Chapter 11 ~ An Eskimo Life

George Koneak was born in a snow house at Cape Hopes Advance where his father was a trapper and a seal hunter in the years before the Canadian government introduced child allowances. The family had known great hunger and one winter they had almost starved to death, as did some of their neighbours, when the Eskimos had only a trader to turn to in their times of need.

The following story is in George’s own words as he told it to me for my tape recorder.

“In 1940, when I was nine years old, as far as I could remember the Eskimo people had a tough time in the winter, in the cold weather.”

“That year, my father was not doing too good on foxes hunting, and trapping. It was a very poor year. Also it was very, very difficult to hunt seals. There was packed ice and it was rough and you couldn’t get to the open water, I think the east wind lasted more than a month and never changed.”

“My father had the dog food cached from summer for the winter. He used up most of it and had one more cache. That was the last one he had left, and we went to pick it up. Somebody else tried to swipe it…and takes half of it and we didn’t know who took my father’s dog food. There was only a very small amount left over…so he tried to stretch it, and each day the dogs eat less and less.”

“Ourselves, we could not eat very much. There’s no fish. No seals. No foxes nor anything so we can get some food at the stores.”

“There’s only Hudson’s Bay stores available, even right now, still. We couldn’t get anything from the Hudson’s Bay Company unless we got something to trade.”

“There was no ration like today … No relief ration from the government and it was very hard. There was a lot of people died that time.”

“During the winter that year, our dogs were very hungry and they’re very wild. Every time my father plans going for seal hunting, he couldn’t go out through the door. Instead of going through the door, he’s going out through the side. He opened the side (of the snow house) and he’s got out that way.”

“He had seven dogs, big dogs too, and they’ve been very, very hungry. They’ve been fighting once in a while and trying to kill each other, they were so hungry.”

“We had one pup at that time. That pup stayed in the house. My mother asked me one morning how I am feeling if she cooks little pup for dinner. I like that little pup, which is my little dog. So, I told my mammy I don’t want to eat the dog, no matter how I am starving. We still eat some skins. Boiled skins. That’s the only thing we can get. Also, we can eat the dog lashes, lines and harness, but we haven’t touched anything of those yet.”

“One morning, my mother asked me (again) if I could eat the little pup. She was going to kill it and cut it up and cook it and boil it. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to eat it.’ Even if she killed it I wouldn’t eat it. I told her, ‘No matter if I’m going to die, I won’t eat the dog,’”

“Finally she didn’t kill that little pup,”

“After a little while … my father tried to make a last trip with his (dog) team. He went to the other place, the village to see his brother. While he was driving along on the ice, when he went along on the ice, his dogs smelled something … then all of a sudden, the dogs stopped and were sniffing around on the ice. While the dogs were sniffing, my father takes his snowknife and went along to the dogs and he tried to poke the knife into the snow. He found about two feet of snow on top of the ice and he couldn’t see anything, but there must have been something there for the dogs were sniffing around and trying digging.”

“Then he finally found it … it was a great big whale. Not a white whale, but a Greenland whale or whatever you call it. Then he started trying to eat, and as soon as a piece is cut he eats it.”

“It must have been drifting round in the summer and got caught up in the ice in freeze-up, and then got stuck. That’s why he found the whale, the dead whale. And it was a big one. He can’t get the whole lot of it out. There was a whole lot in the water. You could see about three quarters of the whale. He could get that much and so he saved the dogs and also himself.”

“He gave the meat to the dogs and the dogs couldn’t walk any more after that. They were fed so well. For a long time they couldn’t get up and walk around or anything, they were so weak.”

“The next morning, he started out again. Only four dogs could walk after they’ve been fed. The other dogs have been so far gone, that after a while they died.”

“He made it to the camp and then met his older brother, he had a few seals the same day my father found the whale. From then on they started catching seals more often and that’s how we’re alive.”

George Koneak’s youth was similar to that of most Eastern Arctic Eskimos. Fortunately, not all the traders at remote camps were alike and some of Canada’s most northerly citizens owed their lives to the kindness of individual traders who would never knowingly let their trappers, basis of the fur trade, starve to death.

Childhood is happy among Eskimo people, but youth is short because the serious business of hunting for food is soon thrust upon Eskimo boys. Within two years of George’s brush with death by starvation, he went hunting with his uncle for polar bears. And he told the story this way:

“One time when I was twelve years old, the first trip I ever made with my uncle was to Akpotak Island in the middle of Ungava Bay. We went out to Akpotak Island by Peterhead (boat).”

“One day, while we were at Akpotak, my uncle and myself went a long walk to hunt polar bear up the mountains. While we walked along, my uncle told me he saw something strange up on the snowbank.”

“He saw a dark spot on the middle of the snow bank and he told me he thinks it is a polar bear house. So, we walked along up towards the snowbank.”

“That snowbank was so (such) a steep slope, it was too slippery… and we walk along very slowly. Sometimes we slide down.”

“When we got close to the hole, my uncle slows down and gives me time to get near. When we get up to the front of the doorway, he told me he thinks something is in it. He can tell (by) what he feels. The air is warmer than outside.”

“He asked me if I would come along when we were going inside. So I’m very scared. I never do this before. And I was so young, I don’t know anything about the polar bear hunting.”

“So he wants me to follow him right inside. First thing, we slide in. Then we stopped at the flat bottom, a sort of floor. We can’t see anything ahead of that hole. It was zig zagging and not a straight hole. We had a flashlight and he kind of shined it ahead and still we can’t see anything.”

“Also, when I turned round, I couldn’t find the hole (way out) because the hole was not straight. We gradually went inside and it seemed to be getting warmer and warmer. The air was very warm.”

“Finally, he told me he saw something right down at the bottom of the hole. He saw the two eyes shining when he flashed at him. He told me to keep following him. I kept following him. I am so very shake I could hardly stand. I’m holding his parka behind him. I don’t even think about my rifle, though I’m still holding it somehow.”

“He told me to keep ready and put the bullet in the chamber just in case the polar bear is coming out … I saw the polar bear, and I am even more scared.”

“He is looking at us, and he’s laying down and growling a few times. We walked along, around it (to) the other side. When we were standing on the other side, my uncle told me he was going to try chasing it out.”

“He don’t want to kill it inside, it is going to be too (big a) problem to haul it out after he’s dead. He wanted to get the polar bear out before he killed it.”

“He started to light up the cigarette and tried to make a stink inside, smoking inside the polar bear house. Finally, the polar bear started getting up and walking and turning round and going away.”

“After he stand up, ‘Boy,’ I’m thinking, ‘what an animal.’”

“We followed him behind, he walking out and we walking behind him, behind the polar bear. After he got out the doorway, he slid down the bank. My uncle told me he don’t want me to go fast, because sometimes the polar bear goes out of the house, just goes right around above the hole, waiting for someone to come out, and then he jump right over them.”

“My uncle, he’s very careful on that and looked around a few times before we came out. After we came out, he saw the polar bear, scared and running over the hill. Just before it went over the hill, my uncle saw it and we started to run after it and he killed it from there. He shot it using a 30 30 high power rifle. He fired twice and he killed it with the second bullet.”

“It was almost two tons, about six foot high at the shoulder and about ten feet long,”

The meat and fat of a polar bear is rated highly by Eskimo people, and a well placed bullet from the rifle of a good marksman can furnish a hunter and his family with food for a week.

Killing a bear is an occasion for a feast and nothing from the carcass goes to waste, except the polar bear liver. Even a bear’s ivory teeth are used to make fishing lures, or made into a miniature carvings. George said it was dangerous to eat the liver, as far as Eskimos knew, because it was too rich. Even the dogs which are fed all kinds of entrails and scraps are not allowed to eat it. He had once seen some dogs which had stolen a polar bear liver: “The dogs’ hair all came off, so that means it must be very powerful,” said George.

The Eskimo people look on the Arctic as their own land. They call it “Our Country” and are thoroughly adapted to living a happy existence in conditions which would defeat and kill a stranger. But because of their isolation, they are easy victims of infectious diseases, which are often carried in to the Arctic unknowingly by White men, and sometimes, tragically, by their own people as in 1953 at Fort Chimo

George was involved in an epidemic when an outbreak of measles swept the west Ungava coast following the return to Fort Chimo of two Eskimos who had been patients in a hospital Outside.

As he told his story to me, George was obviously deeply moved. He had unwittingly contracted the disease himself and carried it to Gape Hopes Advance, where his mother helped to look after him. She caught the illness from him, and died.

“In 1953, two boys came up from hospital Outside and nobody knew they had the measles with them. Two days after they arrived home, all the rash and sores (of the) measles came out on their bodies.”

“The people round here don’t know enough about sickness, how they should care for them. They went along to visit the people who came from hospital. They hadn’t seen them for a long time and were looking forward to seeing them. They also catch the measles from them, and so the sickness spread …”

“I had the sickness myself. I didn’t know I had it, when I was here (in Fort Chimo). I must have caught the measles without feeling it.”

“It was when I was beginning to live at Fort Chimo and had a plan to visit my father and mother.”

“After the measles arrived in Chimo, I had a trip to Koartok (Cape Hopes Advance). When I got half way and half way to run yet … I got sick. I take two weeks from Chimo to Koarktok by dog team. All the way after the half way (mark) I am sick and I can’t do anything, I had a partner, a young boy. One day he feels worse and I feel a little better. Then the next day, I feel worse and he feel a little better. That’s how we got along and that’s how we continue going.”

“When we arrive at Koarktok, at Cape Hopes, the people start catching the germs from us, and quite a few people died. My mother died for the same reason.”

George stopped, unable to go on. His usually sunny countenance clouded. He sat on the edge of the camp bed, clenching his fingers first in one hand and then the other. There was no doubt that George felt the epidemic as more than one of nature’s calamities.

It was his own personal tragedy.

He stood up slowly and announced our tape recording session was ended. “That’s the story, I haven’t any more stories right now,” and with a gentle inclination of his head, he left the room. Later that evening as we left the mess hall after dinner, we saw George busy on the patch of ground outside his small wooden house. He was stretching lengths of sealskin lines for his dog traces. The tough skin of an udjuk, or squareflipper seal, had been cut off spirally in a continuous length. While we watched him, George passed the trace round a stout pole in the ground, knotted the ends and stretched the line by standing inside the loop and leaning all his weight against it.

His cheerful disposition had evidently restored itself and he waved to us and bounced about against the sealskin line. The inevitable happened and he went sprawling as the line snapped under his exuberant bouncing. He scrambled up, rubbing the area of his major point of contact with the ground, and examined the part where the dog trace had snapped, George was getting ready for winter trips once more.