we noticed that several of our eskimo guests appeared at times to be slightly under the influence of liquor and thought perhaps they had obtained gin or rum from some whaling vessel that had touched at the port before we arrived. we asked the intellectual eskimo where these fellows had got their booze. he pointed to an eskimo and said, "him."
"him" was a lordly person dressed in elaborately trimmed and ornamented skin clothes. from the way he strutted about, we had fancied him a chief. he turned out be a "moonshiner."
this doubtless will surprise those whose ideas of "moonshiners" are associated with southern appalachian ranges, lonely mountain coves, revenue raids, and romance. but here was an eskimo "moonshiner" who made unlicensed whiskey under the midnight sun and yet was as genuine a "moonshiner" as any lawless southern mountaineer. the sailors, being thirsty souls, at once opened negotiations with him for liquor. he drew from beneath his deer-skin coat a skin bottle filled with liquor and sold it to us for fifteen hardtack. wherefore there was, for a time, joy in the forecastle—in limited quantity, for the bottle was small. this product of the ice-bound north was the hottest stuff i ever tasted.
the captain was not long in discovering that the eskimo had liquor to sell and sent a boat ashore with a demijohn. the jug was brought back filled with siberian "moonshine," which had been paid for with a sack of flour. the boat's crew found on the beach a little distillery in comparison with which the pot stills of the kentucky and tennessee mountains, made of old kitchen kettles would seem elaborate and up-to-date plants. the still itself was an old tin oil can; the worm, a twisted gun barrel; the flake-stand, a small powder keg. the mash used in making the liquor, we learned, was a fermented mixture of flour and molasses obtained in trade from whale ships. it was boiled in the still, a twist of moss blazing in a pan of blubber oil doing duty as a furnace. the vapor from the boiling mash passed through the worm in the flake-stand and was condensed by ice-cold water with which the powder keg was kept constantly filled by hand. the liquor dripped from the worm into a battered old tomato can. it was called "kootch" and was potently intoxicating. an eskimo drunk on "kootch" was said to be brave enough to tackle a polar bear, single-handed. the little still was operated in full view of the villagers. there was no need of secrecy. siberia boasted no revenue raiders.
the owner of the plant did an extensive trade up and down the coast and it was said natives from diomede islands and alaska paddled over in their canoes and bidarkas to buy his liquor. they paid for it in walrus tusk ivory, whale bone, and skins and the "moonshiner" was the richest man in all that part of siberia.
if contact with civilization had taught the eskimo the art of distillation and drunkenness, it also had improved living conditions among them. many owned rifles. their spears and harpoons were steel tipped. they bartered for flour, molasses, sugar, and all kinds of canned goods with the whale ships every summer. they had learned to cook. there was a stove in the village. the intellectual eskimo boasted of the stove as showing the high degree of civilization achieved by his people. the stove, be it added, was used chiefly for heating purposes in winter and remained idle in summer. the natives regarded the cooked foods of the white man as luxuries to be indulged in only occasionally in a spirit of connoisseurship. they still preferred their immemorial diet of blubber and raw meat.
aside from these faint touches of civilization, the eskimos were as primitive in their life and mental processes as people who suddenly had stepped into the present out of the world of ten thousand years ago. i fancy adam and eve would have lived after the manner of the eskimos if the garden of eden had been close to the north pole.
there is apparently no government or law among these eskimos. they have no chiefs. when it becomes necessary to conduct any business of public importance with outsiders, it is looked after by the old men. the eskimos are a race, one may say, of individuals. each one lives his life according to his own ideas; without let or hindrance. each is a law unto himself. under these conditions one might expect they would hold to the rule of the strong arm under which might makes right. this is far from true. there is little crime among them. murder is extremely rare. though they sometimes steal from white men—the sailors on the brig were warned that they would steal anything not nailed down—they are said never—or hardly ever—to steal from each other. they have a nice respect for the rights of their neighbors. they are not exactly a golden rule people, but they mind their own business.
the infrequency of crime among them seems stranger when one learns that they never punish their children. eskimo children out-topsy topsy in "just growing." i was informed that they are never spanked, cuffed, or boxed on the ears. their little misdemeanors are quietly ignored. it might seem logical to expect these ungoverned and lawless little fellows to grow up into bad men and women. but the ethical tradition of the race holds them straight.
when a crime occurs, the punishment meted out fits it as exactly as possible. we heard of a murder among the eskimos around st. lawrence bay the punishment of which furnishes a typical example of eskimo justice. a young man years before had slain a missionary by shooting him with a rifle. the old men of the tribe tried the murderer and condemned him to death. his own father executed the sentence with the same rifle with which the missionary had been killed.
tuberculosis is a greater scourge among the eskimos than among the peoples of civilization. this was the last disease i expected to find in the cold, pure air of the arctic region. but i was told that it caused more than fifty per cent.of the deaths among the natives. these conditions have been changed for the better within the last few years. school teachers, missionaries, and traveling physicians appointed by the united states government have taught the natives of alaska hygiene and these have passed on the lesson to their kinsmen of siberia. long after my voyage had ended, captain a. j. henderson, of the revenue cutter thetis and a pioneer judge of uncle sam's "floating court" in behring sea and arctic ocean waters, told me of the work he had done in spreading abroad the gospel of health among the eskimos.
finding tuberculosis carrying off the natives by wholesale, captain henderson began the first systematic crusade against the disease during a summer voyage of his vessel in the north. in each village at which the thetis touched, he took the ship's doctor ashore and had him deliver through an interpreter a lecture on tuberculosis. though the eskimos lived an out-door life in summer, they shut themselves up in their igloos in winter, venturing out only when necessity compelled them, and living in a super-heated atmosphere without ventilation. as a result their winter igloos became veritable culture beds of the disease.
those afflicted had no idea what was the matter with them. their witch doctors believed that they were obsessed by devils and attempted by incantations to exorcise the evil spirits. the doctor of the thetis had difficulty in making the natives understand that the organism that caused their sickness was alive, though invisible. but he did succeed in making them understand that the disease was communicated by indiscriminate expectoration and that prevention and cure lay in plenty of fresh air, cleanliness, and wholesome food.
in all the villages, captain henderson found the igloos offensively filthy and garbage and offal scattered about the huts in heaps. he made the eskimos haul these heaps to sea in boats and dump them overboard. he made them clean their igloos thoroughly and take off the roofs to allow the sun and rains to purify the interiors. after this unroofing, captain henderson said, the villages looked as if a cyclone had struck them. he taught the natives how to sew together sputum cups of skin and cautioned the afflicted ones against expectoration except in these receptacles.
the eskimos were alive to the seriousness of the situation and did their utmost to follow out these hygienic instructions to the last detail. as a result of this first missionary campaign in the cause of health, the eskimos have begun to keep their igloos clean and to ventilate them in winter. there has grown up among them an unwritten law against indiscriminate expectoration more carefully observed than such ordinances in american cities. the villages have been gradually turned into open-air sanitariums and the death rate from tuberculosis has been materially reduced.
