THE FORTUNES OF THE ESKIMO
By MICHAEL SPENDER
IN the Arctic the change of season as winter turns to summer means a complete alteration in the way of life of the Eskimo. Along most of the populated coasts the winter days are lit by a vague twilight for a few hours during which some kind of hunting, such as taking seal at a breathing-bole in the ice, is just possible. But the winter is long and for many weeks food is scarce and travel difficult.
As soon as the sun begins to return in spring great sledge- journeys can be made ; expeditions are sent to the seals basking in the new warmth at the edge of the land ice. The watcher at the breathing-hole becomes the skilled dog-driver, controlling his team from a position behind the sledge with well-directed flicks of the great whip and an occasional word of conunand. A little later and the sun takes up the simmer station, to ride round the heavens for all the twenty- four hours, Its persistent rays melt the ice at sea and the snow in the fjords. The winter house of stone and turf in which the Eskimos have spent the dark months becomes dank and uncomfortable ; it is left, and the family moves to some chosen summer quarter amongst the skerries at the mouth of a fjord. At a good spot there will be a flat ledge a few feet above high-water on which the tent can be pitched ; there should be an easy slope into the water so that the canoes or kayaks for seal hunting can easily be drawn np.
This life, typical for the greater number of the Eskimos before the white man came to their territory, is still lived by many, even under a white administration. Other patterns, too, are still existent. There are those who live inland, spending the winter in a snow-house and hunting the caribou in summer the territory of others is so far north that ice hunting can be carried on most of the year. But in general life is shaped by the long winter ; summer is a period of release and plenty.
The Eskimo neither sows nor reaps. He must hunt the whole year round, changing his method with the seasons. This has caused the race to be equipped technically to a remarkable degree of perfection. Clothing, hunting and fishing gear, sledges and canoes are all astonishingly efficient apparatus manufactured out of a minimum of resources, mainly in fact from driftwood and the products of the seal. Yet this high level of material culture goes with as primitive a society as could well be imagined. There is no aristocracy nor is there any recognised system of government of the impermanent aggregation of families which make the Eskimo dwelling-place. Much less is there any attempt at influence over a wider region. There is no complicated marriage system and no burdening of the living with the souls of the dead. Differences of wealth are practically ruled out since it is impossible for any man to own more equipment than he himself-can use ; while no Eskimo wo,uld.think of hunting more food than he and his neighbours could consume. According to recent information more than 4o,000 Eskimos are living under five different Powers. In Greenland, Denmark's colony, there are some 17,000, and in Alaska, part of the U.S.A., there are about the same number. In Siberia and Labrador, under the U.S.S.R. and Newfoundland govern- ments respectively, there are a few thousand. The remainder, about 6,000, are Canadian subjects.
The stability of the Eskimo civilisation has been shown at various meetings with western culture. The white man's implements, iron and gunpowder, need not necessarily throw the Arctic culture out of balance. Not all the resources of machinery have yet improved on the kayak or the dog- sledge ; while the gun has merely made Eskimo hunting quicker and more wasteful without radically altering its methods. The Arctic is not suitable for white settlement and in only one trade has the Eskimo been drawn into the vortex of capitalism. The northern whaling industry, so disastrous to the natives of Alaska but elsewhere without grave consequences, has been abandoned for some time.
Fur brought the Russians to Alaska at an early date ; fur conditions the relations of the British Empire to its Eskimos ; and fur is an important item of revenue to the Danish administration. Formerly it was the sea-otter, but now it is the Arctic fox which provides such a sought- after skin. At the present time, however, trapping is not an important activity in Alaska. The country was bought from Russia by America at the time cf the Crimean war ; American whalers then came to the coast, bringing liquor, greed and disease in sueh a degree that the race was all but wiped out. Benevolent administraticn beginning at the end of the nineteenth century saved the Eskimos by devising a new culture for them and educating them to be able to stand on their own. Reindeer were brought in from Siberia and schools started. The Alaska native now speaks and writes English, herds reindeer and manages his own stores. Most of his culture and language will disappear ; but his people can maintain itself without arbitrary protecticn from western civilisation.
In Greenland the Danes have entered on a more hazardous but very interesting experiment. Its principal characteristic is the monopoly of trade and navigation exerted by the Danish Crown. In effect Greenland is as closed a country as Tibet ; it can only be entered by a foreigner on scientific or political business and by a Dane on even stricter terms. Originally the Eskimo could fairly easily produce a surplus of sealskin and blubber, while the skins of fox and polar bear, and the ivory tusk of walrus and narwhal were not necessities for the culture. These materials could be traded with the administration in exchange for flour, clothing, sugar, _ammunition, &c. The administration could then cover its costs by selling the Greenland goods on the open market at a profit. An important principle held by the Danes was that the Eskimos should not lose their ability to hunt seal—in fact the original culture should be retained as far as possible, while undergoing slow modification to enable the Eskimo to face western civilisation without disaster.
Britain's Eskimos are largely controlled by a more familiar kind of monopoly, the Hudson Bay Company. Furs are exchanged for trade goods, but without discrimination between luxuries and necessities and without consideration of the ultimate effect on the native. Where tribes are very far from one of the Company's stations, the people are still able to fashion their gear and hunt. But within the area ot the shops the Eskimos become expert fox-trappers and neglect all else ; food and clothing, originally from seal or caribou, are now taken over the counter. Enamel ware end ugly ornament penetrate to the most distant communities. The government's interest is more in administering the white man's conception of justice through policemen than in education.
The present trend in Canada if continued indefinitely will work out disa^,trously for the Eskimo and therefore for the Company. But the future is still in the hands of the Canadian Government and the Hudson Bay Company, to avoid the dismal condition of the Eskimos of Labrador. With the examples of Alaska and Greenland available, the working out of a good plan should not be difficult. The Danish administration of Greenland has actually a wider significance than as a model of rule in the Arctic. It has been an exemplary case of colonial administration without exploitation, such as might well be studied, even down to the details of local government, by those responsible for mandated territories.
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