Coppermine (18 page)

They finished butchering the three other caribou in like manner, preserving the hides and sinew for future use, and cached almost three hundred pounds of the best meat. They gave the last of the old provisions to the dogs, but not the caribou legs; the spirits of the caribou would be offended by such an act. They packed up the tent, the skins, and the sleeping bags and set off. The dogs strained hard to pull the extra weight, but Creed noted a higher degree of enthusiasm in Star. The dog licked his hand in gratitude, much happier to be pulling than to be pulled.

Before them spread the last and highest of the Dismal Lakes. Beyond that they could make out the gentle rise to the watershed they would have to cross, miles in the distance; it would be downhill after that. Creed’s goal was to get over that high divide before nightfall or perhaps the day after. As things turned out, they would not cross it for many weeks.

Even as they approached the source of the Dismal Lakes system, snow began to fall and the view of the far ridge quickly disappeared. Creed’s binoculars were useless. The snow was remarkable for its density: huge snowflakes, more flake than air, almost smothered them. They could hardly see three feet in front of them. The north wind rose quickly, and the big flakes that once fell in a gentle vertical descent now came at them in an aggressive horizontal trajectory, hitting their eyes and teeth. Creed’s heavy beard saved his face from frostbite.

They made slow progress along the north shore of the lake, battling the snowstorm until the snow and the darkness became impossible. They needed to find shelter. Creed hoped that the eastern lee of the watershed might provide protection from the wind, but it was still far away. He had them stop and he began to pull out his heavy canvas tent, the snow swirling around him. Angituk came close to be heard.

“Corporal Creed. They want to build a snow house.”

Creed looked to where Uluksuk and Sinnisiak had gone ahead and found several deep snowdrifts formed in the lee of a pile of rocks. Uluksuk turned toward Creed, pointed to the deep snow, and shouted,
“Iglukhaq!”

“I’ve got the tent,” he told Angituk.

Uluksuk called out again,
“Iglukhaq!”
This was one of thirtytwo Copper Eskimo words for “snow,” and it meant “deep, packed snow suitable for igloo building.”

“They will build a snow house,” Angituk told Creed again. “Better than a tent.”

Uluksuk pulled from his pack a long, broad wooden knife. Creed’s hand went instinctively to his pistol. How the hell had he missed that knife when he inspected the pack?

Angituk came between them, shouting over the wind. “He will build it here. There is good snow and it is almost dark. The storm will get worse.”

Uluksuk made sawing gestures with the snow knife. Creed looked up through the snow at the darkly dramatic sky.

“All right, good. We stop here.”

“They’ll need their hands.”

Creed hesitated a moment at this, but it was true. He dug out the keys and freed them both, keeping his rifle under his arm.

THE OLD MAN
chose a flat place near the shore of the lake but far enough back to ensure that there would be grass underneath and not large stones. He walked in a circle, and he and Sinnisiak began to cut and shape square blocks from within the circle, using the wooden cleaver. These blocks they set where Uluksuk had paced, creating the first layer of wall. They worked quickly, almost cheerfully, in the snowstorm. Uluksuk’s knife flew as if in the hands of an inspired sculptor.

Uluksuk had begun with a long, thin triangular block, and as his first circle came back to this, the blocks of the second row slanted upward so succeeding rows formed a continuous spiral. They progressed to the third and fourth rows, each bevelled at the top and bottom and canted slightly in so each layer had one or two fewer blocks and took less time. This was good, because they were now in almost complete darkness. By the fourth layer they had used up the snow inside the circle and Uluksuk began to cut blocks on the outside, creating a moat around the house and passing the blocks in to Sinnisiak, whose shoulders and head were just visible above the rising wall. Finally all that could be seen of him were his mittens reaching up with another block in the thin air and swirling snow.

They were working more by feel than by sight now. And when the final block, sculpted with great care by Uluksuk, was set in place at the top of the dome, Creed and Angituk cheered. Sinnisiak filled in a few gaps on the outside with snow while Uluksuk fashioned the little tunnel entrance. A caribou hide to cover the opening and the house was complete. It had taken perhaps forty-five minutes. Creed’s two prisoners stood proudly at the entrance and gestured for his inspection.

Creed lit his little stove to see their handiwork. It was big inside, almost as big as Uluksuk’s family igloo at his camp. Uluksuk had left two raised snow platforms for sitting and sleeping. They passed in their baggage. They left the caribou meat and bones in a depression to one side of the entrance, where they would remain frozen.

Sinnisiak took out a long, shallow soapstone dish and fashioned a series of wicks from dried grass. He had cut several strips of yellow fat from the doe and he began to melt them over Creed’s stove, dripping the liquid into the dish. When he had enough to wet the wicks, he lit them, six flames in all. They drew from the liquid fat and quickly warmed up the igloo. Creed turned off his coal-oil stove.

Sinnisiak continued to feed his little soapstone dish with chips of fat. Then he suspended a caribou haunch sideways over the flames on moistened gut strings suspended from the roof, looped so he could turn the meat, and soon the pleasure of a warm house was followed by the tantalizing aroma of roasting caribou. Creed noted, as his mouth began to water, that patience was the order of the day. Six small flames would manage only a very slow roast. As it cooked, the haunch dripped its fat into the soapstone dish and replenished the fuel. Creed marvelled at the simple efficiency of the system. He demonstrated the thumbsup sign to his prisoners.

“This means ‘good,’” he told them, and Angituk translated.

“Isuma!”

They all tried it, thumbs up, with a little thrust forward. The prisoners did it to Creed and then to themselves and then to Angituk. Creed gestured to the fine snow house and the meat cooking and gave them another emphatic thumbs-up, which they clearly understood and returned. Then they both put their hands forward and Creed reinstalled the handcuffs.

AS THE WIND HOWLED
outside and the cozy igloo warmed with their body heat, Creed took out Rouvière’s tattered journal. He could not directly ask his prisoners for the details of their actions and motivations without a lawyer present, but he knew the journal held clues. The priest had written:

The people who returned are very good-natured to us and well disposed. A whole brigade of them came to visit! I was delighted that the Eskimos of last summer that I taught to make the sign of the Cross remembered and made it for me and had even taught it to others! So they do have a notion of God and don’t seem to be rebellious to the spirit. And they have a real interest in singing. God seems to want to bless us.

The priests continued to try to teach them about Christ. Again Rouvière wrote of how they struggled with the “incomprehensible” language and how even a fine linguist such as Le Roux was challenged by it. And he wrote too of how Le Roux struggled with his moods.

The Father is aware of his own quick temper and is striving valiantly to subdue it. He has never tried to hurt my feelings. I like to think that our good relations will not be disturbed. After all the reports I was given by Hornby, I was afraid there would be some difficulties, but God has taken everything in hand and nothing has come about to disturb our good understanding.

I have learned some skills here. I can drive the dogs pulling the sled. I have netted a few small trout through the ice. And I’ve learned to shake a little of the sacramental wine into the skillet for flavour, God forgive my indulgence. It is the small comforts that help us go on.

We have decided we will find some Eskimos to take us north to the mouth of the Coppermine and the Gulf. We will reconnoitre that place because it is a gathering place that would be the ideal spot for a mission church. We will win over the people to the one true faith. Then we have big plans. We will travel south again before the worst of the winter, make our way back to Fort Norman, take the riverboat to the Mackenzie delta, and hire a ship in the spring with building materials to take us down the coast to arrive at the mouth again, this time from the west. It is a good plan, may Mother Mary protect us. Let us say our prayers to see what the good God thinks about it.

IN THE WARM IGLOO,
Creed’s thoughts were turning to dinner. There were some impressive hors d’oeuvres: a finely sliced raw kidney, cups of blood, and chunks of tongue. Creed especially enjoyed the bones broiled over the oil lamps until they cracked and released their long jellylike marrows. He did not like the highly prized fat behind the eye sockets simply because he knew where it came from, and he also avoided the liver for different reasons; but beyond that, he loved all the caribou meat.

After they finished their meal, Uluksuk spoke to Creed at length and Creed listened patiently, looking into his eyes but understanding nothing. When he had finished, Angituk began her translation.

“When we kill animals, we must do so with respect. As you did this morning, you must avoid needless pain. We believe the spirit of the animal we kill goes into the next animal we hunt. We will meet him again, so we must treat him with respect and maybe he will give himself to us again. This is why after we kill a seal we give it a drink of fresh water. A bird gets a drop of oil on its head and feet. We do not give caribou leg bones to the dogs for this is disrespectful. And when a boy makes his first kill, his mother will weep over the animal and apologize to it for what her son has done.”

Despite himself, there were cracks forming in Creed’s skepticism about the Copper beliefs. Here on the land they made as much sense as the tenets of any religion he knew. More than most.

Nine

The snowstorms continued for days, but they stayed warm and well fed in the snow house. They had entered total winter night now. They would not see the sun again for many weeks, and even on the rare nights of a full moon’s illumination, travel through the disorienting winds and the heart-stoppingly low temperatures would be too dangerous. Three or four tiny flames in the little soapstone lamp provided their only light and heat. Each day the two hunters would stuff themselves with caribou until their bellies were stretched, sleep for a few hours while more cooked, wake up, and stuff themselves again. They were building up their protein and fat stores so that when the caribou was gone and they had to move, they could go for days without eating. They relieved themselves in a bowl inside, or outside if temperatures permitted, but always close to the igloo. Disorientation in the winter darkness was not uncommon, and many a lost, frozen body had been discovered a few yards from an invisible snow house door.

Creed spent hours with his sharp steel knife, thinly slicing the
nipku,
the meat that would be dried for future use. Every part of the caribou they could not eat, they used elsewhere. Angituk had scraped and dried the new caribou skins. She emptied the forty-foot intestine of each caribou and now patiently cut sixty lengths of gut cord with Creed’s knife.

Sinnisiak went out and returned with a small bundle of long willow saplings he found by feel under the deep snow. With these and the cords and other parts from the caribou, the hunters began to take pleasure in creating things: miniature but functioning bows and arrows—which they presented to Creed for safekeeping—a small, delicate fishnet, a ring-toss game. A carrying sack from the stomach. A bowl from the skull.

Creed’s prisoners worked quickly, apparently unencumbered by their handcuffs. Angituk continued to process the caribou skins, chewing the hide over and over to make it supple. She told Creed she was making something as a surprise for him to wear and he was not to look. As the snow piled up outside in the darkness, Creed learned that the most essential project was yet to come.

Uluksuk started by fashioning a large oval of woven twigs bound together by moistened gut. Then he wove a pattern of open netting back and forth and used some of the caribou hide for straps. Creed was asking fewer questions these days. He had taken up the Eskimo custom of waiting and watching and learning, and so he knew without asking what Uluksuk laboured over: snowshoes. He inspected Uluksuk’s impressive craftsmanship and without discussion fell to making his own. Creed quickly fell behind the progress of the others, but the storms were still howling and the sun was weeks away. There was no rush.

As they worked, Angituk told him stories of her childhood, including the great caribou hunts.

“When a herd came near, we would figure out where to drive them to for the best advantage to kill them. Wind direction was considered. And convenience. We would find a place, a shallow river or, once, I remember, a little walled-in valley. We would all work to build
inukshuks
on either side of a pathway to keep the caribou moving straight when they came. Then all the women and children would very quietly travel around to the far side of the herd and spread out and stretch out our arms and slowly, quietly begin to move the herd down the path to the place. And the
inukshuks
scared them, especially the ones with grass hair, and made them stay in the path. And as they got closer and started crowding, we would begin to yell and howl—kids and mothers with babies on their backs—and the herd would go faster and faster. And we would start to run to keep them going so when they got to the shallow river they could not stop. They would go straight in.

“Then the hunters would come out from their hiding places. In the water two legs move faster than four, and our hunters would run them down and kill them with their spears or arrows. If the river was deep, some hunters even used kayaks to paddle up and spear them, one after the other. And the river would be red, and the women and children would sing and cheer the hunters. And when the killing was done, we’d drag the animals into the shallows. The shaman would give thanks and make sacrifice to the caribou spirits. Then we would all be happy with full bellies for a long, long time.”