In Fond Remembrance of Me (4 page)

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Authors: Howard Norman

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Local knowledge of Inuit births as it pertained to Mark Nuqac's generation is largely hearsay, though there are some frequently reliable church and missionary records, too. As far as I could find out, Mark's own parents were born near Baker Lake around 1890. Near the beginning of my time in Churchill Mark insisted that he was born in 1912, though near the end of my visit he mentioned that he was born in 1915.
Four main groups of Mark's extended community, or tribe,
Caribou Eskimo
(Inuit), were recognized by the Fifth Thule Expedition of 1921-24, led by the famous explorer-naturalist Knud Rasmussen, whose report was published in 1930. Mark claimed to have seen Rasmussen when he, Mark, was a boy. Neither Helen nor I believed him, but if one studies the demographics and calendar of Rasmussen's travels, it could have been true. Anyway, the designated groups are
Qairnirmiut, Hantiqtuurmiut, Harvaaqturrumiut, Paalirmiut
. Later, a fifth group,
Ahiarmiut,
to the southwest on the upper Maguse and Kazan Rivers, was recognized. Mark of course made claims for “first contact” in biblical times, but written records place first contact with white people in the eighteenth century, with the founding of
Churchill. A famous summer trading center was Akiliniq on the northwest side of Beverly Lake, where driftwood had drawn Inuit people from great distances.
Mark Nuqac remembered searching for driftwood there as a child. Here is part of the transcript of a conversation I had with Mark one evening in his kitchen. The subject was driftwood.
HN:
You mentioned yesterday that you gathered driftwood at Akiliniq.
MN:
Yes, I said that. Yes.
HN:
With your family?
MN:
Children ran along. Older people walked. Looking for driftwood. One summer we found a lot of pieces on the same morning.
HN:
And it made for good fires?
MN:
Dried out. Yes.
HN:
Thank you for telling me. You look as if—. You look like you want to stop talking about this.
MN:
One time something from a (capsized?) ship washed up. That caused a problem, a quarrel.
HN:
About what had washed up? The quarrel.
MN:
“I found it!” “No, it was me, I found it!” “I found it!” “No, no, no!” We were children.
HN:
What was it—what had washed up?
MN:
There was a lot of driftwood, too. But this was (
looks to his wife for the right word in English
)—a carved wooden face. From the—”
HN:
—bow. The bow of a ship. The very front, where all the wind and sea spray flies up.
MN:
Someone from a museum was up here. He heard us describe it. It was a woman's face. He said it was very old, probably.
HN:
In what condition was it?
MN:
Condition?
HN:
You could see clearly that it was a woman's face?
MN:
The schooner—the old ship—it went down. The woman's face was let go. It traveled to Akiliniq. My brothers and me found it. We were running around shouting, “Look at that! Look at that! Look at the old face!” That was a wonderful thing.
HN:
Do you know where it is today?
MN:
That is what the person from the museum asked me.
HN:
Do you know where it is? I'd like very much to see it someday.
MN:
Nobody kept it. We didn't keep it. But before we dried it and chopped it up—a lot was rotted out, but some could be saved—before that, we looked at it a long time. “I found it!” “No, I found it!” (
Laughing
.) “No—!”
HN:
I'd like to have seen it.
MN:
I'd like to see it again myself.
HN:
How big was it?
MN:
Two—three, of that stove, there. (
Points to the cast-iron potbelly stove
.) It was at Akiliniq. How could we carry it back? We chopped it up. How could you get the big carved face—very large—wooden face—the nose gone—all the way back? But when we got home we told everyone. We described it.
NOAH WOULD NOT GIVE UP
EVEN A SPLINTER
 
It was almost winter. But the water had not turned to ice yet. After one storm a piece of driftwood was seen out at sea. The villagers gathered together and pointed at it. “It's on top of a wave now,” one shouted. “It's disappeared now! It's on top of a wave now!” But that piece of driftwood didn't tumble in. “I hope we can have one more driftwood-fire before winter,” a man said.
The next day, a storm. No driftwood. The next day, a storm—no driftwood. The next day, a storm—no driftwood. The next day someone shouted, “Look—out there!” Everyone saw a big wooden boat on top of a wave.
A storm hit hard. It was windy and there was sleet. When the storm ended, some villagers went looking for driftwood. No driftwood. But they found an animal washed up on the rocks. “What is that?” a man asked.
“It's not a seal,” another man said. “It's not a polar bear. It's not-It's not—It's not” People were confused.
“It's not a whale,” another villager said. The animal had a very long neck. It was very tall. It had yellow skin and black spots. “No, that's not a seal,” a woman said. In a short while every villager had gone out to look at this animal.
“It must have escaped from the wooden boat,” a man said. “Where else could it have come from?”
“Some of you haul it back out there,” another woman said.
It took a lot of men to do this. They lay the tall animal across their kayaks. Paddling was not easy. There were rough waves and the spotted animal tilted the kayaks and kept them dangerously low
in the water. When they got to the big wooden boat, a man shouted up, “Hey—hey there!”
On deck appeared a man. He was standing next to a tall animal with black spots. It had a long neck. Its skin was yellow—not paled by drowning, either. It had small horns. “Hey, there's another one!” a man shouted. “I wonder how it tastes?”
“What do you want?” the man shouted down.
“We've brought this dead animal back.”
“It fell off my ark.”
“What's that?”
“It's what my boat is called.”
“What's your name?”
“Noah.”
“What's this animal called?”
“A giraffe.”
“Where you come from do you eat it?”
“Not my family.”
“Is your family with you?”
“Yes—my wife. My son. My daughter.”
“I bet they're inside the ark eating a giraffe.”
The villagers in kayaks all laughed.
“No—no—there's only this one left alive,” said Noah.
“Winter is coming in fast. You'll be without food. You better think about eating that giraffe.”
“No,” said Noah.
“Well, the one lying across these kayaks is dead. We don't eat dead animals. Ravens might—foxes might, if the carcass is frozen. Crows do that, gulls do that.”
“I don't want the dead giraffe,” said Noah.
With that, the villagers pushed the giraffe into the sea. “Giraffe-sank-away,” a man said.
It became winter. It was snowing. The ark was trapped in ice out there. Great hummocks of sea ice pushed up against it. Snow fell on the giraffe. Snow fell on Noah. In the village, people said, “Hey, Noah and his family must be hungry. If we have luck in hunting, let's bring them a seal.” It was agreed. Some hunters walked out over the ice. They bent over seal breathing-holes. They caught many seals. All at once the dogs began to bark—all across the ice—echoes of dog barks—over there—over there-and the seal hunters looked around. “Hey—look there!” one shouted. Then from a different place on the ice men saw the other tall spotted giraffe walking out over the ice! Its long legs were not good for this. It collapsed and fell, it got up, it fell, it slid around. “Giraffe-on-the-ice,” a hunter said.
“Let's get it!” another said.
So the men hunted the giraffe. When they got up close they threw spears and gaffing hooks and killed the giraffe. They fed some of it to their dogs. The dogs ate what they were given right away. The men hauled the rest back to their village. People there looked at the strange hooves. People ate some of the giraffe but didn't like it.
“Let's say thanks to Noah anyway,” a woman said.
“He didn't give us this food,” a hunter said. “We got it.”
“His family must be starving,” a woman said. “Bring him some of this animal, at least.” So the hunters dragged the giraffe haunches out to the ark. “Hey, Noah!” one shouted out. “Here's some food to get you by for a while!”
“No!” Noah called down. “I see pieces of spotted hide still attached. We don't want it!”
“Noah, give us a plank of wood, we'll get you through the winter,” a hunter said. “We'll show you how to chisel through the ice
for fishing. We'll show you how to lean over a seal breathing-hole. Just give us a plank of wood.”
“No!” Noah shouted in anger. When he shouted, he slid his hand across the rail of his ark. “Oh! Oh!” The villagers saw he had got a splinter in his thumb.
“Hey, Noah,” a man said, “Just give us that splinter! We'll get you and your family through winter. Hey, come on! We can get that splinter out for you. We get splinters out all the time. Come on, it's just a tiny piece of wood. We get bone splinters out, other sorts … fish-bone splinters. We can spark a fire from just that splinter. Come on, we'll climb up and get that splinter out!”
Noah walked to the rail. He saw a villager climbing up. Noah struck this man with a long stick with bristles at the end. The man fell to the ice. “Hey—hey!” the man said. “Noah, what did you hit me with?”
“A broom,” said Noah.
“Well, a bristle stuck in my face. I'm going to try and spark a fire from it!”
“Go away!” said Noah.
“Let us have the broom,” said a man, “we'll get you through winter. Otherwise you'll starve.”
“No, I sweep the ark with it every day,” said Noah.
“Give us the broom, you won't have to sweep anymore!”
“No!”
The man Noah had struck with the broom said, “All right—winter can have you.” The villagers all went home.
After the ice-break-up, some men paddled out to the ark. It was floating now, turning in slow circles, a lot of pieces of ice were still bumping against it. The men climbed onto the ark. “Hey—hey—Noah!” they shouted. They didn't hear any voice. They saw a lot
of animal bones—all sizes—no animals. Then they saw Noah. He was lying down curled up. He was weeping. He was wearing a coat made of faded yellow skin with black spots. “One thumb splinter -one broom—one plank of wood,” a man said, “it was a very tough winter. Where's your wife? Where's your son? Where's your daughter?”
“They ate the broom bristles and died,” said Noah.
Some men pried up some planks and put them in their kayaks. They felt the ark begin to sink away. It was windy. It was raining hard. “Let's get this Noah to the village,” a man said.
They took Noah and the planks to the village. They built a fire. Noah sat next to it. They fed him and kept him alive. He lived with them all summer and through the next winter. A few times they caught him walking out onto the ice. “He sees the ghosts of his family,” a man said. It was true. Noah made a new broom and swept around. He ate, he swept, and every once in a while people caught him out on the ice. They brought Noah back.
One day in the middle of winter someone shouted, “It's Noah—he's out on the ice again! Hey—what are you doing?”
“I'm following my wife—look—up ahead—she's lost,” he said.
One day later that winter someone shouted, “Hey—look! Noah, what are you doing out on the ice?”

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