Alaska (9 page)

An appropriate name would have been Siberian, but now that they had unwittingly committed themselves to Alaska, they acquired the generic name of Indians, later to be differentiated as Athapascans.

As such they would prosper across the middle section of Alaska and positively thrive in Canada. One sturdy branch would inhabit the beautiful islands forming southern Alaska, and improbable as it would have seemed to Varnak, some of his descendants thousands of years later would wander southward into Arizona, where they would become the Navajo Indians. Scholars would find the language of these Navajos as close to Athapascan as Portuguese was to Spanish, and this could not have happened by chance.

There had to have been a relationship between the two groups.

These wandering Athapascans were in no way related to the much later Eskimos, nor must they be visualized as mov-57

ing consciously onward in some mighty fanlike emigration, carrying their civilization with them to unpopulated lands. They were not English Pilgrims crossing the Atlantic in a purposeful exodus, with provisional laws adopted on shipboard before landing among the waiting Indians. It is quite probable that the Athapascans spread throughout America with never a sense of having left home.

That is, Varnak and his wife, for example, as older people, would be inclined to remain where they were among the birch trees, but some years later one of their sons and his wife might see that it would be advantageous for them to build their cave-hut somewhat farther to the east where more mammoths were available, and off they would go. But they might also maintain contact with their parents back at the original birch-tree site, and in time

their

children would decide to move on to more inviting locations, but they too would retain affiliation with their parents, and perhaps even with old Varnak and Tevuk at the birch trees. In this quiet way people can populate an entire continent by moving only a few thousand yards in each generation, if they are allowed twenty-nine thousand years in which to do it. They can move from Siberia to Arizona without ever leaving home.

Better hunting, an addiction to adventure, a dissatisfaction with oppressive old ways, motives like these were the timeless urges which encouraged men and women to spread out even in peaceful times, and it was in obedience to them that these early men and women began to settle the Americas, both North and South, without being aware that they were doing so.

In the process, Alaska would become of crucial importance to areas like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California and Texas, for it would provide the route for the peoples who would populate those diverse areas. Descendants of Varnak and Tevuk, inheritors of the courage which had characterized the Ancient One, would erect noble cultures in lands that would rarely know ice or have any memory of Asia, and it would be these settlers and the different groups who would follow them in later millennia who would constitute Alaska's main gift to America.

FOURTEEN THOUSAND YEARS B.P.E., WHEN THE LAND route was temporarily submerged because of melting at the polar ice cap, one .of the world's most congenial people lived in crowded areas at the extreme eastern tip of Siberia. They were Eskimos, those squat, dark Asian hunters who wore their hair cut square across their eyebrows. They were a

58

hardy breed, for their livelihood depended upon their venturing out upon the Arctic Ocean and its attendant waters to hunt the great whales, the tusked walruses and the elusive seals. No other men in all the world lived more dangerously in a more inhospitable climate than these Eskimos, and none labored more strenuously in these years than a bandy-legged, sturdy little fellow named Oogruk, who was experiencing all kinds of difficulties.

He had taken as his wife, three years earlier, the daughter of the most important man in his seaside village of Pelek, and at the time he had been bewildered as to why a young woman of such attractiveness should be interested in him, for he had practically nothing to offer. He had no kayak of his own for hunting seals, nor any share in one of the larger umiaks in which men sailed forth in groups to track down whales that glided past the headland like floating mountaintops. He owned no property, had only one set of sealskins to protect him from the frozen seas, and what was particularly disqualifying, he had no parents to help him make his way in the harsh world of the Eskimo. To top it all, he was cross-eyed, and in that special way which could be infuriating. If you looked into his left eye, thinking that this was the one he was using, he would shift focus, and you would be looking at nothing, for his left eye would have wandered. And if you then hurried back to his right eye, he shifted that one, and once more you were staring at nothing. It was not easy to talk with Oogruk.

The mystery of why the headman's pretty daughter Nukleet was willing to marry such a fellow was solved rather soon after the wedding feast, for Oogruk discovered that his bride was pregnant, and at the boats it was whispered that the father was a husky young harpooner named Shaktoolik who already had two wives and three other children.

Oogruk was in no position to protest the deception, or to protest anything else for that matter, so he bit his tongue, admitted to himself that he was lucky to have a girl as pretty as Nukleet on any terms, and vowed to be one of the best hands in the various arctic boats owned by his fatherin-law.

Nukleet's father did not want Oogruk as part of his crew, for the hunting of whales was a perilous occupation and each of the six men in the heavy boat had to be an expert. Four rowed, one steered, one managed the harpoon, and these positions had long been spoken for in the headman's umiak. He led the way. Shaktoolik held the harpoon. And four stout fellows with nerves of granite manned the oars. In many expeditions against whales, these men had proved their merit, and Nukleet's father was not about to break up his combina—

59

tion simply to make a place for his lightly regarded son-in-law.

But he was willing to provide Oogruk with his own kayak, not one of the best but a sturdy craft which was guaranteed not to sink light as a spring breeze through aspen, watertight as a seal's fur regardless of how the waves assaulted it. This kayak did not respond quickly to paddle strokes, but it was many times better than Oogruk could ever have owned by himself and he was grateful; his parents, killed when a whale overturned their small boat, had left him nothing.

In midsummer, when great sea animals were on the move, Oogruk's fatherin-law, aided by Shaktoolik, launched his umiak from the pebbled shore fronting the village of Pelek. But before they departed on what they knew might be a perilous excursion, they indicated with shrugs that Oogruk was free to use the kayak on the chance that he might creep up on some dozing seal and add both a needed fur and meat to the village larder. Standing alone on the shore, with the rude kayak waiting some distance to the east, he looked through squinting eyes as the abler men of the village set forth with prayers and shouts to try to intercept a whale.

When they were gone, their heads six dots on the horizon, he sighed at his hard luck in missing the hunt, looked back at his hut to see if Nukleet was watching, and sighed again to see that she was not. Walking dejectedly to his waiting kayak, he studied its awkward lines, and muttered: 'In that one you couldn't overtake a wounded seal.'

It was large, three times as long as a man, and covered completely by watertight sealskin to keep it afloat in the stormiest seas. It contained only one opening, just big enough to accommodate a man's hips; the sealskin was secured snugly at the top around the hunter's waist and sewn to the kayak by lengths of whale tendons that were pliable when dry, an impermeable bond when wet.

After Oogruk eased himself into the opening, he pulled the upper part of the sealskin about his waist and tied it carefully, so that no water could seep through even if the kayak turned upside down. If that happened, all Oogruk would have to do would be to work his paddle furiously and the kayak would right itself. Of course, if a lone man lashed into the opening was foolhardy enough to tackle a mature walrus, the beast's tusks might puncture the covering, throw the man into the sea, and drown him, for Eskimos could not swim; besides, the weight of his bulky clothing, if it became waterlogged, would drag him down.

When the whale-hunting umiak vanished in the distance, Oogruk tested his aspen paddle and started out for the seas 60

east of Pelek. He had little confidence that he would find any seals and even less that he would know how to handle a big one if he did. He was merely scouting, and if he happened to sight a whale surfacing in the distance, or a walrus lazing along, he would mark the beast' heading and inform the others when they returned, for if Eskimos knew for certain that a whale or a really big walrus was in a given area, they could track it down.

He saw no seals, and this did not entirely disappoint him, for he was not yet sure of himself as a hunter, and he wanted first to familiarize himself with the tricks of this particular kayak before he took it among a herd of seals. He contented himself with paddling toward that distant land on the other side of the sea which he had sometimes seen on clear days. No one from Pelek had ever sailed to the opposite shore, but everyone knew it existed, for they had seen its low hills gleaming in the afternoon sun.

He was well out from shore, some miles south of where the umiak must be by now, when he saw off to his right a sight which paralyzed him. It was the full length of a black whale riding the surface of the water, its huge tail carelessly propelling it forward. It was enormous, much bigger than any Oogruk had ever seen on the beach when the men butchered their catch. Of course, he was not an expert judge, for the hunters of Pelek had caught only three whales in the last seven years. But this one was huge, no one could deny that, and it was imperative that Oogruk alert his companions to the whale's presence, for he alone against this great beast was powerless. Six of the best men in Siberia would be required to subdue it.

But how could he notify his fatherin-law? Having no other choice, he decided to stay with the whale as it lazed its way north, trusting that its course must sooner or later intersect the umiak's.

This was a delicate maneuver, for if the whale felt threatened by a strange object in its vicinity, it could with three or four flips of its mighty tail swim over and collapse the kayak or bite it in two, killing both the man and his frail canoe. So all that long afternoon Oogruk, alone in his boat, trailed the whale, seeking to remain invisible, cheering when the whale spouted, showing that it was still there.

Twice the great beast sounded, then disappeared, and now Oogruk sweated, for his prey might surface at any spot, might even come up under the kayak accidentally, or be lost forever in one strenuous underwater plunge. But the whale had to breathe, and after a prolonged absence, the huge dark creature resurfaced, spouted high in the air, and continued its lazy way north.

61

About an hour before the sun swept low to the north in its reluctance to set, Oogruk calculated that if the men in the umiak had continued in their proposed direction, they must now be well to the northeast of where the whale was heading, and if so, they would miss it completely. So he decided that he must cut across the whale's path, paddle furiously, and hope to overtake the six hunters.

But now he had to determine which method of getting to the east of the whale promised the greatest likelihood of success, for he must not only avoid inciting an attack, which would destroy both him and the kayak, but he must also move in such a way as to conserve maximum time and distance. Remembering that whales, according to tradition, could see poorly and hear acutely, he decided to speed ahead, making as little noise as possible, and cut directly across the whale's path, doing so as far in front as his paddling would allow.

This was a dangerous maneuver, but he had far more than his own safety to consider.

From his earliest days he had been taught that the supreme responsibility of a boy or man was to bring a whale to the beach so that his village could feast upon it, and use the huge bones for building and the precious baleen for the scores of uses to which its suppleness and strength could be put. To catch a whale was an occasion which might happen only once in a lifetime, and he was in position to do just that, for if he led the hunters to the whale, and they killed it, the honors would be shared with him for his steadfastness in trailing the great beast across the open seas.

In this moment of vital decision, when he was about to throw himself across the very face of the whale, he was sustained by a curious fact, for his doomed father who had left him so little did provide him with a talisman of extraordinary power and beauty. It was a small circular disk, white and with a diameter of about two narrow fingers. It had been made of ivory from one of the few walruses his father had ever killed, and it had been carved with fine runic figures depicting the ice-filled ocean and the creatures that lived within it, sharing it with the Eskimos.

Oogruk had watched his father carve the disk and smooth the edges so that it would fit properly, and since both realized from the beginning that when finished, this disk was to be something special, it was in no way foolish when his father predicted: 'Oogruk, this will be a lucky one.' Accepting this without question, the boy of nine had not winced when his father took a sharp knife made of whalebone, pierced his lower lip, and stuffed the incision with grass. As it healed and 62

the opening grew wider, with larger plugs of wood inserted each month, his lower lip would form a narrow band of skin surrounding and defining a circular hole.

Halfway through this process, the hole became infected, as so often happened in these cases, and Oogruk lay on the mud floor stricken with fever. For three bad days and nights, while his mind wandered, his mother applied herbs to his lip and packed warm rocks against his feet. Then the fever subsided, and when he was again able to take notice, the boy saw with satisfaction that the hole had mended to just about the required size.