Their wide Extension.—Climate of the Regions they inhabit.—Their physical Appearance.—Their Dress.—Snow Huts.—The Kayak, or the Baidar.—Hunting Apparatus and Weapons.—Enmity between the Esquimaux and the Red Indian.—The “Bloody Falls.”—Chase of the Reindeer.—Bird-catching.—Whale-hunting.—Various Stratagems employed to catch the Seal.—The “Keep-kuttuk.”—Bear-hunting.—Walrus-hunting.—Awaklok and Myouk.—The Esquimaux Dog.—Games and Sports.—Angekoks.—Moral Character.—Self-reliance.—Intelligence.—Iligliuk.—Commercial Eagerness of the Esquimaux.—Their Voracity.—Seasons of Distress.

Of all the uncivilized nations of the globe none range over a wider space than the Esquimaux, whose various tribes extend from Greenland and Labrador, over all the coasts of Arctic America, to the Aleutic chain and the extreme north-eastern point of Asia. Many are independent, others subject to the Russian, Danish, or British rule. In Baffin’s Bay and Lancaster Sound they accost the whale-fisher; they meet him in the Icy Sea beyond Bering’s Straits; and while their most southerly tribes dwell as low as the latitude of Vienna, others sojourn as high as the 80th degree of northern latitude, and probably roam even still higher on the still undiscovered coasts beyond—a nearness to the pole no other race is known to reach.

The old Scandinavian settlers in Greenland expressed their dislike for them in the contemptuous name of Skraelingers (screamers or wretches); the seamen of the Hudson’s Bay ships, who trade annually with the natives of Northern Labrador and the Savage Islands, have long called them “Seymos” or “Suckemos,” names evidently derived from the cries of “Seymo,” or “Teymo,” with which they greet the arrival of the ships; they speak of themselves simply as “Inuit,” or men.

With few exceptions the whole of the vast region they inhabit lies beyond the extremest limits of forest growth, in the most desolate and inhospitable countries of the globe. The rough winds of the Polar Sea almost perpetually blow over their bleak domains, and thus only a few plants of the hardest nature—lichens and mosses, grasses, saxifragas, and willows—are able to subsist there, and to afford a scanty supply of food to a few land animals and birds. Ill indeed would it fare with the Esquimaux, if they were reduced to live upon the niggardly produce of the soil; but the sea, with its cetaceans and fishes, amply provides for their wants. Thus they are never found at any considerable distance from the ocean, and they line a considerable part of the coasts of the Arctic seas without ever visiting the interior.

It may easily be supposed that a race whose eastern branches have for several centuries been under the influence of the Danes and English, while in the extreme west it has long been forced to submit to Russian tyranny, and whose central and northern tribes rarely come into contact with Europeans, must291 show some variety in its manners and mode of life, and that the same description is not applicable in all points to the disciples of the Moravian brothers in Labrador or Greenland, to the Greek-Catholic Aleuts, and to the far more numerous heathen Esquimaux of continental America, or of the vast archipelago beyond its northern shores. Upon the whole, however, it is curious to observe how exactly, amidst all diversity of time and place, these people have preserved unaltered their habits and manners. The broad, flat face, widest just below the eyes, the forehead generally narrow and tapering upward; the eyes narrow and more or less oblique; all indicate a Mongol or Tartar type, differing greatly from the features of the conterminous Red Indian tribes. Their complexion, when relieved from smoke and dirt, also approaches more nearly to white than that of their copper-colored neighbors. Most of the men are rather under the medium English size, but they can not be said to be a dwarfish race. Thus Simpson saw in Camden Bay three Esquimaux who measured from five feet ten inches to six feet; and among the natives of Smith Strait, Kane, a rather short man, met with one a foot taller than himself. The females, however, are all comparatively short. The Esquimaux are all remarkably broad-shouldered, and though their muscles are not so firm as those of the European seamen, yet they surpass in bodily strength all the other natives of America. In both sexes the hands and feet are remarkably small and well-formed. From exercise in hunting the seal and walrus, the muscles of the arms and back are much developed in the men, who are moreover powerful wrestlers. When young, the Esquimaux looks cheerful and good-humored, and the females exhibit, when laughing, a set of very white teeth. Could they be induced to wash their faces, many of these savage beauties would be found to possess a complexion scarcely a shade darker than that of a deep brunette; but though disinclined to ablutions, for which the severity of their climate may serve as an excuse, they are far from neglecting the arts of the toilette.

Unlike the Hare Indian and Dog-Rib females, in whom the hard rule of their lords and masters has obliterated every trace of female vanity, the Esquimaux women tastefully plait their straight, black, and glossy hair; and hence we may infer that greater deference is paid to them by the men. They also generally tattoo their chin, forehead, and cheeks, not, however, as in the South Sea Islands, with elaborate patterns, but with a few simple lines, which have a not unpleasing effect.

From Bering’s Straits eastward as far as the Mackenzie, the males pierce the lower lip near each angle of the mouth, and fill the apertures with labrets of blue or green quartz, or of ivory resembling buttons. Many also pierce the septum of the nose, and insert a dentalium shell or ivory needle. Like the Red Indians, they are fond of beads, but their most common ornament consists in strings of teeth of the fox, wolf, or musk-ox—sometimes many hundreds in number—which are either attached to the lower part of the jacket, or fastened as a belt round the waist.

Their dress is admirably adapted to the severity of their climate. With their two pair of breeches made of reindeer or seal skin, the outer one having the hair outside and the inner one next the body, and their two jackets—of292 which the upper one is provided with a great hood—with their water-tight seal-skin boots, lined with the downy skins of birds, and their enormous gloves, they bid defiance to the severest cold, and even in the hardest weather pursue their occupations in the open air whenever the moon is in the sky, or during the doubtful meridian twilight. The women are perfect in the art of making water-tight shirts, or “kamleikas,” of the entrails of the seal or walrus, which in summer serve to replace their heavy skin jackets. They also sew their boots so tight that not the slightest wet can penetrate, and with a neatness of which the best shoemaker in Europe might be proud. The dress of the two sexes is much alike, the outer jacket having a pointed skirt before and behind, but that of the females is a little longer. The women also wear larger hoods, in which they carry their children; and sometimes (as in Labrador) the inner boot has in front a long, pointed flap, to answer the same purpose.

The Esquimaux are equally expert in the construction of their huts. As soon as the lengthening days induce the tribes about Cape Bathurst and the mouth of the Mackenzie to move seaward on the ice to the seal-hunt, a marvellous system of architecture comes into use, unknown among any other American nations. The fine pure snow has by that time acquired, under the action of the winds and frosts, sufficient coherence to form an admirable light building material, which the Esquimaux skillfully employ for the erection of most comfortable dome-shaped houses. A circle is first traced on the smooth surface of the snow, and slabs for raising the walls cut from within, so as to clear a space down to the ice, which is to form the floor of the dwelling, and whose evenness was previously ascertained by probing. The slabs for the dome are cut from some neighboring spot. The crevices between the slabs are plugged up, and the seams closed, by throwing a few shovelfuls of loose snow over the fabric. Two men generally work together, and when the dome is completed the one within cuts a low door and creeps out. The walls being only three or four inches thick, admit a very agreeable light, which serves for ordinary purposes; if more is required, a window of transparent ice is introduced. The proper thickness of the walls is of some importance; one of a few inches excludes the wind, yet keeps down the damp so as to prevent dripping from the interior. The furniture of this crystal hut is also formed of snow (the seats, the table, the sleeping-places), and, when covered with skins, is very comfortable. By means of antechambers and porches, with the opening turned to leeward, warmth is insured, and social intercourse facilitated by contiguous building, doors of communication, and covered passages. By constant practice the Esquimaux can raise such huts almost as quickly as we could pitch a tent. When M’Clintock for a few nails hired four Esquimaux to build a hut for his party, they completed it in an hour, though it was eight feet in diameter and five and a half feet high.

In spite of its fragile materials, this snow-house is durable, for the wind has little effect on its dome-like form, and it resists the thaw until the sun acquires a very considerable power. Of course a strong fire could not possibly be made within, but such is not needed by the Esquimaux. The train-oil lamp suffices to dry his wet clothes and boots when he returns from hunting; and the crowding293 of the inmates engenders a sufficiently high temperature to keep him warm. Having also a decided predilection for raw flesh and fat, he requires no great expenditure of fuel to cook his dinner. The lower part of his dwelling being under the surface of the snow, likewise promotes its warmth.

But of whatever materials the hut of the Esquimaux may be constructed—of snow, as I have just described, or, as is frequently the case, of stones, or earth, or drift-wood—everywhere, from Bering’s Straits to Smith Sound, it is equally well adapted to the climate and to circumstances. Thus when Dr. Scoresby landed in 1822 on the eastern coast of Greenland, he discovered some deserted Esquimaux huts, which gave proof both of the severity of the climate, and of the ingenuity evinced in counteracting its rigors. A horizontal tunnel about fifteen feet long, and so low as to render it necessary to creep through on hands and feet, opens with one end to the south, and leads through the other into the interior of the hut. This rises but little above the surface of the earth, and, as it is generally overgrown with moss or grass, is scarcely to be distinguished from the neighboring soil. The floor of the tunnel is frequently on a level with that of the hut, but often also it is made to slant downward and upward, so that the colder, and consequently heavier, air without is still more effectually kept off from the warmer air within; and thus the Esquimaux, without ever having studied physics, make a practical use of one of its fundamental laws. But their most ingenious invention is unquestionably that of the one-seated boat, the “kayak,” or the “baidar.” A light, long, and narrow frame of wood, or seal or walrus bone, is covered water-tight with seal-skin, leaving but one circular hole in the middle. In this the Esquimaux sits with outstretched legs, and binds a sack (which is formed of the intestines of the whale, or of the skins of young seals, and fits in the opening) so tightly round his middle, that even in a heavy sea not a drop of water can penetrate into the boat. Striking with his light oar (which is paddled at each extremity) alternately to the right and to the left, his spear or harpoon before him, and maintaining his equilibrium with all the dexterity of a rope-dancer, he flies like an arrow over the water; and should a wave upset him, he knows how to right himself by the action of the paddle. The “oomiak,” or women’s boat, likewise consists of a frame-work covered with seal-skins, and is roomy enough to hold ten or twelve people, with benches for the women who row or paddle. The mast supports a triangular sail made of the entrails of seals, and easily distended by the wind. The men would consider it beneath their dignity to row in one of these omnibus boats; they leave this labor entirely to the women, who, to the tact of a monotonous song, slowly propel the oomiak through the water. Judging of foreign customs by their own, the Esquimaux between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers made the strange mistake, as Sir John Richardson relates, of supposing that the English sailors whom they saw rowing in company were women. One of them even asked whether all white females had beards.

The weapons of the Esquimaux, and their various fishing and hunting implements, likewise show great ingenuity and skill. Their oars are tastefully inlaid with walrus-teeth; they have several kinds of spears or darts, adapted to294 the size of the various animals which they hunt; and their elastic bows, strongly bound with strings of seal-gut, drive a six-foot arrow with unerring certainty to a distant mark. To bring down a larger animal, the shaft is armed with a sharp flint or a pointed bone; if intended to strike a bird, it is smaller, and blunted.

The harpoons and lances used in killing whales or seals have long shafts of wood or of the narwhal’s tooth, and the barbed point is so constructed that, when the blow takes effect, it is left sticking in the body of the animal, while the shaft attached to it by a string is disengaged from the socket, and becomes a buoy of wood. Seal-skins, blown up like bladders, are likewise used as buoys for the whale-spears, being adroitly stripped from the animal so that all the natural apertures are easily made air-tight.

With equal industry and skill the Esquimaux put to use almost every part of the land and marine animals which they chase. Knives, spear-points, and fish-hooks are made of the horns and bones of the deer. The ribs of the whale are used in roofing huts or in the construction of sledges, where drift-timber is scarce. Strong cord is made from strips of seal-skin hide, and the sinews of musk-oxen and deer furnish bow-strings, or cord to make nets or snares. In default of drift-wood, the bones of the whale are employed for the construction of their sledges, in pieces fitted to each other with neatness, and firmly sewed together.

During the long confinement to their huts or “igloos” in the dark winter months, the men execute some very fair figures in bone, and in walrus or fossil ivory, besides making fish-hooks, knife-handles, and other instruments neatly of these materials, or of metal or wood.

Thus in all these respects the Esquimaux are as superior to the Red Indians as they are in strength and personal courage; and yet no Norwegian can more utterly despise the filthy Lapp, and no orthodox Mussulman look down with greater contempt upon a “giaour,” than the Loucheux or Cheppewayan upon the Esquimaux, who in his eyes is no better than a brute, and whom he approaches only to kill.

In his “Voyage to the Coppermine River” Hearne relates a dreadful instance of this bloodthirsty hatred. The Indians who accompanied him having heard that some Esquimaux had erected their summer huts near the mouth of that river, were at once seized with a tiger-like fury. Hearne, the only European of the party, had not the power to restrain them, and he might as well have attempted to touch the heart of an ice-bear as to move the murderous band to pity. As craftily and noiselessly as serpents they drew nigh, and, when the midnight sun verged on the horizon, with a dreadful yell they burst on the huts of their unsuspecting victims. Not one of them escaped, and the monsters delighted to prolong the misery of their death-struggle by repeated wounds. An old woman had both her eyes torn out before she received the mortal blow. A young girl fled to Hearne for protection, who used every effort to save her, but in vain. In 1821 some human skulls lying on the spot still bore testimony to this cruel slaughter, and the name of the “Bloody Falls,” given by Hearne to the scene of the massacre, will convey its memory to distant ages. No wonder295 that the hate of the Esquimaux is no less intense, and that they also pursue the Indians, wherever they can, with their spears and arrows, like wild beasts.

“Year after year,” says Sir John Richardson, “sees the Esquimaux on the Polar coast of America occupied in a uniform circle of pursuits. When the rivers open in spring, they proceed to the rapids and falls to spear the salmon, which at that season come swimming stream upward. At the same time, or earlier in more southern localities, they hunt the reindeer, which drop their young on the coasts and islands while the snow is only partially melted. Where the open country affords the huntsman no opportunity of approaching his game unperceived, deep pits are dug in the snowy ravines, and superficially covered with snow-tablets. The wind soon effaces the traces of the human hand, and thus many reindeer are snared.”

In summer the reindeer are killed partly by driving them from islands or narrow necks of land into the sea, and then spearing them from their kayaks, and partly by shooting them from behind heaps of stones raised for the purpose of watching them, and imitating their peculiar bellow or grunt. Among the various artifices which they employ for this purpose, one of the most ingenious consists in two men walking directly from the deer they wish to kill, when the animal almost always follows them. As soon as they arrive at a large stone, one of the men hides behind it with his bow, while the other, continuing to walk on, soon leads the deer within range of his companion’s arrows.

The multitudes of swans, ducks, and geese resorting to the morasses of the northern coasts to breed, likewise aid in supplying the Esquimaux with food during their short but busy summer of two months. For their destruction a very ingenious instrument has been invented. Six or eight small balls made of walrus-tooth and pierced in the middle are separately attached to as many thongs of animal sinew, which are tied together at the opposite end. When cast into the air the diverging balls describe circles—like the spokes of a wheel—and woe to the unfortunate bird that comes within their reach.

On the coasts frequented by whales, the month of August is devoted to the pursuit of these animals; a successful chase insuring a comfortable winter to a whole community. Their capture requires an association of labor; hence along the coasts of the Polar Sea the Esquimaux unite their huts into villages, for whose site a bold point of coast is generally chosen, where the water is deep enough to float a whale.

When one of these huge creatures is seen lying on the water, a dozen kayaks or more cautiously paddle up astern of him, till a single canoe, preceding the rest, comes close to him on one quarter, so as to enable the men to drive the spear into the animal with all the force of both arms. This spear has a long line of thong and an inflated seal-skin attached to it. The stricken whale immediately dives; but when he re-appears after some time, all the canoes again paddle towards him, some warning being given by the seal-skin buoy floating on the surface. Each man being furnished like the first, they repeat the blow as often as they find an opportunity, till perhaps every line has been thus employed. After chasing him in this manner sometimes for half a day, he is at length so wearied by the resistance of the buoys and exhausted by loss of296 blood as to be obliged to rise more and more often to the surface, and is finally killed and towed ashore.

Though in many parts seals are caught at every season of the year, yet the great hunt takes place in spring, when they play in the open lanes near the coasts, or come out on the ice to bask in the sun. In spite of their wariness, they are no match for the Esquimaux, who have carefully studied all their habits from infancy. Sometimes the hunter approaches them by imitating their forms and motions so perfectly that the poor animals are not undeceived until one of them is struck with his lance; or else, by means of a white screen pushed forward on a sledge, the hunter comes within range and picks out the best-conditioned of the band. As the season draws near midsummer, the seals are more approachable; their eyes being so congested by the glare of the sun that they are sometimes nearly blind. In winter they are assaulted while working at their breathing-holes or when coming up for respiration.

If an Esquimaux has any reason to suppose that a seal is busy gnawing beneath the ice, he immediately attaches himself to the place, and seldom leaves it, even in the severest frost, till he has succeeded in killing the animal. For this purpose he first builds a snow-wall about four feet in height, to shelter him from the wind, and seating himself under the lee of it, deposits his spears, lines, and other implements upon several little forked sticks inserted into the snow, in order to prevent the smallest noise being made in moving them when wanted. But the most curious precaution consists in tying his own knees together with a thong so securely as to prevent any rustling of his clothes, which might otherwise alarm the animal. In this situation a man will sit quietly sometimes for hours together, attentively listening to any noise made by the seal, and sometimes using the “keep-kuttuk” in order to ascertain whether the animal is still at work below. This simple little instrument—which affords another striking proof of Esquimaux ingenuity—is merely a slender rod of bone (as delicate as a fine wire, that the seal may not see it), nicely rounded, and having a point at one end and a knob at the other. It is inserted into the ice, and the knob remaining above the surface, informs the fisherman by its motion whether the seal is employed in making his hole; if not, it remains undisturbed, and the attempt is given up in that place. When the hunter supposes the hole to be nearly completed, he cautiously lifts his spear (to which the line has been previously attached), and as soon as the blowing of the seal is distinctly heard—and the ice consequently very thin—he drives it into him with the force of both arms, and then cuts away............