Strange Tribe of Eskimo
Just Discovered on Island in Hudson's Bay.
Boston Herald
On a big island in Hudson's Bay a hitherto unknown tribe of Eskimo has been found. Whalers discovered them, and the authorities at the American Museum of Natural History, hearing the news, sent Captain C. Cromer to investigate them. How well his work has been done is evidenced by the glass cases now at the Museum in New York City, filled with the strangest exhibit that ever came even from the strange north land.
Until the last few months these people had never seen a white man. They inhabit Southampton Island, which is almost as large as the state of Maine. It is at the northwestern end of Hudson's Bay. For centuries this tribe has not had the slightest communication with other Eskimo. When discovered they were still living in the stone age, and know no metals until they were introduced within a year by visiting whalers, and to-day they live just as they did when they first emigrated—from no one knows where. Their residence probably antedates the discovery of America by Columbus.
They speak a dialect different from that of any other known tribe. Their huts are built of the skulls and jaws of whales, covered with skins of animals. Snow huts are the fashion among other Eskimo.
In the middle of their primitive dwelling stands the stone lamp (raised a little from the ground) which lights the home, heats it, cooks the food, serves for melting snow, drying clothes, and the perfecting of some of their weapons and implements. Among the Greenland Eskimo this lamp is hollowed out of soapstone, but on Southampton Island the lamp is made of a flat piece of limestone, around the edge of which narrow pieces of limestone are glued. Their pots are made of the same material, one slab serving as the bottom and four others for the ends and sides of the queerest square pot ever made. The glue is made of deer's blood, grease, and fish roe. One glance at the inside of one of these pots, lined with this pitchy mass, is enough to take away a white man's appetite for a week.
Into the limestone lamp, which is an oval a foot or so wide and about two inches deep, is put oil from whale blubber. The wick is a piece of moss. The pot is placed over the lamp on a support on which hangs a piece of blubber, which melts from the heat and feeds the lamp continually.
The dress of these people also differs in design from that of other Eskimo. The women's clothing is made of the skin of the reindeer, sewed skilfully and neatly with needles of bone and sinews instead of thread. The chief peculiarity lies in four bags, two on the shoulders and two on the legs. No one can see any use in these bags, for they are sewn shut, but it is a tradition that formerly they were much larger, and the children were carried in them. The style still persists, however, though children are no longer carried in this fashion.
Another peculiarity of feminine fashion on Southampton Island is the headdress. Nothing like it has been discovered the world over. The women plait their hair in two plaits, parting the hair in the middle. The ends of these plaits are then brought over the shoulders and introduced into two tubes of deerskin, about an inch in diameter and two feet long. From the lower end of these tubes hang wisps of hair, suggesting that the plaits—which are actually only long enough to reach the upper ends of the tubes—are so long that they run through the tubes and hang out a little. Even among Eskimo women there is "glory in the hair," and the fashion holds, though every one understands the polite fiction.
The members of this tribe live altogether by fishing and hunting, the whale being the chief article of diet. The bone harpoons they use are tipped with chipped flints, as well as their arrows and spears. The ingenuity with which they utilize the whalebone is most surprising. Cups and buckets are made of it by bending it round and sewing on the bottoms. Whalebone serves them for weapons and implements of utility. They even press it into service for making tobogganlike sleds. Some of their sledges are made of walrus tusks as runners, and with deer's antlers as crosspieces. On so large an island as theirs there is an abundance of game, such as the seal, walrus, and caribou. There are only fifty-eight persons in the whole tribe, so it is probable that it has decreased largely during the centuries.
The island is thirty miles away from the nearest point on the shore of Hudson's Bay, where there is a colony of Eskimos, and it is only once in a very long time that this strait freezes over. The tribe cherishes a tradition that about seventy-five years ago this happened, and two hunters from the mainland visited them, though the visitors were as much astonished as their hosts to know that there were other men on earth. Each tribe believed that they were the only people in existence. Strangers never visited them again, nor did they make any attempt to return the call
In the large amount of valuable material which Captain Cromer has brought back with him are many curious implements and weapons. The huge bone ear-rings with long pendants are primitive jewelry indeed. There are bows and arrows with flint points or heads, and harpoons of bone similarly pointed with stone. Combs carved out of ivory, walrus tusks, and many curious ivory ornaments and carvings are there; pipes made of stone, bone needles, sinew thread, rawhide dog whips, arrow heads wrapped in intestine and carried in this fashion to replace those that might be lost in the chase. They also carve in slate and stone, and some of the quaint little figures of polar bears, musk-ox, reindeer, and walrus, as well as of human beings, are interesting.—Boston Herald.
