Winter Life in the Land of the Eskimo by Lieut. Frederick Schwatka

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1885

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 34

Winter Life in the Land of the Eskimo.

By Lieut. Frederick Schwatka

The winter life of the American Arctic native, or Eskimo, is much more interesting than his summer existence, which partakes so much of the general life of savages, with a few uninteresting changes, while in the winter time we have a mode of life so radically different from that of any other people, by their peculiar environment, that the first travelers among them to describe these strange details were looked upon as Munchausens of the greatest breadth of imagination. Houses of ice and snow, the very last thing in the world that a person would take to make a comfortable abode anywhere, were reputed to be their winter habitations. They lived on raw frozen meat in a temperature where it would be agony to anyone else not to have their meal hot and steaming; and so on through all the social economy, leading a perfect life of polar paradoxes.

By most ethnologists it has been claimed that this strange nation found itself in its frigid land as a result of national weakness, “crowded to the wall” as it were by superior races, and that wall a wall of ceaseless ice. I am a firm believer in the opposite, or that the Eskimo finds in the North his most congenial clime, and we find to corroborate this the perfect contentment of the people with their country, their hesitation in leaving it for however short a visit, their longings to return when absent; many other reasons show that they are naturally natives of the north land by their own choice and not that of others.

They are no more held to the rim of the cheerless Arctic Sea by other races than are the musk-oxen by the buffalo, or the polar bear by the grizzly. That they are more than satisfied with their cold country and its phenomenal low temperatures is amply shown, I think, in their preference for their winter life over that of the summer, although their struggle for an existence is much harder then, as viewed from our point of hardships, in the terrible exposure and oft-recurring famines, for which they seem to care but little. Now let us take a look at that winter life in the light of one who has lived as an Eskimo for over two years among them, for everyone will admit that some additional light is needed, so little do they have in the winter season.

A few premonitory frosts commence in the Arctic fall, generally followed by a blustering northern storm of snow and sleet, and then with a sharp snap the thermometer sinks to the minus twenties and thirties, and the Arctic winter is upon them, and as the school-boy dialect would have it, “for keeps too.” This varied from early September to late October in my travels, occurring on King William’s Land at the former time in 1879, and in North Hudson’s Bay at the latter in 1878. This sudden onslaught of the winter does not drive them at once into their peculiar houses of snow, glad as they would be, however, to avail themselves of such an abode; for the first snows that fall are not of the right texture for this Arctic architecture. Fully forty degrees below zero must have been reached, and a number of fierce gales must have “packed” down the autumn snow, before it is of the proper consistency, or see-tu-w-ad-lo (heavy), as the Eskimo call it, to be cut into the curious blocks or huge bricks of snow of which they make their snow houses (igloo of the Eskimo), looking with their oblate shape so much like the old-fashioned pictures of bee-hives.

Their skin tents are altogether too cold to live comfortably in them long before that time comes around, and the Arctic carpenter is driven to another curious material for building to keep out the bitter cold, and that is the pure ice from the many fresh-water lakes and ponds with which their country abounds. When it is about six inches thick, they cut out slabs about the size of an ordinary house door, put them upright on their ends, joining them edge to edge, making a little circular pen of ice about ten or fifteen feet in diameter, over which they put the summer tent for a roof. These houses of ice are as transparent as glass, if clear ice has been formed, and when finished, one can look through and see what his or her neighbors are doing without the trouble of getting down on his hands and knees and crawling in to find out. These glass-like houses thus completely kill all incentive to gossip, as an essential element thereto, ignorance of the person talked about, is wanting. I am pleased to add, however, that the malicious variety of this trait is wholly unknown among these distant people.

The house of ice, while warmer than a skin tent, will not compare with one of snow, and as soon as this material is of proper texture, an igloo, or snow house, is constructed. I will not dwell on the construction of the igloo to any great extent, further than saying that it is the shape of a half egg cut perpendicular to its axis, and about six to eight inches thick in the blocks, which are about thirty inches long by half as wide. The most common errors regarding the Eskimo snow house are, that these big blocks are laid flat, when they are really on their longer edge, and that they form one course above another, as we build a brick building, when, in fact, there is but one course, spirally twisting around from bottom to top. While the blocks are but six to eight inches thick, the igloo is often made four to five or even eight to ten times as thick during very cold weather, by a banking of loose snow thrown over it.

Of course the temperature cannot get above freezing in these homes of hard snow, or the structure will commence melting and eventually tumble in; but it must be remembered that a person can soon get used to a temperature just a few degrees below freezing, and even be quite comfortable. I must say that after a person has got thoroughly acclimated to the outdoor winter life of the Arctic, a temperature of 20° to 32° Fahrenheit is every bit as comfortable as one of 70° to 80° to a person coming into the house from a temperature well below freezing.

I distinctly remember one curious effect on the white men of my party during the cold of the first incoming winter. Everyone has probably felt the loss of managing power in the fingers when numbed with cold, an inability to write, or button or unbutton a coat or other garment, or to do anything requiring considerable manipulation and play of the fingers, and we, of course, were at first no exceptions to the rule. Being constantly in this temperature, however, and almost as constantly exercising our fingers under these disadvantageous circumstances, I was greatly surprised to see how rapidly these functions of the fingers were restored, until by the time winter was over they were actually as perfect as ever in any temperature, however cold, and this too, despite the fact that there still remained, as before, the disagreeable sensation of cold in them at times. It seemed as if the motor and sensory nerves could be made absolutely independent of each other; and this benefit, which allowed me to thread a needle and sew below freezing, to use a sextant for observations at minus 40° Fahrenheit, or clean and insert cartridges in a magazine gun at even 20° lower, with ungloved hands, I believe I still, to a certain extent, retain, although all others accruing from Arctic acclimatization have disappeared in my five years away from that zone.

If a comfortable house made of ice or snow seems singular during intense cold, how absurd an enjoyable bed made of the same material must appear; and yet their bedsteads are made of snow, the mattresses of many layers of musk-ox and polar bear robes and undressed reindeer skins, while the sheets are dressed reindeer robes, and the covers of the same material, their pillows being their reindeer clothing rolled in a bundle at the head of the snow bed. Here, stark naked, with only one reindeer skin over them, they will sleep as soundly as a farmer in more favored climes after a hard day’s work, and that with the temperature out-of-doors so low that every breathing thing is enveloped in a cloud of its own making.

The amount of cold these northern nomads can endure borders on the phenomenal. I have seen the little babies, two and three years old, play, perfectly naked, for hours at a time, on the reindeer robes of the bed in the igloo, the temperature, as I have said, being constantly below freezing; and in the fall, I have seen them naked, playing and splashing in a pond of water, long needles of ice forming on the quiet places. I once saw an Eskimo baby boy taken from his mother’s hood, and, naked, made to stand on the snow until she found its reindeer-skin clothing from the sledge, a fairly strong wind, sufficient to drift the loose snow along with it, blowing at the time, the thermometer minus 38°, the only protection it had being a sledge loaded about three feet high, around and over which the wind poured. Its exposure thus was a good minute, and to appreciate this, one must take a watch in his hand, and see that length of time drag by, a time that a not unconscientious but sensational writer might readily jot down as five or ten minutes.

I have known a naked man, surprised asleep in his igloo by a polar bear, hastily grasp a gun and pursue his enemy two or three hundred yards in the snow, the thermometer fifteen or twenty degrees below zero, and slay him. These Eskimo rub slushy snow dipped in water on the bottom of the runners of their sledges with the open palms of their hands until it becomes solid ice, the thermometer being from zero to seventy below, when I have known it to be done. I have seen an Eskimo traveler throw himself on the snow and rest comfortably for half an hour, the thermometer seventy-one degrees below zero, or one hundred and three degrees below freezing; and probably doing some light work with ungloved hands.

The Kinnepetoo Eskimo, who seldom build even the small fires of the native stone lamp in their igloos during the very coldest weather of winter, are probably the hardiest of all these boreal tribes in withstanding low temperatures, and sit around in their cold, cheerless snow houses with only their under garments on (the Eskimo has two suits of reindeer skins, the outer with the hair turned outward, and the inner with the hair turned toward, and resting against, the body), their arms withdrawn from their sleeves and resting on their bare bodies across their breast, chatting all the while pleasantly about various matters, the thermometer often being below zero; in fact, the only warmth the snow house has, is that given off by their bodies.

In fact, I might say that I have been naked myself in a temperature of minus 68°, during the short time it took to undress, roll my reindeer coat into a bundle for a pillow, and crawl into my sleeping-bag; but my movements partook more of the character of a small boy going to a base-ball match than one sawing wood.

Their most efficient method of keeping warm seems to be in the enormous quantities of fat they devour, and especially during the winter season, and of which so much has been written that I will leave the subject for others not so well understood. Their clothing, made of reindeer skins throughout, I have sufficiently, though very briefly, described above in parenthesis. Persons looking at pictures of polar people clad in these swathy furs, think from their bulky appearance that they must be quite heavy, but I think they are lighter than our winter suits at home. They are certainly lighter than any other clothing in the world called upon to protect its owners from such intense cold.

A most peculiar fallacy of Eskimo winter life is that, when they are living in these odd little snow houses, and wrapped in furs and subsisting on fats, their lives are a sort of hibernation, as near as human beings can be supposed to hibernate. On the contrary, the very reverse seems to be the case, and it is by far their liveliest season, despite the fact that their days are much shorter, and all conditions, as we would view them, much more unfavorable for any great amount of active out-of-door life. I do not believe I exaggerate when I say, that for every mile they travel in summer with their kiaks (little skin canoes), or on foot over the land, they can show from a dozen to a score in the winter with their dogs and sledges. They kill more game in this season, and their long evenings are by far the most lively in their acrobatic and superstitious exercises.

A book could be written without exhausting the winter life in Eskimo-land, but I have tried in my small space to give some of the most interesting themes thereon, and, above all, something new and beyond the hackneyed subjects of other polar travelers.—Lieut. Frederick Schwatka, in the N. Y. Independent.