United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They had not seen one another for years, yet all the greeting was a mutual grunt. The Kobuks are not demonstrative in their affections, but it would not be right to conclude the affection lacking. I have seen an old Esquimau woman taking part in a dance the night after her husband was buried, yet it would have been unjust to have concluded that she was callous and indifferent.
I thought of Kipling's Men That Fought at Minden: "For fatigue it was their pride And they would not be denied To clean the cook-house floor." Here at Coldfoot we came first into contact with that interesting tribe of wandering inland Esquimaux known as the Kobuks, from their occupation of the river of that name.
So we were rejoiced to see them, sturdy youths of sixteen or seventeen, making the journey all by themselves. My heart goes out to these adventurous Kobuks, amiable, light-hearted, industrious; keen hunters, following the mountain-sheep far up where the Indian will not go; adepts in all the wilderness arts; heirs of the uncharted arctic wastes, and occupying their heritage.
Uneasy at the softening muscles and sinews of this long inaction, I took snow-shoes and a couple of Kobuks one day and made an ascent of the hill behind Bettles known as Lookout Mountain, because from its top the smoke of the eagerly expected first steamboat of the summer may be seen many miles down the river; being moved to that particular excursion by dispute among the weather-bound freighters as to the hill's height.
The time for the movement of the Kobuks back and forth was not quite yet, though we hoped we should meet some parties and get the benefit of their trail. Just before we left the Alatna River we stopped at Roxy's fish cache and got some green fish, hewing them out of the frozen mass with the axe.
Near the riffle the Kobuks had a fish-trap, and some who were busy getting out fish saw and recognised me, and the whole population came swarming out for greetings. It was good to see these kindly, simple people again, to shake their hands and hear their "I glad I see you," which is the general native greeting where there is any English at all.
The Koyukuk has its own Indian people, but these enterprising Kobuks have pushed their way farther and farther from salt water into what used to be exclusive Indian territory. Representatives of both races were at Coldfoot, and as we lay weather-bound for a couple of days, I was enabled to renew last year's acquaintance with them, though without a good interpreter not much progress was made.
But we had lately met some travelling Kobuks and they had told Roxy of a cabin "just little way" farther on, and I yielded to the rest of the company, who would push on to it and thus avoid the necessity of making camp.
If I were not a white man I would far rather be one of these nomadic inland Esquimaux than any other native I know of. That same day we crossed two headwater forks of the Kokochatna, as the Kobuks call it, or the Hogatzitna as the Koyukuks call it, or the Hog River, as the white men call it, a tributary of the Koyukuk that comes in about one hundred and fifty miles below the Alatna.
There was something to be said on the miners' side, but I rejoiced that the Esquimau boys showed such steadfastness to their teaching. "If you cannot use them six days in the week, if it has to be seven or none, then do as the miners on the Yukon side do, consider the country uninhabited, and make your arrangements as though there were no Kobuks."
Word Of The Day