At night they slept in the bunkhouse, and they presented a sight which
one is not likely to forget--especially one lying on his back on the
table, with his arms extended and his head hanging listlessly over the
edge. One felt sorely tempted to put a pin into him to see if he
really were alive, but we decided to abstain for prudential reasons.
We had among the garments on board three not exactly suited to the
white settlers, so I told the agent to let the Indians have a rifle
shooting match for them. They were a fox huntsman's red broadcloth
tail-coat, with all the glory of gilt buttons, a rather dilapidated
red golf blazer, and a white, cavalryman's Eton coat, with silver
buttons, and the coat-of-arms on. Words fail me to paint the elation
of the winner of the fox hunting coat; while the wearer of the cavalry
mess jacket was not the least bit daunted by the fact that when he got
it on he could hardly breathe. I must say that he wore it over a
deerskin kossak, which is not the custom of cavalrymen, I am led to
believe.
The coast-line from Ramah to Cape Chidley is just under one hundred
miles, and on it live a few scattered Eskimo hunters. Mr. Ford knew
every one of them personally, having lived there twenty-seven years.
It appears that a larger race of Eskimos called "Tunits," to whom the
present race were slaves, used to be on this section of the coast. At
Nakvak there are remains of them. In Hebron, the same year that we met
the Indians at Davis Inlet, we saw Pomiuk's mother. Her name is
Regina, and she is now married to Valentine, the king of the Eskimos
there. I have an excellent photograph of a royal dinner party, a thing
which I never possessed before. The king and queen and a solitary
courtier are seated on the rocks, gnawing contentedly raw walrus
bones--"ivik" they call it.
The Eskimos one year suffered very heavily from an epidemic of
influenza--the germ doubtless imported by some schooner from the
South. Like all primitive peoples, they had no immunity to the
disease, and the suffering and mortality were very high. It was a
pathetic sight as the lighter received its load of rude coffins from
the wharf, with all the kindly little people gathered to tow them to
their last resting-place in the shallow sand at the end of the inlet.
The ten coffins in one grave seemed more the sequence of a battle
than of a summer sickness in Labrador. Certainly the hospital move on
the part of the Moravians deserved every commendation; though I
understand that at their little hospital in Okkak they have not always
been able to have a qualified medical man in residence.
One old man, a patient on whose hip I had operated, came and insisted
that I should examine the scars. Oddly enough during the operation the
Eskimo, who was the only available person whom I had been able to find
to hold the light, had fainted, and left me in darkness. I had
previously had no idea that their sensibilities were so akin to ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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