Читать книгу An Intimate Wilderness - Norman Hallendy - Страница 25

HOW WE TOOK A GREAT WHALE

You had to stoop to enter old Jimmy Killabuck’s house. It was a replica of a Hudson’s Bay Company house, but scaled down to one little room with small sleeping quarters that were reached by climbing a ladder.

The place was filled with pieces of this, bits of that, and parts of things, all lodged in their proper places. There was the sweet smell of woodsmoke from the stove and the sound of the kettle as the water for our tea came to a boil. The skins of Canada geese covered the chairs. We drank tea, ate biscuits, and felt very good in each other’s company.

For a moment, the old man was lost in thought as he gazed out the window toward the sea. Then he looked toward me, lit a cigarette, and said,

I will tell you how we hunted great whales in the old days. I am an old man, I think I am 85 years old, and what I am about to tell you was told to me by my father when I was a very young boy.

In the old days we hunted not only belugas and narwhals but the big whales as well. Some Inuit may have hunted whales from umian [large skin boats] but we hunted them from qajait [kayaks]. A man in a qajaq in the water is no threat to a whale. She thinks that the qajaq is nothing more than a peaceful little animal seeking her company. The qajaq is silent, moves quickly, and is much better to handle than any umiak. Umian are for women, children, and dogs, not for hunting.

When the hunters saw the spout from a whale, they came together. They took their panar [bone knife] and lashed it to their qajaq paddle, so as to make a spear. In the old days it took a long time to make our weapons and tools because we had no saws or metal tools. We cut bone and ivory with pieces of “glass.” We found that special glass that looked like icicles growing from certain rocks. We would take a sliver of that glass and set it into a piece of caribou bone so as to give it a handle. That was our saw. We would then scratch a line over and over again on both sides of the bone or ivory until we could break the piece exactly in the right way. We could do other things with that glass, like make holes, grooves, and decorations.

Now I will tell you how we killed great whales. You must understand that the great whale is a peaceful animal. It doesn’t kill other animals, nor is it afraid of any animal except arluk [killer whale]. When we saw whales, we could move among them and they were not afraid of our little qajait. They moved slowly, feeding on things that lived on the top of the ocean. There was no fear of trying to kill a great whale if you knew how to do it. My father was such a man. He was the one who knew the right place to stick in the spear. He would paddle beside the whale, carefully looking at her body. There is a place below her spine where you can see a movement.

At this point the old man put his left thumb under the flap of skin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and began to make a pulsing motion.

You see, there is a place on the whale that moves just the way I am showing you. That’s where the kidney is, and that’s the only place where it is safe to stick in the spear.

This was done carefully and quietly, and you may be surprised to know that the whale did not even know that she was being killed. There was no fight. She kept swimming on and began to bleed to death. We would follow her sometimes for a very long time until she died. As soon as she was dead, we would come to her side and fasten lines to her body. Our lines were made from walrus hide, and the hooks on the end of the line that were stuck into the whale were made from polar bear claws.

Each hunter fastened a line to the whale and together we paddled toward the shore. There was much hard work and much rejoicing because she gave us food and oil and everything else that we needed in the making of things, even a new panar [snow knife].

The old man looked into his empty teacup and quietly said, They were such peaceful things, such beautiful and peaceful things. I left Pangnirtung (Pangniqtuuq) the following day with many fond memories.

Various forms of inuksuit.