of firmness for his purpose, he marked out a circle in it, the snow. within the circle being reckoned to suffice for the entire hut. To make a calculation of this sort in a moment calls for a great deal of experience and practice. Actually, then, our native architect here builds. his wall and the selfsupporting roof up over the space left by the blocks cut out of the drift as he works. He must therefore cut down to the full depth of the drift, working his way to the bottom, whereas the Greenlanders cut the blocks they need from the surface. It was a simplification of the process amounting to genius, and labour-saving to such a degree that one man here could cut the blocks, set them in place and trim them off with his knife all in about the same time that a Greenlander would take to cut the blocks alone. As the hut grew up out of the drift, one of the women, taking a big flat wooden shovel, spread loose snow over the wall from the outside. This layer of loose snow fills in any cracks and crevices, making the house. thoroughly sound and warm inside, however hard it may be blowing without. The remarkable skill here displayed was evidently the result. of many generations' technical experience, and we at once realised that we had come upon a system of winter housing, and a capacity for utilising available material, superior to that which we knew from Greenland. These men were experts in the use of snow as building material. In three quarters of an hour, three large snow huts were ready; and almost as soon as the snow bench inside was cut to shape, the blubber lamp was lit and the interior warmed up. I and my two companions quartered ourselves in different huts, so that we might make the most of our new acquaintance. Before long, all our baggage was stowed on high platforms built of oblong snow blocks, and as soon as the dogs had been fed, we could go in and settle down among our friends. Snow was melted in pots hung over the lamp, and our hosts boiled caribou meat from the store they had with them. We had walrus meat, but were not allowed to cook any, as this was strictly taboo in a house where caribou meat was to be eaten at this time of year.

My host was a genial, kindly fellow named Pilakapsak; his wife Hauna was untiring in her efforts to make us comfortable, and it was not until all had eaten their fill that we settled down to talk.

We now learned, to our great satisfaction, that there were native settlements in nearly all directions from our headquarters on Danish Island. The population was not overwhelming in numbers, but the more interesting in point of composition. A couple of days' journey from our house we could come into contact not only with Iglulingmiut, but also with Aivilingmiut and Netsilingmiut.

The conversation was of a very general character, we on our part feeling our way carefully at first, to learn how far we could go in our questionings without appearing too inquisitive. Thanks to our speaking the language, however, and the confidence this inspired in our hosts, we were able even to touch upon matters of religion, in regard to which I very soon ascertained that these people were still entirely primitive in their views and unaffected by outside influences.

On the day following this first meeting, we arrived at Repulse Bay while it was still daylight, and made the acquaintance here of Captain George Cleveland, an old whaling captain, now in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company's trading station there. Captain Cleveland received us with great hospitality, and most willingly furnished us with a great deal of information that proved very valuable in arranging our plans of work. We stayed here a few days, and made several other acquaintances, including that of one old man in particular with whom I was to have further dealings in the course of my work later on. His name was Ivaluardjuk; he had a long white beard and red, rheumy eyes, worn dim with over many blizzards. He was, it appeared, the geographer of his tribe, and was remarkably well up in the country and its inhabitants throughout the entire range between, Ponds Inlet and Chesterfield. When I brought out a pencil and paper, he drew, to my astonishment, the whole coastline from Repulse Bay to Ponds Inlet, without hesitation, and though the proportions of course could not be correct, the map yet gave such a good general view that we were now able to fix a number of the Eskimo placenames. This was a very essential point for us, as we should have to discuss the various localities with natives who knew nothing of the English names given to parts of their own territory by Parry and Lyon a hundred years before, while on the other hand they had an abundance of names of their own for fjords, lakes, mountains and all characteristic features. I was thus able to note, on the map drawn for me by Ivaluardjuk, somewhere about a hundred Eskimo names, which I shall refer to later on.

I discovered at once, in the course of our first talk, that Ivaluardjuk, though very careful about what he said, was remarkably well acquainted with the ancient traditions of his tribe. In order to draw him out a little, I narrated a few of the stories common in Greenland. These proved to be well-known here, and the surprise of the natives at finding a stranger from unknown lands able to relate old tales they fancied were exclusively their own, was such that in a short time the house was filled with inquisitive listeners. Thus I gained the old man's confidence, and we were soon discussing the folk-lore of his people as experts, the reserve he had shown at first being gradually discarded. He is the oldest member of the household I am visiting, and is indeed one of the oldest members of his tribe. He himself might have stepped out of some old, weird story, with his strange, worn look, and the quiet, steady manner of his own narration makes a deep impression on those around. After a while he tells me something of his own family affairs. He ought long since to have been a widower, he says, a poor old fellow with no authority among his neighbours; for his first wife had died many years before, and all his children of that marriage grown up. But he dreaded the loneliness and helplessness that are always the lot of a wifeless man in his country, and had therefore married an adoptive daughter of his own, and bought her a child, paying for it with one of his dogs. He laughs in his quiet, kindly fashion as he tells the story, and adds:

"Thus men can better their existence and soften the harshness of fate. Now I no longer feel alone, and my old age is a restful time. But when chance to think of my childhood and recall all the old memories from those days, then youth seems a time when all meat was juicy and tender, and no game too swift for a hunter. When I was young, every day was as a beginning of some new thing, and every evening ended with the glow of the next day's dawn. Now, I have only the old stories and songs to fall back upon, the songs that I sang myself in the days when I delighted to challenge my comrades to a song-contest in the feasting house".

Hardly had he finished speaking when all present begged him to sing a song; he made no objection, but drew back a little on the bench. His wife then chanted in a clear voice a monotonous air, consisting of but a few notes constantly repeated. The other women at once joined in, and Ivaluardjuk himself, thus supported, delivered a peculiar song which I afterwards wrote down. The ideas and expressions, and the general effect, of Eskimo songs are so unlike anything we are accustomed to in our own that it is not always possible to translate literally. The following is, however, as close a rendering of the original as can reasonably be given when endeavouring at the same time to reproduce something of the charm and the unconscious art displayed in the utterance of the Eskimo singer:

Cold and mosquitoes, These two pests Come never together. I lay me down on the ice, Lay me down on the snow and ice, Till my teeth fall chattering. It is I. Aja — aja — ja.

Memories are they, From those days, From those days, Mosquitoes swarming From those days, The cold is bitter, The mind grows dizzy As I stretch my limbs Out on the ice. It is I, Aja — aja — ja.

Ai! but songs Call for strength And I seek after words, I, aja — aja — ja.

Ai! I seek and spy Something to sing of, The caribou with the spreading antlers!

And strongly I threw The spear with my throwing stick (sic!). And my weapon fixed the bull In the hollow of the groin. And it quivered with the wound. Till it dropped And was still.

Ai! but songs Call for strength. And I seek after words. It is I. Aja, aja — haja — haja.

This utterance of an old man, who recognised that for him the joyous days of life were long since over and past, brought the noisy listeners to silence. And I saw that these people I had come to study were not unacquainted with the virtues of piety and reverence. I realised that if I could only go the right way to work, I could learn from them something that might show others at home something of the Eskimo mind.

My visit to Repulse Bay proved of the greatest importance in the subsequent arrangement of my work. The natives here were frank and genial folk, with whom it was easy to enter into conversation on ordinary matters of everyday life. Nor had they any reluctance to tell a story, or sing a song accompanied by the whole household as chorus. But as soon as I ventured to touch on more serious themes, they showed more reserve. There were great and difficult questions here which were best left alone. Only when actual happenings called for some decision, some course of action in face of threatening circumstances, would the subject be discussed with the wise men of the tribe. The earth grew angry if men out hunting worked too much with stones and turf in the building of their meat stores and hunting depots: so also the spirits that guided men's fate might be offended if men concerned themselves over much with such things. Men knew so little of things apart from their food and sleep and rest; it might easily seem presumptuous if they endeavoured to form any opinion about hidden things. Happy folk should not worry themselves by thinking.

And old Ivaluardjuk held to this view at first, maintaining a profound reserve when I endeavoured to draw him out. Moreover, apart from this innate reluctance to speak of such things as life itself and the purpose of life, and its guiding powers, the Eskimos of these regions were extremely cautious in expressing their views at all when dealing with white men. True, no missionaries ever came here — save for a few brief visits — to condemn their religion, but the little they knew of "that sort of white men", who were so unlike the traders and whalers, was not calculated to render them more communicative. As far as they could understand, it seemed that the stran- gers regarded them pityingly on account of their belief in such unreasonable things as their wise men maintained to be the foundations of all wisdom. A kind of spiritual shyness, not unmixed perhaps with a certain sense of dignity, made them reticent on the subject: they merely acknowledged that the missionaries otherwise appeared to be good men in their daily life.

"The other sort" of white men comprised the traders and whalers. These were bright, smart fellows, caring only for their hunting and trading. But when any of them occasionally happened to be present at the solemn seances of the angákut, they would merely shrug their shoulders, or make some scornful remark, as to the relations of these shamans with the supernatural. Furthermore, all white men looked with supreme disdain on the system of taboo by which the balance of the Eskimo community was maintained.

I understood then, that if I were to succeed in gaining the full confidence of these people, it was absolutely necessary to place myself in their position. I was not concerned to guide or correct them in any way, but had come to their country expressly for the purpose of learning what they could teach. The thing to do, then, was to make friends with some of the elders, those most familiar with the traditions of the tribe. Once I had won their friendship, the rest would come of itself.

It was not long before I made just the sort of acquaintance I had in mind; it happened indeed on the way back from Repulse Bay to Danish Island. Peter Freuchen had gone on further south to continue his investigations, and Nasaitsordluarssuk and I were driving home alone to inform our companions of all that we had learned. In order to save time, we decided to make a short cut from Haviland Bay down to Gore Bay. We had not got far inland when we came upon an old woman fishing for trout in a lake. The ice was thick already, and she lay half hidden among broken hummocks, with her head bent over the hole where her line was down. We thus took her entirely by surprise. She started up as the dogs gave tongue, and stumbled backward in confusion at the sight of us. We had already been told that the natives here were not usually pleased to encounter strangers unawares; there was no knowing whether it was friend or enemy. We were not surprised then, that the old woman endeavoured to run away: in this, however, she was unsuccessful: in fact, a moment after she was sitting on my sledge — albeit much against her will — and driving down towards the place where she lived, our dogs having already scented human dwellings near. She had with her at little puppy, that she had not wished to leave behind, and held it in her lap with a convulsive clasp, looking up at me at the same time with such an expression of terror in her eyes that I could not help laughing. She had heard nothing of our arrival in the district and saw now only two men and two sledges, every detail revealing the stranger. The fashion of our clothes, the build of our sledges, the dogs' harness, and even our manner of speech. She was sitting behind me, and as I bent down to explain who we were and what we wanted, I suddenly noticed a sound I had not perceived before, and now discovered, tucked away down at the back of her behind the fur hood, a little naked infant with its arms round her neck, squealing in concert with the puppy. I now hastened to mention the names of all the new friends I had made during my stay at Repulse Bay, and this, as showing that I was well known to people she knew as neighbours, changed her attitude entirely. So delighted was she to find herself among friends that her eyes filled with tears. As soon as she had calmed down a little, I explained where we had come from. It was easier now to do so than in the case of our first meeting with natives at Haviland Bay, for I could now give the Eskimo names of the places. I knew that Ponds Inlet was called Tununeq, and explained therefore that we came from a country beyond the great sea that washed the shores of Baffin Land. Hardly had I finished. speaking when she told me that she herself was called Takornâq ("the recluse" or "the one that is shy of strangers") and came from Iglulik. She had moved down to Repulse Bay with her husband, Padloq, expressly in order to be near white men and all the wealth which one could obtain by bartering with them. She had often been to Ponds Inlet, and had met Scottish whalers there. They had told her of the people from whose land we came, who spoke the same language as she did, and lived over on the other side. So pleased was she at finding that we belonged, as it were, to her own world after all, that she became frankly communicative, not to say garrulous herself. It was not long before we had the village in sight and soon came up to the three snow huts which were all it amounted to. They were built close to a lake where trout were to be caught. The inhabitants came running towards us but without knowing quite how to receive us, for they also had recognised at once that we were strangers. But on catching sight of Takornâq, who was laughing delightedly, they came up and gathered round us. Takornâq certainly did not bear out the character implied in her name. She chattered away, recounting all the information she had just acquired, and pointing to us, explained that we were real live human beings, from a country far, far away beyond the sea from Tununeq.