Guest of Blonde Eskimos

1916

Preacher Dwells With Newly-found Arctic People.

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Canada. — The tribe of blonde Eskimos which Harry V. Radford of New York, the murdered explorer, reported he had found on Coronation Bluff, far in the Arctic zone, have been visited again by a white man. In a letter received this week from the Rev. H. Girling of Emmanuel College by the Rev. Dr. Carpenter, principal of the college, the missionary announced he reached the fair dwellers of the Arctic on Oct. 10, 1915, and remained with them some time. He asserts that he is the first white man to dwell among the newly-found people.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.

Dwellings of Eskimos

1901

It is a mistake to suppose that the Eskimos of Greenland live in huts made of ice or snow, even though some of the writers of geographies do say so. The huts in which they pass the winter are rudely conical in shape, a little more than five feet high, made of stone, with the cracks and spaces filled with earth and the whole covered with turf or sod.

A passageway about six feet long and less than three feet square leads to the interior, and there is a small window in the hut directly over the passageway. The hut, which is called an igloo, contains only one room and has built around its sides a rude platform or bench of stone.

When summer arrives, the Eskimos abandon their igloos and dwell in skin tents, called tupics. Huts made of ice and stone are never used except temporarily, as, for example, when they are traveling long distances during the winter or when for some reason they do not return to their winter settlements.

Crack of the Whip

1902

It is Rapidly Becoming a Sound of the Past

"That crabbed old German, Schopenhauer, who said the crack of the whip was like a drink from the bad place, would have found but little to complain of if he had postponed his passing for a while," said a thoughtful man, "for the whip is getting to be an awfully scarce article in this age. I suppose the whip will finally pass out of existence altogether unless it is put to a new use. Of course, the small riding whip, the kind which jockeys use in urging the horses they ride, will be used as long as horseflesh is used, either in the realm of sport or in the more serious affairs of life. But the kind of whip the old German had in mind was of a larger, longer and older type, the kind the ox-driver uses even now in some of the more remote sections of the world. Whips of this kind generally swing easily on the end of a long handle.

"Frequently the handle is eight or ten feet long and is made of hickory or some wood that is supple enough to bend in the green state. The whip itself, which is generally a four and six-plat rawhide, is from ten to fifteen feet in length, with a seagrass cracker on the end, tightly twisted and knotted at spaces an inch apart. It is this article that makes the noise of which the old German pessimist complained, and a whip of this kind in the hand of an expert can be popped until it sounds like the crack of doom. In a quiet forest where timbermen carry on their work this noise is even fiercer than it is in the cities. Teamsters in cities still use the old whip to some extent, but it is gradually going out, and the sharp crack of the seagrass is rarely heard. Speaking of whips, I am reminded of the marvelous accuracy some men acquire in the use of whips. I suppose the Esquimau has reached a higher standard of proficiency in this respect than any other class of men. I have seen boys of this race pop a silver half-dime at a distance of twenty feet every time they swung a whip. They can simply hit anything they want to hit as long as it is within the reach of the whip. But here in the South I have witnessed some rather notable performances in this respect. Up in Arkansas I have seen ox-cart drivers crack off a snake's head at a distance of twenty feet, and they could do it whenever it pleased them to do it. But these old whips are going out, and I suppose when electricity comes into more general use the crack of the whip will be an unknown sound." — New Orleans Times-Democrat.

Arctic Adventure to Lure Chicagoan

1915

Millionaire Sportsman Announces He Will Sail From Seattle, Wash., for Far North in April

John Borden, a Chicago sportsman and millionaire, will embark next spring on his third adventure. He went whaling to Bering Sea two years ago. He had his taste of war last summer on the French fighting front in Flanders. Next spring he will cease to be an amateur adventurer and become a professional whaler and fur trader.

Capt. L. L. Lane, a veteran of the Arctic, whaler, trader, and miner, will be his partner in the undertaking.

"We shall buy or build a schooner," said Mr. Borden, "and sail from Seattle, Wash., in April loaded with merchandise for trade among the Eskimos. Capt. Lane will be in charge of the expedition.

"I shall drop off somewhere up north — perhaps at Point Barrow — and return by steamer. Capt. Lane will continue the expedition until the ice drives him out in the fall. He expects, with good luck, to bring back a cargo worth a quarter of a million in United States markets."

Capt. Lane is fresh from the Arctic. He left Herschel island on Sept. 30 and traveled 1,100 miles by dog sled to Cordova. There he took a steamer for Seattle, where he arrived November 21. He brought the latest tidings from Stefansson, who has been in the Arctic two years at the head of the Canadian Government's exploring expedition.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Dec. 18, 1915.

Eskimo Bill of Fare

1905

Salmon the "Staff of Life" of the People in Far North

You are indebted to recently returned explorers from Eskimo land north of Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, for information in this article.

A whole winter spent near the villages of these curious people afforded an intimacy in regard to their regular bill of fare which in some respects is new to us. It is hardly consistent with the truth, however, to mention "table fare" in this connection, since tables there are none. Each person eats from his hands, nor are finger bowls to be mentioned, for use either before or after meals. There are circumstances incident to meal time in an Eskimo igloo which, to a refined stranger, are surprising. The process of mastication is carried on with faithful observance to gastric demands, and in utter oblivion to the presence of others than the performer. The teeth of the men and children are good, while those of the women are notably poor. This last is on account of the constant chewing of skins and sinew which is necessary for the proper softness of clothing. "The chewing mill" must operate all day long, and all the long years of an Eskimo woman's life.

Salmon is the staff of life to the Eskimo. In the absence of cereals of any sort, it is corn and wheat. During the three or four months of summer time the fish are caught in nets and harvested. Long lines of rawhide are stretched between trees or poles, upon which the fish are hung to cure. When dried, this harvest is placed on a high scaffold by the side of the igloo, or native house, out of reach of dogs and other animals. This scaffold, always to be seen with its accompanying igloo, is the cellar, pantry, kitchen cupboard and preserve closet of the family. It is also the refrigerator. Perfectly cured salmon is not a food to be despised by anyone. The natives strip off a piece, as salted codfish is stripped by any Yankee, and hold it over the lamp or fire. When the skin begins to crack and writhe, the fish is "done." This heating liberates the oil and improves the taste. It is then bitten off in small pieces and chewed for a long time.

When Food Supply Is Short

The Eskimo are sometimes neglectful in harvest, and their supply of food runs short. They then resort to decayed fish, which has died on the river banks after spawning in the fall. During the winter they go to these wholesale slaughter houses and sled the provisions back to their igloos. This food, eaten often with rancid seal oil, so infests with its offensive odors the persons and houses and vicinities of these people that association with them at this season is almost impossible.

Little cooking is ever done, much of the flesh of beast or bird being taken raw. When on a journey up or down the water's edge, it is no great trouble to row ashore, draw the kayak up on the beach, invert it for a roof, and under its cover prepare dinner or supper.

One of the white men whom I know spent a night in a native igloo and was waited upon by the "lady of the house" in true hospitable fashion. After the dried salmon had been divided and handed around among a half dozen Eskimo and the one white man stranger, this "lady of the house" dropped down on her knees, crawled through the low, long entrance to the igloo, and returned with a birch-bark basket. Glancing at the stranger with an assurance that "the best on the scaffold was at his pleasure," she proceeded to break in pieces the contents of the basket. It was frozen huckleberries in chunks, for even seal oil cannot resist a temperature of 70 below. She reached into a corner and brought out a true white man's frying pan, which she put over the fire and into it dropped the chunks of preserves. As it melted, she stirred the mass with her fingers, now and then putting them, dripping with the purple oily juice, into her month, and sucking them with a peculiar sound of satisfaction, again passing looks of assurance to the stranger for whom she was taking all this trouble. When the mass was melted she poured it into a dirty can and passed it to her guest. Not one of the family was offered so much as a mouthful. It was a "company dainty."

Every sort of bird is trapped or shot by the native Eskimo. Little birds, like the chickadees and red poles, are given to the grandparents of the family. Whether this is on account of superstition, or the idea that these little things are really the proper diet of old age, no one knows. It may be simple courtesy. The main supply of bird food is obtained from the flocks of ptarmigan, a bird closely allied to the prairie chicken of the Western states. These birds do not fly, but walk long distances. They may be easily tracked after a light snow. They subsist, during the winter, on willow buds along the ravines and watercourses. The natives lay snares for them in the same way in which they catch the fish under the ice.

Snaring the Ptarmigan

Branches are woven together and laid along the margin of a willow thicket, here and there being left an opening about which a noose is placed. The ptarmigan have a method of pushing their way through any obstruction, and so, when they come to these little openings apparently among the willows, they push, and are caught in the nooses. One reason why these birds do not fly is from the fact that they are so gorged by their food that they are too heavy. They eat as many as they can hold of the willow buds, which expand in the crop to immense dimensions, giving an almost deformed appearance to the bird. Only the tiny center of the bud is edible, the husks being of no service, and so large quantities must be taken to make a square meal. These soften by reason of the snow taken with them melting in the crop of the bird.

Another bird which the native Eskimo eats is the spruce grouse. It subsists upon the spruce buds and the flesh is highly flavored with this, to the white man, objectionable feature. During the winter prospectors drink freely of spruce tea, believing it to be preventive of scurvy, though they could be induced to partake of spruce grouse only with difficulty, it may be that the bird does possess some remediable agency to the natives. Hawks and owls are eaten with the rest of the birds. One exception, however, exists in favor of the Alaskan jay, which may not be so much as touched by the natives. These birds are never hunted, and are so fearless that they would come in at the door of the white man's cabin, and help themselves to anything in the line of cheese or pie or cake. One daring and curious fellow went so far as to snatch a piece of laundry soap and carry it away to his home in the pines. Whether this was for common family use or for food no one knew; probably the latter, since the native Eskimo are said to eat soap when they can obtain it. Little marvel when they are so fond of decayed fish and rancid seal oil.

Birds that are caught are simply stripped of their feathers before being eaten, unless the skin is needed for wearing apparel, when it is stripped off and hung away to dry before being chewed by the women tanners.

The greatest delicacy of any bird is the eye. This is always given to the babies or little children of the family. It is plucked out and eaten at once with great relish, while the older members look on with pleasure, very much as civilized parents look on when their children partake of gumdrops or gooseberries.

How Indians Find Way Through Woods

1920

Stefansson Disputes Old Belief in Sixth Sense

The apparently marvelous way in which Indians, Eskimos and other primitive people make their way through forests, snow-covered areas or other regions that have little to indicate direction to white newcomers, has led to a widespread belief that they possess a mysterious sixth sense of direction.

Stefansson, the Arctic traveler, who has lived much with Eskimos, is very skeptical about the existence of any superiority of sense of direction among primitive peoples of any kind, and gives strong evidence from personal experience that Eskimos have no such superiority.

The ability of Indians and others to find their way he attributes solely to their familiarity with the country through which they are passing. They note many things that they have seen before and that have no significance to the stranger in their land.

White men can and do acquire the same ability to find their way when they have learned to know the country. When the land is equally strange to the white man and the Indian or the Eskimo, the white man, because of his better developed reasoning power, is more likely to have a correct line of direction than the Eskimo.

Tannaumirk Killed a Deer

Stefansson tells how, at a time when his little party was in great need of food, one of his Eskimos, Tannaumirk, came home late at night and caused great rejoicing by relating his success in killing a deer which he had started to pursue early in the morning. He was the hero of the hour and recounted his adventures in great detail.

When he finished his story Stefansson asked him whether it was a long way to the spot where the meat lay and whether he had cached it safely. The Eskimo's answer was that he had covered the meat with snow and set traps by it, and that the place was a long way off. Stefansson volunteered to go with him the next morning, but Tannaumirk said this would not be necessary; if he were to start early in the morning he would, without assistance, be able to get the meat home by night.

Bright and early the next day he was off with sled and dogs, but it had long been pitch dark when he returned. In answer to questions he said that he had been hurried all the time; that he had hastily loaded the meat on the sled, had set two additional traps by the deer killed, making four altogether, and had come right back home.

Covered 20 Miles Making Trip

The next day about noon Tannaumirk had gone off somewhere to set fox traps. Stefansson and his companion, Dr. Anderson, heard some of their dogs howling and whining behind a ridge about half a mile away from the camp. The sounds indicated that the dogs had been caught in the traps. As the weather was about 40 degrees below zero, there was danger that the dogs' paws, if pinched in the traps, would freeze quickly and render the dogs valueless for service. Stefansson and Anderson hastened therefore to the rescue.

They found four of the dogs, as they expected, with their feet caught in traps. But what greatly surprised them was to find these traps around the deer kill, which Tannaumirk had taken so many hours to reach in his trips hack and forth. The explanation was that Tannaumirk, in starting after the deer, had followed it as it took a circuitous course of more than ten miles.

After shooting the deer he had followed the trail over which he had come and in going after its meat he had once more made the circuitous trip, covering more than twenty miles in a round trip to a spot that was less than half a mile away.

The Garden of Eden

1911

Joking Around with the News

Now we are told that the Garden of Eden was located at the North Pole. Possibly we shall learn also that Adam and Eve were Eskimos and ate of the forbidden blubber instead of the forbidden fruit.

A Boston young woman has been visiting dentists' offices and stealing money and other valuables from the wraps of the patients in the torture chamber. Here's another excuse for not going to the dentist when you ought to.

The New York doctor who asserts that overripe eggs are as nutritious as the fresh kind will not meet with violent objections if he tries to get a monopoly of eating the ancient vintage.

The hobble skirt and high trolley car steps have clashed in Trenton. The steps may have the logic of the situation, but the hobble skirt has the eternal feminine end of the discussion, and all human experience is a unit on what happens when logic attempts to tackle the eternal feminine.

One of the worst things under the sun is a shady reputation.

The following testimonial was given to a servant girl: "This is to certify that the bearer has been in my service one year less 11 months. During this time I found her to be diligent at the back door, temperate at her work, prompt at excuses, amiable toward young men, faithful to her sweethearts, and honest when everything was safe under lock and key."

What Alaskan Indians Smoke

1910

Seattle, Wash. — How would you enjoy a pipeful of wood shavings saturated with a strong solution of pepper as an after dinner smoke? This is the strange substitute used for tobacco by Indians along the Alaska coast. Their mouths are often made raw by the practice, and the eyesight of many is affected by the strong fumes.

It is no uncommon practice among farmers to smoke the leaves of the tomato and potato plants. While both these plants contain a narcotic poison, the smoking of leaves in moderation is harmless. Excessive use, though, produces a heavy stupor, from which the smoker awakes with a terrific headache and a feeling of utter exhaustion. Insanity and suicide have often been caused by the immoderate use of these two weeds. Rhubarb, beet and even garden sage leaves are all smoked by farmers, and are perhaps the least harmful of substitutes for tobacco.


Turtle Asphyxiates Chicks

South Norwalk, Conn. — Funeral services for 100 chickens and three pigs were conducted behind the barn of Herman Jacobs and a snapping turtle that endeavored to qualify as a gas meter inspector is being fattened for slaughter as the result.

Jacobs caught the turtle some time ago and tied it to a stake in the back yard. The turtle broke loose and made for the gas meter in the barn. In his investigations he bit off the gas pipe close to the meter and the chickens and pigs were asphyxiated. Two farmhands who endeavored to rescue the unfortunates were made ill by the fumes.

She's Worth $1,000 a Pound

1909

She's Worth $1,000 a Lb.

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Because she was jilted and lost twenty-five pounds weight in consequence, Miss Luella Lowstetter wants $25,000 damages — $1,000 for each pound lost. She is a school teacher of the fashionable suburb of Sheraden. Her suit is against Prof. Earl W. Reed, principal of the school. Miss Lowstetter asserts that Professor Reed jilted her in a most humiliating fashion after she had agreed to marry him and had got her trousseau ready. She and her attorney said in court today that she lost at least twenty five pounds owing to worry over her jilting, and that the wedding clothes would not fit her now.


Eskimo Is a Cannibal

ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland — Tragedy in the far North formed the burden of the news brought to port by the Hudson Bay Company's steamship Adventure, which arrived with the crew of the lost Dundee whaler Paradox. The crew told of an Eskimo, who driven to cannibalism by starvation, ate his child and after shooting several neighbors who attempted summary punishment, fled into the trackless wilderness of ice.


Tramp Heir to $25,000

William Close, who ran away from his Baltimore home when he was 16 years old, was found — a typical tramp — in a lodging house in Chicago Thursday night and informed that he had fallen heir to a fortune of $25,000 left him by his father. The next morning he started for Baltimore with Attorney J. D. Goldboro of that city, who has been searching for the prodigal for two years. Close, attired in a new suit of clothes, bathed and barbered, ascribed all his troubles to drink and declared he was determined to reform.

Those Ravenous Eskimos

1916

They Eat and Digest Food That Would Kill an Ordinary Man

We bear much of American dyspepsia, but there is one native race of America that is certainly not troubled in this respect. The Eskimo defies all the laws of hygiene and thrives. He eats until he is satisfied, but is said never to be satisfied while a shred of his feast remains unconsumed. His capacity is limited by the supply and by that only.

The Eskimo cannot make any mistake about the manner of cooking his food, since, as a rule, he does not cook it. Nor, so far as the blubber or fat of the arctic annual is concerned, is the Eskimo concerned about his manner of eating it. Indeed, he may be said not to eat it at all. He cuts it into long strips an inch wide and an inch thick and then lowers the strip down his throat as one might lower a rope into a well.

Despite all this the Eskimo does not suffer from indigestion. He can make a good meal off the flesh and skin of the walrus, provision so hard and gritty that in cutting up the animal the knife must be continually sharpened. The teeth of a little Eskimo child will, it is said by those in a position to know, meet in a bit of walrus skin as the teeth of an American child would meet in the flesh of an apple, although the hide of the walrus is from a half an inch to an inch in thickness and bears considerable resemblance to the hide of an elephant. The Eskimo child will bite it and digest it and never know what dyspepsia means. — Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Comment: I don't know, do you suppose this article is true? The part about lowering the meat down their throat like lowering a rope down a well. After all, if the children have such good biting abilities, they're obviously adept at using their teeth. So why would the adults simply partake of big strips of meat by lowering it down their throats?