Childhood Memories
I was born in Shishmaref on March 18, 1912. My father was from the coastline. My mother was from the mainland, from Mary’s Igloo.
Our parents did not have an easy life, not like us. They did not wait for their checks to come. They had to travel where food was more plentiful. Even if it was far away. Even if they did not have many dogs. Back then, those who had three dogs were considered to have many.
When it was time for me to be born in March of 1912, the weather was very bad. There was blowing snow. My mother was out gathering snow to melt for drinking water. Only my oldest sister was with her. She did not want to bother the others. She was shy and afraid of them.
So I was not born in a house. I was born outside with just a windbreak against the blowing snow. A child born like that today might die of pneumonia! Even so, I had frostbite.
There were reindeer herders not far away. They took me there to try and save me. One of them, John Sinnock, wrote down my birthday. That is why my birthday is accurate. I would not have known because my parents did not read and write.
My older brothers and sisters went to school when we were in Shishmaref. But I am not well-educated. I was too attached to my parents.
When I was young, we did not spend our winters at Shishmaref. We stayed on the mainland. There we hunted all winter and put our food away. My parents did not hunt with weapons. They snared ptarmigan. They trapped fish in the river. Since my mother was from that country, she knew how to store the food. They had no freezers in those days. They dried their meat and put it underground so it wouldn’t spoil.
My earliest memories are of our sod house on the mainland. Our house was made from twigs piled up with sod on top. My parents brought home lots of ptarmigan and fish. We did not go hungry.
When spring came, my parents prepared to move to the coast. Oh, my! They scraped the “meat” from beneath the bark of the willows and stored it in seal oil. They brought all the food they had stored away. Then we moved to the coast. There, across from Shishmaref, the whole village would gather.
At spring camp, the pintails had already laid their eggs. The small birds had started flying. The weather was better back then. It warmed up earlier in the spring. Our parents said it never stormed. Those who were hunting out on the ocean could stay on the ice as if it were land.
There was a mid-summer celebration around the 4th of July. Everyone said, “It’s good that we have lived to see the middle of the summer again.” Oh, my! After they had feasted, they played games. They raced their skinboats and kayaks. They held footraces. There was a blanket toss, too. Only on this one certain day. Our mothers were very lively. They even ran in the footraces. I am not like them.
Later on, after the salmonberries were ripe, we went back to the mainland. We fished there for herring and tomcod. And, so many berries—oh, my! Our mothers picked them and stored them away. Sometimes a boat would take them home early to pick berries. There was no other fruit to eat. There was no juice to drink. But they made sure we had berries.
Then, after berry-picking, they all gathered at Mary’s Igloo. In my earliest memories, people from Wales came up there to fish and pick berries. They came all the way by skinboat, without motors. They pulled their boats from the riverbanks and used sails when they could. We put those sails on the hillside where it was sunny. They kept us warm and out of the wind.
Before the Wales people went home, there was a big Eskimo dance. I remember that dance. This was in 1918, just before the big flu epidemic.
My father asked his sister to stay behind. He said, “You don’t have to return to Wales.” It was as if he knew about the flu epidemic. He even told her that he would bring the poke of berries she had picked to Wales in the winter. But no, she was determined to return. That fall in Wales, they dies of the flu, all of them.
By Louise Barr of Brevig Mission
(Note: During the winter of 1918/19, an estimated five-eighths of the population of Wales died in the flu epidemic. The people of Shishmaref were warned beforehand. They refused entry to all outsiders. In this way, the whole village of Shishmaref was spared.)
No comments:
Post a Comment