People of the Deer (32 page)

One night Ohoto and I sat on a knoll near the camp. In the semidarkness of dusk we listened to the steady, monotonous, castanet clicking of the feet of the unseen beasts on the Deer's Way. I asked Ohoto if he would tell me some of those tales of the days of Elaitutna and the old ones. He was willing enough, and he let his mind lapse back into the days when Elaitutna, his father, was young.

During the youth of my father [he began], my family lived for a time on a river which flows north out of Tulemaliguak, the greatest of lakes. There on that river were our tents and they numbered more than threescore. Those who lived in that place were called
Kiktoriaktormiut
—People of the Mosquito Land—for in those times each camp had its own name, though all belonged to the Ihalmiut.

The Kiktoriaktormiut were the most north-dwelling ones of our race, and they were the only ones of the Ihalmiut who lived in contact with peoples who were not of our race. In those times there was no entry into the great plains except from the north. To the south, the Itkilit were strong and angry, and they closed their land to us; to the east lay the sea and its peoples, and these we never knew in those days. To the west there was another breed of Itkilit whom we feared greatly, for in ancient times they had driven us, with much bloodshed, out of the western plains.

So we had intercourse only with men to the north. The Kiktoriaktormiut sat at the gates of our land and my father's people were the keepers of the north gates to the plains.

That was also the land of Omingmuk the muskox, and each winter hunters came from the southern camps of the Ihalmiut to the igloos of my father's people in order to join in the muskox hunts. I have heard that in some winters a hundred sleds came up from the south, and the camps by the gates of the land were places of wonderful doings, of marvelous dances and games.

It usually happened that each hunter of the Kiktoriaktormiut would wait for one of his song-cousins to arrive from the south, so that the two men could make the winter hunt together. My father's song-cousin was Hekwaw—the same who still lives under the Little Hills of this land. And I have heard tales of their hunts from both Hekwaw and Elaitutna, my father.

Not until the middle of winter would Hekwaw arrive in the north camps. Then he would come, bringing his big sled laden high with gifts of deer meat and furs. Elaitutna would welcome his guest and send people out to the other igloos to announce a great song feast for his cousin.

That night the People would gather until the great house of Elaitutna was so crowded with men and with women that there was barely room in the center for the feet of the dancer. Elaitutna always began the dance by singing a song in praise of Hekwaw. And, at the end of his song, he made Hekwaw a gift—a valuable gift—and all who were present shouted in praise of that gift.

Then Hekwaw would dance, and his song would be of the great generosity of Elaitutna, and he too would end his song by making a gift to the hunter who was his song-cousin. So it would go, all through the night, as each of the two men sought to outdo the other in the giving of gifts, and the People in the igloo grew wild with excitement as the gifts mounted up.

The women kept busy. Though it was dark as death outside the igloos, nevertheless they kept special fires burning out in the snow, and they brought in the trays laden with steaming deer meat. New visitors would keep arriving from the outlying camps until at last the drum dance spread to the snow houses nearby. Elaitutna and Hekwaw went from igloo to igloo, and in each they sang new songs, and gave each other new and more wonderful gifts. By morning the excitement would have brought them to such a pitch that they had given away all things they owned, and by morning each would be in possession of all the belongings of his song-cousin!

Sometimes the dancing and singing went on for two or three days, and in the brief intervals when sleep was permitted Hekwaw slept with my mother, for this was the law. It was always the law that a hunter who came northward to seek Omingmuk would not bring his family on the hard trip. So when a man arrived at the gates of the land from farther south, he was permitted to sleep with the wife of his song-cousin, and to have refused him this hospitality would have been to set a terrible disgrace on the whole camp. Yet this you must understand: no man slept with the wife of another unless that woman was willing. It was always the woman who, in the end, made the decision. Of course, also, when Elaitutna journeyed south, in the summer, to the Little Hills country, he went by kayak and so there was no room for
his
wife. When he came to the tent of Hekwaw, he likewise naturally slept with the wife of his song-cousin, for he had no woman of his own in that place.

The festivities in the camp of Elaitutna continued for days, and often before they were ended, new hunters arriving from the south started the contest all over again. So the dancing and singing and gambling swelled and ebbed over most of the winter.

At last Hekwaw and Elaitutna would decide that the time for the hunt was upon them. Then they took their two sleds and their teams, and with only a light load of food set off into the wild land to the west of Tulemaliguak where no man has ever lived.

Sometimes they traveled through the broken rock hills for two weeks before they came on bare spots where the hard snow had been scraped up by the feet of the muskoxen searching for lichens and moss. When the men found these signs they made camp, a small travel igloo: then, taking only two or three hunting dogs with them, they went forward on foot.

It was night hunting then, for up in that land the winter days were only an hour or two long, and during daylight the muskoxen were hard to approach. So the hunters moved in the night, when the darkness was broken only by the long flames of the Lights in the Sky, or by the edge of Taktik the moon spirit's rising.

At last the dogs would go tense and strain at their leads—but in silence, for they had been taught not to cry at the scent of Omingmuk. As the men climbed a low hill, they might see a patch of black shadows against the deep blue of the snow in the valley ahead and they would know that these were muskoxen. Great hairy beasts these were, with their long fur hanging down to their feet and dragging like a great tail in the snow. Their heavy bodies were shaped like square rocks covered with long black lichens, and only their heads looked like the animal things we know.

After seeing where the Omingmuk were standing, the hunters would unleash their dogs from two places at once. Either Hekwaw or Elaitutna would make a great circle to the other side of the herd. The wavering bark of a fox was the signal they used, and when the circling man was in his position, he gave the signal and the dogs were let loose.

The dogs hunted in silence. Like wolves without voices they moved in on the herd and, at the first sign of their coming, the muskoxen formed a tightly closed ring, and the outer edge of the circle was a solid rampart of horns.

The bull muskoxen make a deadly rampart. No dog and no wolf can attack it and live. But Omingmuk knew little of man. They knew only that they were safe from most dangers when they formed their tight ring, and so they did not break and run as the two hunters cautiously approached from the hills. The men came like shadows themselves, and they saw to it that there were rock piles on their routes, where they could retreat if need be.

Now in the flickering dark of the night the man-fox barked once again and the dogs, knowing the signal, retreated and formed a wide circle which revolved far outside the circumference of the muskoxen herd. It was all done without sound—for sound may break up the herd and send it stampeding off over the hills. Only the whispering voices of the spirits who ride with the Lights in the Sky broke the stillness. Only that and the angry snorts of the muskoxen bulls.

Then suddenly there came the hard twang of a bow. Another—and arrows sped invisibly through the darkness. When they struck, the great shaggy beasts leaped with the pain—but while they still lived, the bulls did not break from their place in the ranks.

It was not until arrows began to strike the cows in the heart of the ring and these foolish ones gave way to panic that the ring broke. Then the bulls were pushed out of place by the frenzied lunging of the cows, and the impregnable defense of Omingmuk was broken. Now panic gripped the bulls also, for when the defenses were breached, the dogs leaped in amongst the milling beasts of the herd, and though they remained utterly silent, this made their attack more terrible still.

The hunters ran as swiftly as foxes, leaping in and out amongst the rock piles, stabbing with the short spears they used now instead of the bows, leaping for cover to avoid the blind charge of a great wounded bull, and running along the low ridges to cut off the escape of a cow. But after a short time it was all over.

The dogs were recalled, and they sat with grim patience waiting for the men to finish butchering the beasts which had been killed. Then, while the dogs fed, the men piled up the meat, cut off the precious horns of Omingmuk and rolled up the thick, woolly hides.

So the hunt ended, for it would take three or four weeks to carry the harvest of that one hunt back to the camps. This was the manner of the hunting of Omingmuk, and from his horns we made spoons, ladles and bowls, and best of all, the wonderful crossbows of the old days of my fathers. The meat of Omingmuk was as good as that of Tuktu, and richer, but the hides were not of much use for they were too heavy to wear, and so we used them only as mats under the sleeping robes of the igloos.

Only twice in my life have I, Ohoto, seen Omingmuk alive; for when the time came that the Kiktoriaktormiut were gone from the gates of the land, the muskoxen were already gone. The Itkilit to the westward had been armed with rifles by white men, and the Omingmuk vanished from the land about Tulemaliguak soon after that.

But I have heard of other happenings at Tulemaliguak, and of these I well remember the story of Angeoa—the Great One—who lives in the lake.

One year Hekwaw did not return to his home by dog sled, but waited until spring, and then, with the help of my father, built a kayak for the return south by water. It was late July before the two men, accompanied by a third who was called Kahutna, set off in three kayaks. They drove their light craft up the river which leads to the lake, and at the great falls on the river where the water sinks deep into the earth through a dark gorge, they carried the kayaks up over the tundra into the waters above. When they reached the north bay of Tulemaliguak, they found the lake still covered with ice, though summer was half over then.

The three men found a passage along the east shore, and this they followed, though in other times men had always followed the west shore of the lake. The ice had broken free of the east shore and there was a channel between ice and land, and along this the three kayaks skimmed like the grayling that split the shining surface of rivers.

Tulemaliguak had always had a strange name with our People—the Lake of the Heaped-up Ribs, it is called. The name came to it in years faintly remembered when it was said men found the bones of a beast on its shores, and those bones were so great a man could not lift any one of them with both his arms! The greatest of lakes had more than that name, for there are many tales told of men, in times past, who ventured out on the breast of the lake and never returned to the land, because of the gigantic beast who dwelt in its depths.

In the days when Hekwaw and Elaitutna were young, it was the custom to travel close to the shores of Tulemaliguak; and for generations no man had crossed open water, and so the old tales had come to be thought of only as stories to tell to the children.

My father, Hekwaw and Kahutna made good time down the east shore. On their third day they came to a deep bay quite free of ice, and since they were anxious to escape from Tulemaliguak, they decided to cross that bay from headland to headland.

It was a clear summer day, so bright that the cold waters had absorbed all the blue from the sky, leaving it as white as new snow. But the blue shone in the waters which were so clear that even under the clouds of a storm a man could see downward for the depths of ten paddles.

Hekwaw was leading the three kayaks and all of the men were wielding their paddles with power, for they were anxious to make landfall at the still distant point to the south. Elaitutna was sweating and he felt thirsty, so he raised his paddle straight up in the air in order to catch the trickle which ran down it into his mouth. Then he plunged the paddle into the water again and his gaze followed it, and of a sudden he cried out in a voice shaken by fear—for beneath the hull of his kayak he saw a huge shape, a shadow as long as a hill, and the shadow was moving.

The other two men heard Elaitutna cry out and they rested until they caught the word that he shouted.

“Angeoa!” he cried.

Instantly all three men lifted their paddles and turned their kayaks to the shore, driving them so swiftly they hardly touched the still surface. But they had gone no more than a few dozen strokes when the water between Hekwaw and Kahutna began to boil up. The rush of that water caught the kayak of Kahutna and tilted it sideways so quickly that the man lost his balance. He flailed desperately with his long double paddle, but the kayak spun over and threw him out into the lake.

There was a roaring sound that rose like a whirlpool on a rapid, and above it the other two men could hear the screams of Kahutna—so they turned back to help him, for he was a good man. They turned back, but they had not taken a stroke toward him when, breaking the surface as a huge bubble breaks, there rose the sleek black length of a beast!

It was beyond the words of the People to tell you about, but my father, who saw it, said that it was as long as twenty kayaks and broader than five. It had a fin which stood up from one end, and that fin was as big as a tent. Neither my father nor Hekwaw saw its head, and did not believe the beast had a head.

As the Great One called Angeoa broke water, the two men in the kayaks turned once more for the shore and abandoned Kahutna, for it was plain neither arrows nor spears could defeat this monster from the depths of the lake.