Alaska (13 page)

79

He pointed out that Oogruk's malevolence was proved by the fact that he was cross-eyed, and when he ranted: 'How otherwise would the spirits make a man's eyes to cross?'

he amused his listeners by crossing his own eyes for a moment and making his already ugly face quite hideous. In these tirades he carefully spoke no words against the headman; on the contrary, he praised him rather effusively for his able guidance of the hunting umiak, thus hoping to drive a wedge between the two men, and he might have succeeded had he not made one crucial error.

Driven by his increasing desire to gain Nukleet for himself, he came upon her one evening as she was gathering the first flowers of the year, and he was so taken by her dark beauty and the lyrical way she moved along the field, stopping here and there to study the spring growth, that he was impelled, against his better judgment, to run after her awkwardly and try to embrace her. When growing up, she had known several young men of considerable attractiveness, and for some months she had been a wife to Shaktoolik, the handsome one, so she knew what men were supposed to be, and not even by stretching her imagination could she conceive of the repulsive shaman as a partner. More seriously, she had discovered in Oogruk the kind of companion that women treasured, once they overlooked the obvious deficiencies. He was gentle yet brave, kind to others yet resolute when his mind was made up. In his defiance of the shaman he had shown courage and in his building of the new kayak skill, and in her more mature age, twenty-one, she knew how lucky she was to have found him.

So the greasy shaman with his matted hair and smelly rags had little to make him desirable except his acknowledged relationship with the spirits and the ability to make them work in his behalf. And when he grabbed at her now, she discovered that she was at last prepared to defy even those powers: 'Go back, you filthy one.' She pushed him away, vigorously, and then in the disgust of the moment she did a most unwise thing: she laughed at him, and this he could not tolerate. As he staggered back he swore that he would destroy this woman and all her companions, even her blameless daughter. The village of Pelek would know these malevolent ones no more.

Back in his isolated hut where he communed with the forces that ran the universe, he writhed in anger, devising one plot after another to punish this woman who had scorned him. He contemplated poisons and knives and sinkings at sea, but in the end his wilder passions subsided, and he decided that on the morrow, when the sun was up, he would summon

80

the villagers and pronounce total anathema upon the headman, his daughter, her husband and their child. And in doing so, he would recite a calendar of the evil things they had done to bring discredit upon the village and incur the enmity of the spirits.

He would make his accusations so violent that in the end his listeners might in frenzy decide to ignore the Eskimo aversion to killing and slay these four to save themselves from the retribution of the spirits.

But when, in the early dawn, he started to assemble the villagers and lead them to the headman's hut, where the denunciations would be made, he found most of them already gathered at the shore. When he elbowed his way among them, he saw that they were staring out to sea, where, on the horizon too far away to be apprehended by even the swiftest umiak, three figures nestling in the three protected holes of a new type of kayak were on their way to that unknown world on the far side.

BECAUSE THE GREAT SEA WAS CHOPPY, WITH A FEW Vagrant icebergs still drifting southward, these daring emigrants in their fragile kayak were going to need three full days to make the crossing from Asia to North America, but in this bright dawn all things seemed possible, and they moved toward the east with a lightness of heart that would have seemed impossible to anyone not associated with the sea. When the headlands of Asia disappeared and nothingness lay ahead, they pushed on, with the sun streaming upon their faces. Alone on the great sea, uncertain as to what the next days might hold, they caught their breath as their kayak raced down into the trough of some powerful wave, then gasped with delight as it rose to the next oncoming crest. They were one with the seals sporting in the spray, they were cousins to the tusked walruses making their way north to mate. When a whale spouted in the distance and then sounded, flukes high in the air, the headman shouted: 'Stay out there. We'll come back for you later.'

Their precipitate departure from Pelek had produced two moments of such gravity that they summarized a life. Nukleet had returned from her encounter with the shaman white with shock, and when her father asked what had happened, she merely said: 'We must leave in the darkness.' Oogruk had cried: 'We can't,' and she had replied simply: 'We must.' She said no more, gave no explanation of how she had rebuffed and ridiculed the shaman, nor did she confess that she had brought such danger upon their hut that further occupancy was impossible.

81

The men, realizing that some forbidden line had been crossed, had asked only: 'Must it be tonight?' and she had started to nod, but had stopped, for she realized that she must give them the strongest possible reply, one that would allow no counterargument: 'We leave as soon as the village is asleep, or we die!'

The second moment of significant decision had come when the unwilling emigrants crept to the beach, father and son carrying the kayak silently, mother and daughter bringing with them the household goods. After the men had placed the craft in the water and had helped Nukleet into the center opening, where she would hold her daughter during their escape, the headman stepped naturally to the rear seat, the one from which the kayak would be commanded, supposing that he would lead the expedition. But before he could take that place, Oogruk stepped in front of him, saying quietly: 'I will steer,' and his fatherin-law had surrendered the command.

Now, far from shore and safe from the retaliations of the shaman, the four Eskimos in their frail kayak settled into the routines that would govern them for the next three days. Oogruk at the rear, set a slow, steady pace, two hundred strokes on the right side, a grunted cry 'Shift!' and two hundred on the left. In the front seat, the headman applied his powerful muscles strenuously, as if their progress depended upon him alone; it was primarily he who pulled the canoe forward. And Nukleet, in the middle position, passed drinking water to her men fore and aft and gave them bits of seal blubber to chew upon as they paddled.

The little girl, always aware of the burden she placed upon her mother, sometimes tried to ride upon the rim of the hatch, but always Nukleet drew her back, with the warning: 'If you were up there and we turned over, how could we save you?' and heavy though the child grew, Nukleet kept her on her lap.

Travel did not stop at night, for in the silvery darkness it was important that forward motion be maintained, and both Oogruk and his fatherin-law knew this, so when the sun finally went down in these first days of summer, they settled into a slow, steady stroke which kept the prow of the boat headed east. But no one could paddle incessantly, and when the sun rose, the men took turns dozing, first the headman, then Oogruk, and when they did, each was careful to slip his precious paddle inside the opening, jammed against his leg, from where he could retrieve it quickly.

Nukleet did not sleep during the first two days; she encouraged her daughter to do so, and when the child's drowsy head nestled against hers, she felt more like a mother than ever

82

before, because on this great restless sea she, Nukleet, was all that protected her daughter from death. But she had two other sensations almost equally strong. Throughout the daring trip she kept her left foot against the sealskin that contained the water, assuring herself that it was there, and her right against the spare paddle which might become so necessary if one of the men should in an accident lose his. She imagined herself reaching down, retrieving the paddle, and handing it along to either her husband or her father, and there in the vast wilderness of the sea, she felt certain that if such an accident did occur, it would be her father and not Oogruk who would lose his paddle.

But on the morning of the third day she simply could not stay awake, and once when she dozed and realized that she had left her daughter unprotected, she cried: 'Father, you must hold the child for a while!' but as she started to pass the girl forward, Oogruk intervened: 'Bring her this way,' and as Nukleet fell toward sleep she thought, with tears in her eyes: She is not his daughter but she does fill his heart.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF THAT THIRD DAY THE EASTERN

lands became visible, and this inspired the men to paddle more strongly, but night fell before they could reach the shore, and as the stars came out, seeming more brilliant because they shone not only with their own light but also with hope, the four silent immigrants moved purposefully ahead, with Nukleet again holding her child close, still keeping her feet against the reassuring water and extra paddle.

It was some while after midnight that the stars disappeared and a wind began to rise, and suddenly, with the swift change of weather that region so often provided, a storm was upon them, and in the darkness the kayak began to pitch and twist as it swept down vast chasms in the sea and rose to heights that terrified. Now the two men had to paddle furiously to keep their frail craft from capsizing, and just when they felt they could no longer bear the burning pain in their arms, Oogruk would cry 'Shift!'

above the howling wind and they would in perfect rhythm change sides and maintain the forward motion.

Nukleet, feeling the kayak slip and slide, clutched her child more tightly, but the little girl did not cry or show fear; though she was terrified by the darkness and the violence of the sea, the only sign she gave of her concern was the increased pressure with which she grasped her mother's arm.

And then, as a giant wave came at them from the darkness, the headman shouted 'Over!'

and the kayak was tumbled

83

about, dipping far down on its left side and sinking totally under the great wave.

It had been agreed a thousand years earlier that when a kayak turned over, the man paddling it would, with a powerful sweep of his paddle and a vigorous twisting of his body, try to keep the craft turning in the direction in which it capsized; so now, submerged in dark, icy water, the two men obeyed these ancient instructions, straining against their paddles and throwing their weight to encourage the kayak to keep rolling. Nukleet automatically did the same, for she had been so indoctrinated since birth, and even the child knew that salvation lay only in keeping the kayak rolling, so as she clung ever more tightly to her mother, she, too, helped maintain the roll.

When the kayak was at the bottom of its submersion, with its passengers upside down in the Stygian waters, the miracle of its construction manifested itself, for the exquisitely fitted sealskin kept water out and air in, and in this favorable condition the light little craft continued its roll, battled the terrific power of the storm, and righted itself. When the travelers brushed the water from their eyes and saw in the east the first signals of a new day, they saw also that they were nearing land, and as the waves subsided and calm returned to the sea, the men paddled quietly ahead while Nukleet clung to her daughter, whom she had protected from the depths.

They landed before noon, unaware of whether the village they had once visited lay to the north or south but satisfied that within reason it could be found. As the two men hauled the kayak ashore, Nukleet stopped them for a moment, reached into its innards, and pulled forth the spare paddle. Standing between the men, with the paddle erect in the bright morning air, she said: 'It was not needed. You knew what to do.' And she embraced them both, first her father, out of deep respect for all he had done in the old land and would do in the new, and then her gallant husband, because of the love she bore him.

In this way these dark round-faced Eskimos came to Alaska.

TWELVE THOUSAND YEARS AGOAND NOW THE Chronology becomes somewhat more reliable because archaeologists have uncovered datable artifacts: stone outlines of houses and even long-hidden remains of villages a group of Eskimos who were different from others of that remarkable race existed at various locations near the Alaskan end of the 84

land bridge. The cause of their difference has not been ascertained, for they spoke the same language as the other Eskimos; they had managed the same adaptation to life in the coldest climates; and they were in some respects even more skilled in living productively off the creatures that roamed the earth and swam in the nearby seas.

They were somewhat smaller than the other Eskimos and darker of skin, as if they had originated in some different part of Siberia or even farther west in central Asia, but they had stayed in lands close to the western end of the land bridge long enough to acquire the basic characteristics of the Eskimos who lived there. However, when they crossed over to Alaska they dwelled apart and aroused the suspicion and even the enmity of their neighbors.

Such antagonism between groups was not unusual, for when Varnak's original group had reached Alaska they became known as Athapascans, and as we shall see, they and their descendants populated most of Alaska. Therefore, when Oogruk's Eskimos arrived to preempt the shoreline, they were greeted with hostility by the long-settled Athapascans who monopolized the choicer areas between the glaciers, and it became the rule that Eskimos clung to the seafronts, where they could maintain their ancient marine ways of life, while the Athapascans clustered in the more favorable lands, where they existed as hunters. Decades would pass without one group trespassing on the lands of the other, but when they did collide, there was apt to be trouble, contention and even death, with the sturdier Athapascans usually victorious. After all, they had occupied these lands for thousands of years before the Eskimos arrived.

It was not the traditional worldwide antagonism of mountain men versus seacoast men, but it was close to that, and if Oogruk's people found it difficult to defend themselves against the more aggressive Athapascans, this third wave of smaller, gentler newcomers seemed unable to protect themselves against anyone. So when it became doubtful that they could retain their foothold in one of the better areas of Alaska, the two hundred or so members of their clan began to question their future.