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THE FOOD BIRDS OF THE SMITH SOUND ESKIMOS

BY
W. ELMER EKBLAW

FROM THE WILSON BULLETIN No. 106, MARCH, 1919

The Food Birds of the Smith
Sound Eskimos

THE FOOD-BIKDS OF THE SMITH SOUND
ESKIMOS.

BY W. ELMER EKBLAW.

The title of the article in itself conveys a wrong im-
pression by suggesting that any of the birds that come to
Northwest Greenland, the home of the Smith Sound Eski-
mos, is not used for food. Because existence in that far
northern region is often precarious and the margin of
safety in food supply is always narrow, every living thing
in the land may be, and in times of stress is, put into the
soapstone pot to boil; and if not cooked, eaten raw. Con-
sequently every bird is eaten, from the little snow-bunting
to the great northern raven.

Of course, the Eskimos have their preferences and like
some birds far better than others, but in starvation times,
when strips of sole leather are the only items on the Es-
kimo menu, even the oldest, toughest, greasiest, bird is a
delicacy. Famine does not often actually face the tribe,
but several times in its history the game has failed them
so utterly for so long a time that many of the Eskimos
have succumbed to starvation. These times of stress usually
come in the early spring when first the sun rises above the
horizon, before the birds have come back ; old Eskimos say
that starvation would many more times have overtaken
them, except for the timely arrival of the first birds.

The birds of the land most certainly saved the tribe from

2 THE WILSON BULLETIN — No. 106

extinction during one period of its history, not yet forgot-
ten by the oldest of the people. After one of the famines,
acompanied by a plague in which most of the tribe died,
the survivors lost the art of making the kayak, or skin boat,
for summer hunting. Consequently, throughout the open
season, after the ice had gone out, they were unable to kill
any sea-food, and since at the same time caribou formed
no part in their cuisine, they had to depend entirely upon
the millions of birds that frequented the cliffs and islands
of the coast. Before the ice went out of the Fjords all the
Eskimos repaired to the cliffs of the great bird rookeries,
where they could obtain all the birds they needed for food,
and stayed there until the ice froze again and permitted
the killing of seal and other sea game. This period of de-
pendence upon birds for sustenance for at least two months
of each year ended with the immigration of a small band
of Eskimos from Baffin Land, who revived the lost arts of
kayak-building and caribou-hunting, — a remarkably good
example of the influence that an immigrant people may
have upon the life of the people among whom they come.

Water-birds form the greater part of the bird-food of
the Eskimos; of the land-birds only the ptarmigan plays
an important role. All the small land- and shore-birds,
the raven and the falcon are eaten, but they comprise no
essential part of the Eskimos' dietary as do the ptarmigan
and the water birds.

Even the ptarmigan (Lagopus rupestris reinhardi) is
not so very important a food-bird, and except in the fall,
when it is migrating southward in great numbers, the Es-
kimos rarely hunt for it particularly. Generally they kill
it only when they happen to find it near the shore, as they
sledge from one place to another, when they are hunting
hare or caribou, or when they are attending their hare-
snares or fox-traps. When the ptarmigan is migrating
southward, and numerous flocks stop to feed on the heather
slopes of the high rocky shores, the Eskimos often consider
it worth their time and effort to hunt them. The ptarmi-

FOOD-BIRDS OF THE SMITH SOUND ESKIMOS 3

gan has a sweeter, fresher flesh, freer from grease, than
that of the water birds.

Of the water birds, the dovekie (Alle alle), the murre
(Uria lomvia lomvia), the guillemot (Cepphus mandtii),
the eiders (Somateria mollissima borealis and $. specta-
bilis), the black brant (Brenta bernicla glaucogastra) , the
snowy goose (Chen hyperboreus nivalis), the glaucous gull
(Larus hyperboreus) , the ivory gull (Pagophila alba), the
kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla tridactyla) , the fulmar (Ful-
marus glacialis glacialis), and the old squaw (Harelda
hy emails) are the most used for food.

The dovekie is the most important of these at most of
the villages and in general is so considered by the whole
tribe. Millions of these little birds nest in the sandstone
and basalt talus-slopes on Bushman Island, on the Crim-
son Cliffs at Cape York and westward, at Parker Snow
Bay, on the south shore of Northumberland Island, and
thence northward on the shores of every bay and Fjord
from Inglefield Gulf to Foulke Fjord. The northern limit
of their nesting-sites is Cape Hatherton.

Small though they are, the dovekies are so numerous
and they are so readily caught by the Eskimo women in
the nets used for that purpose, that in a summer the Es-
kimos are able to catch, and lay away under stones, great
quantities of the little birds. When winter comes, and
other food becomes scarce, the Eskimos sledge to their
dovekie caches, which they find under the deep snow with
almost uncanny skill, dig out the tight-frozen masses of
birds, and bring them home, where they are eaten raw
and whole as we eat oysters, except that the feathers are
skinned off. Many times these caches of dovekies laid
away in the summer have warded off starvation in the win-
ter times of stress.

Next to the dovekies the murres (Uria lomvia lomvia)
are the most important food-birds. Four places of Eskimo
habitation yield the greater number of these birds — Akpat,
on Saunders Island; Igfissuk, on Parker Snow Bay; an-

4 THE WILSON BULLETIN — No. 106

other Akpat, along the Crimson Cliffs; and Keatek on
Northumberland Island. The word "Akpat " signifies in
Eskimo, " the place of the murres." The murres are also
caught in nets in large numbers, but many are shot in the
water or on the wing. The murres are relatively less nu-
merous and less easily caught than the dovekies, but their
larger size compensates for these disadvantages, so that
the Eskimos eagerly await their coming and catch large
numbers, which they lay away under rocks as they do the
dovekies. The murres instead of nesting under rocks as
do the dovekies, nest on ledges of steep high cliffs.

The eider, — the Greenland eider and in minor degree
the king eider — are perhaps of somewhat less importance
than the dovekies and the murres. To almost every islet
along the coast, hundreds, even thousands, of the eider
come every summer to lay their eggs. In the old days the
Eskimos caught nearly all the eiders that they used for
food in long lines of snares stretched between the rocks
where the birds nested, but now nearly all the hunters have
shot-guns, which they use most skillfully and with uner-
ring aim. The old snares were very successful; sometimes
a line of snares held two-score birds at a time.

The black brants are rather common along the coast, but
they are too wary to be killed in large numbers. Only in
the nesting season do the Eskimos get many. The snow
geese are not at all common, but almost every fall, when
the birds moult before migrating south, the Eskimo get a
few. As a rule an Eskimo must be rather hungry before
he kills an old-squaw for food, but it is fairly common
along the whole coast.

Of the gulls, the Eskimos eat every kind. The glaucous
gulls are caught in a particular kind of snare along cracks
in the ice, and in the open pools about icebergs. The old
gulls are rather tough, but the young birds, while in their
pale-brown barred plumage, are as tender and sweet as a
spring-chicken. The ivory gulls and the kittiwakes are
often killed and eaten, too. The kittiwakes are very good,

FOOD-BIRDS OF THE SMITH SOUND ESKIMOS 5

much like fat young squabs, and always rolling in golden
fat. The fulmars are eaten in great numbers in early
spring, even though they are most unpalatable, for they are
the first birds to return in large numbers. The guillemots,
too, are used a great deal for food.

The sandpipers, snipes, and other shore birds are not
often eaten because they are so rare or so hard to get. Ra-
vens are rather frequently eaten, and the Eskimos profess
to like them.

Besides the birds themselves, the eggs are a considerable
addition to the Eskimos' larder. On Lyttleton Island,
McGary's rock, and other islets north of Etah, the Eski-
mos gather thousands of eider eggs, which they store away
under rocks for winter use. Likewise in Inglefield Gulf
they get hundreds of eider eggs, though not so many as
near Etah. The eggs freeze solid and keep fresh until the
next summer. At the great murre rookeries, the Eskimos
collect thousands of the murre eggs on the high, dangerous
cliffs ; and in the nesting-places of the dovekies, the Eskimo
women and children gather the pigeon-like eggs, which
they eat frozen in the long arctic night as the children
of the southland eat chocolates. Wherever the dovekies
nest in numbers the Eskimos gather their eggs too.

Without these birds and eggs, the Eskimos' food supply
would often fail them ; and though the abundance of birds
is but one of the conditions that make human life possible
in that far north country, it is of as great importance as
any. Small wonder it is then that the Eskimos half uncon-
sciously mark most of the natural periods of their year by
some bird activity or some bird movement ; as, for example,
the time that we call June, the Eskimos call the time of
nesting birds. And just as small wonder it is that they
rejoice when the first birds come to their country.

AL

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GELES
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