The Arctic Circle, which in the Western Hemisphere includes much of the Alaskan coast, far-northern Canada and western Greenland, is without a doubt the world’s most merciless environment. This immense wilderness of tundra and mountains, of ice and snow, is for much of each year a region of the most brutal and merciless climate imaginable. Yet even this hostile part of the New World was home to a population of the most unique of all Native Americans. No one knows why the Eskimo chose this inhospitable land. They may simply have continued the ancient ways of their ancestors along the Siberian coast; perhaps, as the very last of the prehistoric migrants to America, they had no choice at all. Finding the traditional routes blocked by more southern people, they may simply have accepted what was left and made the best of it.
Eskimo, at any rate, are a vastly different people than any other Native Americans. Their physical appearance – usually short and heavy-set, with broad faces, narrow eyes with the Mongolian fold, and a natural protective fatty layer under the skin – points to a definite Asiatic heritage, much more pronounced than that of any other American Indians. Eskimo, in fact, are not as a rule considered Indians at all, and they certainly do not regard themselves as such; even their language is does not seem to be related to any other in Native America, or in the world. Still, many of their rituals and customs are so similar to North America’s Indians that a common ancestry seems very likely. In typical worldwide native fashion, the Eskimo refer to themselves only as ‘the people’ – in their language, Inuit. It was their neighbors to the south, the Ojibwa Indians, who began calling them, perhaps in a derogatory spirit, Askkimey – the ‘eaters of raw flesh,’ which Europeans later corrupted into Eskimo. The Inuit, in turn, got even by referring to the Ojibwa as ‘itqilit’ – meaning ‘lousy.’
The Eskimo population, including their relatives, the Aleut, who still inhabit the string of islands west of Alaska which bear the same name, was probably larger than most North American native tribes, though at no time, perhaps, were there more than 40,000 people. But these robust nomads covered incredibly large areas in their perpetual pursuit of polar animal life. North America’s Arctic region stretches some 3,200 miles east to west, a immense hunting ground, indeed, for the Inuit; still, 17th-century explorers in North America repeatedly reported seeing Eskimo bands as far south as Newfoundland, a thousand miles or more from their usual terrain. It is also known that Eskimo regularly crossed the hazardous waters of Bering Strait, returning to Siberia, their ancestral homeland; there are, in fact, small communities of Eskimo who have made permanent settlements within the territory of present-day Russia.
Needless to add, in order to survive in the Arctic, the Eskimo, more than any Native Americans, had to make use of every one of their region’s limited resources. Their clothing – the trousers, shirts, boots, and mittens – were often sewn from caribou hide, which is warmer, lighter, and more flexible than seal skin, another widely used material. During the long and bitterly cold winter months, everyone wore the familiar hooded parkas, sewn of various animal furs, with polar bears providing the favorite raw material. Another essential item in these snow-and-ice-bound wastes were snow goggles, often made of ivory, with one or two narrow slits providing critical protection against snow blindness.
Eskimo housing is usually considered one of the more unique aspects of the Arctic people’s life, although what is regarded as the traditional Eskimo lodge, that famous domed igloo, was customarily found only in far-northern Canada, almost never in Alaska. But it is this igloo (the name is actually used to describe any kind of Eskimo housing), constructed entirely from snow and ice, that is a remarkable example of human ingenuity and adaptability to most any environment. With its entrance and narrow passage built below the ground level of the igloo’s interior, the rising warm air was trapped inside, making the living quarters comfortably warm, at times even stuffy. Hides and furs covered the floor and also served as bedding and covers. During the short warmer season – it seems hardly appropriate to call it summer – some of the Inuit lived in tents of skins and poles, though most preferred their year-round lodges of stone, driftwood and sod, or whatever materials were available. Alaskan Eskimo frequently constructed shallow pit houses – much as their ancestors had done so long ago in ancient Siberia – dug into the ground, covered by a framework of logs and a thick layer of earth. Earthen platforms, again covered with animal skins and furs, served as sleeping quarters, and a central fireplace, vented by a smoke hole at the top of the lodge, was used for cooking. If the whole place was thus cozy and warm inside, it was generally a smoky homestead as well.
As a rule, Eskimo lived and hunted together in isolated family groups for most of the year. But the Inuit concept of family was an extensive affair, a liberal collection of grandparents, parents, children – anyone’s children – and various relatives from both sides, until such clans amounted to forty or fifty people or more. There were no chiefs as such; the leader of a family group was usually the most competent man among them, the best hunter usually, the man sure to provide enough food for everyone. His one distinction might be some impressive title, such as ‘He Who Knows Everything Best,’ or ‘The One to Whom All Listen.’ Listen to him they might, but an Inuit leader’s status always depended on continued performance. Sometimes a particularly aggressive male might have been able to bully a group into following his lead for a while, but in the Eskimo’s merciless world such tactics rarely lasted very long. Conditions in the Arctic would simply not tolerate a leader who was incompetent – or even one who had became too old to ‘Know Everything Best.’ Ineffective leaders were inevitably – and ruthlessly – replaced by one who was better fitted to the responsibilities.
Unlike most Native Americans, the Inuit never laid claim to private hunting grounds or tribal territories. Any Eskimo who came upon an unoccupied shelter was welcome to consider it his home for as long as he needed it, and he was free to hunt wherever he chose on land or at sea. Some of the Eskimo lived entirely off sea animals, but most tried to vary their diet with the meat of land animals as well. In their kayak, a light-weight, one-man canoe made of a driftwood frame and sealskin covering, they hunted fish and seal with bow and arrow and light spears. In the umiak, a larger, open row-boat, groups of hunters set out after walrus and even whale – armed with little more than ivory-tipped spears and harpoons, and floats made of inflated animal bladders. On land they used the familiar dog-drawn sleds to pursue caribou, wolves, foxes, and even that most ferocious of Arctic predators, the polar bear.
It is difficult to imagine that any human being could survive for very long on a diet of nothing but meat and fish, but the Eskimo not only survived, but actually seem to have thrived on it. Because they ate a good part of their meat raw, and included the fat and the internal organs as well, their food intake apparently provided all the protein, vitamins and minerals essential in human nutrition. At any rate, the Eskimo seem to have fared well on this diet, and it was only in times of extreme scarcities – or due to the effects of social taboos – that there were any signs of malnutrition among them.
In a region where life consisted of a daily struggle for mere survival, it was the extensive family ties and kinships that provided a sense of security to the individual. A lone Eskimo seldom grew old in the Arctic Circle. As a man, he had no one to keep his life together, to prepare his meals or make his clothes; a female was worse off still, for she had no one to go out and hunt for her, to protect her, or to take care of her inevitable brood of children. And any Eskimo traveling across the immense and forbidding Arctic was invariably forced to rely on relatives to offer him food and shelter along the way, not to mention aid and support in an emergency. And to a relative, no matter how distant or tentative, such assistance was provided without question. But the lone stranger, the man who could not point to some family ties in the area, however obscure, that man had placed himself into a most precarious situation. At best, he may have been unable to persuade anyone to help him, and in Arctic conditions that was tantamount to a death sentence. Worse yet, any stranger unable to associate himself with a known family was immediately suspected of being a member of a feuding family; such a man could not be trusted or even be tolerated, and he usually ran the very real risk of being murdered by a suspicious group.
Having wide-ranging family connections was therefore a vital necessity in Eskimo life, making advantageous marriages far more than merely a matter of personal choice or economic consideration. If a man married into a totally unrelated family group, he instantly doubled the number of people on whom he could depend in any emergency. For this very reason, marriages within a family group were usually discouraged. Though cousins were occasionally known to start a family – in a few instances even a brother and sister – but such couples were generally treated with righteous contempt: not out of any objections to their incestuous relationship, for such concepts had no meaning in Inuit life, but because their relatives were already prepared to assist them in any case. There was no need to bind them further by marriage.
But Eskimo marriages were capricious affairs in any event. A young man with sufficiently developed hunting skills to support a family, and a girl, prepared to assume domestic chores, would simply begin a sexual relationship. If both sides found the arrangement satisfactory, they moved in with his or her family group and settled down to matrimonial bliss. The couples were frequently very young – often little more than 16 or 17, the girls still younger. Eskimo families sometimes also pledged small children and even infants in marriage, although their nomadic way of life must have made such agreements extremely difficult to keep. But among some Inuit groups female infanticide had become a common practice, though betrothed female infants were apparently always spared from such fate, making early betrothal a life-saving event.
The Old World concept of the virtuous and chaste woman, found even among many of the Native Americans, had no meaning at all among the Inuit, and young girls often entered sexual relationships before they had even reached puberty. If she became pregnant as the result of such dalliances, it presented no problem either; any man with whom she eventually chose to settle down with, accepted any and all children as his own without reservation. In fact, a girl’s reputation might even benefit by such living proof of fertility. Children, at any rate, were always a welcome addition to an Inuit family, and it mattered little whose children they were or from where they had come. Orphans from other groups were taken in, as were children of deceased relatives, those of previous marriages – or romances – even those of a stranger who had been killed. All were taken in with equal affection and were treated as naturally as one’s own.
Not unexpectedly, the end of such matrimonial relationships was often as casual and unceremonious as the nuptial process had been to begin with. Any disagreement between man and wife was considered a valid reason for a parting of the ways, and the disgruntled partner would simply return to his or her own family group. Sometimes, however, a stronger man – apparently there was no shortage of bullies in Inuit life – might forcibly abduct some nubile maiden who had caught his fancy and take her to his igloo; if her husband was not strong enough or brave enough to retrieve her, or if his family failed to support him, he would suddenly find himself a bachelor again, his reputation considerably blemished. The abductee, meanwhile, may have become the second, perhaps even the third wife of her kidnapper. There was no taboo on polygamy – as long as the man was able hold on to his womenfolk and take care of them. Many a weary Inuit wife, in fact, was known to have encouraged her mate to go out and increase his household by this very method; in the never-ending rounds of her daily chores she undoubtedly welcomed any additional hands, by whatever means they arrived.
No matter how clannish Inuit society appeared, however, even in their close-knit society not every activity of daily life could be limited to family members alone. From time to time, even unrelated Eskimo males were forced to cooperate with each other in such essential activities as hunting and fishing, and in the process, temporary partnerships were often begun out of mutual interests. It was with the formation of such partnerships a unique and curious – and widely misunderstood by white folks – ritual took place: the new associates exchanged their wives and engaged in sexual relations with them. Contrary to the vague perception among outsiders, this was no mere gesture of Inuit hospitality; this was a formal contract between two men intended to symbolize a kinship-type of relationship, assuring each other of trust and mutual cooperation, much as if they were in fact related.
Despite such liberal-minded attitudes toward female promiscuity, adultery was a serious offense in Inuit society. It was not considered adultery when a husband lent his wife to a new associate; adultery occurred only when a woman had carnal knowledge of another man without her husband’s approval. Since such approval carried with it very special social implications, an adulterous relationship acquired a significance all its own: it became, in fact, a public challenge of one man to another. Unless the deceived man was prepared to spend the rest of his life in disgrace and ridicule, he had no alternative but to answer this challenge to his manhood. And among the Inuit, the answer to such challenges more often than not consisted of bloodshed and murder. The act of adultery thus led not only to the end of a marriage, but often to the death of one of the male antagonists, which, in turn, was the onset of a long-lasting, deadly feud between two families.
Murder seems to have been an alarmingly frequent occurrence in Inuit communities, apparently most often the result of some dispute over women. It was said, in fact, that nearly every Eskimo male had murdered someone at some time in his life. But when an Eskimo was murdered – for whatever reason – the victim’s relatives were obliged to revenge the deed, thereby upholding the family honor – which, in turn, brought on reprisals from the other side, forcing each family to act again and again, extending the feud ever further, until everyone related to the opposing families became deadly enemies and potential victims. Some Inuit assassins, therefore, carried matters to the ultimate extreme in the attempt to avoid such devastating feuds. There are horrifying stories of men wiping out entire families, well aware that if even a single person were allowed to remain alive, some man, some boy, perhaps as yet unborn, would grow up to take a certain and bloody revenge in the distant future. It was for this very same reason, that if some particularly hotheaded member of a family committed repeated murders, thereby exposing his entire family to blood feuds, the relatives themselves might get together and decide to eliminate the troublemaker once and for all.
But Eskimo showed a remarkable lack of fear, of sentimentality, or emotions in general, when it came to death or the dying. Unlike so many Native Americans, the Inuit held virtually no superstitions at all in connection with death or with the body of a deceased person. The only sign of such native fears was the belief that the spirit of deceased would attempt to reenter his lodge through the same opening out of which the body had been carried. Therefore, whenever an Eskimo died inside an igloo, the body was taken outside through an opening cut into the roof, which was then quickly covered up again. But once outside, the body was brought out to the tundra or onto the ice and was simply left there to be disposed of by the animals. If this practice seems incredibly callous, it was actually one of plain necessity: for much of the year, the Arctic soil was frozen solid, making it impossible to dig any kind of grave. Neither the frozen coastline nor the inland tundra could have supplied wood for a scaffold, as was the practice among many of the northern Indians, or even to build a fire which might have allowed the Inuit to dispose of a body with any sort of ceremony or dignity.
As was true of so many of North America’s nomadic people, however, it was the elderly and the sick who became the special victims of their environment. Some of the older people might simply have outlived their immediate family, and no longer had anyone left to care for them; they, or any person who was too ill or too old to keep up with the nomadic group, posed a grave problem for the entire family. Unless the food supply was extremely abundant, such people stood little chance for survival. Rather than allow them to jeopardize the whole family group, these wretched people were often abandoned in the wilderness, left to certain death by the elements or wild animals. No one protested such actions, not even the victims themselves, some of whom were know to request that a family member put an end to their misery rather than create more problems for the family.
It was only at the birth of a child that the Eskimo displayed some of the typical Native American superstitions, though the Eskimo never carried things as far as did some of the southern tribes. When an Eskimo woman was about to give birth, she was secluded in a hut especially built for that purpose, and there she remained until several days after the birth. Like most American natives, the Inuit believed that the female blood flow at the time of birth – and menstrual blood as well – was dangerous to men; it would sap their strength and destroy their efficiency as hunters. More important still, in this condition a woman was offensive to the game animals and would drive them away, and that was one risk no native hunter anywhere was prepared to take.
Not only pregnant women, but anyone who was ill, or even associated with anyone who was ill, was generally considered to be dangerous to the fortunes of the hunters, and all such persons were denied any sort of fresh meat. This restriction was even applied to relatives of a recently deceased person – a taboo that often brought about tragic consequences: entire Inuit communities are known to have starved to death because no one there was allowed to go out and hunt or eat fresh meat for several days after the death of a family member. If during that time of fasting yet another person died, perhaps already ill or weak from the lack of food, the survivors again went hungry for several days, which usually was enough to kill still another. As the fasting continued, so did the deaths, sometimes with the tragic result that an entire family group perished for the lack of nourishment, even though there might have been plenty of food available.
As a rule, superstitions and religious beliefs among the Arctic people were concentrated on the immediate needs of the people’s everyday lives; there was little concern over such speculative matters as life after death or a world beyond. The Inuit world was flat, and if a hunter dared to go out to sea too far he would fall over the edge. There were some myths about the moon and the stars and about the aurora borealis; there were sea monsters, and a sea goddess called Sedna – ‘She Down There’ – who was powerful enough to keep sea animals far from the shore to punish any hunters who had sinned. For the most part, however, Inuit beliefs concentrated on the vital aspects of their lives – primarily on the relationship between man and animal. All animals were regarded as superior beings that allowed themselves to be caught only out of compassion for the pitiable humans. But in return they demanded respect. It was of critical importance not to offend any animals – either during or after the hunt – or their spirits would return to warn others of their species, who would thereafter refuse to let themselves be caught. As a result, the hunt was associated with a great many strict taboos; if any of these taboos were violated, not only would the offended creature elude the hunters, but the violator himself would invariably become ill. This was a belief common to virtually all North American hunting people.
Among the Eskimo, the more important taboos demanded a strict division between land and sea animals. A conscientious hunter always used separate weapons in the pursuit of these animals, and he never ever ate the meat of land and sea animals at the same meal. Clothing made of sealskin and caribou hide could not be worn at the same time. Any hunters who had been out after seal or walrus, for example, made every effort to clean themselves entirely before going after caribou, because caribou were deeply offended by the smell of seal grease. And whale bones or any blood or meat of sea mammals could never be fed to the sled dogs – not if the hunter expected to catch another of these animals.
Wolves and foxes were particularly outraged if more than five traps were set for them at any one time, and for each animal caught in a trap a special offering was made to their spirit, together with an apology for such undignified treatment. If any hunter neglected such rituals, he would inevitably be caught in one of his own traps the next time out. All sea animals were offered a drink of fresh water, for it was believed that living in the ocean’s salt water made them perennially thirsty, and that they could be enticed to surrender themselves to the human hunters with a gift of fresh water. And no hunter ever spoke in a disrespectful manner about any animal, alive or dead; there was always the possibility that their spirits might be hovering nearby and become insulted by such reckless talk.
Perhaps the most powerful influence in Inuit life was the shaman, the medicine man of popular Indian lore. The term shaman came originally from the Siberian Tungusic language and it refers to any person who is possessed by some special spiritual force and who can therefore perform magic and even cure the ill. Among most American natives, the shaman had had some peculiar personal revelation, a vision, perhaps, or a dream that pointed him toward his calling as a medicine man. Among the Eskimo, in particular, he was rarely a very stable person; usually he was known for bizarre behavior or even some emotional disturbance, a man who had failed to live up to the rigorous demands of life in the Arctic, and who had no other place to fit in in this society.
An Eskimo shaman’s duties were extensive: he attempted to predict and even control the weather; he located and attracted game animals in times of need; he cured diseases; and he brought fertility to barren women. Inuit shamans also ran their own version of the Spanish Inquisition, wringing confessions from sinners suspected of having broken taboos of one sort or another, thereby jeopardizing the hunting luck of all the people in the group.
The Inuit believed that all illness was caused by a loss of the human soul, which, in turn, was the result of breaking some taboo. After discovering the exact violation, the shaman would then send out his own soul to the spirit world to find and recover that lost soul. Often he would contact his personal spirit helper – usually the spirit of some animal, such as a wolf or a bear – who would help in the search. In the process, the shaman fell into a deep trance and spoke magical words in some mysterious language not understood by his deeply awed audience. And shamans everywhere used an impressive bag of tricks to reinforce the effect of their performances – ventriloquism, hypnosis, and drug-induced hallucinations were special favorites. They were well aware, of course, that they were using trickery and deception, but at the same time they were totally convinced of their own powers in dealing with the supernatural world. Conditioned ever since childhood by their people’s beliefs and superstitions, shamans themselves were true believers – so much so, that whenever one of them fell ill, they invariably called on other shamans to treat them. And if their behavior in general was often bizarre, it only enhanced their reputation; as far as the people were concerned, a shaman needed such strange abilities if he was to deal successfully with the unpredictable demands of the supernatural world.
If a cure proved successful, the shaman naturally expected to be rewarded; and since he obviously possessed all these magical powers, he was usually able to intimidate his people into sizeable rewards. Usually the payment consisted of items or services which the shaman was unable to get on his own – warm clothing, a weapon perhaps, or a specified share of the next hunt. Sometimes his fee consisted of a patient’s female relative’s sexual favors, or perhaps those of a cured female patient herself. Also, the routine for making a barren woman fertile usually included a shaman’s sexual participation; in cases where a husband was sterile, the results of such treatment were no doubt of striking effectiveness.

For the most part, however, Eskimo society placed its greatest value on the self-reliant, self-confident man, the skillful hunter, the accomplished maker of tools and weapons. A successful hunter, in particular, assured the welfare of his entire family group, and as such he ranked highest in the people’s regard. As a rule, however, the Inuit attitude was a simple one: the good of the group, the survival of the community was placed above all else. That was far more important than the well-being or even the survival of any one individual.