Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos/Chapter 9
Meat is practically the sole food of the Iglulik Eskimos, or at any rate was until a very few years ago. Flour, especially in the form of biscuits and "flap-jacks", has nowadays come into use, although they only have flour during the first few days after a visit to the trading post.
Nearly all the animals living in their area are eaten, and the meat is cocked in various ways.
Caribou meat is the favourite food of the Iglulik Eskimos and, in autumn and the early winter, often in summer too, it is practically their one fare. Parry, too, says: "They like the (walrus) flesh better than that of the seal; but venison is preferred by them to either of these. and indeed to any other kind of meat". Caribou meat is best in summer and early autumn, when the animals are fat, and caribou fat is a greatly prized food.
Most of the caribou meat is eaten in a frozen state, in summer raw; they eat large quantities of the cooked meat, however, when they have sufficient blubber for cooking. The parts of the caribou which are usually cooked are the breast and ribs, the saddle and the shoulders, the hindquarter taking a secondary place. Delicacies such as tongues and lower jaws are often cooked too: the latter are sometimes collected for a long time, are cooked and provide an uncommonly tasty and rich soup. If lean meat is being cooked, a piece of back fat — if they have any — is often put into the pot and, while eating, a small piece of fat is taken with every mouthful of meat. The men's method of eating is to take a piece out of the pot and pass it round, always in the direction of the sun, each man cutting a piece as large as he can stuff into his mouth, and thus it goes round until it has disappeared and a fresh piece can be put into circulation. A cup of soup (often a dipper of musk-ox horn) in the same manner goes from mouth to mouth. The soup secured through cooking the caribou meat is always drunk; it is sometimes made richer by adding blood before cooking. Even when they have plenty of blubber it is seldom that cooked meat (ûssoq) is eaten more than once a day.
Raw caribou meat (mikiaq) is eaten a great deal in summer and autumn, in winter time too, during and just after flensing; certain parts of the animal, such as the head, the meat and fat of which are especially tasty, the marrow bones and the chine, are as a rule thawed over the lamp in winter before they are eaten. But otherwise in winter most caribou meat is eaten frozen (quaq). If it is lean, a piece of fat is often taken with each mouthful, or, in the absence of this, a lump of raw blubber or a drink of rancid oil. The quantities of lean, frozen caribou meat eaten in winter, when the Eskimos have no other food to eat, are enormous; they can eat big pieces every other hour all through the day without being quite satisfied. The fillet is almost always eaten frozen.
Sometimes caribou meat is dried in summer; on rare occasions it is baked by laying a slice of meat with a lump of fat or blubber between two flat stones, under which a fire is lighted. Rotten caribou meat is also eaten, as caribou shot in summer and cached are often more or less ir a state of putrefaction when taken out. If the meat is so far gone that it smells strongly, it is usually used for dog feed. Even the entrails, with the exception of heart, liver and kidneys, are as a rule given to the dogs. The brains are eaten raw.
Caribou fat (tûnuk) is a great delicacy. It is thickest on the back, but the fat on the head, between the guts and in various parts of the body is considered to have a better taste. In the good hunting time in early autumn the fat is often rendered down and kept in bladders. to be brought out and consumed on festive occasions later in the winter, when fat is scarce. Children often play about sucking a piece of fat as white children suck sweets.
Caribou marrow (pateq) is valued even higher than fat and is the best these people can have; during the period when the marrow is firm and fatty — in summer and early autumn — it is particularly tasty. Most marrow bones are eaten at once, before they have time to freeze; but they are often saved for long periods and then all thawed together ― one method in the autumn being that they are hung down in a water hole and a young man breaks the bones into pieces and picks out the marrow. Later on in winter the marrow is more meagre and watery.
Contents of caribou stomachs (nerrugaq), a greenish, acidous mass, consisting of masticated and half-digested vegetation, is eaten with enjoyment, although most of it as a rule is thrown to the dogs. It is eaten either frozen, often covered with liquid blubber, or cooked with blubber; a mouthful or two are often eaten during flensing. Sometimes it is mixed with soup, which is "improved" by chewing pieces of blubber and spitting them into it. The contents of caribou guts (milugaut), which are more fluid and acidous than those of the stomach, are only eaten in soup. Caribou excrement is sometimes cooked with blubber and eaten.
Wasp larvae from the caribou hide (tugtup kumait) are often eaten, though more to quench thirst than to appease hunger, as they "taste like water". Hall[1] says that the Aiviliks were very fond of soup made of these.
Musk-ox meat was once of importance to the Aiviliks. Rae[2] says: "It appears that the favourite food of these Esquimaux is musk-ox flesh; venison ranks next, and bear and walrus are preferred to seal and fish". Boas[3] mentions the ear cartilage of the musk-ox, eaten raw, as a great delicacy.
The flesh of wolverines, wolves, foxes and dogs is only eaten in cases of emergency; now and then, however, a piece of fox fat may be eaten as a luxury. Fat marmots are eaten now and then; more rarely they eat cooked lemmings.
Bear meat is valued next after caribou; this and the fat are eaten. cooked or frozen, more rarely raw or rotten. Bear liver is considered to be uneatable, as Klutschak[4] also mentions.
Walrus meat is of particular importance to the Iglulingmiut; it is not so important to the Aiviliks, although Gilder[5] refers to it as their principal food.
It is eaten cooked, frozen or rotten, more rarely raw. Rotten. walrus meat (igúnâq) is greatly prized. It is prepared in the following manner: In summer it is placed in a cache, covered with a layer of blubber, and over this stones; but as the air must get to it below, it is laid upon gravel. During the summer it will thus putrefy, the blubber oozing down and saturating it; this process gives the meat a sharp flavour, reminiscent of Rochefort cheese.
Walrus hide is also eaten cooked, raw or frozen, having to be cut into very small pieces in order to be swallowed. Walrus liver and heart are delicacies; the liver is eaten raw, cooked or frozen; the guts are eaten cooked and, thus prepared, are considered to be tasty. At Iglulik they sometimes cook walrus liver cut into slices, laid in boiling salt water and then placed in a cache with blubber. all sewn into a covering of walrus hide; the product thereby obtained, ageq, is considered to be very palatable.
The contents of walrus stomachs, principally half-digested mussels and snails (ipisaunaq) are eaten raw.
Seal meat is the third important food: it is almost exclusively Phoca foetida and P. barbata. The meat is cooked or eaten raw and frozen; more rarely it is baked with blubber or dried. Bearded-seal meat, less frequently the meat of the fjord seal, is made into ikúnâq in the same manner as walrus meat. Seal liver and heart are as a rule eaten raw. The meat that is mostly cooked is from the breast and the ribs. Seal flippers are eaten cooked or rotten (for instance in the blubber bags) as a delicacy. Seal brains are chopped up with blubber and eaten. Seal skin is only eaten in emergencies; sometimes it is boiled into a gelatinous mass (ûneq). The stomachs of young seals, when quite full, are cooked whole; the milk then tastes like a rich, sharp cheese; it stiffens on being cooled.
It is particularly in the latter part of winter and in spring that seal meat is important as a food. The Eskimos everywhere, however, regarded it as the poorest kind. An old man on Southampton Island told, as being something very desirable, of a settlement where caribou hunting was so good that none of the inhabitants ever needed to eat seal meat, but could leave it to the dogs.
Narwhals and white whales. These are especially important in northern Baffin Land. Their meat is poor, soft and not in much favour, but is eaten cooked, raw, frozen and rotten. The hide (magtaq) on the other hand is relished and is also eaten in these four conditions, but preferably cooked; a little blubber is nearly always eaten with it. The meat and, particularly, the hide of big whales are also eaten when these are caught occasionally.
Of birds they eat some ptarmigan, eider ducks, gulls and occasionally geese, loons and, at Ponds Inlet, guillemots. They are nearly always cooked as they are usually caught in summer where there is plenty of fuel. Sometimes they are eaten raw, especially ptarmigan. Eggs are not of much importance; at Iglulik they are occasionally dried. Parry[6] mentions that eggs in large numbers were collected on the islands of Nerdlonartoq and Tern Island, north of Iglulik. Ptarmigan excrement is chewed together with walrus meat into a porridgy mass, which is stirred up in blubber. Lyon[7] mentions eider duck fat as a great delicacy.
Of fish, only the salmon trout is of any significance; it is eaten cooked and frozen, and sometimes raw; very frequently it is dried, the guts being taken out, and stretched in the air by means of two sticks. Salmon soup is drunk too; a particularly strong soup is made of heads, which as a rule are saved for the purpose. Sometimes caplins are collected and cooked.
A sort of "chewing gum" is made of stiffened oil, kneaded with eider down or sinew-thread after having been softened in water; it is quite stringy. The first mixture is packed into the chewed walrus hide and the whole is chewed until it becomes quite white and is called pujaq. Caribou fat can be used in a similar manner; the chewing mixes it with saliva and air and it is called taqoarataq.
Very little vegetable food is eaten; it has no part at all in the economy of the people. The principal vegetable food is the contents of caribou stomachs. Sometimes they eat the berries of Vaccinium uliginosum and the crowberry, often mixed with fat or blubber; not many of these berries are to be found, however. Image missingFig. 162.Pipes. The roots of Silene acaulis (tordleq), Potentilla pulchella and creeping willow[8] and the leaves of Oxyria digyna (serneq) are eaten now and then, mostly by women and children. The roots of Pedicularis (airaq) are eaten raw and sometimes boiled in soup.
The principal meal is almost always eaten in the evening, when the men return from the hunt. Very often they go out in the morning without eating or drinking. If they catch anything, they eat a little of the animal at once, or they wait until they return home in the evening. Nevertheless they eat when they please all day, especially when there is an abundance of food and not much work to do. At meals the men eat in the manner already described, the pieces of meat and cups of soup going from mouth to mouth until there is nothing left. The women, however, each take a piece of meat and eat it alone, and the children have their own portions too. As a rule the women eat several meals during the day while the men are out hunting; on the other hand they do not consume such great quantities at each meal.
Smoking is now generally spread among the Iglulik Eskimos and has been ever since the first contact with white men; in Parry's time it was not known.
The pipes (pujuluitsit) are for the most part home made: the bowl is cut out of soapstone and the stem made of two longitudinal wooden pieces bound together with sinew-thread.[9] Fig. 162 a (Ponds Inlet) is one of these pipes of soapstone, with a wooden stem. The head has three brass mountings. Length 10.1 cm. Fig. 162 b (Iglulingmiut) has a soapstone head with three mountings, a wooden stem bound together with sinew-thread and a separate European mouthpiece of bone, held on to the stem by a brass band; on the bowl is a brass cover held on by a chain, and on this chain hang three strings of beads and a pipe-cleaner, needle-shaped, and a spatula-shaped scraper, both of brass.
A small pipe from Ponds Inlet is cut out of one piece of ivory: bowl and stem form an obtuse angle. Length 7.3 cm; diameter of bowl 2.1 cm. A pipe from the Aivilingmiut, Southampton Island, has a cylindrical head of antler, 3.7 cm high, 2.7 cm long, oval in section, and a wooden stem which extends 8.5 cm from the bowl; as usual the stem is formed of two long pieces bound together.
As a rule, tobacco is not smoked pure in the state in which it is bought at the trading post, but is mixed with chopped Vaccinium twigs, Cassiope or cotton grass, as the pure tobacco is too strong. Both men and women smoke, mostly indoors and, as the women are mostly indoors, it is they who smoke most. The pipe does not hold much tobacco and as a rule only a few draws are taken every time it is lighted, before it is laid aside or passed on to another mouth. One peculiar custom is that every time a man or a woman wakes up during the night, the pipe is lighted and a few puffs are taken, whereupon it is laid down and one goes to sleep again.
Smoking has now become quite a passion; when the store of tobacco is exhausted, they start upon old linen bags or the like, in which there has been tobacco, and these are chopped up and mixed with pieces of wood or bilberry twigs; they smoke all kinds of substitutes such as heather, cotton grass and the like, these being mixed with old pipe scrapings as long as they have any. At Christmas, 1922. when I was on Southampton Island, we still had a trifling quantity of tobacco left; an Eskimo woman made me a present of a new pipe mouthpiece which she had made herself; her kindness touched me deeply, but her action turned out to be rather less unselfish: She wanted my old mouthpiece to chop up and smoke!
Alcoholic liquors are, thanks to the prohibition of the Canadian Government, unknown to most of the Eskimos; but many of the older ones can still tell of the orgies of the time of the whalers. when they filled themselves with rum till they were hopelessly drunk.