Inuit people

“ Now Sedna is the Mistress of the Underworld, and the Inuit believe that every one who dies must spend a year in her horrible country before going to Quadliparmiut, the Happy Place, where it never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when you call.
Through the village people were shouting: “The tornait have spoken to Kotuko. ”

“ If there are Eskimos upon this north-east coast, their secluded position, debarring them from all intercourse, direct or indirect, with the outer world, must render them, from an ethnological point of view, among the most interesting people in existence.
↑ Hans Egede. Trans. ↑ Sæter = mountain châlet. Trans. ↑ The Eskimos call themselves inuit—that is to say, 'human beings'; all other men they conceive as belonging to a different genus of animals. ↑ North of the 68th degree they could kill seals and whales in plenty from the ice all the winter through ”

“ They are Innuits, or representatives of the most populous savage family indigenous to Alaska, and are as nomadic as Bedouins. They are the least changed or altered by contact with our race. They are Eskimo, strictly speaking, and the natives of Kadiak are almost strictly related to them. In portraying the physique, physiognomy, and disposition of these people, we find in an average Innuit a man who stands about five feet six or seven inches in his heelless boots; his skin is fair, slightly Mongolian in its complexion and facial expression ”

“ Another tale oft told in winter gatherings was one, doubtless in ridicule, of the occasional Inuit who, holding fast to a barren land, came west only to trade and never to live. It is a beautiful legend showing true and abiding love of home and country. Dr. Rink thus translates it: "A man from the east coast of Greenland from love of his home never left it even during the summer-time. ”

“ Whoever cuts a whale's body with an iron axe will die. Indeed the use of all iron instruments is forbidden in the village during these four days. These Inuit have a special name (nu-na hlukh-tuk) “for a spot of ground where certain things are tabooed, or where there is to be feared any evil influence caused by the presence of offended shades of men or animals, or through the influence of other supernatural means. This ground is sometimes considered unclean, and to go upon it would bring misfortune to the offender, producing sickness, death, or lack of success in hunting or fishing. ”

“ The cold was intense, the land was barren of game, the region seemed accursed in its desolation, while the conditions of travel were hard in the extreme.
The absence of human life was far more distressing to the heroic McClintock than the rigors of the journey, for without Inuit aid the labors and sufferings of his crew and of himself would be unavailing. Was it possible that the region was abandoned by beast [179] and so by man? Was his mission destined to be a failure? Could he succeed without Eskimo help? ”

“ They were so strong that they could lift large boulders which were far too heavy for the Inuit, though the latter were much stronger in those days than they now are. Some of the stones which they used to throw are lying about the country still, and the toughest of the men now living cannot lift them, much less swing and throw them. Some of their stone houses also remain. They generally lived in these houses all winter, and did not cover them with snow to make them warmer. ”

“ If they could only rest contented with a fair shot, the Inuits would probably secure more game than they now do, for the most of those I have seen them lose in this way went down after the hunter had approached within easy range—say twelve or fifteen yards. They are so anxious, however, to make a sure thing of it that they often try to get too near. I have frequently timed an Inuit as he started for a seal on the ice, and found it takes about an hour from the time he starts in pursuit until the shot is fired. It is amusing to watch the countenance of the seal through a spy-glass. ”

“ He is as untiring in his efforts to aid us in our search as in securing food, and there is always a degree of intelligence displayed in whatever he undertakes that is wholly foreign to the Inuit character. Even the stones that he brought into camp bore marks that were most astonishingly like writing. ”

“ Still among the Inuits of extreme southern Greenland were numerous and curious traditions of the inhabitants of the east coast, one to the effect that far to the northward were some light-haired people of European complexion. ”

“ Some thirty-five villages of these hyperborean Innuits of Alaska are scattered along the coast between St. Michael’s and Point Barrow; they possess an aggregate (estimated) inhabitation of three thousand men, women, and children. The Diomede and Prince of Wales natives are the most active middlemen or commission merchants among their people; they conduct all the trade between the Asiatic Chookchie savages and the American Innuits, chiefly with those of Kotzebue Sound. ”

“ The largest part of an Inuit's food is, however, eaten raw. These o-yooks are merely festal occasions, though they occur several times a day, and may happen at any hour of the day or night when the natives are assembled in villages and have plenty of food on hand. ”

“ They are dwarfs and are frequently seen between Iglulik and Netchillik, where the Anganidjen live, an Inuit tribe whose women are in the habit of tattooing rings around their eyes. There are men and women among the Uissuit and they live in deep water, never coming up to the surface. When the Inuit wish to see them, they go in their boats to a place where they cannot see the bottom and try to catch them by hooks which they slowly move up and down. ”

“ In common with all other Eskimo tribes the Innuits are a sturdy, well-built people, having lighter-coloured skins than the Indians, and more nearly approaching the yellow of the Asiatics, but distinct from it, and in many instances having a decided reddish tinge to the cheeks. ”

“ In days of old an enormous man lived with other members of the Inuit tribe in a village beside a large inlet. He was so tall that he could straddle the inlet, and he used to stand that way every morning and wait for the whales to pass beneath him. As soon as one came along he used to scoop it up just as easily as other men scoop up a minnow. And he ate the whole whale just as other men eat a small fish.
One day all the natives manned their boats to catch a whale that was spouting off the shore; but he sat idly by his hut. ”

“ Such, though inadequately described, are the newly found Inuits of the Angmagsalik district of East Greenland, the sole surviving remnant of the untutored aborigines of the north polar lands. Their human evolution is of intense interest, as it has been worked out under adverse conditions of appalling desolation as regards their food and their travel, their dress and their shelter, their child-rearing and their social relations. ”

“ Those Eskimos who live in Asia call themselves Yuit, a dialect form of Innuit. They dwell around East Cape and the shore south of it, in immediate contact with the Namollos or Sedentary Chukchis, a Sibiric people, totally different in language, appearance and culture. The Yuits have not at all assimilated to the reindeer-keeping, pastoral habits of the Chukchis, and by their own well-preserved traditions, moved across the straits from the American side, with which they continue commercial intercourse. ”

“ These northern Innuits are not known anywhere to have a village located far back from the sea save at three places, where, on the Selawik, the Killiamoot, and the Kooak Rivers, are settlements of a few people who are at least fifty and one or two hundred miles inland; but they are the exceptions only to their rule of living. ”

“ Another cause of misfortune is for the line to become entangled around the arm of the hunter, so that he cannot cast it off, in which case he is most assuredly drawn into the sea, and in nine cases out of ten drowned, for his knife is seldom at hand for an emergency, and no amount of experience will ever induce an Inuit to provide against danger. ”

“ Any one who has been killed by accident, or who has committed suicide, certainly goes to the happy place.
All Inuit who have been bad—that is, unkind one to another—all who have been unhappy while on this earth, will go to Adliparmiut. If an Inung kills another because he is mad at him, he will certainly go to Adliparmiut.
Kumlien’s remarks on this subject, as well as on other ethnographic subjects, are not trustworthy. He has transferred Greenland tales to Cumberland Sound, though the traditions of these tribes differ materially one from the other. ”

“ Kadlu was an Inuit,—what you call an Esquimau,—and his tribe, some thirty persons all told, belonged to the Tununirmiut—“the country lying at the back of something.” In the maps that desolate coast is written Navy Board Inlet, but the Inuit name is best, because the country lies at the very back of everything in the world. For nine months of the year there is only ice and snow, and gale after gale, with a cold that no one can realise who has never seen the thermometer even at zero. For six months of those nine it is dark ”

“ The Inuit say that in olden times there were a great many of these creatures, and they often sat in a row along the ice floes, like a flock of penguins. Their numbers have become less and less, till now there are but a few left.
Anyone standing on shore may see them swimming under water very rapidly, and occasionally they rise to the surface as if to get air. They make a great noise by splashing with their feet [Pg 15] and arms as they swim. In summer they like to come out and bask on the rocks, but in winter they sit along the edge of the ice or else stay under water. ”

“ It remained for the expeditions of Hall, Nares, Greely, Amdrup, Holm, and Mylius-Erichsen to prove by their united observations that there was not only an Inuit settlement on the east coast, but that such [337] natives are the descendants of the true Children of the Ice, who have crossed Grinnell Land, skirted northern Greenland, and thus come eventually to their present habitat. Their fathers were formerly inhabitants of the most northerly lands of the globe, of the lands of Grant, Grinnell, Greenland, and Hazen (or Peary) . ”

“ I found it under some rubbish in a house at Colombo, and have translated it from one end to the other.
[Pg 234]
"ANGUTIVUN TINA"
[This is a very free translation of the Song of the Returning Hunter, as the men used to sing it after seal-spearing. The Inuit always repeat things over and over again.]
ur gloves are stiff with the frozen blood, Our furs with the drifted snow, As we come in with the seal—the seal! In from the edge of the floe.
Au jana! Aua! Oha! Haq! And the yelping dog-teams go, And the long whips crack, and the men come back, Back from the edge of the floe! ”

“ William H. Dall, Paleontologist of the United States Geological Survey and Honorary Curator of Mollusks at the National Museum at Washington, D. C., has written the following charming verses about the natives of Alaska. [193] "Innuit" is the name by which the Eskimo calls himself and his people from Greenland to Mt. St. Elias. The topek is the winter house of turf and walrus hide. In the igloo, or snow house, there is no wood. All Innuit believe in evil spirits which are supposed to dwell far inland, away from the shores. ”

“ The reasons for the frequent removals of individual Eskimo to strange tribes are to be looked for in the customs of the natives. I can only mention here that intermarriage, adoption, and the fear of blood vengeance are the principal ones.
It is peculiar to the migratory habits of the Eskimo that almost without exception the old man returns to the country of his youth, and consequently by far the greater part of the old people live in their native districts. ”

“ The women went on shore, and the men awaited the white people at the crack on the ice. Five of the white men put up a tent on the shore, and five remained with the boat on the ice. The Inuits put up a tent not far from the white men, and they stayed together here five days. During this time the Inuits killed a number of seals on the ice and gave them to the white men. They gave her husband a chopping-knife. He was the one who had the most intercourse with the white crew. ”

“ They have neither seal float and spear nor inflated legs, but carry the skin scraper. They must try to enter the huts while the Inuit hold a long sealskin thong before them to keep them off. If they fall down in the attempt to cross it they are thoroughly beaten with a short whip or with sticks. After having succeeded in entering the huts they blow out all the fires.
The parts of the feast already described as celebrated in Cumberland Sound seem not to be customary in Akudnirn, the conjuration of Sedna and the exchanges of wives excepted, which are also practiced here. ”

“ Petroff, who has made the only hand-to-hand examination ever conducted, by a white man, of the people of the Lower Kuskokvim, says that they resemble in outward appearance their Eskimo neighbors in the north and west, but their complexion is perhaps a little darker. The men are distinguished from those of other Innuit tribes by having more hair on the faces ”

“ These 372 scourges, coming from the south, have been almost as great a blight among the native peoples as would be the sweeping southward of a wave of arctic temperature to the vegetation of tropical lands. The curse of contact, resulting when a civilized race invades a land inhabited by childlike aborigines, as has been seen in many parts of the world, has overtaken the Innuits in common with nearly all other tribes in Alaska, and decadence and the prolongation of a miserable existence, unless cut short by extermination through starvation, is all that seemingly can be hoped for. ”