Before we begin to follow the achievements of the great Polar worthies, it seems desirable to take a brief survey of the dwellers on the threshold of the Arctic regions; for here are races who have for ages found homes along the European, Siberian, and American coasts of the Polar Ocean and in Greenland.
To begin with the Spitsbergen quadrant; the northern coast of Norway, now known as Finmarken, and the Kola peninsula face the Polar Sea, but, owing to the warm current from the south, this coast has its bays and inlets clear of ice throughout the year. The coast is lined by numerous islands, several of them of considerable size to the west of the North Cape, and is indented by deep fjords. The most northern point of Europe is in 71° 11′. Inland there is a flat mountain plateau, with a height of some 1500 feet, consisting of stony desert with a few patches of reindeer moss, and some morasses. The plateau is traversed by rivers such as the Tana and the Alten, which force their way through accumulations of gravel before reaching the sea. Pine forests have now receded from the coast to the foot of the gneiss mountains in the interior, and their place is taken by dwarf birch near the sea. The Kola peninsula, known to the Russians as the Murman coast, has high and precipitous granite cliffs and a line of central hills sending the drainage on one side to the Murman, and on the other side to the White Sea.
This is the land of the Lapps, encamped for hunting, and on the sea coast for fishing in summer. Their average height is about 5 ft. 1 in., and they have high cheek-bones, small elongated eyes, wide mouths, little or no beard, and dark straight hair. Their circular tents are made of coarse cloth supported by branch poles of birch and pine. A fire is lighted in the centre, and there is an opening at the top by which the smoke escapes. The Lapps are always wandering for food for their reindeer—moss and birch leaves, and in winter lichen. One family requires a herd of at least 200 animals. The Lapps drive their reindeer in sledges, make cheese from their milk, eat the venison, and make most of their clothing of the skins. These people can march great distances with a short quick step and carry very heavy loads. They live to a considerable age. Their language is Mongolian, and their religion one of magic and witchcraft, which inspired some awe in the minds of the Norsemen who enforced tribute from them.
Eastward from the White Sea the nature of the country changes, and we enter upon the tundras, a Russian name for the bare tracts between the forests to the south, and the shores of the Polar Ocean. The Petchora is the greatest river of the western tundra, flowing northwards along the western spurs of the Ural Mountains towards the gulf of Mezen, where the delta is 120 miles long, the channels winding in a network round islets and banks which shift their positions at every thaw. Fifty miles off the coast lies the island of Kolguev, 50 miles long by 40, entirely composed of sand and small stones, all its deposits being referable to oceanic forces; it is, indeed, essentially a water and ice-formed island.
The region from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains is inhabited by a race called Samoyeds, brachycephalic Mongols with a Finnish admixture. Of short stature, averaging a fraction over 5 feet, they have the short broad Mongolian face, long oblique eyes, high cheek-bones and flat noses. Like the Lapps they are dependent for locomotion, clothes, and food on their herds of reindeer, and they also have dogs for rounding up the deer. Their boots, loose tunics, and winter cloaks are of deer-skin, and the Samoyed hut (choon) is made of birch poles covered with deer-skin for winter, and with strips of birch-bark sewn with sinews in summer. Like the Lapps too, and for the same reason—to drive off mosquitos—they light their fires inside the choon. The Samoyed sledge, drawn by three to five reindeer abreast, consists of two thick runners curved upwards in front, about 9 feet long and 30 inches wide, with four uprights and cross bars. These people worship great numbers of wooden idols grouped round a seven-headed idol of Kesaks. They come to the settlement of Khabarova, near the narrow strait which separates the mainland from the island of Waigatz, during the summer; and they look upon the latter as the holy island on which they wish to be buried.
Eastward of the Samoyed country is the Siberian coast, extending for 2000 miles of longitude along the Polar Ocean, a vast tundra traversed by three great rivers—the Obi and its tributary the Irtish, the Yenisei, and the Lena. To the east of the Lena there are three smaller rivers, the Yena, Indigirka, and Kolyma, but all have their sources far to the south of the Arctic Circle. Some other streams, merely rising in the tundra, flow into the Polar Ocean. These are the Piasina, Taimir, Khatanga, Anabara, and Olenek between the Yenisei and Lena, and the Alaseia between the Indigirka and Kolyma.
The three great rivers have remarkable width and volume. The Yenisei is more than three miles wide for at least a thousand miles, and a mile wide for another thousand. The 200 miles of delta have a width of 20 miles. The sudden melting of the winter accumulations of snow gives rise to floods of great magnitude. Vast harvests of ice are thus annually poured out. The tundra is generally a slightly rolling plain sloping towards the rivers, intercepted by deep river valleys with precipitous sides. The ground is frozen for several hundreds of feet below the surface, and for eight months, from October to May, the tundra is a sheet of snow 6 feet thick. In the summer a wild-looking country appears, full of small lakes, swamps, and streams, swarming with mosquitos and frequented by myriads of birds. The sun brings to life a brilliant Alpine flora, and the tundra has a carpet of grass and mosses.
The Siberian shores of the Polar Ocean forming the edge of the tundra are for the most part low and flat, and Cape Chelyuskin, the northern termination of the Taimir Peninsula in 77° 36′ N., is a low promontory.
This Siberian tundra is the coldest region in the world. The earth, alternating in many places with strata of solid ice, is hard frozen in perpetuity for a depth of several hundred feet. The mean temperature of January is -65°, but the interior is much colder than the sea coast, there being a difference of 20°. At Yakutsk -79° has been recorded, but the greatest natural cold ever measured is -93° at Verkhoyansk, in 67° 34′, near the river Lena.
A great part of the Siberian coast is quite uninhabited, but some hardy tribes extend their wanderings to, and even have permanent settlements on the shores of the polar sea. The Samoyeds, with both reindeer and dog-sledges, extend their wanderings to the Yenisei. The Ostiaks of the Obi and upper Yenisei rivers, numbering 27,000, are Finnish and have close racial affinities with the Samoyeds. They possess a fine breed of dogs, but live chiefly by fishing. The Yuraks of the Yenisei are a branch of the Samoyeds. The Tunguses and Yakuts wander further to the east, as far as the Kolyma.
The mysterious Onkilon or Omoki inhabited the river banks and sea shores of eastern Siberia. “Once there were more hearths of the Omoki on the shores of the Kolyma than there are stars in a clear sky.” They were established in fixed settlements. The remains of their forts, built of tree trunks, and their tumuli are found, especially near the banks of the river Indigirka. Nordenskiöld found the ruins of their house-sites near his winter quarters, and his excavating operations were rewarded by finding a stone chisel with a bone handle, slate knives, bone and slate spear-heads, and a bone spoon. Some centuries ago there was great pressure from the south, and the Onkilon, Omoki, and Chelagi appear to have been driven northwards. The Omoki are said to have gone away over the frozen ocean, but it is not known whither. It is thought that they went to the land said to be visible from Cape Jakan in clear summer weather. At all events they disappeared.
Their place was taken by the tribe called Chukchis, who occupy the Siberian coast from Chaun Bay to Cape Chelagskoi. They are divided into reindeer or inland, and coast Chukchis, each with about 400 tents representing a population of 2000. The Chukchi race is the finest on the Siberian coast, the finest eastward of the White Sea. They are cleanly compared with the Samoyeds, with a higher type of head, more intelligent-looking, and with a reddish-white complexion. They are a hardy and thriving people, with many children, but indolent when not forced to exertion by want of food. They live in large and commodious tents both winter and summer, which are unlike those of any other tribe. The Chukchi tents consist of an outer and an inner tent. The outer one is of seal and walrus skins sewn to each other, and stretched over wooden ribs bound together by thongs. The inner tent is covered with reindeer skins and a layer of moss, and is warmed by oil lamps. The tents are usually pitched on the necks of land separating the strand lagoons from the sea. The boats of the Chukchis are of walrus hide sewn together, and stretched on a frame of wood or bone. Their dog sledges are very light and narrow, with runners of bone covered with layers of ice, and they use shoes for their dogs, to prevent their feet from being cut by the ice. Their snow-shoes, for the winter, have a frame of wood crossed by well-stretched thongs. Expert with lance, bow and arrows, fishing line and nets, they live on the spoils of the chase, to which cloudberries are added in favourable seasons, when the fruit is able to ripen. The Chukchis carve animals and other figures during the long winter nights, and display considerable skill and ingenuity in the conversion of all the means that Nature has placed within their reach to their own uses. They are brave and independent, intelligent and well disposed, and on the whole must be considered to be the finest of the Arctic races.
The dogs used for draught by the Siberian tribes have much resemblance to the wolf. They have long projecting noses, sharp upright ears, and long bushy tails curling over their backs. They vary in colour, and the size of a good sledge dog is about 2 feet 7 inches in height, and 3 feet in length. In summer they dig deep burrows in the ground or lie in the water to avoid mosquitos. The feeding and training of dogs is a special art, but their natural sagacity is extraordinary.
The homes of the Eskimo along the Arctic coast of North America present an aspect which differs, in several respects, from those of the Siberian coast. The American polar rivers are less numerous and of far less volume than those of Siberia, and for the tundras of Siberia are substituted the “barren lands” of North America, which are essentially different. The first consists of frozen earth and ice for an immense depth, the second of low granite and gneiss hills with rounded summits separated by narrow valleys. Except for limited deposits of imperfect peat-earth in the valleys, the surface of the “barren lands” consists of a dry coarse quartzose sand scattered over with granite boulders. The American Arctic coast is faced by islands, with narrow straits intervening, except for 800 miles to Bering Strait where it faces the heavy ice of the Polar Ocean.
This American coast produces edible berries and roots, and on the land are musk oxen, reindeer, wolverines, wolves, foxes, martens, hares, and marmots. Salmon, with other fish, frequent the rivers, and many wading birds, besides ptarmigan and willow grouse, ducks, geese, and guillemots, come to breed. It is a Sub-arctic, not an Arctic region. The whole coast, for 1700 miles, affords the means of subsistence.
Here the hardy little Eskimo race has dwelt for long ages, from the Aleutian peninsula to Hudson’s Bay and Labrador. Their original position is supposed to have been the coast near Bering Strait, from Kotzebue Sound to the Colville river. They have preserved themselves, for generations, by their great faculty of obtaining subsistence by the most ingenious contrivances, and through hereditary skill and perseverance. Their tales and traditions go back for untold years, and with them have been transmitted those methods of hunting and fishing which long practice, through many generations, has perfected. Living mainly on seals, their southern neighbours, the Algonquin Indians, gave these coast people the name of Askikamo or seal-eaters, whence our word Eskimo, but they call themselves Innuit.
The American coast Eskimos have a dozen winter settlements, four of which are never altogether abandoned in the summer. They move about for purposes of bartering and trading, as well as for hunting and fishing; but they have permanent settlements, like that at Point Barrow, with a population of 300 souls in 50 huts. These Eskimos average a height of 5 feet 4 inches, with square shoulders, deep chests, and great muscular strength in the back. The hands are small and thick, and the lower limbs well proportioned. In walking their tread is firm and elastic, the step short and quick. Their hair is black and cut in an even line across the forehead, the complexion fair enough to make the rosy hue of the cheeks visible, giving place to a weather-beaten appearance before middle age. The face is flat and plump with high cheek-bones, forehead low, nose short and flat, eyes dark, sloping obliquely. The mouth is prominent and large, the jaw-bones strong, with firm and regular teeth. The expression is one of habitual good humour, but marred by wearing large lip ornaments of stone.
The dress consists of a frock reaching half down the thighs, with a hood and loose waist-belt, and a tail of some animal attached to it behind. The breeches are tied below the knee over long boots. The clothes are doubled, the inner frock of fawn-skin with the fur inwards, and the outer of full-grown deer-skin with the hair outwards. The winter habitations are entered by a passage 25 feet long, terminating under the floor of the iglu or hut, which is a square chamber from 12 to 14 feet by 8 or 10. The walls are of stout plank, and the roof has a double slope with a square window on one side, covered with a transparent membrane stretched by two pieces of whalebone. The oil burner or fireplace is the most important piece of furniture. It is a flat stone, hollowed on the upper surface, and placed on two horizontal pieces of wood fixed in the side of the hut a foot from the floor. A flame is kept up from whale or seal oil, by means of wicks made of dry moss. The summer tents are conical, of deer or seal-skins, on poles slung together by a stout thong.
In October the sea becomes closed and the men set nets under the ice for fish, also angling with hook and line through ice holes. In January they set out in search of reindeer, hollowing out dwellings in the snow-drifts. Their hunting employment lasts until April, when they return home to get ready their boats for whaling. In summer they are scattered over the country in search of seals and birds.
These Eskimos are described as cheerful and good-humoured, quick-tempered but placable, and with strong conjugal and parental affections. They are shrewd and observant and some exhibit considerable capacity. Far to the eastward, in Boothia, the Eskimos live in snow houses instead of wooden huts. These snow houses are built of large blocks of snow carefully laid and made in the shape of a dome with a square hole for light. The dog sledges of the Boothians are rude, and the runners made of folded seal-skin carefully coated with ice.
Still further east, in Melville Peninsula at the head of Hudson’s Bay, the Eskimos average an inch or two more in height. Instead of lip ornaments, they tattoo the face, arms, and hands, and as with the Boothians their winter habitations are snow huts. Besides dog sledges they have kayaks 25 feet long, with a width of 21 and depth of 10½ inches, but no umiaks or women’s boats. Their dog sledges are heavy, with runners of bone scarped and lashed together. Their weapons are spears, bows and arrows, and bird darts used with a throwing-stick.
Thus the Eskimos spread themselves over a vast extent of country, wandering from Bering Strait to Labrador, a distance of 2000 miles. They adapted themselves to their environment alike in the construction of their dwellings and in their contrivances for fishing and hunting. They are equally at home whether the building material is plank, drift wood, stone or snow; and with the same versatility they adapt their weapons and sledges to the materials within their reach. These Eskimos, by reason of their vigour and courage, of their shrewdness and intelligence, have been among the greatest and most successful wanderers on the face of the earth.
The problem of the peopling of Greenland has been more difficult to solve. It is now clear that the Eskimos, as we call them, who established themselves in Greenland, originally came from the north. We therefore seek for the evidence of movement of Arctic people. The most remarkable migration was that of the Onkilon, Omoki, and other Siberian tribes during a long period of years, owing apparently to pressure from the south. We are told that their abandoned yourts may still be seen near the Indigirka and Cape Chelagskoi. As we have already said, there is a tradition that they wandered away from Cape Jakan to the land in sight in the distance, which we now know to be Wrangell Island, and thence across the ice to the American continent. Finding the coast already occupied they went northwards and eastwards seeking for a home. They must have come in very small parties and at long intervals, for the desolate country could not sustain a large migration. Wandering along the coasts of Banks Island, they came to a region which, owing to the absence of open water during long intervals, was unable to support them.
This is one of the most wonderful migrations ever performed. It is unrecorded. But the long route is strewn with abundant vestiges of marches, during centuries perhaps, over the snow and ice, in search of an abiding-place. Many must have perished. We found relics at frequent intervals from Melville Island to Baffin’s Bay. Their appearance and the lichens growing upon them, justify the conclusion that the movement took place centuries ago3. The relics consist of stone iglus or winter huts, circles of stones to keep down summer tents, stone fox-traps, stone lamps, graves built with stone slabs, and many articles brought from a distance. Among these were portions of the bones of whales used to support the roof of an iglu, other pieces cut into a shape for running melted snow into a vessel, pieces of the bone runners of sledges, and a willow switch 2 feet 3 inches long, covered with lichens4. These vestiges are numerous and continuous from Melville Island to Wellington Channel. Then the traces form two branches; one along the coast of North Devon to Cape Warrender and the north water of Baffin’s Bay, the other up Wellington Channel and the western coast of Ellesmere Island, then across the land to Sir Thomas Smith’s Channel. The most northern traces are near the 82nd parallel, where the framework of a wooden sledge, a stone lamp, and a snow scraper of walrus tusk were found5. Further north, life could not be supported, and the wanderers wended their way southward to Greenland. Perhaps a few followed the musk oxen and reached the east coast.
Thus, we may safely believe, was Greenland first peopled. A further proof is that they have the word umingmak (a musk ox), which does not exist in Greenland, but was met with in the far northern wanderings and the tradition handed down. Very gradually the Eskimos worked their way south along the west coast of Greenland. But they were in the region between Disco Bay and Holsteinborg in a far-off prehistoric period. There have been rich finds of implements in North Greenland (68° to 71°) in deep deposits of great age6. The Eskimo appeared much later in South Greenland.
The Greenland Eskimo differed very little from his congener of the North American coast. He was dolichocephalic, with a short broad face, small slanting eyes, cheeks broad, prominent, and round, hair straight and black, and about the same average height. In Greenland the Eskimos passed the winter in iglus or stone houses, the floors of which are sunk some feet below the surface of the ground. In summer they lived in skin tents, while their property was moved from one hunting encampment to another in their umiaks or women’s boats, which are 30 feet long by 5 wide and 2½ deep, flat-bottomed, and made of seal-skins stretched on a frame. The kayak or hunter’s canoe is the triumph of Eskimo art. It also consists of seal-skin stretched on a frame, but the frame, flat-bottomed and sharp at both ends, is designed on the most perfect lines for speed and buoyancy. It is entirely covered except a hole for the hunter, who ties a waterproof, which is attached all round to the kayak, around his waist when seated. Then, with his double paddle, he faces the wildest seas with dauntless courage, and with his harpoon secures his prey with unerring aim. The Greenland kayak is the most perfect application of art and ingenuity to the pursuit of necessaries of life to be found within the Arctic Circle.
The use of the kayak among the Eskimo of Hudson’s Bay makes it probable that, at one time, there was some intercourse by way of Davis Strait.
Equally ingenious is the use of an air bladder attached to their harpoons to retard the seal in its rush when struck, and to keep the harpoon floating if the quarry is missed. The point of the harpoon is also so fitted that, when the seal is struck, it slips out of the shaft, obviating the danger of the shaft being broken by the animal’s struggles, and of the barb slipping out of its body. The point is attached to the shaft by a thong.
Seals provide material for clothes, boots, tents, and food. The Greenland dogs are excellent for their purpose and draw sledges 30 or 40 miles a day over smooth ice easily; but the dog as a draught animal is an Asiatic invention. The Greenland sledge consists of a couple of boards for runners, 6 feet long, with cross pieces, and two upright poles for guiding. All is kept together by seal-skin thongs, thus affording elasticity. On smooth ice a pace of 16 miles an hour can be attained, the load for dogs being nearly 500 lb. Eskimo necessary furniture consists of lamps, wooden tubs, dishes, and stone pots. Their arms are bows and arrows, bird darts, javelins, and lances.
The wood required by the Greenland Eskimo is provided by the Arctic current. Flowing down the east coast of Greenland it is diverted by the Gulf Stream, turns round Cape Farewell, and flows up the coast of Greenland bearing abundance of drift wood. Again meeting the Baffin Bay current, it is turned again down into the Atlantic. This drift wood consists of coniferous trees which must come from Siberia. Pieces 60 feet long are found on the coast so far north as 60° 30′, one yielding 3 cords of wood in 63° N., and pieces of 12 to 30 feet are not uncommon.
The Angekoks, like the Shamans of Siberia, are the priests and physicians of the Eskimos, who believe in a great first cause, and in spirits, especially evil spirits, who have to be propitiated. They have myths and traditions, but none that throw any certain light on their origin and history. By far the best account of the arms, tools, and utensils of the Eskimos of West Greenland is by Porsild7.
The most interesting tribe of Eskimos is that which was discovered by Sir John Ross on the north coast of Baffin’s Bay, probably descended from the last Asiatic arrivals. Having no canoes their progress south was stopped at the curving shores of Melville Bay, 300 miles round, nearly all occupied by glaciers coming down to the sea. Ross named them the “Arctic Highlanders.” They had dogs and sledges but no kayaks, consequently there was no communication with the Greenland Eskimos to the south.
The coast from Cape York to Etah, within Smith Sound, is the country of the Arctic Highlanders. It is broken by deep fjords, separated by magnificent headlands, the breeding-places of guillemots and kittiwakes, and the favourite home of millions of little auks or rotches. The Arctic Highlanders are stout well-built little men, thick-set and muscular, with round chubby faces, oblique eyes, and small and very thick hands. With marvellous endurance they are courageous, are ready to close with a bear, and have been known to enter into a conflict of four hours’ duration with a fierce walrus, on weak ice. Without wood, without bows and arrows, without canoes, they still secure abundance of food with their spears and darts. In summer they live in seal-skin tents, in winter their habitations are circular stone huts built at permanent stations along the coast. Their utensils consist of shallow cups made of seal-skin for receiving the water as it melts from a lump of snow and flows down a shoulder blade of a walrus, and of stone lamps. They eat their food raw and in large quantities. Their weapons are a lance of narwhal ivory and a harpoon, and nets to catch the little auks and other birds. The Arctic Highlanders possessed knives of meteoric iron, made by inserting in a row along a slit made in a haft of stone or ivory a number of thin flakes, carefully chipped to a circular form. This meteoric iron came from three huge boulders at the back of Bushnan Island, near Cape York.
The Arctic Highlander wears a shirt of bird-skin neatly sewn together next to the skin, with the soft down inwards, over which there is a loose kapetah or jumper of fox-skin, tight round the neck, where a hood is attached to it. The nessak or hood is lined with bird-skins and trimmed with fox fur. The breeches, called nannuk, are of bear-skin and come down to the knees, and above are just in contact with the kapetah, when the wearer is standing upright. On the feet bird-skin socks are worn with a padding of grass, over which come bear-skin boots. By means of their sledges these hunters can move swiftly to the bear-hunting grounds, and no hunters in the world display more indomitable courage and presence of mind, or more skill and judgment in the exercise of their craft. Their number, when first discovered, was about 300. From an ethnological point of view they are the most interesting of all savage tribes, by reason of their wonderful exodus and their isolation.
We have now passed in review all the dwellers on the Arctic Threshold, from Lapland round the northern shores of Siberia and America to Greenland, considering them with reference to their environment, and we have traced the wanderings of the Onkilon until we find the last remnant of the exodus on the northern shore of Baffin’s Bay. Such a brief survey is a necessary introduction to the history of Arctic enterprise.