People of the Deer (9 page)

Now I forgot the discomforts and despair of the long trek. At last I was amongst the People, in the heart of their own land. And it was evident that at least some of my forebodings had been groundless.

The tea pail boiled over and the tiny fire hissed feebly and died. Franz flung a handful of leaves into the pot and while they steeped I relaxed on the fragile reindeer mosses below the crest of the high ridge. For the moment I was free of the blindness which had been mine while we had been forced to struggle so hard against the unmerciful antagonism of the land. I was free to look out over the summer plains and for the first time to feel something of their beauty, and begin to understand the libel that is perpetrated by that name—the Barrenlands.

In winter perhaps the name has validity, and at all times of the year it has validity for those whose minds have hardened over visions of great forests or neatly cultivated fields. Even after two years in the land, I too have often found myself using the word, and meaning it.

Staring out over the limitless expanse I at first saw only a rolling world of faded brown, shot through with streaks and whorls of yellow greens, for when I tried to see it all, the individual colors merged into anonymity. It was a barren sight, and yet that desert face concealed a beauty that rose from a thousand sources, under the white sun. The deep chocolate bogs, laden with rich sepia dyes that stain the streams and pools, were bounded by wide swales of emerald ledges and tall grass. On the sweeping slopes that rose above these verdant meadows, the dark and glossy greens of dwarf birch scrub formed amorphous patches of somber vitality that were illuminated by broad spaces where the brilliance of ten million minute flowers drew to themselves small butterflies as gorgeous as any in the world. Even on the shattered ridges that are given over to the rocks, the creeping lichens suffused the gray stone with a wash of pastel tints ranging from scarlet through the spectrum into velvet rosettes of perfect black. There was no lack of color rising from living things—but it is only that the eye beholds too much in this land that has no roof and no containing walls. The colors flow together and are lost in distance that the eye cannot embrace. And so we only see the barrenness that follows when beauty flows too thinly into the sponge of an illimitable space.

These were the living colors that I saw upon the land, but there was much else to see as well. The lakes beneath us were quite uncountable, a meaningless jumble, looking like the shattered fragments of a great mirror. Between the shining shards of water were the Little Hills, low formless ridges whose slopes seen from the distance were gray-green with lichens, and whose crests were mottled with black rock. To the horizon on the north, the fading glint of lakelets caught the sun and glittered like dew upon brown grass. I knew that somewhere in that maze must lie the twisted course of Innuit Ku, River of Men, but for the life of me I could not distinguish it in the aquatic puzzle spread out below.

While I stared, Ohoto came over and squatted on his hams beside me, also looking out over the land—his land. I lowered the glasses. He grinned again, and, in the grand manner of a small townsman showing his city friend the sights, he began to point out the things of interest.

It did not matter that he could not speak my language, nor I his. Ohoto had the power of expression without words. There was a directness that made his gesticulations seem as clear as printed English. Now he stretched his arm toward a rather large lake that lay only a few miles to the north, and said,
“Ootek Kumanik!”

Looking with my glasses, I could see three little grayish pimples by the shores of Ootek's Lake and as I strained my eyes I could also see a fine thread of smoke. The tents of the People!

Rapidly Ohoto swung his arm to the north and pointed out the other lakes: Halo Kumanik, Kakumee Kumanik and, lastly, Tingmea Ku, the little Goose River that leads the lakes into the great current of Innuit Ku itself. But I could still make nothing of Innuit Ku. It seemed to be only a string of lakes, set amongst countless other lakes, and lacking all the continuity of a great river. Later, when I traveled on it, I was to marvel at its clear-cut shape and its directness; but seen from the distance it simply blended into the watery chaos and disappeared. It became part of the chameleon shape the Barrens show to all outsiders.

We drank our tea on the crest of the hill, then packed up and started down into the Ihalmiut land. The two Eskimos led the way, and their bounding agility over the rough rocks would have put a caribou to shame. We followed painfully a long way behind, and at last came to the low shores of Ootek's Lake.

Across the water we could clearly see the three tents, blending so well with the weathered gravel ridge behind that they might have grown from the hills. People and dogs were running aimlessly about amongst the tents and two new fires had been lighted, for the distant vision of the People had shown them that strangers were approaching, and it is mandatory that all strangers must be fed as soon as they arrive.

I was to learn later that the camps of the People were arranged in little groups of two or three tents on the shores of several lakes, for there is not enough willow scrub in the land to support the cooking fires of more than three families at any single spot. Here at Ootek Kumanik were the tents of Hekwaw, Ootek and Ohoto, and a few miles eastward on Halo Kumanik were the tree tents of Halo, Yaha and Miki. On Kakumee Kumanik there were three separate camps, Katelo and Alekahaw having their tents at one spot, Owliktuk and Onekwaw at a second, while the two tents of old Kakumee stood alone on the far side of the lake.

Thus, within a radius of three miles of each other, dwelt all the living People in a land which stretches for five hundred miles from south to north, and three hundred miles from east to west. It was the most ancient camp of the Ihalmiut, and it was also the last. And I was the first outlander to come upon it in all the centuries that tents had stood beside the Little Lakes. Yet if that thought filled me with excitement, the prospect of meeting a white man for the first time in their lives was filling the women and children from the tents ahead with equal excitement.

We rounded the lake and came up toward the camp. Here the foreshore sloping to the lake was not composed of rocks, but almost exclusively of bones. This was an ancient site and the piles of whitened caribou bones had mounted with the years until they had reached staggering proportions, for in the Barrens neither wood nor bone ever seems to rot or pass away. Dogs and the weather had broken up the larger pieces of bone and spread them evenly around until they formed a pavement all about the camp. But neither dogs nor weather had greatly affected the skulls, and these, with their huge antlers, formed a dead forest of white snags. Later on I counted over two hundred skulls within a hundred yards of an Ihalmiut tent, and these represented only a fraction of the total number of beasts whose remains lay in that place, for only the heads of kills made close at hand are ever brought to camp.

The three tents stood on a sloping ledge where they would catch whatever breeze might blow, for the breeze serves as the sole protection from the flies. Near each tent was a rough stone hearth and beside each fire a tremendous mound of willow twigs. These were, of course, quite green and the little fires were giving out great rolling coils of smoke. On the nearest fireplace was a huge iron pot looking ridiculously like the pots that cannibals seem to favor in our magazine cartoons.

As for the tents themselves, each was a cone about fifteen feet in diameter at its base and perhaps ten feet high. They were patchwork affairs composed of roughly scraped deer hides hung on a wooden frame. The hides had been stitched together while they were still green and, as they dried, the seams had pulled apart so that broad cracks outlined the position of each hide. Around the bottom of the tent a ring of boulders acted as an anchor. In that land you do not drive wooden pegs, even if you have them, for if the rocks did not prevent you, then the perpetual frost which often lies only a few inches below the surface of the ground would shatter the peg before it got a grip. The doorways faced the north, the direction from which the returning deer would come. The doors themselves were made of single hides, untanned, and dried to the hardness of wood.

In a way the Ihalmiut camp seemed only to accentuate the apparent desolation and emptiness of the arctic plains, and yet in the immediate vicinity of the tents was this little pocket of life in the center of the human vacuum that otherwise possessed the Barrens. We felt that we could breathe easily here, for we were no longer entirely alone, though I was still a little afraid of our reception.

It was a foolish fear. Hekwaw and Ohoto had run on ahead, shouting loudly as they went, but their warning was superfluous, for every man, woman and child was out about the fires, driven to a kind of ecstatic fury by the approach of strangers. One old woman, bent and beaten as if by the rocks of the land, frenziedly blew at the coals of a fire and heaped fresh twigs upon it until she smothered it completely. Ootek's wife, Howmik, was wrestling with the hindquarters of a deer, still dripping wet, which she had hauled out of the cold storage of the frigid lake for supper. Between snatching furtive glances at us and trying to cut off chunks of meat with her curved
ulu,
or woman's knife, she was in imminent danger of slicing off her fingers too. Her wooden hair ornaments swung and jumped like live things as she hurried, and her child, Kalak, who lived in the back of her parka, screamed with pleasure as he batted at her flying braids.

Even the dogs caught the excitement. Three pups simultaneously began to chase their tails while a pair of older dogs joined noisy battle. Children hustled among the dogs, kicking them lightly in their exposed bellies either to drive them off, or just to have something to do as we approached.

Franz and I stopped about a hundred yards short of the nearest tent and the three men, Ootek, Hekwaw and Ohoto, came out to welcome us formally into their homes. Ohoto and Hekwaw acted as if they were meeting us for the first time. They were very correct and very solemn as they gravely touched our fingertips. Then, with the formal greeting over, Ootek produced a stone pipe, loaded with
atamojak
—the dried leaves of a low, bushy plant which make an inadequate substitute for tobacco—and offered me a smoke. Together we walked to Ootek's tent while the women and children ceased their frenetic labors and watched us with unconcealed anticipation. We had been welcomed formally, so that it was now good manners to give way to curiosity, a thing one must not do until a visitor is settled, lest you embarrass him thereby.

All the children, women and old people from the entire camp crowded closely into Ootek's tent behind us, and collectively they produced an overpowering odor—which, however, was canceled out by the obvious good nature and good feeling which also emanated from these People.

Ootek bade us sit down on the sleeping platform, and while his wife was organizing the other women in preparation for a feast, I had a good look at this home of the Ihalmiut. The tent was not even vaguely weathertight. Great streaks of sky showed along the joints between the skins. Under those portions of the tent which were more or less whole were the belongings of the family, and these possessions were simple almost to the point of nonexistence.

Along one half of the enclosed circle was the low sleeping bench of willow twigs and lichens, covered with a haphazard mattress of tanned deer hides. This was the communal bed where the entire family slept together under a robe or two of softened skins. The rest of the floor space was given over to an amazing litter of half-eaten, ready-to-be-eaten and never-to-be-eaten bits of caribou. I saw an entire boiled head that had been pretty well chewed over, and a pile of leg bones which had been cracked for marrow and then boiled to extract the last precious drop of oil. On one side of the tent was a more or less complete brisket, with skin attached, of a deer that obviously should have been eaten long ago. Later I discovered this was a sort of snack bar where hungry visitors could slice off a bit of raw, but well-tenderized, meat while waiting for mealtime.

Around the inner surface of the tent, suspended from the dozen precious poles, were the odd bits of clothing not required for the moment. A few pairs of
kamik,
stiff and dry and half transparent, waited for their owners' feet. Nearby lay a couple of inner parkas, called
ateegie,
and some children's overalls that are one-piece garments of fawn hide. Pushed under one pole was a huge wad of dried sphagnum moss waiting the needs of the young child Kalak, for diapers are not used in the Barrens, where nature has provided a more efficient sponge.

And that about completed the furnishings of Ootek's tent, except for an ancient wooden chest which held the treasures of the family: the amulet belt of Ootek, the sewing kit of Howmik with its bone needles and hank of caribou sinew thread, half a dozen empty .44-40 brass cartridge cases which someday might ornament the bowls of stone pipes, a bow drill, a muskox horn comb and some children's toys.

While I was getting my bearing, Franz produced a plug of trade tobacco, which is nearly as vile as the Ihalmiut product, and it went the rounds. I noticed with great interest that Ootek, after filling his pipe with the precious stuff, passed it to his wife so that she might have the first smoke. In fact, she smoked most of it before returning it to Ootek. A small gesture, this, but one that I was to find was typical of the consideration and affection with which the Ihalmiut men treated their wives.

There was a tremendous amount of talk while we sat about the tent waiting for supper, most of it between Franz and the three Eskimo men, while the rest listened avidly and interjected comments and bursts of laughter. Franz translated a little of what was being said and the conversation was, as always, mostly about the deer. Where were they? Had we seen any fresh tracks? How long did we think it would be before
Tuktu
—the deer—came from the north? It was an engrossing subject and I wanted to be in on it, but only by begging Franz to tell me what was going on could I get the gist at all. I began to get bored after a while, feeling left out, for Franz was soon too interested to waste time translating for me. To occupy myself I got out my notebook and began idly to sketch a caribou. The talk rose and fell about me and with no conscious thought I sketched a pipe in my caribou's mouth and gave the beast a self-satisfied and human leer.