Ataata ((The Grandson)(A short story in the Canadian Arctic))

I never got to know him very well, my grandfather, after my father bought me in a small Eskimo town in 1905, and I was ten years old. I would be adopted, adopted into a system, somehow, we came into a family circle, not allied by blood, and the reasoning behind it was to strengthen our family ties. My father was trading wives now, my mother for someone else’s wife, our town was a hundred miles away and there were only twenty of us in the community, I was adopted by my grandfather for a year, and my real father now called him by his name. Sorqaq-I’s name was now called Ataata, the grandson. Now my mother and father exchanged partners as I said, in the village, wives willing to exchange, and after a year I had a brother, I don’t know who his father was, but we didn’t care, for the mother. He exchanged husbands three times during this period, and was given to a certain family, one we shared with. We had new blood in our family, and that was important. In addition to a new brother, we as a family had an alliance. My mother’s name was Qaassaaluk, and my father’s name was Itukusuk, and my name was Natuk, and the child born to my father’s exchanged wife was named Natuk, that’s how we identify family relatives. The mother of Natuk the youngest was called Qaammaliaq (the month of the Moon, which is January). We lived a hundred miles away, on what was called a peat bog.

Sorqaq, he was a very mysterious grandfather, he had squint eyes, a scraggly beard, a mustache and long hair, and he was said to have Whiteman’s gold, and he drank his whiskey, and he had a rifle, things we only know about. I saw it once, and heard about it afterwards.

My sister, she wasn’t worth much, but she was my sister, Uummannaq, and she was four years younger than me, when I was fourteen, she was ten, she was born in 1899; my new brother 1906. Mom was going to kill her, leave her out in the cold to die, a custom of ours because it’s hard to feed everyone, and we needed hunters, not young girls to feed, but she begged Dad and so kept her, but the other two, the father insisted, and so, the big bears or the walruses, or the dogs one or some of those creatures, ate that night, and the father in turn would kill the big bear sooner or later, and we would eat it, so it all came back to us one way or another, my father said.

This is what I remember as a child. We had a sled and a kayak, and several dogs, and the mother had a beautiful necklace, she would give it to me some day, she said, I’m telling you, it had ivory decorations, on it, like the igloo, an Eskimo woman, and a salmon fish , a female narwhal, an ivory seal. Mother was a small woman, but stern, strong and enduring.

We had strict group laws and values ​​and they were preeminent. I must tell you what happened to my brother, or maybe I should say, half brother, with the same name, his father and mother were killed by a big white bear, now he was an orphan, and it’s not good to be like that. , he was ten years old when this became his fate, and I was twenty. He had no rights in the village, and he was sent to ours, but he had no rights there either, but he was given a chance, and orphans are relegated to the lowest level, and he was given a little igloo to live in (Natuk the minor ).

I told him that he had to make extraordinary efforts to improve his condition, so as not to be left alone on the ice, with the bears, because it really was a burden for everyone.

Over time I had cheered him up, and I did it well, because he showed everyone around him that he could get up on his own (no one knew of course, I helped him from time to time, I taught him some tricks my father and grandfather had taught me taught).

I found a harpoon by the little island in the water, the river to be exact, and I left it so that Natuk the Lesser could find it. I told him where I put it, and where the Canadian arctic walrus basked, that it was on the island, and when the hunters bothered it, they swam to the shore, and the shore is where it should hide. when this happened, and then he needed to nail one of the smaller seals that followed their parents, or a baby walrus. And he did this, and learned how to get food for himself, thereafter.

Many times I would leave our house and visit him at night in his igloo, he was shaking, if he was not there, he would be huddled in the katak outside with a blanket, our family was not allowed in. unit where we had a fire. After I had finished my meal, I visited him often, and found him some scraps, if he did not have them, and wood for a small fire.

When he was twelve and I was twenty-two, my father addressed him as inulupaluk (poor little man), and one day my father surprisingly gave him an oil lamp, but he would have to find his oil. He was not allowed to join the hunt with us or others, so he took his harpoon and went to where the island was, and waited on the shore, when it was solid ice, he would crawl towards the island, and try to find meat. . During these difficult days, it was difficult for my father to even feed the dogs, let alone an orphan.

However, in time, Natuk the Lesser would become a legend. This is what happened:

Because he had no father or mother, nor was he adopted, nor did he ask for food from igloo to igloo as many orphans did, because he once told me, if I depend on them now, I will do it forever, and thus, I will die. in the process, and die a miserable life, hoping to be fed; therefore, he refused to beg. Although it was some blood, it must be remembered, this only makes it a bilateral relationship, and did not force other families to feed the orphans in such cases. Because they were all somehow related to each other.

At the age of fourteen, Natuk, was making harpoon heads for Kayaks, what is called an aq. Something simple for many but also artistic; he learned how to make a bow drill, which allows Eskimos to cut a piece of bone. It’s also good for lighting a fire in the central Arctic, so by necessity he learned a lot in this area: Hew could demonstrate, buy by putting a piece of dry wood covered with cottony plants, and light it. In return, many people approached him, offering him fish or the equivalent of it, and thus he became a wealthy merchant. He lived to the ripe old age of 104, being born in 1895 and dying in 1999.

Written on 4-26-2008 (The author spent time in the Arctic, 1996)