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"POST SACKED – LONE WHITE MAN TURNS ESKIMO - HE BECOMES A WITCH DOCTOR OF THE TRIBE"

The following is a transcription of the third of six articles Cleveland wrote (with writer Minna Littmann) for the New Bedford Sunday Times during his year’s leave of absence from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1923-4.

See my notes at the end.

[From the New Bedford Sunday Standard, Apr. 27, 1924:]

POST SACKED – LONE WHITE MAN TURNS ESKIMO - HE BECOMES A WITCH DOCTOR OF THE TRIBE

Captain Cleveland Received a Shock When Native Offered to Provide Him with a Wife. Ten Day Vigil by Himself Was First Step in His Initiation as a Tribal Angikok

 Captain George G. Cleveland, Vineyard whaleman and Arctic trader, has told the story of his adventures in the far north to Minna Littmann of The Standard staff. They will appear for three more Sundays crammed with unusual incident and many thrills. The second, presented herewith, is entitled:

Three Years an Eskimo

The two Eskimos who had accompanied me on the long, hard mid-winter journey to Wager Bay were as stunned as I when they saw that their southern neighbors had robbed me of all my stores. They stood in the snow beside me, staring at the empty rooms we had just shoveled clear, and swore in their own picturesque fashion. They had come to rely on the tobacco, matches, ammunition, and lesser luxuries which my post had provided. What had happened meant privation for them as well as for me.

“The thieving wolverines!” they exclaimed. “May the most terrible toomnites haunt them! May all their dogs fall ill and die! We will have our angikoks (Medicine Men) put fearful curses on them and afflict them with starvation! … You shall not go hungry. You will come with us,” they assured me warmly after their first burst of indignation. “What do you say, Shukwahtee? Shall we not summon the whole Iwilick tribe to pursue these thieves and slay them?”

The warlike suggestion of my usually peaceable friends shocked me out of my depression. It might be more sensible, I remarked, to save what ammunition the tribe possessed to kill animals for food, and the first thing to do in any event was to return to the Eskimo camp from which we had come.

I went back to Repulse Bay as poor as any beggar. My only possessions were the garments I had on my back, which the Eskimos had made for me. The two whaleboats and the whaling gear I had left with the Eskimos were the property of the company.

They All Responded

Upon our arrival at camp, my companions sounded the Eskimo drums, the kilaute, summoning the tribe to hear of my ill luck and to decide what provision should be made for me. The whole community responded, men, women, and children hurrying to join the large group which had gathered at first sight of us. My faithful friend Keedluk pushed through the circle to my side. In one breath he had bade me welcome; in the next he vowed grimly that he and his fellow angikoks would put a curse of starvation on the southern Eskimos. The angikoks are an Eskimo fraternity, half priest, half witch doctor, supposed to have supernatural powers of curing the sick and banishing other ills by communing with the spirits. As it happened, they gained prestige by fulfilling Keedluk’s vow, for many of the southern tribe perished the following season.

Keedluk would not accept the suggestion of his comrades that I take turns living with different families. He told them that the cobloon – white man – in their midst had been his good friend since he was a little child, had given him many gifts and much good council, and that there would always be a place for him in Keedluk’s igloo as long as he lived. The men nodded agreement. Keedluk should be my host, and if ever he were in want, they would share what they had with him to lighten his burden.

I accepted Keedluk’s hospitality with gratitude, and entered for the first time in earnest into the life of an Eskimo among Eskimos. The tastes of native life I had had before were nothing to this. No indoor heat, no cooked food, no coffee, tea, sugar, flour, or salt, no change of clothing, nothing to read, and, worst of all, no tobacco – these were among my deprivations. White man’s qualms rose within me at the omnipresent dirt – I found it impossible to keep clean myself – at the lack of privacy, the crudeness of some of the native customs, but I chocked them down with an inward prayer that my face might not register my feelings.

Cleveland Turns Eskimo

Wherever the tribe went, I went also, and whatever work there was for the men to do, I pitched in and shared. We wandered over a range of several hundred miles in search of good hunting. I helped build our snow huts in winter – not infrequently a new one every week – and the ice block shelters and tents of skins which served us in summer. I hunted and fished with the rest. When our ammunition gave out at the end of the first winter and the Eskimos had to fall back on primitive weapons, I too wielded a bow and arrow, and harpooned beasts by flinging at them knives fastened to long ropes. I gorged with my friends when we had plenty, and starved with them when there was nothing. Always, except when we camped away from our base on hunting trips, I shared a one-room habitation with Keedluk’s family and another.

Keedluk’s wife, Towdleechuk and Outtoon, wife of a young man whose name sounded like Pick-up-Sticks, who were our igloo mates, sewed fresh caribou skins into a sleeping bag for me and my accommodations were ready. Keedluk’s little family, which included a baby, slept under a single caribou skin on one side of the cramped igloo space, Pick-up-Sticks and his wife on the other. My place was on the fur-covered snow platform between them. Each family had a lamp hung from the roof of the igloo. On racks of bone and deerskin suspended above the lamps, ice was melted and meat thawed during the day; at night our boots reposed on them to keep from freezing. The floor beyond the lamps was the pantry and dining room, a pile of frozen meat and fish cluttered with bones from preceding meals its sole furnishing.

Not Even a Comb

My appearance corresponded with my quarters. My grimy, greasy face peered from worn fur garments, likewise streaked with grime and grease. Sometimes I ventured to borrow the four-toothed bone that was the family comb. I had none of my own. The little water that could be melted over the flame of the family lamp was needed for drinking; none could be spared for washing. I washed my face only in summer, when we happened to be near running streams and infrequently then, for the effort was useless without soap and towels. The nearest approach to soap was the paunch of the reindeer, the acid contents of which cut the grease on one’s hands so that they could be washed clean. I indulged in handwashing, even in winter, using snow for water, but I drew the line at rubbing reindeer paunch on my face at any season.

My table manners were in keeping with my appearance. There was, of course, no table except the floor. When I was hungry, I selected a piece of meat from the frozen pile, thawed it above the lamp, and fell to it, using both fists and a long snow knife. Following Eskimo custom, I ate when I felt like it, once a day or 20 times, standing or squatting on the floor as I tugged at the uncooked morsels. Only one restriction had to be observed. It was taboo to warm meat of sea animals and land animals in the same pot in one day. Like other Eskimos, Keedluk firmly believed that the water and land creatures would resume their ancient warfare even within the human stomach if a sleep did not intervene between the times their flesh was eaten. He told me seriously that all animals once lived on land; a time came when they quarreled and fought, and the defeated creatures were driven into the sea. Thus arose everlasting enmity.

When I had had a chance to adjust myself somewhat to Eskimo life, Keedluk began to inquire how I would like to join the tribe. It was his favorite theme when we had snuggled down beneath our blankets for the night, with our clothes rolled underneath our heads for pillows. I could join the tribe in two ways, he told me, by marrying into it, or by going through a formal ceremony. He strongly urged the marrying method. I would be much warmer if I had someone to share my blanket, he suggested. I assured him I was quite comfortable. I would fare better having my boots chewed soft when they were frozen, and would be surer of getting new garments as the season changed, he remarked, trying another tack. I turned that suggestion gently aside. “Oh, well bye and bye,” he would comment, and I knew he would bring up the subject later.

Initiated as a Witch Doctor

I received a shock I shall never forget when Keedluk one day offered to arrange for a marriage between me and Outtoon, wife of Pick-up-Sticks. She had some Scotch blood – that was perhaps his reason for selecting her. Hadn’t I noticed how industrious she was, he asked? He assured me she would be the best match in the tribe for me, and he was positive Pick-up-Sticks wouldn’t mind giving her up and getting another wife. A payment at some time when I could afford it would settle my debt.

I took my well-meaning friend aside and explained that I did not want to marry anybody, that I appreciated his kindness, but I was determined to stay single. I assured him, however, that if the tribe would adopt me without marrying one of its women, I would be glad and honored to have the privilege of membership.

If Keedluk was disappointed, he did not show it. He appeared delighted at the prospect of arranging for my adoption, and began making plans for it immediately. First he asked my solemn promise that I would not reveal to the Eskimos any of the angikok secrets with which I might become familiar. The angikoks admitted among themselves that most of what they did was humbug, but they commanded the utmost confidence among the people. I gave Keedluk my word that my tongue would forget whatever secrets my eyes or ears might learn.

Even a Shaving

A solemn series of questions propounded by the angikoks followed by the ceremony of shaving a circle of hair from the top of my head with a snow knife, comprised the first part of the adoption ceremony. I stood in the center of the huge assembly igloo, composed of two large igloos joined by a smaller one in the center. My answers to questions were repeated by the angikoks to the tribe; their answers to questions concerning me were relayed to me in the same way. I was relieved to note that my public refusal to seek the right of marrying into the tribe aroused no resentment. Quite cheerfully I promised to observe all the practices of the Eskimos, including their religious superstitions.

Then followed a long, primitive ceremony, at the end of which I learned that I had become a member of the tribe and belonged to the family of Keedluk. The initiation, however, was far from finished. The angikoks now gathered closer and conferred among themselves. I could understand perfectly what they were saying. They asked each other whether they should offer me the privilege of joining their society. Having cured simple ailments by administering medicines while I was at my post, I was already a coblooner angikok with medicine; the question was whether I should now be admitted to the Eskimo angikok secrets of communing with the spirits. They decided to make me the offer. Evelowaukjug, the eldest, announced the decision. If I chose to accept, I would be an Eskimo in fact as well as in name, and would succeed to Keedluk’s rank if he should die before me, the old man proclaimed. If not, well and good. The choice lay with me.

I solemnly accepted. To participate in the mysteries would at least be entertaining; with no certainty of how long I might have to remain an Eskimo, there was strong possibility that it might be very useful.

My acceptance was communicated to the tribe, and a grand celebration began. One man after the other performed the tribal dance. It began with a dash to the center of the igloo to seize the great one-headed drum, the kilaute. No sooner did a man seize it than the others retired to their places, while the women of the man’s family struck up his hunting song. The man circled the center of the igloo in a shuffling run, beating time on the drum to the song of his exploits and courage, and every now and then uttering a wild whoop. Round and round he went, sagging lower and lower with the weight of the drum until exhaustion compelled him to stop.

Eyes glued in my direction told me what was expected of me. The women had made up a whaling song for me when I was still at my post, and I had danced to it in fun. Now I had to dance to it in earnest. Keedluk’s wife and the wife of Pick-up-Sticks started the song. I seized the drum and danced and whooped, mortified by the mirth my attempts created, but determined to do my duty, until I too sank exhausted.

My initiation was now to begin. While the dance was in progress busy hands had erected a small snow hut some yards from the community igloo. Thither the angikoks escorted me. Before I could learn the mysteries, I must spend ten days alone in that hut, meditating on the step I was taking. If I decided after all that I did not want to join, I might come out before the time was up. Otherwise I might remain in seclusion until I was sent for. Thus spoke the angikoks and left me.

A Prey to Black Thoughts

I found the hut completely furnished. Skins were spread on the floor, my sleeping bag was in readiness, a pile of meat lay in one corner, a lighted lamp hung from the roof. I was tired and slept soundly that first night. The next morning I thought my situation amusing. By noon the loneliness was eating into me. I meditated not at all on the responsibilities of being an angikok. Until now I had successfully avoided solitude, for I knew the black thoughts that would come with it. Alone in the igloo, I could not beat them off. Would release ever come from my exile, I wondered? And if it did not come soon would what had once been myself be worth taking back to civilization? How was this adventure going to end? My mind ran in gloomy circles. The visits of the little girl who came daily to trim my lamp were a blessed interruption, despite the fact that the child was frightened speechless at facing an angikok in seclusion and stayed only the few reluctant minutes necessary to do her work.

The afternoon of the tenth day brought my release. Two angikoks escorted me to the community igloo. How gladly I went with them! Evelowaukjug announced to the assembled tribe that I had completed my vigil and was now a full-fledged angikok. As he spoke he slipped over my shoulder a strip of sealskin from which dangled long deerskin fringes – the regalia. It was as if he decorated me with a badge of honor. The tribe burst into jubilation and the ordeal was over.

Very shortly after my adoption I was called upon to fulfill one of the new obligations I had incurred; I had to attend a feast. My old friend Johnny Bull had just killed a deer, and was standing treat to the whole tribe.

I had stood by, blissfully ignorant that I was to help eat the deer, while Johnny Bull’s wife with several other unwashed old women skinned and quartered the animal as it lay on the trodden snow. I had watched them pile the pieces into two washboilers, early purchases from my post, above a huge fire of seal fat and red hot bones. As the meat grew hot, I saw the cooks plunge their hands into the broth to turn the big junks over, seasoning the gravy with them, one might say, for there was no salt.

When the feast had cooked sufficiently for Eskimo taste, that is practically raw, Johnny was notified. He stepped to the door of his igloo, and bellowed into the circle of snow huts around him so that no one could fail to hear “Ooh yuk! Ooh yuk! Boiled Meat! A feast!”

The whole tribe came on the run, carrying knives and bone spoons. Their faces shone with anticipation as they formed a circle around the shelter in which the cooling meat awaited them. An old man took his stand beside the pot, reached in with both hands, and brought out a four or five-pound piece of meat. He crammed one end of the dripping mass as far as it would go into his mouth, and held it firmly with his teeth, while he cut off what remained outside. The remainder he passed to the person next to him who repeated the process. As each piece disappeared the angikok started another on its way to complete the circle, first taking a huge bite himself as tradition required. When the meat was finished, the broth was dipped up and passed around in a pail from which everyone drank as from a loving cup. Shuddering inwardly, and fearing mutilation as I whacked morsels from the chunks that passed me, I gulped and gobbled with the rest.

Such feasts were primitive enough, but nothing in my life with the Eskimos had made me realize more keenly how far I was from civilization of the white man than the scenes of the night when I witnessed my first angikok ceremonial.

The month of January is set apart among the Iwilicks for recreation and community gatherings. The tribe holds nightly dances in a community igloo such as I have already described. If there has been general distress of any kind, magic precedes the dancing. The winter after I was adopted the dogs of the Iwilicks were afflicted with a distemper which killed more than half of them. A great angikok was called to exercise the evil spirits which caused this calamity. It was my duty as a tribesman to attend and not to leave until the ceremony was over, on pain of breaking the spell.

Igloo Was Crowded

The triple igloo was crowded, women and children jamming one end, men and half-grown boys the other. The light from many lamps threw enormous grotesque shadows upon the snow walls. Keedluk was among the five angikoks standing in readiness in the central circle. The boom, boom, boom of a kilaute announced the beginning of the ceremony. The angikoks strode around their circle, raising and dropping their arms in unison. They made unintelligible sounds with their lips, supposed to represent conversation with the spirits. With every sound they moved faster. Their strides became a run. Their voices rose from murmurs to shrieks. Their eyes grew wild. They frothed at the mouth. I thought they had gone mad. Soon they were running so swiftly that their figures blurred before my eyes.

A crazy excitement spread among the close-packed crowd. People sprang to their feet, jumping, swaying, shouting, a sea of hysterical motion, weirdly magnified by the great shadows that leaped and swayed on the walls. Men and women clapped their hands, groaned, and shouted, “Ah-tee! Ah-tee! Go ahead! Keep it up!”

After perhaps an hour of dizzy circling the angikoks abruptly stopped, and flung off their shirts and boots. Half naked, they dashed out of the igloo, scrambled through the series of low entrances, and thence into the freezing night. I heard them thudding around the big shelter, uttering weird cries. When they returned a few moments later, one of their number was missing, and they carried their toaks, long spear-like sticks tipped with bone, used for piercing holes through the ice. Again they circled, brandishing their toaks, and as they passed the door they jabbed at something just beyond it from which the sticks emerged dripping with blood. “Ah-tee!” shouted the crowd hoarsely as the blood spurted, and “Tow-wah! Tow-wah!” “Go way, evil spirits, flee!”

Chasing Away Evil Spirits

My blood ran cold. The angikoks ceased their fearful jabbing. They dashed outside again and returned in a moment with their missing colleague. The circling began again, stopped. At a signal, everyone arose and followed out of the igloo. Linked together by arms clasped around the waist of the person in front, the human chain began a race over the snowy ground, among tall black stones which cast long shadows in the moonlight.

“There, there!” “No, yonder!” “Away, you devils!” exclaimed the runners, pointing wildly into the shadows. They thought they saw the evil spirits fleeing.

A link in that crazy chain, I returned with it to the igloo. As we entered a sudden calm fell. The head angikok announced that six toomnites, or evil spirits, had been killed. He and his comrade resumed their shirts and boots, and the ceremony was over. The next morning I returned to the community igloo and puttered around until I found bloody finger marks on the snow at the entrance. I drew out a snow block, and found behind it three badly punctured seal bladders which still showed signs of having been filled with blood. I never found a witch dance thereafter as appalling as my first.

Two summers of my stay with the Eskimos I roved with the tribe north and west of Repulse Bay wherever good hunting was to be found; the third summer two Eskimos and their families went southeast with me to my sacked post at Wager Bay. We made the trip in a whaleboat with Keedluk and Johnny Bull, who put us ashore and sailed away again to rejoin the tribe. It was my first visit to the place since I had left it; the desire to see what had become of my furs was my main reason for going. The furs were as I had left them; in casks ranged outside the hit, undisturbed. The hut, too, was apparently untouched, the smaller room alone intact – I had burned the inner walls of the two larger rooms for fuel in the dire need of my last year at the post. Finding game plentiful in the vicinity, we spent the summer there, hunting and drying the skins which had accumulated moisture by freezing and thawing inside their water-tight casks.

One afternoon, about a week before we expected Keedluk and Johnny to take us back to camp for the winter, a halloo sounded from the bay. A boat with full sail set was approaching. As it drew near, we recognized our two friends. They were smoking. We had had no tobacco for three years. The sight of the curling pipe smoke set my pulse pounding. Tobacco – white men – a ship at last?

We rushed down to help beach the boat. Keedluk’s first move as he leaped ashore was to draw from inside his shirt a bit of deerskin which had been hung around his neck by a thong. He tore it open and handed me the scrap of paper it contained. Johnny heaved a cask from the bottom of the boat and dropped it at my feet.

My trembling hands smoothed the slip of paper. It was a page from a notebook penciled in a bold script. “I hear by your Eskimos that you were left at Wager Bay destitute, without food or means of hunting. I am sending you a little food, tobacco, and matches. Proceed direct to my schooner, Repulse Bay. Captain John Murray, schooner Ernest Williams.”

“The Ishemateenuak was in his whaleboat when we told him about you, Shukwahtee,” said Keedluk, watching my face. “I believe he sends you good news.”

“You are a wise angikok, Keedluk,” I began and choked. My heart was beating a tattoo of joy against my ribs and I felt something wet freezing on my cheeks.

Comments:

Of the six articles Cleveland wrote with Minna Littmann in 1924, this one is not only the most questionable in terms of accuracy, but also the most patronizing toward his Inuit hosts.

We know now that Cleveland did indeed have wives during this period (roughly 1902-1905), or at least women with whom he had children (Tabitia Taututtiaq and their daughters Ittuliaq and Hanna(h) Siksik, and possibly also their sons Nangaat/Nangnaan Issigaitok and Siusarnaat/Siusarnaan as well as Kasugiaq and her daughter Kiatshuk/Qiatsuk who was born about 1903 (or 1907?) in Cape Dorset (Kingnait); and a third unidentified woman with whom they had a son Qinnguq born sometime during 1900-1905 near Wager Bay.)

But who were these people he mentions in this story:

2) Can you help us with better translations and explanations of these terms than the ones Cleveland and Littmann provide?

Angikok – “medicine men” “Eskimo fraternity, half priest, half witch doctor, supposed to have supernatural powers of curing the sick and banishing other ills by communing with the spirits.”

toomnites – “evil spirits”

kilaute – “the great one-headed drum”

cobloon – “white man”

toaks – “long spear-like sticks tipped with bone, used for piercing holes through the ice.”

 “Ooh yuk! Ooh yuk! Boiled Meat! A feast!”

“Ah-tee! Ah-tee! Go ahead! Keep it up!”

“Tow-wah! Tow-wah!” “Go way, evil spirits, flee!”

The Ishemateenuak – ?? [a reference to Capt John Murray]