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 entered a family circle, not allied by blood, and the reasoning behind it was to strengthen our family ties. My father traded 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 name. name Sorqaq-I 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 with whom we shared. 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 called 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, in what was called a peat bog.

Sorqaq, he was a very mysterious grandfather, he had squinty eyes, a wispy 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 that only we know about. I saw it once, and heard about it later.

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 he 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 in turn the father would kill the big bear sooner or later, and we ate it, so everything came back to us one way or another, my father said.

This is what I remember when I was 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 one day, she said, I mean, it had ivory ornaments, on it, like the igloo, an Eskimo woman, and a salmon fish , a female narwhal, an ivory seal. Mother was a small woman, but severe, strong and enduring.

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

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 he really was a burden to everyone.

Over time I had cheered him up, and I did 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).

I found a harpoon by the little island in the water, the river to be exact, and left it so Natuk the Younger 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, it swam to shore, and the shore is where it should hide. when this happened, and then 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 shivering, if he wasn’t there he would be huddled in the katak outside with a blanket, he wasn’t allowed in our family. unit where we had a fire. After I finished my meal, I visited him often and found him some leftovers, if he didn’t have any, 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 crawled onto the island, and tried to find meat. . During these difficult days, it was difficult for my father to even feed the dogs, let alone an orphan.

In time, however, Natuk the Younger would become a legend. This is what happened:

Because he did not have a father or a mother, nor was he adopted, nor did he ask for food from igloo to igloo as many orphans did, because he told me once, if I depend on them now, I will do so 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 bilateral kinship, and did not force other families to feed the orphans in such cases. Because they were all related in some way to each other.

At the age of fourteen, Natuk was making harpoon heads for Kayaks, which is called unaaq. Something simple for many but also artistic; he learned to make a bow drill, which allows the Eskimos to cut a piece of bone. It also serves to start a fire in the central Arctic, so out of necessity he learned many things 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, offered him fish or its equivalent, and thus he became a rich merchant. He lived to the ripe old age of 104, was born in 1895 and died in 1999.

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