My Life with the Eskimo

[Guest guest]

Sleep almost completely eluded me last night, so I spent some time reading

the first three chapters of " My Life with the Eskimo " by Vilhjalmur

Stefansson and thought I'd share some interesting tidbits.

The book is about Stefansson's expedition to an area north of the Arctic

circle that began in 1908. He'd done a previous expedition a year or two

prior. But on this one, his mission was to locate Eskimo peoples who'd never

seen the white man before. It was said in the area that he initially

traveled that there were none. This was in the Yukon, I believe, south of

the arctic circle. There were trading posts (mostly the Hudson's Bay Company

trading posts) every 200 miles or so on the rivers heading north. Already in

1908 virtually ALL the indians/eskimos along these rivers were eating the

white man's food. The most popular items were candy, chocolates and sugar in

some areas. Tea was also popular and some of the native replaced their

caribou, moose and fish diet with canned veggies. Potatoes were also being

grown in the area and became a staple. VS was an ethnographer and was

determined to live AMONG the eskimo rather than nearby as an observer in

order to more fully understand their culture. And he wanted to find some

eskimo who were still living by their ancestral traditions. His companion, a

Dr. R. M. , who held a Ph.D. in philosophy and wrote books and

articles on birds and animals, had joined the expedition to study the flora

and fauna of the remote regions they intended to visit.

It's a *fascinating* book and my notes certainly don't do it justice. But

here are some random points of interest.

1. VS describes how TB and measles wiped out a large percent of the

Indian/Eskimo population, BUT he was referring to the ones along the trading

routes and they had by that time displaced much of their traditional diet

with the imported foods. Additionally, and very importantly, they had given

up their traditional style tent-like (tepee?) homes for permanent cabins and

apparently, they used to move their tents around every three weeks or so,

which, in conjunction with airflow, kept the tents clean. Whereas, when they

settled in the permanent homes, they didn't change their cleaning habits and

the cabins became filthy. One missionary noticed that it was those living in

the permanent homes getting sick from TB. He happened to be a former

heavyweight boxer, IIRC, and there was one family with an older girl that

had TB who insisted on living in their newly purchased cabin. The missionary

threw them out and boarded up the cabin so they couldn't get back in. He

told them to go live in their traditional style home. They went back to

their village and their traditional style home and returned next season. The

daughter had fully recovered. However, VS writes that many other families

were wiped out. One family member would get TB, then spread it to the rest

of the family in their cabin and they would all die. Then another family

would move into the unclean cabin, get sick and die, then another and

another...

2. During his previous expedition in 1906-07 only a handful of the

Indians/Eskimo had converted to Christianity even though some of the

missions had already been in the area for over a decade. But by 1908 they

had virtually ALL converted. ALL! Apparently, one community converted first,

and the others thought that if it was good enough for that group then it was

good enough for them, so they'd convert en masse. At one point VS describes

the Eskimo as living communism style, where everything is shared. I wonder

if this is just the way they viewed the world - that things should be done

collectively so that if one community converts to this new religion, then

they should all do it together? It was rather remarkable that they all

converted so suddenly in one year's time, even thought the missions had

already been there for years. Interestingly though, VS writes that the most

" primitive " groups in the world, assumedly including the Indians and

Eskimos, were the MOST religious. In fact the book starts out describing an

Eskimo taboo about the way a marrow bone was broken, and because it was

broken with the wrong instrument, the person's cousin got sick. He wrote

that you couldn't even turn your hand over without it having some religious

significance. There were taboos for a million different things.

3. One really funny thing happened when VS, Dr. , their entourage

and several other boats of converted Eskimos where in a hurry to get to

Herschel Island to meet up with the whaling ships that were passing through

and would be there only briefly. The whaling ships were carrying some

materials for VS's expedition, and the Eskimos wanted to meet up with them

to get their annual supplies. Interestingly, it had come to the point where

the imported foods were considered *necessities*, not luxuries. So when the

whaling ships didn't show with their sugar, flour, canned goods, etc, it was

thought that there would be large scale starvation! (LOL) In any case, VS

and the Eskimos were less than a day's journey to Herschel Island but there

was a head wind that prevented them from moving forward. So they anxiously

spent a couple of days at their camp waiting for the winds to shift.

Finally, on the third day, I think, the wind was favorable for their journey

so VS joyfully went about packing for the journey. BUT, when he told

everyone to get ready, they said that he had to set out first because it was

the Sabbath, and they were no longer heathen so knew the punishment for

breaking the Sabbath. They wanted *someone else* to break the Sabbath, as it

was considered " evil doing " . So they sat there from morning to nearly

sundown, with a perfect wind for sailing, anxious to get to their

destination, but no one willing to engage in evil-doing. Finally they

spotted a whaler passing by, whose captain they knew. They flagged him down,

and essentially VS asked him to have a meal with them, then they'd follow

him from there. Having the meal meant that the captain would become a part

of their party, and thus, if he set out first after the meal, HE would be

the evil-doing Sabbath breaker. He agreed to do this. So they finally were

able to sail to Herschel Island at the end of the day.

4. Dogs. Near the very beginning of VS's journey he observed that the

Eskimos' and Indians' treatment of their dogs was abominable. I don't know

if this was true of those natives living their traditional ways or not. The

only Indians and Eskimo he encountered early in the journey were already

greatly impacted by white culture. Although he said the white men's

treatment was only slightly better. In any case, they did not feed them all

summer and some of the dogs died and the remaining ones were mere skeletons.

When fall arrived they'd feed them to get them through the winter. As a

joke, it wasn't uncommon for someone to throw a hatchet or hammer at a dog,

taking out an eye or breaking a leg. As a result, the dogs always snarled

when humans approached. But VS had bought some dogs and found with proper

treatment that they warmed up to him just like his dogs back home. Many in

his entourage owned dogs. So when they first set out down river in their

boats, about 20 or so of these dogs followed along the banks of the river.

Often when the boats would swing to one side of the river, the dogs on the

opposite bank thought they were landing so they jumped in the river and swam

after them. There were ice drifts up to 20 ft, IIRC, all along the river,

and the dogs, weak with hunger, would tire after having to traverse these

drifts. Eventually, after several days into the journey, the numbers of dogs

dwindled as one by one they were unable to keep up. VS figured they probably

died of hunger.

That's all I have time for now. I'll post more later when I get a chance.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

“The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times.” --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------