The Innuat • Keepers of the Conifer Forest
Since time immemorial,
the Innu have lived in the vast conifer
forest dominated by black spruce, fir and birch trees. The forest extends
from the deciduous forest far to the
south, to the edge of the arctic circle and the icy wastelands of that
polar north. The aboriginals peoples took their names to reflect the vastness of the land
and the human beings that inhabit it. All nomadic by nature, these
first peoples are all members of the Algonquian family and share many
cultural and language features, although each is unique in its own way.
These peoples, hunters and gatherers, used
to travel in winter across vast family hunting grounds in search of game
and fish. In summer, they gathered near a stretch of water, in a place
that became a site for their community. Even today, the tremendous network of lakes and rivers in the
conifer forest constitutes a gateway to a country in which these forest
dwellers hunt caribou, moose and geese, fish for trout and whitefish and
gather Labrador tea, blueberries and cloudberries.
The Innu have an oral tradition replete with countless stories of
their heroes, and their monstrous counterparts, of one sort or another. In
general Innu stories are divided into accounts, or into myths. The
stories or tales concern the real
life events of Innu people, living or dead; their travels in the country,
their dealings with spirits, other peoples. They are accounts that relate events that have been witnessed
or experienced by the Innu people. Myths on the other hand "recall
the creation of the world and events which transpired during an epoch when
humans and animals were still joined. Some in supernatural realms of the land of the Mishtapeuat, while others
occur on the earth itself, populated as it is by the Innu, the animals,
and their kindred spirits.
For generations, the Innu
young would imagine the creatures told of while lying on the fir bough floor of an Innu tent listening to an Innu
Elder tell the tale of their heroes, and of the evil spirits that dwell in
the forests and icy wastes beyond.
A family of strangers, on the move, came across
fresh Innu tracks, and followed them After a time, they reached the Innu camp
site.
"Here come strangers," said the Innu people
settled there. As hospitable people, they invited them to
come into their camp site.
"Have something to eat," said the Innu.
The Innu provide food and drink, while they told their own young girls to
put up the camp for the strangers.
When the young girls finished the camp, the
strangers went out into the rest of the camp. The elder father of the
strangers walked behind the rest of his clan. He came upon a
woman sitting by the doorway of her dwelling holding a baby. The elder
stranger made himself trip and
fall right where the baby was being held. As he fell, he put his hand on
the baby's head and crushed it. Ignoring the woman's horror and
screams of sorrow, he went to join the rest of his clan at their camp.
The elder stranger's sons
feared their father's actions. They heard the people crying
inside the camp and they said to their father, "You must have done
something wrong." But their father answered, "Nothing much
happened, I just broke one of their spoons."
The Innu people in the camp said, "What
kind of people are these strangers? How could they kill without
regret, surely they must be cannibals! What should we do with them? How
can we kill
then? And how to trick them away from our families?"
The next morning, one of the Innu
elders visited the cannibals. He said to
them, "We've found many beavers, and every man is going out to hunt them. If you
would like to come with us, we would be glad to have you. We should try to
kill them all." The father of the cannibals agreed to come
along with them.
Thus the Innu planned to kill the cannibals. "We will go in three groups."
said the elder Innu. "The younger people will lead the way, with a
second group to follow and we, the old people, will come behind."
Then he said "One of
the cannibal's sons will go with the first group and the other with the
second group. We'll follow behind with the father."
A young hunter said, "When you see us gather together, you will
know that we are killing his sons. Then you do the same thing with the
father."
And they went. As they were walking
through the snow covered forest, they saw the young men gathering together
ahead. "Look
at the young people playing," said the old Innu to the father of the cannibals. "Our
boys always love to have a snowshoe race with strangers."
Just then the elder Innu said to he father, "We used to be good on snowshoes
in our younger days. Shall we have a race too?"
When the father of the cannibals started to run, one of the Innu
stabbed his snowshoe with a spear, causing the father to fall. As the father fell,
the other Innu elders attacked and killed him with their spears.
The snow ran red that day with the blood of the cannibal strangers. All the Innu
then turned and went home, leaving the dead for the forest spirits to
consume.
When they returned to
their campsite, they told of their deed, "We killed the father and his
sons too - we killed them all."
The people returned to
their normal lives of hunting, fishing, and gathering the fruit and nuts
of the forest. They lived a peaceful life as the seasons came
and went.
Then the season of the wolf - winter returned, to
hush the
forest with a carpet of snow and ice. It was one year later. A
year since the arrival and death of the strangers who killed the baby.
It was a moonless night with a gentle snow fall. No sound could be
heard in the gentle hush that settles on the forest as the snow descends
from the invisible sky. Yet on this snowy night, the Innu were awakened
in their sleep, to hear the footsteps of strangers walking through their
village. These were not the sound of snow shows, nor the sound of moccasined feet. This was the sound of bare feet on snow. Yet
how could a person walk through the frigid night in their bare feet, they
wondered? Who were these strangers wandering the night? Were
these demons?
For many nights, they
heard these footsteps. The sound of bare feet in snow, yet no other
sound. Not of speech, nor wood, nor clothes.
After a time, a young
hunter was chosen to stay on guard. That night, the young hunter sat
sheltered by his tent, covered from the snow and cold. The next
morning, the people came out of their tents to find the young man gone,
his shape still in the snow, but only bare feet tracks coming up to his
spot and leaving. Of the young man, no trace to be found.
The people followed
these bare foot tracks but soon lost the trace as they vanished in drifts
of snow.
The next night,
another young man was chosen to guard the people through the night.
Again, gone the next morning, with only the fading bare footed tracks
leading to nowhere. If one was not chosen to guard, the visitor
chose for them, taking one in silence in the night. Alone or in
company they were taken. A man lying next to his wife asleep, would
be gone the next morning. An elder in the company of others awake
and watchful, then fallen asleep, gone, with no one to see. Always
fearful of the sound, afraid to come to face the spirit of those nights,
they hid. And so it went for 10 nights. None were found, none
returned. Yet every night, the foot steps heard by all, and one less
of their number.
In the end, the elders
agreed to abandon this place of cold and death and strangers walking in
the night. They gathered their families and fled. They walked
many days to depart the area of their misery. As twilight descended
after a few days, they at last came to the pass leaving the valley
of their traditional settlement. As they filed through the gap, they
looked back to see a lone figure silhouetted black against the distance in
the dimming twilight.
From time to time to
follow, the people would look into the dimming twilight of day, in the
hours of the wolf, searching
for the lone stranger in the distance. And so they taught their
young, never to greet a stranger in the forest, and seal and never leave their
tents in the dark of night. But from time to time, as one of their
number vanished into the night, they would hear only the solitary footsteps of
the wanderer - the Nomad! - the Eater of Souls!
And so it is with the
peoples of the north, who avoid the lone stranger who wanders the
forest, or the mountains, or the ice of the sea.
The Chukchi •
Kelets
Among the
Chukchi, spirits were sometimes considered neutral, or even benevolent,
but most of the time were aggressive and offensive. Even souls of dead
relatives might, as among these Asian Eskimo, become dangerous after a few
years when they began to long for company and tried to capture the souls
of their kinfolk. They believed that these evil spirits were those of dead people who had led evil
lives. To protect against them, the earth or snow around the dwelling was
sprinkled with human urine or with old lamp oil. Besides family and
personal amulets, weapons, and especially drums, were most
effective for protecting against the Nomad evil spirits because these spirits did
not like loud noises. They much preferred the quiet solitude, and to
take their victims far from human activity. They would only take a
victim at night when all or most were asleep.
These evil spirits,
sometimes called kelets or Nomads, lived, according to Chukchi belief, in
the upper world (the mountains), or underground, or on the ice when
trapped on an ice flow, but not in the sea. They believed that they
normally inhabited a wild world, symmetrical to man's, on the other side of a
vertical separation. Yet at special times they could enter this world to
eat the souls of humans. The kelets had various appearances, but they
were as a rule human in appearance, though larger than the Eskimo people and had
unusually shaped
heads.
A common thread of the
tales of the Arctic Peoples is the prison of ice. That the Kelet
could only be freed by the hand of man. Once trapped on the ice,
they rode the floe until the foolish fisher man came to their succor,
where usually all trace would be lost upon reaching the favored shore.
The sea was their enemy, the great cleanser of evil from the surface
world. Such are the tales told by these North People, from North
America to the Scandinavian Lands to the Siberian Steps of Asia.
They are also told in the Great South by early explorers of the Southern
Ocean. Some still see them in the crossings of the vast frigid
southern seas!
The Inuit • Hunters At The Edge Of The North Pole
