Part 5

In summer time the question of transportation is much simpler; you go by canoe and you do not need strouds or the winter caribou-skin capote. There is a very great difference between the winter and the summer caribou pelts, and the latter is used for the summer trips. Nor do you need a tepee in summer.

METHOD OF HUNTING

Among the Indians that live south and west of the Barren Grounds (no Indian lives in the Barren Grounds), the method of hunting the musk-ox is practically the same, and, as I have shown in the early part of this paper, it is because the Indians lack high hunting skill and because their dogs are neither trained nor courageous that bigger kills are not made. White hunters and trained dogs could practically wipe out every herd of musk-oxen they encountered; for while it is true that musk-oxen give you a long run once you have sighted them, yet when you get up to them, when the dogs have brought them to bay, it is almost like shooting cattle in a corral. There is always a long run. I think I never had less than three miles, and in the first hunt which I have described, I must have run nine or ten. But, as I say, when you get up to them it is easy, for they will stand to the dogs so long as the dogs bay them. And all this running would be unnecessary if the Indians exercised more hunting skill and judgment.

Collected at Fort Conger by Commander R. E. Peary, U.S.N. (From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)]

Killed and photographed in the Barren Grounds by the author. The horns are just beginning to show a downward tendency. Hair over forehead is gray, short, and somewhat curly. The background is the tepee referred to in the text.]

Although the prairie form of the country is not altogether the best for stalking, yet one could stalk comparatively near a herd before turning the dogs loose. The Indians never do this, and, in addition, the dogs set up a yelping and a howling the moment they catch sight of the quarry. This, of course, starts off the musk-oxen, which invariably choose the roughest part of the country, no doubt feeling, and rightly, too, that their pursuers will have the more difficult time following. Indian dogs are not always to be relied upon, for they have a disposition to hunt in a group, and your entire bunch of dogs is apt to stop and hold only three or four stragglers of the herd while the remainder of the musk-oxen escape. Sometimes when they stop practically the entire herd, the dogs are very likely, before you come up to them, to shift, leaving their original position and gradually drawing together; perhaps, the whole pack of dogs finally holding only half a dozen, while the rest of the musk-oxen have run on. Musk-oxen, when stopped, invariably form a circle with their sterns in and their heads out; it matters not whether the herd is thirty or half a dozen, their action is the same. If there are only two, they stand stern to stern, facing out. I have seen a single musk-ox back up against a rock. Apparently they feel safe only when they get their sterns up against something.

Hunting musk-oxen on the Arctic Coast or the Arctic islands after the manner of the polar expeditions, is a much simpler proposition. There the hunters are always comparatively near their base of supplies, and, from all accounts, the musk-oxen are more numerous than they are in the interior. According to Frederick Schwatka, the Innuits hunt musk-oxen with great skill. They hitch their dogs to the sledge differently from the method of the Indians to the south. The southern Indians hitch their four dogs in tandem between two common traces, one on each side; while each Eskimo dog has his own single trace, which is hitched independently to the sledge. When the Innuits sight the musk-oxen, each hunter takes the dogs of his sledge, and holding their traces in his hand, starts after the game. The wisdom of this method is twofold: in the first place it immeasurably aids the running hunter, for the four or five straining dogs practically pull him along; indeed, Schwatka says that when these Innuits come to a hill they squat and slide down, throwing themselves at full length upon the snow of the ascending bank, up which the excited dogs drag them without any effort on the part of the hunter. I should like to add here that if such a plan were pursued in the Barren Grounds over the rocky ridges, the remains of the hunter would not be interested in musk-ox hunting by the time the top of a ridge was reached. Seriously, the chief value of hunting in this style is that the hunter controls his four to six dogs, the usual number of the Eskimo sledge. When they have caught up with the musk-ox herd, he then looses them and he is there to begin action. The Eskimo dogs are very superior in breed to those used by the Indians farther south, and are trained as well to run mute.

The chances of getting musk-oxen in the Barren Grounds are not so good in summer as in winter, because travelling by canoe you are, of course, bound to keep to the chain of lakes, and your course is therefore prescribed, it being impossible to travel over the land at will as it is in winter when all is frozen. One day’s hunting is about like another. There is nothing to kindle the eye of the nature lover. In winter it is like travelling over a great frozen sea; in summer it is a great desolate waste of moss and lichen, dotted with lakes and rock-topped ridges, which observe no one or special form of direction. There is a black moss that the Indians sometimes burn if they can find it dry enough, and a little shrub that furnishes a bitter tea if the tea of civilization has run out. Nearly all of the lakes have fish, and a hunter ought really, with experience and judgment, to go in and out in summer time without suffering any excessive starvation. Warburton Pike, who has studied the Barren Grounds in summer time more thoroughly than any other man living, reports spots covered with wild flowers that grow to no height but in comparative profusion and some beauty.

The distance you make in a summer day of Barren Grounds travel may depend entirely on your inclination, for with the fish and the moving caribou you are fairly well assured against hunger, and the weather is comparatively warm and permits of lingering along the route. It is quite another story in the winter, for then food is always a problem, and every day draws on your slender supply of wood. Of course the farther you penetrate, the nearer you get to the Arctic Coast, the more likely you are to see musk-oxen; and the faster you travel, of course, the farther you can penetrate. We averaged about twenty miles a day. That means that we kept busy every hour from the time we started until we camped. The hour of starting depended very largely upon whether or not there was a moon. If there was a moon, we would get started so as to be well under way by daylight, which when we first entered the Barren Grounds would be about nine o’clock. If there was no moon, we waited for daylight. There always was a moon unless it stormed; but it stormed most of the time. When there was a moon, however, it was always full. Travelling from Lac La Biche to Great Slave Lake on the frozen rivers, where it was a mere question of getting from one post to another, we used to start about two o’clock in the morning, the sun coming up about ten o’clock and setting at about three, and darkness falling almost immediately thereafter. In this river travelling I averaged a full thirty-five miles a day for the (about) nine hundred miles.

The animals are within a quarter of a mile of the extreme northern limit of the most northerly land on the globe. Photograph by courtesy of Robert E. Peary, by whose expedition it was taken.]

I think the most trying hour of the twenty-four in the Barren Grounds day was at the camping time in the afternoon. Beniah invariably chose the highest and most exposed position to be found, that our tepee might be the more visible to the scouts, kept out all day on either side looking for caribou, or musk-oxen; and there was always the delaying discussion of the Indians amongst themselves, while I, chilled to the bone by the inaction, stood around awaiting the close of the argument before it was possible to get to the business of camp-making. Because the snow was packed so hard as to be impossible to shovel away with the snow-shoe, a rocky site was always sought, where we fitted our bodies to the uneven ground as best we could. With the camp site definitely chosen, a circle was made of the sledges, touching head and tail; then three lodge poles, tied together at the top, were set up in the form of a triangle, with the ends stuck into the sledges to give them firm footing, and the four remaining poles placed so as to make a cone of the triangle. Over and around this was stretched the caribou-skin tepee, with the bottom edge drawn down and outside the sledges. Blocks of snow were then cut and banked up around the outside of the tepee and against the sledges; all this by way of firmly anchoring the tepee, which set so low that one’s head and shoulders would be in the open when standing upright in the centre; but that was of no consequence, the lodge being set up merely as a protection to the fire. A short pole, also carried along from the last wood, was lashed from side to side of the tepee, on to the lodge poles proper, and from this, attached by a piece of babiche and a forked stick, hung the kettle. Then, all being ready, four or five sticks were taken from the sledges equally, and split into kindling wood with the heavy knife one needs to carry in musk-ox hunting. Of course the fire furnished no warmth; it was not built for that purpose; it was simply to boil the tea, and perhaps I can best give an idea of its size in saying that by the time the snow in the kettle had been melted to water and the water begun to boil,--the fire was exhausted. While it blazed and the tea was making, always the close circle of seven hungry men, shoulder to shoulder, squatted around the light in the fancy that some heat must come from that little jumping flame. Outside that other circle of sledges, the dogs snuffed and sniffed and howled. Once I took off my gloves, with the thought of warming my fingers. I made no second experiment of the kind.

Having drunk the tea, we rolled up in our fur robes, lying side by side around the tepee, with feet toward the fire and head against the sledge, knees into the back of the man next you, and snow-shoes under your head, away from the dogs that would eat the lacing. This was only preparation for sleep; actual sleep, even to men as tired as we were, never came until the dogs had finished fighting over us; for so soon as we were rolled in our robes the dogs invariably poured into the tepee. As there were twenty-eight dogs, and the lodge about seven feet in diameter at its base, I need not further describe the situation. Truth is, that no hour in the day or night was more miserable than this, when these half-starved brutes fought over and on top of us before they finally settled down upon us. In extreme cold weather a dog curled up at your feet or at your back is not unpleasant; but to have one lying on your head, another on your shoulders or hips, or perhaps a third on your feet, and you lying on your side on rocky, uneven ground--take my word for it, the experience is not happy. Of course you are entirely wrapped up, head and arms as well, in your sleeping robe; if you rise up to knock the dogs off, you open your robe to the cold: and the dogs would be back on top of you again just as soon as you had lain down.

It is all in the Musk-ox game; and so you endure.

THE MUSK-OX

A full-grown bull. (From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)]

Although there is nothing in the appearance or in the life of the musk-ox to suggest romance, yet the Indians and the Eskimo surround it with much mystery. They say it is not like other animals, that it is cunning and plays tricks on them, that it is not safe to approach, that it understands what is said. The Indians among whom I travelled have a tradition that long years ago a woman wandered into the Barren Grounds, was lost, and finally turned into a musk-ox by the “enemy.” Perhaps this accounts for the occasional habit these Indians have when pursuing musk-oxen of talking to them, instructing them as to the direction of their flight, etc. Several authors maintain that these Indians, when hunting, do not talk to other animals; but I have heard them jabbering while hunting caribou after the same manner they do when running after musk-oxen. Why the Indians should consider the musk-ox tricky or ferocious, appears to me to be the only mysterious element in the discussion; a less ferocious looking animal for its size would, it seems to me, be impossible to find. Several Arctic explorers who have written on the musk-ox also refer to it as “formidable” appearing and “ferocious,” but those are the last adjectives that I should apply to the creature. The Indians and some of the Arctic authors also say that it is dangerous to approach, especially when wounded. My experience does not indorse that statement. We encountered about one hundred and twenty-five musk-oxen, killing forty-seven, and I did not see one that even suggested the charging proclivities for which it is given credit. They stand with lowered heads, making a hook at the dogs that are nearest, and on occasion making a movement forward, practically a bluff at charging, but I never saw one really charge a dog, much less a man. I do not believe they can be induced to break the circle they invariably form, as they would, of course, do in charging. On one occasion I wounded a musk-ox badly enough to enable me to run him over and around a series of short ridges finally to a standstill. He was entirely alone, and I was without a dog, and when I had got to within seventy-five feet of him he suddenly stopped running and faced me, setting his stern against a rock--or, rather, over it, for it was quite a small rock. I walked up to within about thirty or forty feet of him, and took a head shot. I thought to see if I could reach his brain, but the boss of his great frontal horn protects it, except for the small opening of an inch where the horns are divided. Then with an idea of putting a ball back of his shoulder or back of his ear, I tried to get on his side, but as I moved, he moved, always keeping his head straight at me, and we made several complete circles; yet, in that time,--I suppose ten or fifteen minutes--he never offered to charge. If a straggling dog had not come my way and attracted the bull’s attention, I probably never would have got the chance of a shoulder shot. Mr. Pike, whom, of living men, I consider to have made the most extended study of the musk-ox, agrees entirely with my view of the animal so far as its charging is concerned. Perhaps the musk-ox might charge if you walked up and pulled his ear, but I doubt if he would under less provocation, and really, I do not feel so certain that he would even then. He seems a stupid, mild creature,--anything but “ferocious.” In one little band of eight which we had separated from the main herd and killed, a yearling calf ran against my legs, seemingly seeking protection from the dogs precisely as a young sheep would.

The musk-ox appears, in fact, to be a veritable link between the ox and the sheep. It has the rudimentary tail, the molar teeth structure, the hairy muzzle, and the intestines of the sheep; while its short and wide canon-bones are like those of the ox, and differ widely from either sheep or goat. The hoofs are large, with curved toes and somewhat concave underneath, like the caribou hoof, which facilitates climbing rocky ridges and scraping away the snow from their only food, the lichen and the moss, for which purpose their horns are also admirably adapted. Mr. Rhodes has advanced the theory of the existence of a transition between the musk-ox and the bison, but the structure of the molar teeth and the rudimentary tail convince Professor R. Lydekker, perhaps the foremost scientific authority, of the impossibility of there being any manner of relationship between the two groups. Scientifically, the musk-ox is of the genus OVIBUS, divided into O. moschatus, the Barren Grounds and Greenland type, the O. wardi (Lydekker), and O. bombifrons, otherwise known as the Harlan’s musk-ox, an extinct type that, in a word, differed from the present living type largely in shape of the horns, which did not have the downward curve of those in existence, nor did the curve of the horns come closely to the head as they do now.

Adult male. (From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)]

Until 1898 O. moschatus was the only existing type known to either hunters or scientists. In that year, however, Lieutenant Peary, the Arctic explorer, killed in Bache Peninsula, Greenland, a series of specimens which, on being sent to the Museum of Natural History of New York, were decided by Professor J. A. Allen as having sufficient distinction to warrant classification. Meantime Rowland Ward, the London taxidermist, had secured, by purchase, a couple of similar specimens from East Greenland which Professor Lydekker recognized as a new variety, and in honor of Mr. Ward named O. moschatus wardi. Mr. Ward’s specimens were secured from whalers who, in turn, got them from trading with natives in East Greenland. Lieutenant Peary’s specimens, however, were collected on the ground by himself, and he is certainly entitled to the honor of the new variety bearing his name. So Professor Allen rightly thinks, and though he has adopted Professor Lydekker’s name, he reserves O. pearyi (Allen) as a provisionary one which may be accepted for the Grinnell Land animal in case it should prove to be separable. This, however, does not appear likely. The most distinguishing difference between the O. wardi, as called, or O. pearyi, as it should be known, and the O. moschatus, is in the head. The entire front of the new variety head is more or less gray instead of wholly brown, as is the O. moschatus; while the horn base of the new variety is much narrower and slightly different in shape from those of the old variety. The skulls of the two varieties are practically alike; at least there is very slight difference. The general color of the fur of the new variety is a little lighter, and the animal itself is not so large or heavily built.

How either variety of musk-ox ever got to Greenland has been a subject of much discussion among scientists who seem now, however, to have finally decided that they reached the island from the west by crossing Smith Sound from Ellesmere Land, and by crossing Robeson’s Channel from Grinnell Land, thence along the low Greenland Coast to East Greenland. Outside of the Arctic islands and of Arctic America so far south as the 62d parallel, the musk-ox is unknown. There was a time, however, when its range included all that part of the northern hemisphere between, roughly speaking, the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. It seems even possible that in the dim ages, the musk-ox had a wider and much more southern distribution, for the skull from which the extinct type bombifrons was named, was found in Kentucky, another having been found also in Arkansas. Fossil remains of musk-oxen have been unearthed in Siberia, Alaska, Grinnell Land, and Northern Europe. There is no authentic data of their having been found in Alaska within the memory of present living man, and they do not range within two hundred miles of the Mackenzie River, which is laid down as their western limit. Much has been said of their being of recent existence in Alaska. I made careful search for authentic data concerning their western range, but secured no information at all trustworthy of even a tradition of them in Alaska; while nothing more certain than hearsay handed from father to son did I find as to their being seen near the Mackenzie River. From time to time statements find their way into print of a musk-ox found in Alaska. Such misleading information is based on the tales of traders who may perhaps have got a musk-ox skin at some Alaskan post. Mr. Andrew J. Stone, who has spent several years in the Far North collecting for the Museum of Natural History, and who knows Alaska and all that great stretch of country west of the Mackenzie River thoroughly, has covered this question in a statement published in an American Museum bulletin in 1901. It touches finally upon a question much agitated, and it seems to me sufficiently important to make permanent record here. Therefore I reproduce it.

(From a photograph provided by the American Museum of Natural History)]

AS TO THE WESTERN RANGE OF MUSK-OXEN.

Febr’y 28, 1901.

MY DEAR DR. ALLEN:--

In response to your inquiry in reference to the existence of the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) west of the Mackenzie River, or in Alaska, I will state there are none of these animals in any part of Arctic America west of the Mackenzie. Previous to my departure for the North in the spring of 1897, I had for several years carefully searched for information upon this subject, and from what I had gathered I had a faint hope of finding some of these animals in the mountains west of the Mackenzie, just south of the Arctic Coast. These mountains are known, respectively, as the Richardson, Buckland, British, Romanzof, and Franklin Mountains, but in reality they are the western extension of the main Rocky Mountain range that bends west from the Mackenzie along the Arctic Coast. On reaching the neighborhood of these mountains, however, in the winter of 1898-99, all hope of finding living specimens of musk-ox in them was destroyed.

The Romanzof Mountains, from which specimens of musk-ox are reported to have recently been brought, by way of Camden Bay, are about one hundred and seventy-five miles west of Herschel Island. The Pacific Steam Whaling Company, with offices at No. 30 California Street, San Francisco, have maintained a whaling station at Herschel Island for a number of years; there has also been established there for a number of years a Church of England Mission, under the direction of the Rev. I. O. Stringer. I visited Herschel Island in November and December, 1898, for the purpose of collecting all possible information relative to the animal life of those regions. On my way to and from Herschel Island I sledded the very base of the Davis Gilbert, Richardson, and Buckland Mountains. I stopped over night on both journeys with a lot of Eskimo, at that time hunting the Davis Gilbert Mountains and living in what is known as Oakpik (willow camp), in the extreme western part of the Mackenzie delta, very near the foot of the mountains. Specimens of Ovis dalli (white sheep) and of caribou and fur-bearing animals were plentiful in their camp, but there was no sign of musk-ox.

At Shingle Point, on the Arctic Coast, near the Richardson Mountains, I spent several days with a man who was trading with the Eskimo who were hunting the Richardson Mountains. There were several Eskimo in his camp at the time, and he had in his possession skins of the white sheep, caribou, and a variety of fur-bearing animals, but there was no sign of musk-ox, and I learned on careful inquiry through my interpreter that the natives seemed to know nothing of them, with the exception of one young man who had been to the eastward on one of the whaling ships. The Tooyogmioots, a tribe of Eskimo who once lived along this coast and hunted these different mountains, are now almost extinct. I found between the mouth of the Mackenzie and Herschel Island a very few individuals living in snow houses, but I did not find in or around their places of residence any sign of musk-ox skins, bones, or heads.

I remained at Herschel Island from Nov. 24 to Dec. 14, visiting the Rev. I. O. Stringer and Capt. Haggerty of the steam-whaler, Mary Dehume. Both men were able to converse readily with the Eskimo in the Eskimo tongue, and they gave me every possible assistance in making my inquiries. This whole coast far to the westward of Herschel Island is now occupied by the Noonitagmiott tribe of Eskimo. There were a large number of these people at the island, and among them were parties who hunted all the mountains of the mainland mentioned, living in the mountains a great part of the time. Many skins of caribou, sheep, and fur-bearing animals were seen in the possession of these people, but none of them possessed any part of the musk-ox, and the only members of the tribe who knew anything of the musk-ox were those who had been carried to the east by whaling ships. The Rev. Mr. Stringer takes great interest in the natural resources of the country and travels extensively among these people, but he had no knowledge of the existence of any musk-oxen west of the Mackenzie. Capt. Haggerty had wintered along this coast for a number of years, trading extensively with the natives, but he had never secured or heard of a musk-ox skin west of the Mackenzie.