In the Empire of Ice Read Online Free PDF Page B

stretched gut of a walrus.
     
    “LONG AGO people did not live like we do today. You knew how something was connected to the center and therefore together,” an elder from down the coast said. The “center” was spread wide to the edges of the world and the margins were part of the center. It was impossible to talk about hunting or animals without talking of watercraft, shamans, and spirits; the umiaq (kayak) and harpoon; trade fairs and whale dances; thought, weather, and sentient beings. It was also “a dark and unforgiving world,” Herb Anungazuk said. “We knew the sea and the seasons and how the sea moved into new seasons.” Death and life braided together on moving ice and tormented seas, on winter storms and in summer fogs through which no one could see.
    The villages on the Bering Strait were not isolated outposts. Wales was a sentinel and capital of sorts, with smaller villages dotting the Saniq coast north of Wales along its wind-battered sand spits and sheltered inlets. Miffitagvik, Ikpek, Sinnazaat, Kigiqtaq, Sifuk, Qividluaq, Sinik, Ikpizaaq, and Espenberg were some of the villages whose people were joined by a common language and culture, by feasts and trade, but differentiated one from the other by subdialects, decorative designs, and songs.
    Sea mammal hunting had come into being by the first millennium B.C ., followed by the invention of the toggle-head harpoon, which detached from the shaft when an animal was hit and hooked into the flesh so that the animal could not pull away. By A.D . 900, bowhead-whale hunting was an art.
    Trade was structured and intercontinental. Coastal people traded fish and marine mammals for caribou. The umiaq was seaworthy, allowing trips south to St. Lawrence Island, north to Point Hope, and east to East Cape, Siberia. Some traveled up the Colville River to trade with people on the north coast, where Barrow now is.
    Summer fairs were eagerly anticipated. The inland Nunamiut traded with maritime people. Siberians traded with Americans. The people of Wainwright and Point Hope used dogs to pull umiat (the plural of umiaq) on rivers and traveled south to the Kobuk, down the Utokak, portaging over the Noatak to Kotzebue. There, they waited for the rivers to freeze, then returned by dogsled on river ice.
    Siberians brought pieces of iron to trade. Because the Alaskans’ ivory harpoon points and knife blades broke easily, animals got away. They could make the same implements with iron tips and blades that did not break, and the lust for iron grew.
    Feuds broke out between the two groups. There were robberies, and in retaliation, women and children were sometimes stolen by the Chukchi. “We were a warring people,” Joe told me. The Wales hunters wore armor—chest shields made of walrus-ivory slats tied together with sealskin sinew. Chukchi hunters wore iron-plated armor. Both groups were fierce. When anyone approached King Island, armor was donned by all, even if no war was imminent, and on leaving, the invited guests put the armor back on.
    “Perhaps the antipathy started long ago when groups of Inuit people were pushed from Siberia. Maybe it was a time of bad weather and there wasn’t enough to eat; or it could have been overpopulation. Maybe those resentments held on over the years,” Joe says.
    The north coast of Siberia had plenty of walrus and polar bear, but Wales was rich in fur-bearing animals, both kinds of bears, fish, seabirds and ducks, greens, and berries. The corresponding culture reflected that wealth. There were deer-antler mallets; whalebone snow beaters to get snow off boots; bone shovels; wooden fire drills to make a spark; fox-jaw amulets threaded on sealskin thongs; loon-skin and eagle-feather wands; sealskin finger masks and walrus-stomach drums; ivory belt fasteners with seal-human faces; bone, driftwood, and bead earrings; and labrets of jade and green jasper, to name just a few.
    “We lacked for nothing. Every detail had been thought of. We made