People of the Deer (15 page)

But now, often enough we do not have any shells for the rifles we own, and that seems strange to me. When the white men first came to the edge of our land and told us of the virtues of guns, we believed them. When they told us to put by the ancient deer hunts of our People and turn to the killing of foxes instead, we did what they wished and for a time all was well, and we prospered. Like most of the People I became a fine hunter of foxes from the days of my youth, and I knew all the ways they might be caught. But I did not know much of the hunting of Tuktu as it was done in the days of my father, for I never needed to know while there were shells for my rifle.

Now, often enough, there are no shells for the rifles, and I cannot tell why, for I still trap many foxes as the white men wished me to do, yet when I take my catch to the wooden igloo in the South, there is no one to greet me but Hikik the squirrel. It was that way first on a winter many years before you came into the land, and I remember the winter well, for the traders told us they must have many foxes that year. They were so anxious that we gave up the great fall hunt of the deer and used all of our skill and our strength to trap foxes, believing we could trade them for food at the place of the white man and so we would have little need of deer meat. But when, in midwinter, we took our pelts south, the door of the wooden igloo stood open and the white man had gone, leaving only the smell which lingered for many long years. Only dead things lay in his camp. The boxes were empty and there was no food in the place and no shells for our guns, so we could not even hunt meat for ourselves.

Indeed I remember that winter, though I wish it would go from my memory. Epeetna, who was my first wife, died during that time and my two children died with her. Nor was I alone in hunger and sorrow for in the camps of the People only one out of five lived to see spring.

Some of those who survived tried to return to the old way of living given us by Tuktu the deer, but it was found that we did not have the old skills we needed. Some hoped and believed the white man would return and so, stubbornly, clung to their fox traps. These are gone. Only those remained who tried to return to the deer, and few of these are still alive.

Then five winters after the first white man went away, another came in his place. Once again we threw away the pursuit of the deer, for we felt that this time the white man would surely remain. Once more we had shells for our guns, and all things seemed well, yet last winter the white man again left the land, and again we had nothing to eat but the skins of the foxes we had trapped for the trade.

Why is it you white men should come for a time, stay for a time, and then suddenly vanish when we are most in need of your help? Why is it? Why can we not take our fox pelts to the trader and have shells for our guns in return, for this is what the trader taught us to do? This mystery I cannot understand...

Well, because we did not have shells, we did not have enough meat in the camps during the winter. You have already heard of the winter I speak of, and of the death of the parents of Kunee and Anoteelik by the shores of Ootek's Lake. But you have not yet heard how it went with those of us who fled toward the east, where we had heard a rumor of the presence of a new trader.

There were four hunters living on the shores of Ootek's Lake and their families were as I shall tell you. There was Angleyalak, his wife, his old mother, and his children Pama, Kunee and Anoteelik. There was Ootek, and Howmik his wife, and a child in her womb and another in her
amaut.
There was Owliktuk, his wife and his mother and his children. There was myself, and Nanuk, my wife, my old father called Elaitutna, and the children Aljut and Elaitutna, who were the sons of my wife by a man who is dead.

In the late months of the winter I speak of, Ootek and Angleyalak took all the dogs we four families still had and traveled south to the camp of Franz to tell him of our need, which was great. While they were gone I went out alone over the snow-covered land to seek out the caches of deer meat Franz had made as bait for his fox traps in the fall. I found only one cache, for the snow had hidden the rest. And the one I found had also been found by Kakwik the wolverine, who had left only bones and chewed skin for me.

When I came in empty-handed from my trip over the Barrens, I found Ootek and Angleyalak had returned from the South. They told us Franz had little food to give to the People, for his own caches were empty. Then I knew a very great fear, for the deer could not come again to our land until long weeks had passed.

Although we did not have hope, still while we had dogs to pull our long sleds, we went out to hunt on the sterile slopes of the snow. But when the dogs began to die from their hunger, we could go no more to the plains. That did not matter, for there was nothing to hunt, and had there been, we had no shells for our guns.

One night we heard that the old woman, the mother of Angleyalak, had gone from her igloo and had not returned in the morning. It was our duty to mourn. My wife went to the igloo of Angleyalak and when she returned she told me the wife of that man was sick nearly to death, with the evil which lies in the lungs.

The sickness of death was not far from us all. In our igloo, the boy Elaitutna sat as still as his grandfather, and neither spoke when I came in, nor went from the igloo. Young Aljut still had life enough to help me dig under the snow for old bones that might have some strength left upon them.

Nanuk had grown desperate for the lives of her children and on a day she whispered to me that we must kill the old man, my father, and so have food for the starving bellies of ourselves and the children. I could not bring myself to agree to her plan, for Elaitutna had been a good hunter all the days of his life and he had given freely of his strength and his years to me and my family in the days that were gone. But Nanuk was desperate as only a woman can be, and so she spoke directly into the ears of the old man, who sat on a far part of the high sleeping ledge, his wrinkled eyes closed. Elaitutna did not open his eyes as she spoke, and for a long time it seemed he had not heard the urgent voice of my wife. Then at last he slowly nodded his head and we knew he was willing that we should take what little of life remained in his heart.

I would not help, and when Nanuk got the rawhide and tried to tie the noose in its end, her fingers shook so that she could not tie the knot. At last she flung the cord from her and threw herself, weeping, on the ledge between her two children. So Elaitutna lived a while longer.

It was more than three weeks since we had eaten meat, and we lived only on scraps of old bones and on the dog and human excreta found near the camps. At last Ootek and Owliktuk came to my igloo and Ootek told us that in the summer he had heard of a white man who was said to have built a log igloo on a lake many days to the east of our camp. He and Owliktuk had decided to abandon their igloos, and journey east out of the land of the Little Hills, to seek the white man. I agreed to go with them for it was certain death to remain. But when we asked Angleyalak to come with us, he refused, saying his woman was dying and he would not leave her to die by herself.

There were three living dogs in our igloos and these we killed and ate, even to their guts and their skin; and so we had enough strength to start out on our journey.

The bright sun brought the first warmth of spring on the day we set out. We walked slowly and the men, being strongest, carried a few skins to make shelters, and they also carried the children. The women and old ones carried only themselves—and that was enough.

When we came to Halo Lake we found only the families of Halo, Miki and Yaha. Hekwaw and Katelo had gone with their surviving families, leaving behind in their igloos the bodies of their wives, Eepuk and Oquinuk. Hekwaw and Katelo had fled out into the plains, hoping to reach a far valley where they believed some deer might have wintered. But no one at Halo Lake ever expected to see any of these people again in his life—though before spring they returned, having found and killed a few deer.

In this place we heard news of the camps on Kakumee Lake, and we heard that Kakumee and all of his people were living and had enough meat to eat. Yet we knew there was no use traveling there to ask him for food, for being an evil man he would have turned us away and set devils against us.

We spoke to the three families who remained by Halo Kumanik of our plans to go eastward for help, and these people decided to join us, for they too lived with the dead and with the presence of death and they had but little hope for their lives.

It was a good thing for us that they came, for Miki owned a spit-rifle [a .22] whose bullets are as small as a bee and can kill ptarmigan or hares, though they can seldom kill deer. Miki also had some of the little bullets, a present from Franz in the early days of the winter.

We traveled for two days before we were out of sight of the hills of our land, a distance a strong man could have walked in half a day. But we had no strength, and we had to stop every few feet while the women and old people rested their thin bodies on hummocks of snow, and tried not to complain of the dull pain in their bellies.

On the fourth day we came to the edge of the forests and here by good luck we found the corpse of a deer the wolves had killed and half eaten. Enough still remained for us, who were more hungry than wolves. We cracked all the bones and in a tin pot that Yaha had brought we made a good soup, for now we were in a land where the little trees are and there was wood to burn.

We stayed for two days in that place, until the deer that Amow the wolf had given to us was gone to the last shred of sinew which had clung to the skull. Our strength was a little renewed and we pushed on into the thin forests for another three days before we knew that we could not go any further. There was no food where we halted, not even a ptarmigan to be seen, but nevertheless we put up our shelters, for at least we had wood and we could keep warm by the fires. We melted snow and drank great quantities of warm water to still the agony of the teeth that gnawed at our bellies.

On the second day at that camp, we had luck once again. Ootek had borrowed the spit-rifle of Miki and gone hunting alone, for Miki did not have the strength to walk in the deep snow of the forests. Ootek came suddenly on a hare, and by falling on his knees in the snow he managed to aim, and to kill the hare as it watched him from the edge of the woods.

Now when he brought the hare into camp, I thought the women would be frantic to eat it, for the women had much reason to eat. Ootek's wife carried only dry breasts to feed her young child and she also carried a new child who starved in her womb. My own wife should have snatched at the hare to give life to Elaitutna and Aljut, and the others of the women should have fought for the meat.

But this did not happen. The women decided that the three men whose bodies had suffered the least damage from famine alone should eat of the hare, in order that its flesh would enable these men to travel on to the trader and bring his help back to all the others of our party who could push on no further.

So we took the hare into the bush, Ootek, Owliktuk and I, where the smell of the cooking could not reach the noses of those who had given up their share of the food. Though it was a terrible torture to wait while it cooked, we had to cook the meat, for our bellies would have retched it up had we eaten it raw. I wolfed down my portion and did not let myself think of the children who lay in the shelter at the camp. Then with the sharp pangs of food in our stomachs, we three set out down the course of a small frozen river to find the place of the trader.

It was a two-day march, though we traveled fast, before we came to the shores of a lake, and across it we saw the walls of a log igloo which could only belong to a white man. It was the trader. Surely it was a great thing that we had found him in all of the land there was to search. We hurried over the lake, and the white man's dogs heard us and howled as we came near.

We knew then that the famine was done—done with and gone. Already I found myself beginning to forget what had happened in the camps of the People under the Little Hills. There was no longer any need for the strength which does not come from the muscles but from the spirit. My legs gave way beneath me and I fell in the snow, yet I did not care for I knew we were safe.

The trader, a short little man, came out of his igloo and looked at us as we sat and lay in the snow. We laughed with embarrassment when he saw us, for we were ashamed of our weakness, and we were ashamed that we could not speak his language.

We got to our feet and stood there not sure what we should do. At last Ootek pointed to the hollows that lay on his cheeks, and showed how his ribs stuck out from his belly. I lay down again in the snow and closed my eyes like a dead man so that the
Kabluna
—the white man—would know how it was at the camps.

And the trader—did not understand!

He went to his cabin and brought back a fox pelt, holding it up with one hand, and stretching the other hand out to us. Then a great sickness filled me, for we had no fox pelts to trade. Starving men cannot trap fox pelts and I saw that if pelts were demanded there could be no help for the People.

When we showed him we had no foxes, the white man suddenly grew very angry and I thought that perhaps he had not understood why we came. Again and again we tried to show what our need was, and again and again we lifted our parkas so he could see the bones of our bodies. But something was wrong, and he did not understand.

As I think back on it now I know the trader could not have understood what we tried so hard to tell him, for no man who has food will turn away one who is hungry. We knew this man had food, for his dogs were fat and well fed, and we would have been glad for some of that dog food, if he had only not misunderstood what we said.

Perhaps he was afraid of us three, for Ootek still carried the rifle of Miki, and perhaps this strange white man was afraid. I know he went back to his cabin and when he came to the door he had a deer rifle in his right hand, and in his left hand a sack of flour, but so small a sack that it could have been carried by a child. He flung us the flour and slammed the door shut—and we never saw him again.