PORTRAIT OF AN ESKIMO FAMILY

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Never in Anger
Jean L. Briggs Never in Ange
Portrait of an Eskimo Family

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

and London, England
© Copyright 1970 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-105368

ISBN 0-674-60828-3 (paper)

Certain portions of the Introduction and Chapters I,

II, and VI of this book appear in Women in the Field;
Anthropological Experiences, edited by Peggy Golde, pp.
19-44, Copyright © 1970 by Aldine Publishing Company.

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Dorothy, Doris, and Alfred
who taught me how rewarding a
picture puzzle world can be
for Ben and Sol who put up
with the scattered pieces
and for Cora who inspired this
particular solution
 Acknowledgments
This book is based on fieldwork conducted between June 1963
and March 1965 with the financial support of the Wenner-Gren
Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health (Pre-
doctoral Research Fellowship No. 5 Fl MH-20, 701-02 BEH with
Research Grant Attachment No. MH-07951-01), and the North-
ern Co-ordination and Research Centre of the Department of
Northern Affairs and National Resources of the Canadian Gov-
ernment (now the Northern Science Research Group of the
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development). I
am indebted to the latter not only for financial support during
the first six months of the field period but also for Jogistic support
throughout the whole term, which facilitated my work con-
siderably.
I owe many things to many people. In the period when the
research project was being formulated I sought and received
advice from a number of individuals acquainted with the North,
or with the problems involved in fieldwork in isolated areas.
To the following I am particularly grateful: Asen Balikci, Jame-

vii
 son Bond, Norman Chance, Father Pierre Henry, Diamond
Jenness, Graham Rowley, Eleanor Shore, Richard Slobodin,
and Doug Wilkinson. The solution of most of the practical prob-
lems that plagued me before departure I owe to B. F. Shapiro
of the Northern Co-ordination and Research Centre, an admin-
istrator who markedly increased my admiration for adminis-
trators. At the outset, I was and am most indebted to Victor
Valentine, then Chief of the Northern Co-ordination and Re-
search Centre, for permitting me to go to live in the remote
Chantrey Inlet area in spite of his misgivings, and to Graham
Rowley and Richard Slobodin for injecting a reassuring note of
confidence into the venture. The back issues of the London
Times and the package of toffee contributed by Mr. Rowley
served me well for many months.
While I was in the Arctic my way was smoothed by many
of the white residents and transient scholars I encountered.
The Northern Service Officers in Cambridge Bay, David O’Brien
in 1963 and Peter Green in 1965, were especially generous
with hospitality, advice, and assistance, material and otherwise.
Among the others whose friendliness I remember very kindly,
I must mention particularly David Damas and Anthony William-
son, who gave me much useful counsel and good cheer; Eliza-
beth O’Brien, to whom I owe an elegant Christmas dinner of an
orange and a boiled chicken leg; Don Hamilton, the pilot who
ferried me back and forth and fixed my tape recorder, and his
wife, who gave me a haircut which made it possible for me to
retum to civilization; the fishing guides “Pooch,” “Bud,”
“Barney,” and “Jim,” who contributed a hundred pounds of
ambrosia in the form of vegetables and eggs to my fishy larder;
two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers named “Frank”
and “Bill,” who provided me with a different sort of ambrosia:
English conversation; and finally, Fred Ross, who, when I
passed through Cambridge Bay on my way home, let me eat
my fill of $4.00 meals at his restaurant for a week—free.
In my travels to and from the Arctic, Charles Hobart at the
University of Alberta and Otto Schaefer at the Camsell Hospital
in Edmonton were particularly kind, and in San Francisco I
incurred lasting debts to Norman and Martha Rabkin, to Charles
and Jean Lave, and to Benjamin, Lois, and Janice Paul, who

Vili Acknowledgments
nursed me through a lengthy illness, at no small inconvenience
to themselves.
To the residents of Gjoa Haven, both Eskimo and white, I
am indebted for more kindnesses than I have room to describe.
Fathers Georges Lorson and André Goussaert, and Brother
Jéréme Vermeersch, and the schoolteachers, William and Eliza-
beth Eades, were always ready with hospitality while I was in
Gjoa Haven, and while I was at Back River the services they
performed for me, the errands they ran for me, alleviated my
isolation considerably. Among the many Eskimos who helped
me in Gjoa Haven, Aqnayaq and Walter Porter were particularly
generous with time and information. The friendship and support
of the Anglican missionary and his wife, who appear in the book
as Nakliguhuktuq and Ikayuqtuq, were invaluable, as will be
evident, I am sure, to a reader of the book. Without their help
my fieldwork would have been far less productive; in fact, my
continued existence at Back River would have been next to
impossible.
My greatest debt is of course to the Utkuhikhalingmiut with
whom I stayed, especially the members of the family who
adopted me and about whom this book is written. I am sorry
that they would not understand or like many of the things I have
written about them; I hope, nevertheless, that what I have said
will help to further the image of Eskimos as “genuine people”
(their word for themselves), rather than “stone age men” or
“happy children.”
To Cora DuBois I am indebted in many ways. Her advice
before I left for the field sobered me, and her letters while I
was in the field cheered me. As my thesis advisor, she pains-
takingly supervised the creation of this book (né thesis) from
the original formulation of the idea to the final semicolon.
At various stages and to various degrees the book has also
been molded by advice and encouragement (and occasionally
tactful discouragement) from the following friends, colleagues,
and professors: Christopher Boehm, George Dalton, David
Damas, Minnie Freeman, Richard Katz, Elliott Leyton, Alfred
Ludwig, Robert Paine, Benjamin Paul, Carol Ryser, Alice
Salzman, Miles Shore, Victoria Steinitz, Barbara Stromsted,
Beatrice Whiting, John Whiting, and Anthony Williamson.

Acknowledgments ix
 My notes were mined for relevant data and the results were
typed by a number of diligent assistants: Jane Adcock, Ellen
Bate, Susan Berson, Patricia DuBrock, Susan Falb, Ellen Glass.
Bonnie Gray, Helen Hetherington, Constance Hunter, Judith
Kateman, Patricia Knight, Beth Rothschild, Alice Salzman,
Sigemund Snyder, and Anne Wilson. Without their work the
book would have been a shadow of itself. I was shepherded
through the intricacies of punctuation by Barbara Stromsted
and through the mysteries of logical organization by Alice Salz.
man. Winnifred Martin not only succeeded in producing flawless
copy out of chaos in the shortest possible time, but also paid
me the high compliment of reading what she typed. Dorothy
Vanier and Shirley Fraize patiently retyped and re-retyped
every time I changed my mind. And I thank my brother, William
Briggs, for his craftsmanly way with maps, diagrams, and charts.
On the principle that the last item is the most visible, I have
saved for the end my gratitude to Robert Paine and Robert
Stebbins, both of the Memorial University of Newfoundland,
who at some cost made available the time necessary to complete
the book. Without their kindness there would be no book.

Jean L. Briggs
St. John’s, Newfoundland
September 1969

x Acknowledgments
 Contents
Spelling and Pronunciation Note xv
People xvii

Introduction
I. The Study 1
II. The Setting 10
III. Arrival 17
IV. The Seasons 28
V. Nomadism 32
VI. The Society 36

Chapter 1: Inuttiaq 41

I. Dominance and Intensity 42

II. Religious Leader: Assertiveness 48

xi
 III. Father to Kapluna: Protective Domi-
nance 59
IV. Father to His Own Children: Affeo.
tion 69

Chapter 2: Family Life: Expressions of Closeness 3

I. The Inner Circle: Intimacy and Infor-
mality 79

II. Men and Women: The Warmth and Lux-

ury of Male Dominance 96

Chapter 3: Inuttiaq’s Children 109

I. Saarak: Temper and Reason in Child Na-
ture 109

II. Saarak’s Charm: Spontaneity; The Ex-

pression of Affection toward Small Chil-
dren 112 |
Ill. Raigili’s Charm: Mildness 118
IV. Raigili and Her Family: The Expres-
sion of Affection toward Older Chil-
dren 120
V. The Lives of Children: Sibling Relation-
ships 125
VI. Raigili and Saarak: Sibling Friction 130
VII. Raigili’s Troubles: Hostility in Older
Children 137
VIII. Saarak’s Changing World: _ Recalci-
trance in Small Children 146
IX. Saarak’s Crisis: Loss of Mother’s Close-
ness 152
X. No Longer a Baby: Transition to Older
Childhood 162

xii Contents
Chapter 4: Two Kin Groups: Expressions of Separate-
ness and Hostility 177

Nilak’s Family 187

Chapter 5:
I. Unpleasant People: Utku Dislike of Vola-
tility 194
II. Outsiders All: My Ambivalence toward
the Disliked 198
III. Loneliness and Isolation 202
IV. Stinginess and Greed 209
V. Ostracism and Confrontation 214

Chapter 6: Kapluna Daughter 225

I. Stranger and Guest: Graciousness 226

II. Family Living: Covert Conflicts 235
III. Recalcitrant Child: Open Conflict and
Attempts to Educate 252
IV. The Fishermen: Crisis 274
V. Persona Non Grata: Ostracism 285

VI. A Vicious Circle: Depression and Hos-

tility 291
VII. Reconciliation 299

Appendixes

I. Emotion Concepts 311

Affection: unga; niviuq; aqaq; iva; huqu;

naklik 313
Kindness and Gratitude: hatuq; quya 326
Happiness: quvia 327

Contents xiii
 Ill Temper and Jealousy: huaq; ningaq;
gqiquq; urulu; piyuma; tuhuu; hujuujaq
328

Humor: tiphi; takhaungngittuq 337

Fear: kappia; iqhi; ilira; tupak 343
Anxiety: huqu; ujjiq 347
Shyness: kanngu 350
Loneliness: hujuujaq; pai; tumak 351
Evaluative Words: ihluaq; ihluit; naamak;
pittau; pittiaqg 357

Reason: ihuma; nutaraqpaluktuq; ayuq

358

II: Table of Seasonal Activities 367

III. Composition of Families 369

Glossaries

I. Eskimo Terms Other than Emotion Terms 373

II. Emotion Terms 375

References 377
Maps
I. The Canadian Arctic XXIV
II. The Annual Migration Area of the Utkuhikhaling-
miut: Campsites 30
Diagram

Inuttiaq’s Tent and Iglu 76

xiv Contents
 Spelling and Pronunciation Note

The spelling used here is based on an attempt at phonemic

rea-
analysis of the Utkuhikhalingmiut dialect, but for several
sons it is not completely consisten t. First, the phonemic analysis
is still incomplete. Moreover, for the sake of simplicity I have
removed the glottal stop throughout, and in several instances in
order to make familiar words recognizable I have anglicized
spellings to bring them partially (though still not completely)
into line with established usage. Thus, I have spelled iklu
(snowhouse) as “iglu,” qaplunaaq (white man) as “kapluna,”
and Nattilingmiut or Nattilik (the name of the Eskimo group
that traditionally inhabited the Gjoa Haven area) as “Netsiling-
miut” or “Netsilik.” Finally, in the case of certain names of
English origin (Raigili, Rosi, Saarak, Peeterosi, Goti) that have
not been completely incorporated into Utkuhikhalingmiut pho-
nemic patterns, I have retained English phonemes to represent
Utkuhikhalingmiut attempts to pronounce the foreign words.
With regard to pronunciation the following guidelines are
offered. These are intended only to facilitate pronunciation of
words occurring in the text; they do not constitute a technical
linguistic analysis.

Vowels

a: as in father
ai: like the i in like
i: Like the ee in keel, except that before and after q and r
it is pronounced like the e in bed
u: like the oo in pool, except that before and after q andr
it is pronounced like the o in pole or like the au in Paul

Consonants

h: as in English, except that following k or q itis sometimes

pronounced like English s or sh, and following p like
English s (thus Utkuhikhalingmiut is pronounced Utku-
hikshalingmiut and tiphi is tipsi)

XV
 hl: is a voiceless 1, which has no English equivalent; it js
formed by placing the tongue in the position for pro.
nouncing / and exhaling
is usually pronounced like the English r (thus ujjiq
and hujuujaq are pronounced urriq and huruuraq)
as in English, except that before | it is pronounced almost
like English g (thus ikliq is pronounced igliq)
Ul: something like English dl (thus Allaq is pronounced
Adlaq)
ng: as in sing, never as in hunger
as in English, except that preceding | it is almost b (thus
qaplunaaq or kapluna is pronounced qablunaaq or kab-
luna)
like French kr or rk
like the French r (except in proper names of English
derivation, such as Raigili, Rosi, and Saarak, where it is
pronounced like the English r)
tt: like the English ch (thus Inuttiaq is pronounced Inu-
chiaq)

xvi Spelling and Pronunciation Note

People

Appendix
These households are also shown in chart form in
shown on
III. The household numbers here correspond to those
imate, as
the charts. All names are pseudonyms. Ages are approx
the Utku do not keep track of birthdays.

Household I

y
Piuvkaq: Elder half-brother of Pala (Household II), probabl
more than seventy years old, the oldest man in Chantr ey
Inlet. He died during my first winter at Back River.
Huluraq: Piuvkaq’s elderly wife, perhaps in her sixties. She
died a few days before her husband.
Maata: Piuvkaq’s only child by birth, a woman in her mid-
twenties, twice widowed. After the death of her parents
she moved away from Chantrey Inlet with her children and
remarried.
Pamiuq: Piuvkaq’s adopted son (really his grandson, the son of
a deceased adopted daughter of Piuvkaq), about fourteen
years old. He moved away with Maata.
Qijuk: Maata’s daughter by her first marriage, about five years
old.
Rosi: Maata’s daughter by her second marriage, about three years
old.

Household II

Pala: Younger half-brother of Piuvkaq (Household I), perhaps

in his mid-fifties or older; father-in-law and uncle (father’s
brother) of Inuttiag (Household III).
Mannik: a young man of about twenty-five; Pala’s eldest son and
Inuttiaq’s best friend.
Amaagqtuq: Pala’s third daughter, about seventeen years old.
Ukpik: Pala’s youngest son, about fourteen years old and away
at boarding school during the first of the two winters I spent
with the Utku.
Akla: Pala’s youngest daughter, about ten years old.

xvii
 Household III

Inuttiaq: a man of about forty; the Anglican lay leader of the |

Utku; son-in-law and nephew (brother’s son)
of Pala (House. |
hold II); husband of Allaq; my Eskimo father.
Allaq: a woman in her mid-thirties; Inuttiaq’s
wife and Pala’,
eldest child; my Eskimo mother.
Kamik: Inuttiaq’s eldest daughter, about four
teen years old
and away at school during both of the wint
ers I spent at
Back River.
Raigili: Inuttiaq’s second daughter, about six years old.
Saarak: Inuttiaq’s third daughter, about three years
old.
Qayaq: Inuttiaq’s infant daughter, born while I was at Back
River.
Yiini: This is the Utku pronunciation of my Christian name
, Jean,
I was Inuttiaq’s adopted daughter but I am, I think
, about
the same age as my mother, Allaq.

Household IV

Ipuituq: a young man in his mid-twenties, married to Pala’s

(Household II) second daughter, Amaruq. He is half-brother
to Qawvik (Household VI).
Amaruq: Pala’s second daughter, a woman in her mid-thirties,
Ipuituq’s wife.
Mitqut: Amaruq’s daughter by a previous marriage; about thir-
teen years old and away at boarding school during my sec-
ond winter at Back River.
(Ipuitug and Amaruq also had a daughter, who was born and died
while I was at Back River. She is mentioned only once in the
book.)

Household V

Nilak: like Inuttiaq (Household III), a man of about forty;

a
fairly distant relative of Pala (Household II) and Inuttia
g
(refer to Chart I in Appendix III); husband of Niai.

xviii People
Niqi: Nilak’s wife, a woman of about forty, with apparently sub-
normal intelligence.
Tiguaq: Nilak’s adopted daughter (really his deceased brother’s
daughter), about seventeen years old.

Household VI

Qavvik: a man probably in his mid-fifties like Pala (Household

II); a Garry Lake (Hanningajuq) Eskimo who married an
Utku woman and almost always camps with the Utku,
though his wife is now dead.
Putuguk: Qavvik’s adopted son (really the son of Pala); a young
man in his early twenties; husband of Kanayuq.
Kanayuq: a girl of about eighteen; Putuguk’s wife, and a niece
(brother’s daughter) of Nilak’s (Household V).
(Qanak: a son born to Putuguk and Kanayuq while I was at Back
River. He is mentioned only once in the book, and not by
name.)

Household VII

Kuuttiq: a man in his mid-twenties who was born an Utku but

who has lived most of his adult life in Gjoa Haven. He is
married to an Utku woman, the daughter of Pukiq (House-
hold VIII); they camped with the Utku during my first winter
at Back River.
(Uyaraq: a woman in her early twenties; wife of Kuuttiq and
daughter of Pukiq (Household VIII). She is not mentioned
in the book.)
(Kuuttiq and Uyaraq have two small children: Niaquaq, a girl of
about four and Nainnuag, an infant boy, who are not men-
tioned in the book.)

Household VIII

Uyuqpa: a Netsilik Eskimo, a man, probably about fifty, who is

married to a Hanningajuq woman and who camped with the
Utku during my first winter in Chantrey Inlet.

People xix
 Pukiq: wife of Uyuqpa, an elderly Hanningajuq woman, probably
in her sixties. By a previous marriage she is the mother of
Uyaraq (Household VII), of Ipuituq (Household IV), and
of Tutaq (see below under Others).
Itqiliq: Uyuqpa’s son by a previous marriage; a boy of about |
eighteen, considered, like his father and brothers, to be ,
Netsilik Eskimo.
(Qingak: another son of Uyuqpa by his previous marriage; ,
boy of about fourteen. He is not mentioned in the book.)
Ukhuk: Uyugpa’s youngest son by his previous marriage; a boy
of about eleven. |

Others Mentioned in the Book

Nattiq: Nilak’s brother, who lives in Gjoa Haven.

Uunai: wife of Nattiq.
Tiriaq: a boy of perhaps seventeen who was away at boarding
school during my first winter at Back River; an orphaned
nephew (brother's son) of Nilak (Household V). When home
from school he usually lived either with Qavvik (House-
hold VI) in Chantrey Inlet (because he is brother to the |
wife of Qavvik’s adopted son, Putuguk), or with his uncle |
Nattiq in Gjoa Haven.
Tutaq: an unmarried man of about twenty; the youngest son of
Pukiq (Household VIII). He lived sometimes with his
mother’s husband, Uyugpa; sometimes with his sister’s |
husband, Kuuttiq (Household VII); and sometimes with his |
brother, Ipuituq (Household IV).
Nakliguhuktuq: the Eskimo Anglican missionary in Gjoa Haven
who oversees the religious life of the Utku; a man probably |
in his early forties. He and his wife sponsored my intro-
duction to the Utku community and arranged for my adop-
tion.
Ikayuqtuq: Nakliguhuktuq’s wife, a woman in her mid-thirties.

Note: Of these people, the only ones who spoke any English
were the school children: Pamiug (Household I); Ukpik (House-

xx People
 (Household III); Itqiliq, Qingak, and Ukhuk
hold II); Kamik
(Household VIII); Tiriaq and Tutag, the two unattached young
tug
men; and Ikayuqtuq, wife of Nakliguhuktug. Only Ikayuq
ne over the age of six
spoke it well and easily. However, everyo
-
and under the age of fifty or so, with the exception of Nigi (House
hold V), was literate in Eskimo syllabics.

People xxi
Never in Anger
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 Introduction

I. The Study
In the summer of 1963 I went to the Canadian Northwest
Territories to make a seventeen-month anthropological field
study of the small group of Eskimos who live at the mouth of the
Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. These twenty to thirty-
five Eskimos, who call themselves Utkuhikhalingmiut,! are the
sole inhabitants of an area 35,000 or more miles square. The
nearest other people are 150 miles north in Gjoa Haven, a small
mission-and-trading settlement of perhaps one hundred Eskimos
and four to five kaplunas.?
The Utku usually camp near the foot of Chantrey Inlet, the
sound seventy-five miles long and nearly a third as wide, into
which Back River empties. It takes one and a half to two weeks to
make the round trip from Chantrey Inlet to Gjoa Haven by sled
1. Hereafter Utkuhikhalingmiut will be abbreviated to Utku.
2. Qaplunaaq is the Canadian Eskimo name for white man; this is often angli-
cized to kabloona (here kapluna) in Canadian Arctic literature.
 in winter; in summer the trip is impossible altogether, becaus:
the open water of Simpson Strait lies between the inlet and Kin,
William Island, where Gjoa Haven is. Most Utku men make th:
sled trip two to three times each winter to trade fox skins for th.
kapluna goods they see as necessary to their way of life: weap:
ons, clothing, bedding, and cooking equipment, tools and tents,
tea, tobacco, flour, and a holiday smattering of more frivolous
items. But on the whole, the Utku live quite self-sufficiently in
their remote river country.
Contact between the Utku and the outside world has beer
slight until recently. Brief glimpses of three British and Ameri
can exploring expeditions,? whose members spoke at most a few
words of Eskimo, and a visit of a few days with the Greenlandic
explorer and ethnographer Knud Rasmussen in 1923 comprise
the total of their early encounters with white men. Rasmussen
(1931) calculated on the basis of Utku reports that the first guns
and modern tools were introduced to the Utku about 1908 by an
Eskimo trader from the Baker Lake area to the south; since that
time the Utku have traded with increasing frequency, first at
Baker Lake and at other posts on the Hudson Bay coast, later
at Perry River, and most recently in Gjoa Haven. But it was
only after the disappearance of the caribou in 1958 that cloth
and canvas largely replaced caribou as materials for clothing and
tents. Similarly, it is only in this last decade or so that contacts
with kaplunas themselves—missionaries, government person-
nel, and most recently sports fishermen—have become an ex-
pected part, however small, of Utku life.
Anthropologically, too, the Utku have been very little studied
Rasmussen’s short visit in 1923 was made with the purpose o
collecting ethnographic data; and in 1962 a French ethnographe
named Jean Malaurie made a trip of a few days to Chantrey Inle.
But prior to my own trip no long-term studies of the Utku hac
been made.
I chose this unusually isolated group as a subject of study be
cause I was interested in the social relationships of shamans
I had been assured that the Utku were pagans, and I hoped thar
in this place, presumably so far from missionary influence, |
3. Back in 1833 (1836); Anderson in 1855 (Rasmussen 1931:468); Schwatka
in 1879 (Gilder 1881).

2 Never in Anger
could still find practicing shamans. As it turned out, I was mis-
taken. The Utku encountered both Catholic and Anglican varie-
ties of Christianity about thirty years ago, and they are now very
devout Anglicans; their shamans are all, in their view, either
in hell or in hiding. But I did not discover this until long after my
arrival in Chantrey Inlet.
When I did finally ascertain that no information on shamanism
would be forthcoming, I was of course compelled to find some
other aspect of life to study. The choice of subject was de-
termined in part by factors beyond my control, especially by my
limited knowledge of the language and by the Utkus’ reticence
and, during a certain period of my stay, by their resistance to my
presence. Because of the language barrier, during the first year
of my stay at Back River I was confined very largely to recording
those aspects of life that were tangible and visible. After some
months I began to follow ordinary conversations and to feel that
there was some likelihood of my understanding the answer if I
ventured to ask a question. But at about that time a serious
misunderstanding arose between the Utku and me. I lost my
temper (very mildly as we ourselves would view it) at some
kapluna fishermen who visited the inlet during the summer and
who broke one of the Eskimo canoes. This incident brought to a
head a long-standing uneasiness on the part of the Eskimos
concerning my un-Eskimo volatility; and as a result of my un-
seemly and frightening wrath at the fishermen I was ostracized,
very subtly, for about three months.
During this period there was simply no use in asking ques-
tions. At best, Utku consider questions boorish and silly; never-
theless, they will sometimes politely attempt to answer them.
During this period of tension, however, they did not. Moreover,
my intense resentment at the unpleasant situation resulted
in a spectacular decline in my own linguistic prowess. I could
not remember even the simplest words, which had become
second nature to me.
The tensions were eventually resolved. My vocabulary un-
froze, and people once more submitted with gracious cheerful-
ness to my impertinent inquiries. But even with the best of
rapport there were subjects that met with great resistance. His-
torical matters in particular were difficult to discuss, as they

Introduction 3
 were tainted with paganism. Not only could I get no information
on shamanism, I could not even obtain the genealogical data
necessary for a proper social structural analysis of the group.
Perhaps this was because of the very un-Anglican marriage
practices that would have been unearthed in the recent, pre-
Christian generations. The Utku have heard that it is “bad” to
talk about the old days because “in those days people were very
confused.”
The upshot of this situation was that the aspect of Utku life
most accessible for study, and the one most salient in terms of my
personal experience, was the patterning of emotional expres-
sion: the ways in which feelings, both affectionate and hostile,
are channeled and communicated, and the ways in which people
attempt to direct and control the improper expression of such
feelings in themselves and in others. Emotional control is highly
valued among Eskimos; indeed, the maintenance of equanimity
under trying circumstances is the essential sign of maturity, of
adulthood. The handling of emotion is thus a problem that is of
great importance also to the Utku themselves.
I was in a particularly good position to observe this emotional
patterning both because I was a focus for emotional tension and
because I lived with a family as their adopted daughter, sharing
their iglu during the winter and pitching my tent next to theirs in
summer.
In this book I shall describe Utku emotional patterning in the
context of their life as I saw and lived it during my seventeen
months in Chantrey Inlet. Instead of attempting to make a formal
structural or psychological analysis (for which I lack the requisite
systematic data) I shall draw a series of vignettes of individual
Utku interacting with members of their family and with their
neighbors. I feel that this approach will make maximum use of
the research situation: the smallness of the group studied, the
intimacy of my living arrangements, and the resulting richness
of the behavioral data obtained.
I hope this behavioral description will also supplement pre-
vious literature on Eskimos. A great deal, both professional and
popular, has been written about Eskimos; few peoples so fasci-
nate the outside world. Much of this literature, however, consists
of generalizations about Eskimo life, based partly on the writer’s

4 Never in Anger
necessarily limited observations and partly on Eskim. —iu
mants’ reports of what Eskimos do, or ought to do. As ina" ~~~
tures, there are often discrepancies between what people ..,
about themselves on the one hand and their observed behavior
on the other. The two kinds of data provide quite different per-
spectives on a culture and complement each other.
We do catch vivid glimpses of Eskimo individuals in a number
of works, anthropological and otherwise. A partial list includes
Brower (1942), Ingstad (1954), Marshall (1933), Mowat (1952,
1959), Poncins (1941), Wilkinson (1956), Jenness (1922, 1928),
Lantis (1960), Stefansson (1951), Metayer (1966), Washburne
(1940), and almost all the Eskimo publications of Rasmussen
and Freuchen. Lantis’ book contains short life histories of several
Southwest Alaskan Eskimos, and the Eskimo autobiographies
edited by Washburne and Metayer are particularly rich in detail
concerning the everyday lives of Eskimo individuals. These
three books, as well as those of Marshall, Rasmussen, and Freu-
chen, are especially valuable in that they provide insight into
the Eskimos’ own view of their behavior. Gubser (1965) does not
show us individuals as such, but his book, too, gives excellent
data on Eskimo views regarding interpersonal relationships,
since: his generalizations are based both on observation of Es-
kimo behavior and on Eskimo statements concerning the mean-
ing of that behavior. None of these authors, however, is concerned
primarily with emotional behavior. Moreover, to date no attempt,
as far as I know, has been made to analyze the terms in which
Eskimos speak about their relationships with one another. Thus,
both in its focus and in its use of Eskimo terminology I believe
my report may constitute a contribution. I believe, too, that my
experience as a “daughter” in an Eskimo family may cast new
light on old generalizations concerning relationships between
Eskimo men and women. Gubser, Jenness, and Wilkinson were
all adopted as “‘sons”; Freuchen and Rasmussen had Eskimo
wives; but to my knowledge the only other account written by
one who played a feminine role in an Eskimo family is the auto-
biography of Anauta (Washburne 1940).
The behavioral data that I utilize in my description of Utku
emotional patterns are of several kinds. In the first place, I
present observations made by Utku themselves, both on their

intenduntian 5
 personal feelings and on the feelings of others in various situ-
ations. Because Utku do not label emotions exactly as we do,
I insert in the text, whenever possible, the base of the Utku
term for the feeling that is described, and in several cases
I insert the base of the term for the behavior that expresses a
feeling. While these terms by no means exhaust the Utkus’
emotional vocabulary, they are among those most commonly in
use. The circumstances of their use are summarized in an ap-
pendix to the book.‘
Secondly, in addition to describing what the Utku themselves
say about feelings, I draw on more personal data. On the one
hand I describe my observations of Utku behavior and the
feelings that the behavior seemed to me to portray; and on the
other hand I describe the feelings that I myself had in particular
situations. My justification for this is that I was an intrinsic part
of the research situation. The responses of my hosts to my
actions and my feelings, and my own reactions to the situations
in which I found myself—my empathy and my experience of
contrasts between my feelings and those of my hosts—were all
invaluable sources of data.
Conscious of the pitfalls of misperception to which such
a personal approach is subject, I shall try throughout to dis-
tinguish explicitly among the various kinds of data on which
my statements are based and not to extrapolate from my own
feelings to those of Utku without cautioning the reader that I
am doing so. I hope, moreover, to present the material vividly
enough so that the reader, sharing to some extent my cultural
background,’ can also experience empathy and contrasts be-
tween his feelings and those of Utku, thereby enriching his
understanding of the situation that is described and making
his own interpretations.
It is important to emphasize that the picture of Utku life that
is drawn here is very much a still life: a product of a particular
4. See also the glossary of emotional terms. Where terms are not given in the
text, it is occasionally because they would be redundant: the term has been given
once already on the same page and in the same context. But more often it is be-
cause they are not available; either the conversation quoted was in English or
I do not know how the Eskimos labeled the situation.
5. In interpreting my statements, readers may find it useful to know that my
background is that of a middle-class, urban, Protestant New Englander.

6 Never in Anger
situation, a particular set of human relationships at a particular
moment in time. I could never write the same book again, nor
could any other observer have written exactly the same book.
This point was brought home to me vividly on a return visit
to Chantrey Inlet in 1968, when my relationships with the
same people were quite different: more familiar and more.
peaceful. As a result, I saw, or attributed to the Utku, quite dif-
ferent behavior and motivations and hence observed somewhat
different characters, in certain respects. They saw new qualities
in me, as well, and attributed a somewhat different personality
to me. This is not to say that our earlier views of each other were
false, simply that they were a product of a different situation.
The book is a still life also in the sense that Utku life, like that
of other Eskimo groups, is changing. Some of the practices
and attitudes described here already at this writing belong to
the past; and there is no telling how long the Utku will remain
in Chantrey Inlet. But having made it clear that the book de-
scribes a particular moment in time, for simplicity’s sake I
shall avail myself of anthropological privilege and refer to that
moment in the present tense.
The book focuses on a few individuals who, I think, illustrate
exceptionally well in their relationships with other members
of the camp the points to be made concerning the patterning
of emotion. None of these central characters is an “ideal”
Eskimo. On the contrary. I have chosen for two reasons to de-
scribe people whose behavior or character deviates markedly
in one way or another from the ideal. My first reason for this
choice is that it is often easier to learn what good behavior
is when it is thrown into relief by misbehavior. Secondly, the
description of individuals whose behavior is considered inap-
propriate gives me an opportunity to describe the way people
try to control these undesirable tendencies, in themselves
and in others.
The introductory sections of the book describe the geograph-
ical and historical setting of the group and the circumstances
of my arrival at Back River. The seasonal nomadic cycle and
Utku family organization are also briefly outlined. Following
the introduction, chapters devoted to descriptions of individuals
and their social relationships are interspersed with more general

Introduction 7
 |
chapters intended to provide the ethnographic background nec- |
essary in order to understand the behavior of the individuals
with whom the book is concerned.
The first person to be described is Inuttiag, the religious
leader of the Utku and my Eskimo father. He is considered
by his fellows to be a “‘good person”; in important ways his
self-expression remains within acceptable limits. But I think it
probable that he maintains his reputation at some personal
cost, as he seems to be a highly tempestuous person internally,
and in this respect is far from the Eskimo ideal. People of Inut- |
tiaq’s type may recur fairly frequently in Utku society. I have
the impression, both from Eskimo literature and from conver-
sations with Eskimos about the personalities of shamans, that
such people often became shamans in the old days. In any case,
Inuttiaq, in his relationships with his family and with others,
and in his role as religious leader illustrates most of the ac-
ceptable modes of personal expression, as well as a few that
are subject to criticism.
Following a chapter on family life, Inuttiaq’s children are
described in an attempt to show how the proper patterns of ex-
pression are inculcated in children and how deviations from
this proper behavior are handled. Utku, like many other peoples,
expect children, at least small ones, to behave badly. Allowances
are made for them because they do not yet “know better” or are
not yet motivated to conform to adult standards. Nevertheless,
attempts are made to train children in the way they should
eventually go, and to observe this training is to observe what
Utku believe the proper adult personality should be and what
methods are appropriate in this culture to control and to educate
children to grow in that direction.
The fourth chapter describes in general terms the ways in
which members of different kin groups behave toward one
another. This chapter is followed by one that centers on two
specific kin groups: Inuttiaq’s and Nilak’s. Nilak’s wife, Nigqi,
appears to be the least intelligent of the Utku; she is also the
least able to control her emotions. Nilak, like his wife, is reputed
to have a bad temper, as well as other unpleasant qualities such
as stinginess. Between the two of them, therefore, Nilak and
Niqi illustrate a good many of the unacceptable modes of per-

8 Never in Anger
sonal expression and the ways in which these are dealt with
by the community.
The last relationship to be described is my own with Inuttiaq’s
household. Like Niqi’s and Nilak’s, my behavior illustrates
mainly the unacceptable. However, the origin of the difficulty is
different. Whereas Niqi failed to conform because she lacked
the mental ability, I failed because I had been educated to a
different pattern. Some of the ways in which my offensive be-
havior was handled by the Eskimo community reflects this
difference in cause: the fact that I was not, after all, an Eskimo.
Nevertheless, the Utku measured my behavior by their own
standards; they disliked and criticized it, as they did Niqi's.
The situations described in these chapters are obviously
quite different from one another. The common denominator
is the fact that all these forms of improper behavior attract critical
notice and provoke attempts to control them. I am considering
children, volatile Utku adults, and foreigners together in this
way in order to point out similarities and differences in the ways
in which Utku deal with the inappropriate behavior of these
different categories of people. Let me stress that with regard
to the particular forms of emotional behavior, the expressions
of hostility and affection, with which this book is concerned,
there is, as far as I could tell, only one ideal, which is applicable
to all human beings, Utku or not, over the age of three or so.
I judge this from the fact that the emotional behavior of all
human beings is eriticized in the same terms. This does not mean
that in all respects a child is expected to behave like an adult,
or a woman of twenty like a man of fifty, or a foreigner like an
Utku, but the rule of even-tempered restraint does apply to all
categories of people (except for the smallest children); and de-
viations from that rule are very likely to attract disapprobation,
regardless of how common such deviations are.
An appendix to the book will summarize the kinds of behavior
that are classified under each of the major emotion terms that
occur in the text, and outline the situations in which the various
kinds of behavior are or are not appropriate.

Introduction 9
 II. The Setting

Northwest of Hudson Bay, along the northern shore of the Amer-

ican continent and southward to the tree line hundreds of miles
away, lies an immense open tundra. The feel of the tundra is
that of a vast mountaintop—the same exhilarating, wind-clean
space, low-scudding clouds, and the peculiar silence, almost
audible in its intensity, that exists only where there is no tall
growth for the breeze to ruffle. It is a severe country, but one of
moorlike beauty and dramatic change.
In the Arctic each season sets its stamp sharply on the land,
as well as on the lives of the people who inhabit it. In spring and
summer, that is, from about the middle of June to the middle of
August, the thin soil nourishes a luxuriant though tiny growth.
The tallest plants, willow and birch, with twigs perhaps three
feet long at most, lie spread-eagled along the ground in the
marshy hollows or pressed flat against the ledges, where they
seem much shorter than they are. The ground itself is covered
with a hummocky mat of lichens and Alpine flowers, none more
than a few inches high; and lichen-covered rocks are like
elaborate Japanese fabrics in orange, green, and black.
In these months, the tundra harbors other life, as well. Insects
swarm from the marshes, clogging eyes, ears, mouth, and nose,
and pattering like rain on one’s jacket. Ptarmigan whir up wit-
lessly in front of one’s feet, an easy target for the stones of chil-
dren; and plovers run swiftly over the tundra on their long sand-
piper legs, uttering the thin frightened cries that give them their
Eskimo name: “Qulliq-quliik, qulliq-quliik.”
In August when the berry leaves redden, the land glows rusty
in the low sun till the first snow transforms it overnight into
a charcoal drawing. Every day, flocks of birds pass across the
gray sky, and once in a while, a loon, lost in the autumn land,
cries a shivering complaint. “He is cold,” the Eskimos say.
Winter comes rapidly. Snow falls thinly during the nights of
September and October, driving in ribbons across the black
ice surfaces of the lakes and rivers to freeze there, sculptured
into graceful tongues by the wind. After the sea has frozen, the
cloud blanket lifts, and the black-and-white landscape of autumn
becomes suffused with the colors of the sinking sun. Then, too,

10 Never in Anger
the moon reappears. In the strong light of summer it had been
a shadow, unnoticed, but now, radiant even at noonday, it seems
the one living thing in a world whose silence is broken only by
the rustle of the ground-wind on the frozen snow and the thun-
der-crack of ice. Animal life has withdrawn into the whiteness;
only the tracks of invisible ptarmigan, fox, and rabbit pattern
the snow, and an occasional crow, startling in its blackness,
flaps heavily above the ground in search of food.
Finally, with the returning warmth and the beginning of the
long summer day in May and June, the year is complete. The
long-forgotten gurgle and rush of water, cloud reflections, the
plash of fish rising to insects, earth-fragrant wind, and endless
sun bring liberation from an imprisonment felt only in the con-
trast.
This is the country through which Back River flows. Rising
near Contwoyto Lake, on the edge of Indian country, it flows
northeast to the Arctic coast, where, more than two miles wide,
it empties into Chantrey Inlet.
From any hilltop near its mouth the river dominates the scene.
No matter where one looks it is there, winding broad, peaceful
arms around knolls of islands, or racing narrow and turbulent
between confining granite bluffs. In the spring, torrential with
melting snow and ice, the roar of Itimnaaqjuk, the Franklin Lake
Rapids, can be heard at a distance of twelve miles or more, a
bass murmur underlying the frenetic little freshets, and their
surf shows as a white line of breakers on the horizon. In the
summer the churning surf subsides, but the current never
slackens. Even in winter no scab of ice forms over the rapids;
and in autumn their breath hovers as a black vapor over the hole
of open water.
The river derives its English name from that of the British
explorer, George Back, who first traveled its length and mapped
it. Back himself (1836) called it the Great Fish River, a translation
of the name, Thleweechodezeth, used by the Indians who lived
near its source at Contwoyto Lake. But the Eskimos call the
river simply Kuuk (river).
The Utku are one of three Eskimo groups who have inhabited
the lower reaches of the river. The territory of the Utkuhik-
halingmiut (the people of the place where there is soapstone)

Introduction 1]
 lies between Chantrey Inlet and Franklin Lake. Beyond, where :
the river widens to form lakes Garry and Pelly, was the home »
until recently of the Ualiakliit (the westerners) and of the Han-
ningajuqmiut (the people of the place that lies across), that is, |
the river bend.* For generations these three groups hunted »
the great herds of caribou that migrated, spring and fall, through |
their territory, and fished for the trout, char, and whitefish for
which the Indians named the river.
The early history of these three Eskimo groups is not clearly
known. Current Utku traditions say that their own ancestors, and
probably those of the other two groups also, came from the north,
from the sea called Ukjulik, off the west coast of Adelaide Penin-
sula. The reasons given for the move are various. Knud Ras-
mussen, who visited the Utku briefly in 1923, was told (1931:
473-474) that following a famine in which many of their number
had died, the remaining Utku families moved south into the un-
inhabited river country, seeking better game. Utkuhikhalik,
the country of the river mouth, was rich at that time in caribou,
musk oxen, and fish, and seal were plentiful where Chantrey
Inlet widened beyond the river mouth. The Utku told Rasmus-
sen that when they first moved into their new country, they used
to go sealing every winter and spring in Chantrey Inlet; but
that when they obtained guns, which they did in 1908 or there-
abouts, they gave up sealing and turned to trapping fox, which
at Baker Lake, two hundred miles to the south, they could trade
for modern tools and white men’s goods, including the valuable
guns. For food, they fished and hunted caribou, ranging in search
of the latter deep into the interior, as far as Garry and Pelly
Lakes, the country of the Hanningajuqmiut and Ualiakliit.
An encounter of the explorers Gilder and Schwatka with Utku
in 1879 supports the story of a move from Ukjulik, though the
old man they spoke with said that he and others had moved from
6. Robert Williamson (1968) tells me that there are really only two groups:
the Utkuhikhalingmiut and the Hanningajuqmiut. According to his sources
(Eskimos from the interior who are now living at Baker Lake and on the west
coast of Hudson Bay), the Ualiakliit are a subgroup of the Hanningajuqmiut,
who live in the southwestern part of Hanningajuq. However, as my Utku infor-
mant explicitly and emphatically distinguishes the Ualiakliit from the Han-
ningajuqmiut, I shall continue to speak of three groups for the moment, as
Rasmussen does.

12 Never in Anger
Ukjulik not because of famine but because they were driven
out by a neighboring band of warlike Netsilingmiut (Gilder
1881:77). Nowadays one sometimes hears Iluiliqmiut (whose
traditional territory also bordered on Ukjulik) claim the credit
for driving out the Utku. My elderly Utku informant, on the
other hand, while telling me about the move from Ukjulik,
mentioned neither famine nor warlike neighbors; he told me
that the Utku came south in order to obtain guns, and when
they had guns they gave up sealing and turned exclusively
toward the interior, living on caribou and trapping fox to trade—
a change in subsistence which agrees with what Rasmussen was
told.
Accounts are least in agreement concerning the reasons for
the move to Utkuhikhalik and the period when it occurred. My
elderly informant thought that the Utku had moved at about the
turn of the century; his older brother, he thought, had been
among those who moved “to obtain guns.” Rasmussen, too,
says that the famine, which Utku told him had precipitated the
move, was “not so very long ago” (1931:473). However, one
gathers that he means it was several generations before 1923,
which would place it well before the turn of the century. I
think most other evidence also points to an earlier date, most
probably a date prior to 1833. The old man, Ikinnelikpatolok,
with whom Gilder and Schwatka spoke in 1879 (Gilder 1881:
77-78) said that “his family comprised nearly all that was left
of the tribe which formerly occupied the west coast of Adelaide
Peninsula and King William Land.” It may be assumed that he
himself had moved from Ukjulik, since he referred to himself
as a person from there; but he must have been already living on
Back River as a small boy, since he remembered having shaken
hands with Back when the latter passed through Utkuhikhalik
in 1833. Back, in his travels down the river in that year, met
two camps of Eskimos and found traces of Eskimo habitation all
along the river, from the inland lakes to the mouth, in the places
we now know as Ualiakliit, Hanningajuqmiut, and Utkuhikha-
lingmiut territories (1836:333-438). Back in 1833 (1836:378-
386; 432-433), Anderson in 1855 (Rasmussen 1931:468), and
Schwatka in 1879 (Gilder 1881:198) all found camps of Utku in
the vicinity of the Franklin Lake Rapids, where Utku live today.

Introduction 13
 And these seem not to have been just transient families, moving
through a foreign territory. The continuity of the Utkus’ resi-
dence in Utkuhikhalik is shown by the fact that Ikinnelikpa-
tolok’s son-in-law, whom Schwatka met in 1879 (Gilder 1881:79)
had been among those in the camp seen years earlier by Ander-
son. Another fact that supports a sizeable move prior at least
to 1855 is that M’Clintock (1859:251) was told in 1859 that
“formerly” many natives had lived at Ukjulik (“Oot-loo-lik,”
in M’Clintock’s orthography), but “now very few remain.”
All of these contacts with explorers seem to argue that the
Utku moved into their present area early in the nineteenth cen-
tury, in flight from famine or from enemies. But one report is
difficult to reconcile with this view. Rasmussen’s Utku in-
formants told him of an “ancient tradition” which says the Utku
were once a warlike and arrogant people, a “great nation, so
numerous that all the hills looking over Lake Franklin were
sometimes enveloped in smoke from the many camp fires round
the lake” (1931:481). How is this possible if the Utku really
moved into Chantrey Inlet just a few generations before Rasmus-
sen was there and within the memory of the old man with whom
Schwatka spoke in 1879?
Whatever their origins, within recent times these three inland
groups have had a harsh history. In 1923 Rasmussen (1931:473)
counted a total of 164 Utku and Ualiakliit combined, of whom
135 were Utku, or living with the latter in Chantrey Inlet.’
But according to Utku with whom I spoke, at some time within
7. Rasmussen (1931:473-477) thought he had included the Hanningajuqmiut
in his census, too, but according to contemporary Utku informants, he was mis-
taken. We therefore do not know how many Hanningajuqmiut there were in
1923.
In designating people as “Utku” I have followed the Utkus’ own definition,
as Rasmussen apparently did in the census referred to here. The term Utkuhik-
halingmiut (people of the place where there is soapstone) seems to be essen-
tially, but not wholly, a territorial concept. A person is Utku if he is born in
Chantrey Inlet and lives there during his childhood, but he may lose his Utku
affiliation by moving away and staying away for a number of years. Then he will
be referred to as “formerly Utku.” On the other hand, a person who was born and
raised elsewhere, then moved to Chantrey Inlet as an adult, may or may not be
referred to as an “Utkuhikhalingmiutaq,” depending on the context of the con-
versation. Sometimes he will be referred to as “an Utkuhikhalingmiutaq—but
not really (-marik, genuinely) an Utkuhikhalingmiutaq.” I did not push the con-
cept to its limits in discussing it with Utku.

14 Never in Anger
their memory® famine and illness destroyed many of the Ualia-
kliit and Hanningajuqmiut. Those who were left moved away
to join other groups, such as the Utku at the river mouth and the
Qaiqniqmiut at Baker Lake. Utku say that when the last remain-
ing members of the “real’”’ Hanningajuqmiut had left the area,
then some of the Utku moved in, since Hanningajuq was usually
very rich in caribou and fish. But between 1949 and 1958 there
were again several famines in Hanningajuq, and in 1958 the
government evacuated the survivors, taking them to Baker Lake,
to Rankin Inlet, and to Whale Cove, communities on or near the
Hudson Bay coast (McGill 1968; Williamson 1968). A few
families have since moved in and out of the area, but no one,
to my knowledge, has returned permanently to Hanningajuq
(McGill 1968; Thompson 1967; Williamson 1968).
In the spring of 1958 there was a famine in Utkuhikhalik at
the river mouth.’ At that time, people did not depend on fish
for food in all seasons as they do now. Instead of catching fish
in the autumn for use in the spring when the river is empty,
they used to go inland in search of caribou. But in 1958 the
caribou failed to come. By the time this was apparent, the fish
had gone. People tried to hunt seal, but owing to bad weather,
hunting was poor. A few people died; others moved away: to
Baker Lake, to Spence Bay, to Gjoa Haven. Before the 1958
famine, too, some Utku families had moved away: to Han-
ningajuq and to the kapluna communities. In 1956 there had
been 100 Eskimos, mostly Utku, living in Chantrey Inlet, but
during the winter of 1963-1964, when I lived there, there were
eight households in the camp,” a total of thirty-five people at
maximum count, excluding three adolescent children who were
away at school. Of these eight households, two were only periph-
erally attached to the camp; they did not join the Utku every
winter. They may possibly have come only to share the novelty
and the resources of the anthropologist. The following year,
1964-1965, there were only twenty-one people, five households,
in the winter camp; the two peripheral families were camping

8. Robert Williamson (1968) thinks it was around 1927.

9. The information in this paragraph was obtained from various sources in
Gjoa Haven and Chantrey Inlet.
10. Household composition is shown on the charts in Appendix III.

Introduction 15
 elsewhere, and a third had disintegrated. Three of its six mem-
bers had died of illness, and the survivors had moved away.
Once in a while Utku remark on their shrunken numbers as
they walk among the old tent rings or along the top of the bluff
where in former days long rows of fish were hung to dry in the
sun; or as they sit drinking tea beside the tents in the summer
nights, looking out over the blue river to the empty hills.
Twenty-one people in an expanse of thirty-five thousand or
more square miles, their nearest neighbors several days’ travel
distant.
To the foreigner who is accustomed to having all the space
within his awareness filled with people, the Utku world can
seem either lonely or refreshing, depending on his inclinations.
I do not know whether the remaining Utku have either of these
feelings. Of the land itself, with its plentiful fish and occasional
caribou, they speak, so far, with contentment. They are grateful
for the kapluna goods that make their life easier—and they have
a surprising number of these, ranging from Coleman stoves to
cameras—but they have not yet learned to value a kapluna way
of life above their own. “Gjoa Haven,” they say, “—dreadful
(hujuujaq) place, there’s nothing to eat there. But here we never
lack for food; the fish never fail.” They see beauty, excitement,
and pleasure in their world, too. Their eyes shine as they
describe the thunder of the rapids in the spring and the might
of the river when it lifts huge ice blocks and topples them,
crashing, into itself. When the first ice forms in September adults
and children slide, laughing, on its black glass surface. “When
winter comes you will learn to play,” they told me—vigorous
running games on the moonlit river. And the men, mending
torn dog harnesses with long awkward stitches, sway heads
and shoulders in imitation of a trotting dog, as they discuss a
coming trip. Other men, whittling a winter fishing jig out of a
bit of caribou antler, jerk it up and down tentatively in the hand,
imitating the gesture of fishing, while humming a soft “ai ya ya,”
as they do while jigging, then laugh at themselves. “It’s pleasant
(quvia) to fish,” they say. And in the spring, when the breeze
loses its bite, there are endless hills of the sort “one wants to
see the far side of.”

16 Never in Anger
Il. Arrival

I was flown in to Back River at the end of August 1963 in the

single-engined plane that the government chartered in those
days to service the remote camps and villages of the Central
Arctic. In the ordinary course of a year the plane made just four
trips down to Back River. In late winter (weather permitting) it
brought the Utku population out to Gjoa Haven for chest X-rays
and medical examinations and took them back again. In the fall,
children who wished to go to boarding school were picked up
from all the villages and outlying camps in the Central Arctic
and flown to the government school in Inuvik, a thousand miles
away on the Alaskan border. In the spring they were brought
home again.
It was the school pick-up trip that took me in to Back River,
a fact that had uncomfortable implications for me. Though I had
spent the month of August in Gjoa Haven, trying to learn some
of the rudiments of the Eskimo language, my success had not
been so spectacular that I could regard with equanimity the
prospect of being abandoned in a completely non-English-
speaking community. The two or three school children who
would leave on the plane that brought me were, I knew, the
only Utku who had had any exposure at all to the English
language.
I had other cause for trepidation, too, as I watched Gjoa Haven’s
warm wooden houses recede beneath me. Flurries of snow had
fallen for a week or more already, and the ground crunched
frozenly, though it was only August. Would I be able to survive
the Arctic winter without benefit of any of the accoutrements
of civilization? All too few of the kind and anxious people, both
white and Eskimo, who had given me advice had really thought
my project feasible. A blessed two or three did think it was;
a few others fervently hoped it was. (And I noted with relief
that optimism tended to be positively correlated with expe-
rience in the Arctic.) But, like “civilized” people everywhere,
the majority of my advisors cherished horrendous images of
the “primitive.” One got the impression that the Chantrey Inlet
Eskimos were all morons and murderers. Some said there were
no Eskimos living there at all any more; they had all died of

Introduction 17
 starvation. And whatever their views on the local population
(and their less directly expressed views on my motivations and
sanity), my advisors were agreed on the impossibility of the
climate. I was visited one day in Gjoa Haven by an Utku ac-
quaintance who was living there. Uunai had heard that I planned
to spend the winter at Back River. With vivid shivers drama-
tizing her words she told me: “It’s very cold down there; very
cold. If we were going to be down there I would be happy to
adopt you and try to keep you alive.” The expression she used,
I later learned, was one that mothers use when exhorting their
children to take good care of the baby birds they find and adopt
as pets.
The image of myself as a perishable baby bird did not increase
my peace of mind as I looked down from the plane at the empty
expanse of broken ice, a gigantic green-edged jigsaw puzzle,
that lay below us. It was expected that we would find the Es-
kimos settled in their traditional summer campsite just beyond
the foot of Chantrey Inlet and beside the rapids at the mouth of
Franklin Lake.
As we flew over the inlet, land reappeared, first on one side,
then on the other: low sandy promontories, rocky islets jostled
by the floating ice, and high capes, whose weather-ravaged
faces dropped sharply into the water. The ice thinned and gave
way to choppy water, dull under a gray sky. From the air the
land seemed so barren, so devoid of life, that when we landed
partway down the inlet to cache some of my supplies near
the expected winter campsite, it was startling to find there two
families of Eskimos from Gjoa Haven camping for the summer
to net whitefish.
The country grew more rugged as we flew south, with small
lakes sunk in hollows among granite knolls. The pilot and the in-
terpreter in the cockpit began to scan the landscape, looking for
signs of life. The interpreter pointed. Looking down at the
camp that was my destination I was pierced by its fragility:
racing water between two steep bluffs and two white toy tents
side by side on a narrow gravel beach under one of the bluffs.
Nothing else but tundra, rolling russet and gray to the horizon.
A tiny knot of people, perhaps six or seven, stood clustered in

18 Never in Anger
front of the tents, watching the plane circle to land in a quiet
backwater.
They were waiting by the plane in the same quiet knot when
the door was opened, the men and boys slightly in the forefront.
As the pilot, the interpreter, and I emerged, the Eskimos smiled
and, smiling, came silently forward to shake hands, the “shake”
no shake at all but a gentle squeeze almost entirely lacking in
pressure. At the time I read it as the shy greeting of strangers, of
Eskimos for kaplunas; but later I found husbands and wives,
fathers and children greeting one another after an absence with
the same restrained, tentative-seeming gestures. Even a new-
born baby is welcomed into life in this way by its family and
neighbors.
I was embarrassed when the plane began to disgorge my gear
without so much as a by your leave or any sort of explanation
offered to the Eskimos. But I was. helpless, for the first of many
times, in my ignorance of the language. The Eskimos obligingly,
unquestioningly, caught the bundles as they emerged and laid
them on the beach. I could only smile, as they did, hoping for
acceptance, and trust to the later efforts of the interpreter.
I had with me letters of introduction from the Anglican mis-
sionary and his wife in Gjoa Haven. This missionary, an Eskimo
deacon named Nakliguhuktug, was overseer not only of the Gjoa
Haven Anglicans but also of the Utku, and he and his wife,
Ikayuqtuq, had very kindly taken upon themselves the re-
sponsibility of introducing me to the Utku. They had written to
the latter in the syllabic script in which most Canadian Eskimos,
including those at Back River, are literate. The letters said
that I would like to live with the Utku for a year or so, learning
the Eskimo language and skills: how to scrape skins and sew
them, how to fish, and how to make birch mats to keep the
caribou mattresses dry on the iglu sleeping platforms. They
asked the Eskimos to help me with words and with fish and
promised that in return I would help them with tea and kero-
sene. They told the people that I was kind, and that they should
not be shy and afraid of me: “She is a little bit shy, herself’;
and assured them that they need not feel, as they often do feel
toward kaplunas, that they had to comply with my every wish.

Introduction 19
 They said, finally, that I wished to be adopted into an Eskimo
family and to live with them in their iglus. And in order to fore-
Stall any errors, Nakliguhuktuq specified that I wished to be
adopted as a daughter and not as a wife.
The idea of being “adopted” into an Eskimo family had been
suggested to me in Ottawa by two Arctic scholars, both of whom
had traveled as members of Eskimo families. In addition, I had
read an account written by a man who had lived for a year as a
“son” in an Eskimo family to learn what it felt like to be an
Eskimo. There were logistic advantages to the idea: it would
be warmer living with other people than living alone in an
environment where body heat is a major source of warmth.
And I thought vaguely it might be “safer” if one family had spe-
cific responsibility for me. The idea had a romantic appeal, also,
as since early childhood I, too, had wanted to know what it
felt like to be an Eskimo; and secretly I thought of this trip partly
as a fulfillment of that dream. On my two previous field trips
to Alaskan Eskimo villages I had identified strongly with the
Eskimo villagers by contrast with such elements of the kapluna
population as I had had occasion to meet. I had had no problems
of rapport, and I expected the same to be true again. Indeed,
never having felt very American in my outlook, I rather hoped
I might discover myself essentially Eskimo at heart.
I voiced no such romanticism aloud, however. I was rather
ashamed of my “unprofessional” attitude; and I had a number
of qualms concerning the wisdom of being adopted, in terms of
loss of “objective” position in the community; drains on my sup-
plies which would result from contributing to the maintenance
of a family household; and loss of privacy with resultant difficul-
ties in working. Therefore I was not—so I thought—seriously
considering the idea of adoption.
Nevertheless, when one day in Gjoa Haven Ikayuqtuq asked
me why I wanted to live at Back River for a year, I spontaneously
told her that I wanted to be adopted by an Eskimo family in
order to learn to live like an Eskimo. I put it this way partly
because I wanted—I think now, wrongly—to conceal from her
that I would be “studying” the Eskimos. I was embarrassed by the
scholarly analytical aspect of the enterprise, thinking she would
consider it prying. Eskimos do not like to be asked questions;

20 Never in Anger
they have an extremely strong sense of privacy with regard to
their thoughts, their feelings, and motivations; and I feared
to offend it.
I particularly wished to avoid telling Ikayuqtug that the pro-
jected subject of my study was the traditional shamanistic prac-
tices of the Utku. My feeling that this was a delicate area of
investigation was strengthened by tales I had heard about de-
voutly Anglican Eskimos in other areas who had committed
suicide from guilt after being persuaded by an anthropologist
to discuss the ancient practices and sing shamanistic songs. I
did not intend to mention shamanism to anyone at Back River
until people voluntarily mentioned it to me, which they pre-
sumably would after a certain amount of acquaintanceship
and development of trust with regard to my intentions. Thus my
naive thought. As it turned out, ironically, the Utku never
were willing to discuss shamanism with me; and Ikayuqtuq
herself became my most interested and helpful informant on
the subject. But at the time I could not foresee this; I saw her
stereotypically as the wife of the Anglican missionary, the most
unlikely of persons with whom to discuss pre-Christian tradi-
tions. So I withheld my professional purposes from her and told
her only in the most general terms what I was doing in her
country. I told myself, again with vast naiveté, that after I
had “learned the language” and “developed rapport” I would
be able to explain the other aspects of my work to the Utku.
Later, at Back River, I sometimes remembered that conversa-
tion with Ikayuqtuq and the resulting letters to my Eskimo hosts,
and wondered in my frustration whether I would have been less
rigidly defined as a learner-of-words-and-skills if I had been
more open with Ikayuqtuq in the beginning. But perhaps not;
perhaps in any case the Utku would have defined my role in
some such narrow, relatively harmless way in order to keep
me safely to one side of their lives, to keep their privacy invio-
late. Or perhaps these tangible aspects of my role were simply
the easiest for the Eskimos to see, as I never did discover how
to tell them that I wanted to learn their “ways of life” until two
years later when I was on my way home to my own way of life.
Ikayuqtug had counseled me that on my arrival at the Utku
camp I should tell the people through the government interpre-

Introduction 21
 ter who would accompany the plane that I would like to live
with them for a year; I should, however, withhold my letters of
introduction until after the plane had left. “Tell them once,”
she had said, “then give them time to think about it.”
Ikayuqtuq had written a letter to each adult woman; Nakligu-
huktug had written his letter to all of the men collectively, but
had addressed the envelope to Nilak, who, he thought, would be
the most appropriate father for me. There were only two suitable
fathers in the group, since there were only two mature house-
holders who had wives alive and at home. One of these was
Nilak; the other, Inuttiaq. Nilak had a wife and an adolescent
daughter. Ikayuqtug and Nakliguhuktuq thought that I might
be less of a burden on Nilak than on Inuttiaq, who had three
daughters to support in addition to his wife. However, Nakligu-
huktuq’s letter told the men that they should talk about it among
themselves and should decide among themselves who wanted
to adopt me.
I was uneasy about this arrangement. While I agreed in not
wanting to be a burden to anyone, I had discovered that Nilak
occupied a much more peripheral position in the group than
Inuttiaq did, in terms of his family ties and his camping habits.
Nilak, it was said, sometimes camped alone in the summer when
the Utku customarily scatter into small widely distant camps.
Moreover, I had heard that Nilak’s wife, Niqi, was “kind of dif-
ferent’ —a characteristically Eskimo euphemism for negative
traits. The condemnation was somewhat unspecific, but I had
the impression that Niqi preferred sociability to hard work. In
any case, all these factors combined to make me wish to post-
pone any decision until I had had an opportunity to look my
prospective parents over in situ. It also made me anxious to
reserve the decision to myself; but Ikayuqtuq assured me that I
could veto the men’s decision if I wanted to. I could even change
my mind about being adopted if circumstances warranted it. I
was much reassured.
On that first day, however, no adoption problem arose, as both
Nilak and Inuttiaq, together with all the other able-bodied Utku,
were somewhere out in the distant countryside, hunting caribou
for winter clothing. The camp in which I was deposited, Itim-
naaqjuk (the Rapids), had been the summer fishing site of four

22 Never in Anger
of the eight households that were living in Chantrey Inlet in
1963, and had I arrived a week or so earlier I would have found
all four households there. As it was, only the two elderly broth-
ers, Pala and Piuvkaq, remained, tending a small agglomeration
of dogs, daughters, and granddaughters who would have been
superfluous on the hunt.
My introduction to the community was quickly over. We sat
hunched on stones under an uncomfortably slanting tent wall
while the interpreter checked the registration numbers and
parentage of the departing students, then proceeded to account
for my presence. I told him to ask whether the Eskimos would
mind if I stayed with them for a year to learn their language and
ways; whether they would help me. The younger of the two old
men smilingly assured me they would help me. The interpreter
called to me: “Have a good winter,” and the plane was gone.
It was only as the hum of the motor faded into the snow-heavy
clouds that I fully realized where I was. Realization came in the
form of a peculiar sense not of loneliness but of separateness, of
having no context for my existence. With the plane had vanished
the last possibility of access to my familiar world until the strait
froze in November, and as yet no bond of language, of under-
standing, or of shared experience linked me with the silent Es-
kimos behind me.
The feeling remained with me that night as I lay in my sleep-
ing bag and listened to the flapping of my tent, accented now and
again by a staccato gust of sleet on the thin canvas barrier. But
already a new context was beginning to form. I felt it in the warm
welcoming courtesies of the Eskimos, their smiles, and their
amused attempts to bridge the linguistic gulf between us. It was
also in the physical warmth of the sleeping bag, the snug bright-
ness of my tent—its kerosene storm lantern suspended from the
ridgepole. Flaps tied against the windy darkness, boxes and
duffels ranged along the walls to serve as seats for the ever-
present visitors, primus, cooking pots, and cups set out tidily by
the door, the tent seemed very much home, a molecule of the
familiar and personal in the wilderness.
Later I often felt this fragile cosiness of Eskimo camps at night,
seeing the glow of a tent illuminated by a fish-oil flame, the trans-
lucent dome of a traveler’s iglu on the sea ice, or a covey of sparks

Introduction 23
 darting up from a campfire—pockets of human warmth in the
blackness.

Our camp of three tents lay at the edge of a quiet inlet, a back-
water of the rapids whose roar was a pervasive undertone to the
yippings and clatterings of camp life. The rapids were confined
on either side by granite bluffs; on one side, crowned with rows
of small stolid cairns, stood Itimnaagjuk, the bluff that gave the
area its name, on the other side Haqvaqtuug, on whose shoulder
my tent was placed.
The Eskimo tents stood below by the shore, at a little distance.
Peeking out between the flaps of my doorway, fastened against
the icy wind, I could look down to the tents with their flaps open
on the inlet; the gulls dipping and soaring over the fishnets,
whose rows of tin can floats patterned the water; the chains of
ragged dogs curled in sleep; the frozen piles of tea leaves set to
dry on boulders; the little cluster of women and children by the
twig-banked outdoor fireplace, one crouching to blow at the
reluctant blaze or to encourage it carefully with a twig while the
others watched or chased each other, laughing, around the fire.
Stones clattered underfoot as one of the women or children
crossed the beach and bent from a boulder to fill the teakettle
in the water; a paddle clunked against the side of a canoe as one
of the men pulled wriggling whitefish out of the net with his
teeth and dropped them into the boat; then as the boat ap-
proached the shore came the frantic yipping of the dogs, tugging
at their chains in anticipation of a meal.
Life in the waiting camp moved with the same stillness as the
waters of the inlet, rising and falling in their faint tides. Every
morning shortly after dawn, Pala, the younger and more vigorous
of the two brothers, made himself a kettle of tea, then, taking his
kapluna fishing reel or a coiled throwline, he went to cast from
the ledges where the surf foamed over the gray rocks. His catch,
two or three or four salmon trout or char, each weighing between
ten and twenty pounds, provided the camp’s food for the day.
Meanwhile Piuvkaq and his widowed daughter, Maata, woke,
and Maata brewed tea for her father, herself, and any of the chil-
dren who might have wakened. Pala, bringing one of his fish
to contribute to the meal, joined the others at their tea. Later in

24 Never in Anger
the morning, or perhaps in the afternoon, the men, each with a
cargo of daughters and granddaughters in his canoe, paddled
out to check the fishnets. Piuvkaq might take his line and go to
fish in the rapids. And sometimes the two women, Maata and
Pala’s grown daughter Amaaqtugq, seeing that the high bank of
twigs around the fireplace had dwindled, would take their ulus,
the half-moon knives that all Eskimo women use, and a rope, and
go off across the tundra in search of dwarf birch bushes, stopping
in the lee of knolls to rest and eat the tiny seed-filled crowberries
that grow there; then plod slowly home again bent beneath
loads so big that the bearers were almost invisible beneath the
burden. “Heeaavy!” they laughed. “Tiiiring!”—their vowels
drawn out for emphasis. “But after one has felt tired for a little
while one will stop feeling tired.” At home they collapsed jok-
ingly on top of the cast-off load, then refreshed themselves with
tea and large slices of raw trout.
Late afternoon was the busiest time. Then, as the sun was
sinking behind Haqvaqtuug, the women took their ulus again
and went down to the beach where the men had tossed the net-
ted whitefish into a silver pile. Drawing into their parka hoods
for protection against the icy breeze and sucking their wet scaly
fingers to thaw them, the women gutted the fish, slicing out the
oily belly flesh in two smooth cuts and tossing it into a bucket
to be boiled for food and fuel. Now and then somebody would
remark with a little laugh: “Uuuunai (it’s coooold)!”
With fish gutted and dogs fed and watered, people gathered
around the blaze of the twig fire while Maata or Amaaqtuq boiled
the remains of the morning’s catch for the evening meal. Only
Piuvkag, because he was old and tired, lay on his bed, smoking
his pipe as the light faded or crooning “ai ya ya's’ —brief songs
in which people speak their thoughts and feelings. The songs
had a poignancy out of all relation to their monotonous four-
or-five-note structure.
The evening meal was eaten together, the steaming fish heads
ladled with a caribou scapula into a single tray, around which
people crowded sociably; only Piuvkagq, if he were in bed, was
taken a separate bowl. The day ended as quietly as it had passed.
The evening fire darted its arrows into the night and faded as a
half-invisible figure carried a steaming teakettle into a tent;

Introduction 25
 shadows moved against the glowing tent wall as people drank
their tea; and the camp faded into darkness.
My arrival in Itimnaaqjuk altered, if not the tenor, at least the
pattern, of the day’s activities. Visiting the kapluna woman be.
came the major diversion. My tent was never empty, from the
time I awoke in the morning (and sometimes before) until, frayed
to exhaustion, I retreated into the warm protection of my sleep-
ing bag, leaving my departing visitors to tie the tent flaps behind
them. Life in those first days was a matched battle between an-
thropological conscience on the one hand and an overwhelming
desire for recuperative solitude on the other, and every night ]
was as tired as ifI had in fact waged battle all day. I felt wooden
within and without: my face from smiling; my mind and tongue
from hours of struggling with unaccustomed and meaningless
sounds; and my body from endless sitting in a frigid tent, enter-
taining visitors. I was still burdened by the illusion that it was
necessary to “entertain” visitors, in the kapluna tradition, and
to stay with them as long as they chose to remain. It was some
days before I made the happy discovery that the Eskimos them-
selves rarely adapted their activities to the presence of a visitor.
They exchanged smiles with a visitor when he appeared, and
talked a bit now and again if there was something to talk about.
Eventually, if the visitor stayed long enough, as he usually did,
the hostess would probably serve a kettle of tea. But for the most
part the visitor either spontaneously joined the family’s activities
or sat quietly on the periphery, ignored, to my foreign eye. If the
host had business elsewhere he simply announced the fact and
went out, whereupon it was incumbent upon the guest to leave
also.
My neighbors were the most benign and considerate of visi-
tors. I knew it at the time, even as I wearied of their presence;
and I realize it more vividly now, hearing my colleagues’ ac-
counts of the very different peoples they have lived with. The
Eskimos, unlike these others, never begged, never demanded.
They frequently offered to trade bone toys for tobacco or for
bits of my carefully hoarded food supplies, but they rarely com-
plained of the amounts I gave them. They were never noisy or
obtrusive; they just sat, quiet and observant, around the edges
of my tent. If, out of concern for my dwindling tea and kerosene

26 Never in Anger
supplies, I let them sit unfed for more than two or three hours,
one of the adults might remark on the warming qualities of tea
or, more indirectly still, ask if my water supply was low and offer
to replenish it. They noticed when my fish was all eaten and
brought me more. And if I was a bit slow in attacking the slimy
raw body, they assumed I did not know how to cut it, so they
filleted it for me. They laid a gravel floor in my tent to lessen the
dampness. They lit my lamp when my fingers were too stiff with
cold, they fixed the primus when it clogged, and sharpened my
knife when they saw it was dull—all without my asking.
Their unfailing anticipation of my needs (even when my needs
did not coincide with theirs) was immensely warming. I felt as
cared-for as a three-year-old, and I am sure that is precisely one
facet of the light in which the Eskimos regarded me. Their at-
tentions also awakened in me guilt concerning the one need that
would never occur to them: my desire for solitude. I knew I
should regard their constant visits as a sign of friendly accept-
ance and curiosity, as well as hunger for the luxuries of tea and
bannock, and so I did; but I could not help seeing them also as
an invasion of privacy. I felt trapped by my visitors. I longed to
see the view from the bluff-top, to explore the ledges by the
rapids; I would even have welcomed an opportunity to pay a
return visit to the Eskimo tents. Nothing depresses me more
than inactivity, and when the site of the inactivity was a tent
permeated with the dank chill of autumn the situation quickly
became unbearable. I resented the fact that the Eskimos, when
they felt cold, could go out and do some warming work or chase
each other around the tents, whereas I had to sit and smile at the
next relay of visitors.
Six days passed before I escaped. For once the relays of visi-
tors had not quite overlapped. Piuvkaq with his five-year-old
granddaughter had shared my breakfast and left; I was enjoying
solitude when I heard a cough ominously close to my tent and
the crunch of a foot on the frozen lichen. Clutching a berry can
under my arm in the hope of obscuring my motives and feigning
ignorance of my approaching visitor, I fled to the tundra and
wandered there all day, memorizing Eskimo words and feeling
homesick.
It was when I came back into camp late that afternoon that I

Introduction 27
 first realized how important to me my Eskimo neighbors were
and how dependent I was on the warmth of their acceptance,
Coming over the ridge behind camp I looked down on the two
women. Maata was airing quilts and mattress hides while
Amaagqtuq boiled fish for the evening meal. They greeted me
with smiles, and when the fish was cooked, Amaaqtuq brought
me a large piece.
They did not invite me to eat with them, however, as they had
the day before; and that evening for the first time I had no visi-
tors. Wondering guiltily whether people had correctly read my
disappearance, I decided to make amends. It was a gray windless
evening, the temperature a balmy forty degrees. I found the wo-
men on the bluff-top, picking mountain cranberries. They smiled
a welcome and began to drill me on the tongue-twisting names of
the plants that grew on the bluff, convulsed with laughter at my
pronunciation—laughter in which I joined with real relief. They
were willing to overlook my hostile withdrawal, I thought, or—
happy possibility—perhaps they had not even noticed it. I had
been there a year or more before I realized the vanity of that
hope. At the time, secure in my innocence, I felt the giddy joy of
being, to all appearances, accepted. More, for the first time I
really enjoyed the company of my new acquaintances. And it
dawned on me how forlorn I would be in that wilderness if they
forsook me. Far, far better to suffer loss of privacy.
An icy breeze rose and the women shivered on the hilltop. I
invited them in for tea and bannock and was happy when they
came.

IV. The Seasons

I had been at Back River for two months before I met all of the
eight households that would constitute our winter camp. The
Utku are nomadic, and their camps fluctuate in size and member-
ship with the season as they move in pursuit of the fish and other
game on which their life depends. Each family has a fairly pre-
dictable annual pattern of moving.''! During the winter all the
families who live in Chantrey Inlet camp together in an area
11. A table of seasonal activities will be found in Appendix II. Usual camp-
sites are shown on Map II on p. 30.

28 Never in Anger
known to them as Amujat, near the mouth of the Hayes River.
Here, where the scanty snow has drifted and packed hard in the
lee of the riverbank, they build an iglu village and set nets for
whitefish under the ice. And from here the men go out every few
days, each in a different direction, to check traplines for the fox
whose skins buy tea, tobacco, and a variety of other goods in
Gjoa Haven.
In March, when the sun returns, the whitefish disappear from
the river mouth, and the surplus, frozen and stored in snow caves
for the lean spring, is quickly depleted. Then people scatter,
each family according to its custom. Some go to camp near the
fish caches they made the previous autumn for use when the
winter supplies should be exhausted. Others go to spots where
they hope that by jigging with a hand-line through the ice they
will be able to catch enough salmon trout to carry them from day
to day. Later, in May or early June, when the seals come out to
sun on the ice of Elliot Bay, a few families go north to hunt them.
In spring people may be almost constantly on the move. Between
the end of April and the middle of July the camp in which I
lived moved thirteen times, distances ranging from four feet to
forty miles. The long moves were determined by the need for
fish. The short ones were dictated by the thaws, which first
melted our iglus, then transformed the snow patches where our
tents were pitched into waist-deep quagmires of slush and sent
us down to exposed gravel strips along the river's edge, and finally
flooded our gravel strips, forcing us uphill in retreat from the
advancing water.
In July, drawn by thoughts of migrating salmon trout, the
dispersed families walk and paddle back along the river to the
fishing spots where they will pass the summer, singly or in
groups of two or three, occasionally separated from one another
by as much as a hundred miles or more. One or two families may
travel north as far as the Adelaide Peninsula; one or two others
habitually return to the mouth of the Hayes River, near the
winter site. The majority, with whom I lived, move much farther
south, to Itimnaaqjuk by the Franklin Lake Rapids.
People usually remain at the summer campsite until the frosts
set in, in late August. This was the season in which I arrived,
to find the able-bodied off in the interior hunting caribou for

Introduction 29
 Gjon Haven | N

[epring ed werner) CI trey

ADELAIDE $F, montreal Island w

be
PENINSULA J 0

i.
AP" Inlet
4 Flot Bey
* < & Umanakey} cevya(vt & tpaiogv1

A %
' % ¢ 6 13

AY .

Qavvik (V1)
(summer)

Kajat
Pala (iI), Piuvkag (I), inuttiag (in)
(spring)

(spring and summer)

ene nee (1), inuttiag (111), ipultug (IV)

A
Map II: The Annual \
Migration Area of A
Utkuhikhalingmiut: sy . ;
Campsites ' of Ss

1. Roman numerals correspond to the household

numerals on the charts in Appendix III.
winter clothing, while the old people and some of the unmar-
ried women and children waited at the fishing place. The hunt-
ers are usually gone for one to three weeks. If they have been
successful, they return with hides for the women to work into
clothing, and a little marrow and tallow as a treat for those who
stayed behind. Most of the meat is cached at the site of the kill,
to be fetched by sled in late autumn or winter, when it makes a
welcome change from a diet of frozen whitefish.
By the time the river begins to freeze, usually in early October,
the canvas tents are crackling in the bitter wind, and the men
think of building gaqmaqs. A qaqmaq, among the Utku, is a
round, tent-roofed dwelling, walled with ice blocks cut from the
river, or sometimes, if the snowfall has been sufficient, with a
combination of snow blocks and ice blocks. A qaqmaq is much
warmer than a tent, as the wind cannot penetrate the solid walls.
However, one is at the mercy of the erratic autumn thaws,
which cause the slush mortar between the ice blocks to melt,
and sometimes even threaten to melt the walls themselves.
Through the holes the wind drives fine snow (or sleet or rain)
over the occupants and their bedding. “Snow” falls also from the
canvas roof; the steam from boiling tea collects there and
freezes into long frost-feathers which precipitate in fine cold
prickles on one’s face as the dwelling cools.
The Eskimos accept these minor annoyances with equanim-
ity. They agree that it is unpleasant (hujuujaq, not quvia) to be
cold and wet, but what can one do (ayuqnaq)? So when a sudden
rain makes a sieve of the canvas roof they laugh: “We are wet
like dogs.”
And there are compensations. The river in Itimnaaqjuk teems
with salmon trout in October. Often twenty and occasionally as
many as forty trout, each weighing between ten and forty pounds,
may be caught by one fisherman in a day’s jigging through the
ice. A few of these are eaten fresh, but most are cached in hollow
cairns to freeze for use in winter and spring. Autumn is also the
season when caches of whitefish are made for spring dogfeed.
As in winter, nets are set under the ice near the camp, and some-
times as many as fifty whitefish are caught daily in each net.
There are still quantities of fish in Itimnaaqjuk at the end of
October and early in November, but by this time the desire for

Introduction 31
 the warmth of iglus begins to outweigh the pleasure of the daily
meal of boiled trout. Salmon trout are much scarcer in Amujat;
there the daily fare consists almost entirely of the inferior frozen
whitefish. “On whitefish we grow thin,” people joke. But iglus
can be built much earlier in Amujat, where snow falls sooner and
more heavily than in Itimnaaqjuk to the south. So one day the
ice-walled shelters stand open to marauding foxes. The sleds are
off for Amujat to join the other families gathering there for the
winter.

V. Nomadism
Nomadic life holds much pleasure for the Utku. Arduous as
moving sometimes is—when the sled runners bore into thawing
drifts and stick fast; when the river snow becomes water-logged
so that dogs and people slosh deep in slush and are soon
drenched; when winds bite at noses and toes so that the children
tied atop the load whimper with cold or shrink silently into the
protective quilts that shroud them—nevertheless a move to a
new campsite is a memorable punctuation in the ordinary flow
of life. People look forward to the change of scene or of dwelling,
just as they look forward to each turning season. In the autumn
the talk is about how good (quvia) it will feel to move into an
iglu. The night before we set off for Amujat, my first October at
Back River, Inuttiaqg, my father, lying in bed, pantomimed in the
air the motions of cutting snow blocks and improvised a little
“ai ya ya” song about tomorrow's iglu building. In the spring,
when the iglus have been transformed by long occupancy into
burrows of filthy gray ice, the talk turns to the pleasures of the
spring moves: “Iglus are unpleasant (hujuujaq, not quvia) in the
spring; the water of Amujat tastes unpleasantly of salt; it will
be good to go to Itimnaagqjuk and fish.” And people pantomime
the motions of jigging for trout.
Even the process of moving holds excitement. A happy bustle
pervades a camp that is preparing to move. Packing is done at
double-quick tempo, orders given and obeyed with a vigor
rarely seen in the quiet life of a settled camp. In the spring,
when thawing weather and the search for fish required that we
be constantly on the move, the spirit of impermanence seemed

32 Never in Anger
to infect people, so that, from my point of view, they seemed to
make the maximum rather than the minimum necessary number
of moves. At this season, unlike any other, tents were shifted
for the slightest reason: because the gravel floor had become
soiled with bits of paper and fishbones, or because a shift in the
breeze was filling the tent with mosquitoes. Shifting was not
done with quite such abandon in the more permanent summer
camp; there, the unwanted foreign matter was picked out of the
floor and the mosquitoes were simply endured. In spring, too,
when the flooding river forced us uphill, the retreat was always
made foot by foot as the river rose. For several days we moved
camp at least once a day and sometimes oftener, and always
when the water had arrived within inches of our doorsteps.
Once as we were setting up the tents for the third or fourth time,
I asked the friend who was helping me: “Does the water come
up this high?” (I indicated the spot where we were placing the
tents.) “Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t,” was the
reply.
I do not know what prompted people to move in this way. It
may have been optimism; weakened by measles, as the Utku
were that spring, they may have hoped that each minimal move
would be the last. But then why shift the tent to escape the mos-
quitoes or improve the flooring? It sometimes seemed as though
moving—rearranging the environment—were a form of play
for the Eskimos, a pleasure in itself. Whatever the explanation,
I never completely shared the Eskimo spirit. I found it a stren-
uous job to strike a tent, move all its contents uphill by armfuls,
set up the tent again, and rearrange the interior. Once it was
done, I enjoyed the freshness of a new home, a tent floor car-
peted with reindeer moss and cranberry blossoms. Still, moves
were a nuisance that disrupted my work and, worse, shifted my
world as a kaleidoscope shifts its bits of glass, making me un-
comfortably aware of the pattern’s fragility. So, in retreating from
the rising water, had I followed my own preference, I would
have moved, once and for all, the few hundred feet to the top
of the hill and sat there securely, looking down at the flood.
The fact that the moves were always made with no time to
spare I sometimes found a little harrowing, too. I was never
quite sure when I went to bed with the water two feet from my

Introduction 33
 door whether I was going to wake up afloat. One such evening
I observed to Inuttiaq that the dogs, who were chained to boul-
ders at the water’s edge, were going to get wet during the night.
“Yes, they are,” he said. And sure enough, in the morning several
dogs were standing belly-deep in the flood, their noses pointing
stifly skyward.
In the course of many years of moving up and down the river,
from campsite to campsite, from one fishing place to another, the
countryside that seemed so limitless to me and at first sight so
empty, had become to its inhabitants as grooved with associa-
tions as a familiar face. In the recognition of this familiarity, as
well as in the excitement of change, may lie some of the pleasure
the Utku find in their way of life. Like other wandering people,
the Utku have a remarkable memory for the details of their ter-
ritory, and the accuracy with which they observe and mentally
record the contours of the terrain are proverbial; their map-
making (and -reading) abilities are phenomenal. I showed several
Utku men maps of the entire North American Arctic. They
pointed out and named correctly all the major rivers, lakes, in-
lets, and islands from Baker Lake in the south to King William
Island in the north, and from Perry River in the west to the west
coast of Hudson Bay in the east, a territory approximately 135,000
miles square. One man even pointed out Bathurst Inlet and
Southampton Island correctly, from hearsay. He had never been
to either place, but he had heard them described by other Es-
kimos on his travels. Rasmussen’s volume (1931) on the Netsilik
contains maps of approximately the same area that were drawn
by Netsilik Eskimos at his request. The Eskimos need these
abilities, not only to find their way up and down the river in
their sometimes lengthy travels, but also to relocate the caches
of game and of belongings that they leave behind them as they
move.
I was shown the country through Utku eyes the first time I
traveled with Utku companions. While still camped at the sum-
mer site in Itimnaaqjuk, we had gone, two men and I, to replen-
ish our supply of tea from the cache I had made in Amujat for
winter use. This entailed a two-day round trip of sixty to eighty
miles, on foot and by canoe. I was awed by the granite silence of
the shores between which we paddled. The dip of the paddles

34 Never in Anger
and the quiet remarks of my companions were the only sounds.
The stone fingers of cairns protruding into the gray sky to me
accentuated the emptiness, the loneliness of the scene. But the
Utku build cairns to lessen the loneliness, to create company
for themselves. My companions knew the builders of many of
the cairns; some had been built by people already familiar to
me as well. The men pointed out to me on the hilltops and pen-
insulas we passed the many traces of their habitation: “That’s
Pala’s cache, that oil drum”; “‘Piuvkaq built that cairn”; “people
fish here in the autumn after the ice comes”; “Nilak has two cari-
bou cached on the far side of those two steep knolls.” Every
point of land, every rise, every island and backwater was known
and named, had its use and its associations.
Often a reminiscent mood was roused by a move to a new camp-
site, even when in my view people should have been exhausted
and miserable after hours of shoving and tugging heavily loaded
sleds through impossible country and worse weather. Once, I
recall, it was five in the morning before we had our new camp
made and tea drunk. It was June, just before break-up. We had
traveled all night through wet snow, sleet, and slush, and had
been without sleep for twenty-four hours. Even so, instead of
going to bed people sat and shared memories of this campsite—
some memories more than forty years old. They talked about
places where they had fished and what they had caught. They
showed me landmarks, including the place where Rasmussen
had camped in 1923, though no visible trace remained of it, and
taught me the names of all the points of land that now and then
emerged as shadows behind the veil of sleet. It was rare, this
eager talkativeness; it belonged to the peak moments. I heard it
also when the men returned from a trading trip to Gjoa Haven in
the winter, or when two households were reunited after a sea-
sonal absence. Finally silence fell—but there was still no sleep.
The men went fishing, picking their way out across the slushy
river, while the women went for a slow ramble up over the hill
among the oblongs and circles of stones that marked old tent
sites, each in her own path, thinking her own thoughts. Only
the children went to sleep, one still holding her half-drunk tea.

Introduction 35
 VI. The Society

Although the location of fish is the primary consideration in the

Utkus’ choice of campsites, nevertheless, within the limits set
by their need for food, people still have considerable latitude to
choose where and with whom they will live. There are many
places where salmon trout and char are plentiful during the
summer and where caribou can be hunted in autumn. Choice,
within narrower limits, is even possible with regard to the winter
campsite. Utku camping patterns, therefore, reveal not only the
location of fish, seal, and caribou but also the shape of Utku
social life; the preferences of the various families that compose
the group and the quality of their relationships with each other.
It was in the pattern of the summer dispersal that I first, and
most concretely, saw the lines along which Utku society is di-
vided. The basic division is between “real family” (iLammarigiit)
and “‘less real” or “not real family” (ilammarilluangngittut or
ilammaringngittut). In the Utku view, everybody in the group
is related to everybody else, and everybody addresses, or refers
to, everybody else by terms of kinship. Kinship is the most
important bond in Utku society. The dyadic contractual rela-
tionships—the hunting, meat-sharing, joking, and dancing
partnerships—that are prominent in many other Eskimo groups
play no role in contemporary Utku society, as far as I was able
to determine. It is possible that there may have been hunting,
joking, or dancing partners in the days when the group was
larger, but I doubt that there were sharing partnerships even in
the old days. The neighboring Netsilik did have such partner-
ships. In their winter camps, seals used to be distributed accord-
ing to complex rules by which two men always gave each other
a specified part of every seal caught. And throughout their lives
the partners addressed each other by the name of the seal-cut
which they shared: “My buttock,” or “My head” (Van de Velde
1956). But Rasmussen (1931:482), writing of his visit to the Utku
in 1923, describes them as lacking any such special sharing rela-
tionships at that time.
The Utku establish kinship bonds in four different ways: by
birth, by betrothal or marriage, by adoption, and by naming.
Formerly, bonds were created in a fifth way, as well: two friends

36 Never in Anger
would exchange wives for a period of time. Traces of previous
wife-exchanges can be seen in the kinship terms used by cer-
tain people today. One woman, for example, calls two men
“father,” because they were joint husbands of her mother. Now-
adays, however, since the practice of exchanging wives is in
disrepute, it is difficult to obtain information either on the pre-
vious extent of the practice or on its present existence.
Wife-exchange aside, most Utku are related in two or more of
the four other ways mentioned. Marriage relationships overlap
with and complicate blood relationships, since Utku parents
almost always, when possible, betroth their children to relatives,
especially to cousins, that is, to the sons and daughters of the
parents’ brothers, sisters, and cousins.
Adoption is a complicating factor in kinship, too. As in other
Eskimo groups, adoption is common, and the adopted child
tends to retain certain kinship bonds, both terminological and
behavioral, with his genealogical family in addition to acquiring
membership in his adoptive family. For example, he continues
to call his genealogical brothers and sisters by sibling terms and
to treat them as informally as genealogical siblings treat one
another. So complex do consanguineal and adoptive relation-
ships become that there is even a kinship term (tamajrutik),
which people resort to in certain cases when they do not know
which of two equally applicable terms to choose for a given
relative.
The fourth way in which Utku create kin relationships is by
bestowing on a baby the name of some other person. A belief
widespread among Eskimo groups is that a person acquires along
with his name various characteristics of the previous owner or
owners of the name: the latter’s physical, mental, or moral traits,
his skills and abilities. In a sense, he becomes the previous
owner or owners of the name. The belief in name-souls and be-
havior related to the belief appear to vary in detail from group
to group. Among the Utku, a baby may be named either for a
living or for a dead person; in both cases the child is thought to
acquire physical characteristics and mannerisms of previous
owners of its name, including animals, if the name happens to be
that of an animal. For example, a child who cocked her head to
one side when listening was said to do so because her name was

Introduction 37
 Tulugaq (Raven). I do not know whether Utku believe, as some
other Eskimos do, that the previous owners of a child’s name
protect their namesake (Gubser 1965:206; Stefansson 1951:
398-400), or transfer to the latter their skills and other character-
istics (Guemple 1965:328-329). An Utku namesake does, how-
ever, acquire the network of kin relationships that belonged to
his “name,” that is, to the name’s last owner, the person for
whom he was named. He does not entirely substitute the terms
appropriate to his “name” for those that would be genealogically
appropriate for him to use; he may still use genealogical terms
for many of his relatives; but for other relatives he uses the terms
that his “name” would have used, and is in turn addressed by the
terms that his relatives would have used in addressing his
“name.”
Among some Eskimos, name-sharing influences other behavior
besides the use of kin terms. It may lead to an especially close
friendship (Gubser 1965:162) or entail responsibilities for eco-
nomic support (Guemple 1965:326-327). The extreme indul-
gence shown to Eskimo children is also sometimes explained
in terms of the name-soul belief: punishing the child would be
an affront to the deceased person for whom the child was named
(Stefansson 1951:398-400; Thalbitzer 1941:600). The Utku,
however, usually explain their indulgence of children in differ-
ent terms; and though I did not inquire concerning ideal be-
havior associated with the Utku name-relationship, in practice
I noticed no special behavior between name-sharers, other
than the use of the name-sharing term in address and reference.
In any case, the complexities of name-relationships do not
obscure the all-important bond among those who consider them-
selves ilammarigiit (real family). In one context—when talking
about kinship terms—the expression ilammarigiit may be used
synonymously with ilagiit (family in general) to refer to all rel-
atives to whom one is linked, or assumes one is linked, genea-
logically. But in other contexts, when talking, for example, about
sharing property, ilammarigiit is defined more narrowly, as an
extended family consisting of genealogical or adoptive siblings
(nukariit) and the children of those siblings. To be sure, the
Utku are no less flexible in matters of kinship than in other mat-
ters. Residence and personal likes and dislikes are both impor-

38 Never in Anger
tant in determining whether a potential bond will be activated
or ignored. When I inquired about relatives who had moved
away, I was told, “We don’t use kin terms for those people; they
don't live here.” One elderly man did not know by what term he
would address his genealogical sister if she should return; he
could not recall her name, either, because she had married and
moved away before he was born. My data seem to indicate, too,
that bonds between the children of siblings tend to weaken
after the death of the connecting relative or relatives. But what-
ever the precise composition of the ilammarigiit in a particular
case, it is in most contexts a subcategory of ilagiit (family in
general). And it is in this sense that I shall use the term through-
out the book. People outside the ilammarigiit are considered
“less real” or “not real family” (ilammarilluangngittut or ila-
mmaringngittut), even though, because of shared names or
because of distant or putative consanguineal relationship, these
outsiders are addressed by the same kin terms that are used for
“real family.” Whenever possible, it is with their “real family”
that people live, work, travel, and share whatever they have.
Moreover, it is only with their “real family” that they appear to
feel completely comfortable and safe.'2
When I lived with them, the Utku were divided into three kin
groups, whose central figures were, respectively, Pala and
Qavwvik (both elderly widowers) and Nilak (a married man of
about forty). Of these groups, Pala’s was the largest. Whereas in
1963 Nilak’s and Qavwvik’s families each had a core member-
ship of three persons, Pala’s kin numbered sixteen and com-
prised three households: Pala’s own, and those of his older half-
brother, Piuvkag, and his nephew-cum-son-in-law, Inuttiaq.
Piuvkaq and his wife were frail with age and illness (“tired,”
the Eskimos called it) and so were dependent on Pala’s help, the
more so, as they had no grown son or son-in-law to support them.
Inuttiaq, like Nilak, was a vigorous man of about forty. He was
related to Pala in two ways: as the son of one of Pala’s brothers

12. Hereafter, I shall refer to members of an ilammarigiit or “real famil: |

in various ways: as “kin” or “close relatives,” as a “kin group” or as an “extend
family.” When I use the unqualified term “family,” it may refer either to an i
mmarigiit (an extended family) or to one of the nuclear families #F-* mmr
the latter. Which is meant should be clear from the context.
 and as the husband of Pala’s eldest daughter, Allaq. In addition,
Pala’s son Mannik was Inuttiaq’s close friend; so Inuttiag’s
household and Pala’s were inseparable. Pala had a second son-
in-law, too, a young man in his twenties named Ipuitug, whom
he would have liked to count among his own. But Ipuitugq, being
a half-brother to Qavvik, had divided loyalties and was not al-
ways as obedient to Pala as the latter would have liked.
There were in addition two other households who, departing
from their usual pattern, camped with the Utku during the first
of the two winters I spent with them, but the Utku considered
these families to be “not real Utku,” in one case because the
head of the household, Uyuqpa, though married to an Utku, was
himself a Netsilingmiutag; in the other because the head,
Kuuttig, though born an Utku, had become a Catholic and was
now tied more closely to Catholic Netsilingmiut in Gjoa Haven
than to Anglican Utku in Chantrey Inlet. These two peripheral
households constituted a fourth kin group, because Uyuqpa’s
wife was the mother of Kuuttiq’s wife; and there were also bonds
of a complicated nature between them and Qawvik’s family.
Though, as I have said, all three kin groups were interrelated
in various ways, and clear lines were hard to draw, each never-
theless considered itself somewhat separate from the others,
and frequently separated itself physically. When the Utku dis-
persed to their spring and summer camps, each of the three kin
groups tended to go its own way, and when two or more shared
the same campsite, as they did in the winter and occasionally
at other seasons, one could usually see the lines between them
in the spacing of the iglus or tents. Ipuituq’s household, drawn
both to Pala and to Qavvik, lived sometimes with one man,
sometimes with the other, and occasionally by itself.

40 Never in Anger
 Inuttiaq

The autumn camp in which I was deposited on my arrival at

Back River consisted entirely of members of Pala’s family group.
And it was with Pala’s (more precisely with Inuttiaq’s) family
that I was destined to remain during my year and a half at Back
River.
I had been camped at the Rapids for a week when the caribou
hunters returned—first Nilak’s family, then, two days later, In-
uttiaq’s. And within another day or two Inuttiaq had adopted
me. Inuttiaq was to become the most significant figure, both
personally and anthropologically, in my life at Back River.
When I think of him now, my feelings are a complex blend of
admiration, affectionate gratitude, and a helpless desire to com-
pensate him somehow for the difficulties that my un-Eskimo
behavior created for him and his family. At the time, however,
my predominant feeling toward him was, all too frequently,
irritation. Inuttiaq was not a typical Utku: he was more assertive
than most, and from the outset I came into conflict with this
quality in him. But it was from Inuttiaq that I learned most about

4l
 the ways in which the Utku express their feelings toward one
another. It was partly his very atypicality that made it possible
for me to learn from him what the proper patterns are. Most
other Utku were so well controlled that my untutored eye could
not detect their emotions. But Inuttiaq was, if I have read him
correctly, an unusually intense person. He, too, kept strict con-
trol of his feelings, but in his case one was aware that something
was being controlled. The effort of his control was caught in the
flash of an eye, quickly subdued, in the careful length of a pause,
or the painstaking neutrality of a reply. Occasionally, when he
failed to stay within acceptable bounds of expression, I learned
from the disapproval of others what behavior constitutes a lapse
and how disapproval is expressed. Living in Inuttiaq’s own
dwellings, as I did for two winters, I watched him with others:
as father and husband, as host to his neighbors, and as religious
leader of the community. The turbulence of my own relationship
with him also gave me many opportunities to observe his efforts
at control. By seeing what annoyed him in my behavior, what
pleased him and made him feel proud or protective, I learned
how he showed these feelings and how he tried to influence my
feelings or control their expression.

I. Dominance and Intensity

In a society in which people seem to blend harmoniously with
the brown tundra, Inuttiaq stood out. In a different society he
might have been a leader; but Utku society allows little scope
for would-be leaders. The Utku, like other Eskimo bands, have
no formal leaders whose authority transcends that of the separate
householders. Moreover, cherishing independence of thought
and action as a natural prerogative, people tend to look askance
at anyone who seems to aspire to tell them what to do.
Neither was Inuttiaq a man of informal influence. Sometimes
an Eskimo who has a reputation for wisdom, for skill in hunting
or in other matters, may acquire influence within the band; he
will be known as an ihumataaq (one who has wisdom) and his
views may weigh more than other men’s, when plans are being
made. But Inuttiaq, although perfectly capable of keeping his
family fed, was not remarkable for his hunting ability, nor were

42 Never in Anger
his opinions particularly prized. The one outlet he had for lead-
ership was provided by the Anglican church. He acted as the
band’s lay leader, conducting the triweekly church services and
the occasional funeral, and reading prayers over sick people if
called to do so. For the rest, he stood out solely on account of
his individual style.
There was nothing mild about him. Even in photographs his
personality is so vividly communicated that people who have
never seen Eskimos single him out of a group, asking who he is.
I, too, noticed him before I knew who he was. I had been waiting
with considerable suspense for his return to the Haqvaqtuuq
camp, wondering whether I might find in him my Eskimo father.
Nilak, my other potential father, had already returned to camp
and, I am sure with an eye to my tea and tobacco, had been most
hospitable in offering to adopt me. However, both because of his
socially peripheral position in the group (he was even camped
on the opposite side of the river from the other households) and
because the doubts concerning his wife, Niqi, which I had ac-
quired from Ikayuqtuq’s criticisms now had derived substance
and strength from my negative first impressions, I had postponed
making a decision until Inuttiaq should return.
When I was called from my tent by the announcement that
Inuttiaq had arrived, I found the camp in turmoil: dogs burdened
with back packs, tent poles, and cooking pots milled around the
tents and were discouraged from thieving entry by shouts and
well-aimed rocks. The number of the newcomers was magnified
in my view by their strangeness and by the uproar; but confused
though I was, my eye was drawn to a man of about forty, who
stood with straight barbaric arrogance (so my fieldnote de-
scribed it), surveying the commotion. My instant premonition
was chilling; I determined on the spot that under no circum-
stances did I want to live in that man’s household. It was, of
course, Inuttiaq.
I thought him haughty and hostile in appearance, very un-
Eskimo in both feature and expression. He did not smile; he
looked hard at me in the few moments before we were intro-
duced, making no move. He did smile as we shook hands, but I
could not read in the smile either the warm friendliness or the
gentle shyness that I had come to expect from unknown Eski-

Inuttiaq 43
 mos. Later I found that Inuttiaq did have great warmth; I had a
glimpse of it that first day when I watched him greet his small
daughter Raigili. They shook hands in silence, but there was
affectionate softness in Inuttiaq’s eye as he looked at her. Never-
theless, the predominant impression was of a harsh, vigorous,
dominant man, highly self-dramatizing; a personality set off al-
most as sharply as that of a kapluna against the backdrop of his
self-effacing fellows. Kaplunas, in general, with their aggres-
sively loud voices, vigorous, jerky gestures, and noisy bravado
create a highly discordant impression in an Eskimo group. Toa
lesser extent, so did Inuttiaq, even though, if one analyzed his
voice and gestures they were Eskimo, not kapluna.
When kapluna sportsmen visited the Inlet during the summer,
it was Inuttiaq who initiated most of the Eskimo visits to the
kapluna camp and who took charge of distributing to the other
households the boatload of food the kaplunas left for the Eskimos
on their departure. Indeed, he was so much more self-assertive
in his trading than either Nilak or Pala that some of the kaplunas
felt quite chary of him and protective toward the other Eskimos.
I do not mean that he was aggressive in the way a kapluna
would have been; he expressed dissatisfaction with a poor trade
only when I encouraged him to do so, and then in the most tenta-
tive way. Once a kapluna offered Inuttiaq pink beads when he
had asked for tea and tobacco, and I asked Inuttiaq: “Is it
enough?” Inuttiaq looked uncomfortable and said, “Almost
enough—just a little bit more, maybe.” But instead of shyly
retreating as others did when confronted by the language bar-
rier, he played clown and communicated in pantomime. He was
always in the forefront of the group of men who were displaying
their articles for trade and he, unlike the others, was never loath
to state what he wanted in exchange for his bone toys. And
whereas other men presented an amiably acquiescent face to a
drunken sportsman who patronized them, Inuttiaq quietly re-
fused to shake hands. He stood with his hands at his sides, just
smiling slightly.
Later, innumerable small incidents contributed to strengthen
my initial impression of Inuttiaq’s self-dramatization. There
was the forceful way he drove his dogs, his voice rising and fall-
ing at top volume over several octaves as he told them pic-

44 Never in Anger
turesquely what he thought of their slowness, their contrariness,
or the odor of their feces. “Smells like sugar!” he would roar,
then turn to his passengers and laugh. I noted the commanding
jerk of his chin as he whistled an inattentive congregation to its
feet at the start of a church service, instead of quietly saying to
its members, “May you stand up”; his habit of reserving his
best laughter for his own jokes (which were exceptionally nu-
merous and often exceptionally lewd); and his way of intro-
ducing himself at the beginning of a tape-recording session: “T,
Inuttiaqg, am going to speak,” or (when I taped a church service)
“Inuttiaq is leading.” No one else ever gave his name when
recording or volunteered to sing a song he did not know just for
the sake of being heard. Inuttiaq was also one of the very few
people who was positively eager (as distinct from merely willing)
to have his picture taken; the other two who displayed similar
eagerness were Inuttiaq’s elderly father-in-law, Pala, and the
former’s three-year-old daughter, Saarak. Pala and Saarak would
come to join any group at which I aimed my camera. Inuttiaq
asked me to take a picture of him for him to keep, and he posed
for it with care, planting himself, very erect, next to his lead
dog and calling for his ice chisel and scoop to hold.
The theatrical quality of his manner is typified for me by his
retum one winter morning from a two-week trading trip to Gjoa
Haven. He arrived while the camp was asleep and so was not
greeted as usual by dark knots of people clustered outside the
iglus to watch him anchor his sled with a flourish at the foot of
the slope. I woke to hear a most tremendous pounding of fist
and snow knife on the wooden inner door of the iglu, a banging
much greater than necessary to unstick it from its icy frame; he
might have been sounding brasses. Then, crawling through, he
heaved himself up and stood very straight and solid in his snow-
encrusted furs, staring at us from under icicled lashes, as if an-
nouncing by his bearing: “HERE AM I Ly?
I quickly came to share the Utku view of Inuttiaq’s preten-
tiousness and his antics. People considered him a show-off.
No derogatory reaction was ever visible when he was present,
and one sometimes heard people commend him for being a
great joker and very funny ( tiphi). His reputation as a joker
had even reached Gjoa Haven; it was the first thing I heard

Inuttiag 45
 about Inuttiag on my way to Back River. People laughed with
merriment when he played his favorite comedian role—making
faces, grabbing playfully for adolescent penises, or graphically
describing the size and shape of his feces or the life history
of his urine—but behind his back they also gossiped about his
fondness for being at the center of the stage. “He is not very shy
(kanngu),” they would remark.
Nevertheless, Inuttiaqg was considered a fine person. It
seemed to me curious that it should be so in a society that places
a high value on mildness and gentleness. Perhaps it was partly
that people enjoyed watching Inuttiagq play a role that they
themselves would have liked to play. Very important, too, I
think, was the fact that control of temper is a cardinal virtue
among Eskimos, and Inuttiaq never lost his temper.
This was a remarkable feat if my impression is correct that in-
ternally Inuttiaq was a highly tempestuous man. Perhaps it was
partly his self-dramatizing behavior that gave that impression
when contrasted with the much milder, retiring manner of the
others. Partly, too, it was the unusual ferocity of his dog-beating.
All the Utku beat their dogs; they saw it as a necessary disci-
plinary measure: “We all do it; we know it makes the dogs be-
have; everybody knows it,” they emphasized in justification.
They beat them with boots, rocks, frozen fish, hammers, tent-
poles, or anything else that came to hand, and as the dog was
usually chained or harnessed, escape was impossible. They got
a good deal more than pedagogical satisfaction out of the process,
too; I saw gleaming eyes and smiles of delight as dogs cowered
and whined with bruises and bloody heads. I also saw a woman’s
face absolutely set and expressionless as she pounded and
pounded a thieving dog from a distance of two or three feet
with a boulder, which she picked up and threw again every time
it bounced off the animal’s ribs. But Inuttiaqg sometimes beat his
team mercilessly for no offense whatever. One day he broke a
tentpole over the back of one dog because the team, having had,
as usual at that season, nothing to eat for two or three days, was
howling in anticipation of an approaching armload of ptarmigan.
No power on earth could have stopped the team from howling
at that moment, but Inuttiaq beat them, anyway.
Inuttiag also had extremely violent fantasies, full of stabbings,

46 Never in Anger
whippings, and murders. He usually voiced them on occasions
when he felt helpless to cope with kaplunas. I do not know that
these fantasies were peculiar to him. Others may have shared
his views; but Inuttiaq was the only one who expressed them
to me.
Moreover Inuttiag, far more frequently than other adults,
had audible nightmares. Young children often had them: dread-
ful nightmares from which there was no waking them. Inuttiaq’s
six-year-old daughter, Raigili, often screamed and sobbed in her
sleep, raising her head from the pillow and writhing in a most
agonized way, while her parents pummeled her and shouted at
her to go to sleep, usually to no avail. She never woke; her
sobs gradually subsided as she slept. It is Utku belief that only
children have nightmares, and indeed all of the adults I knew
except Inuttiaq slept extremely quietly. I asked an old lady one
day if adults ever had nightmares; she laughed heartily and
joked: “That would be frightening (kappia)! Are you going to
have nightmares here?” But Inuttiaq slept restlessly and often
talked in his sleep in an anxious, defensive tone; I could not
understand the words.
Other people seemed to have a sense, similar to mine, of
Inuttiaq’s inner intensity. They feared him for the very reason
they admired him: because he never lost his temper. They
said that a man who never lost his temper could kill if he ever
did become angry; so, I was told, people took care not to cross
him, and I had the impression that Allaq, his wife, ran more
quickly than other wives to do her husband’s bidding.
Looking back, I wonder if Inuttiaq might have been partially
aware of people’s fear of him. It occurs to me that a desire to
reassure people, in addition to the obvious desire to attract
attention, might have been one of the motives behind his joking.
One day when he was teasing a fourteen-year-old by grabbing
for his penis—a favorite game of his, and his alone—he said to
me: “I’m joking; people joke a great deal. People who joke are
not frightening (kappia, iqhi).”
The feeling Inuttiaq was expressing is one that is very charac-
teristic of Eskimos: a fear of people who do not openly demon-
strate their good-will by happy (quvia) behavior, by smiling,
laughing, and joking. Unhappiness is often equated with hostil-

Inuttiaq 47
 ity (ningaq,' urulu) in the Eskimo view. A moody person may
be planning to knife you in the back when you are out fishing
with him, claiming on return that you drowned. In the old days
he might have been plotting to abscond with your wife—a
common occurrence prior to the introduction of Christ and
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Even without harboring
specific evil designs an unhappy person may harm one, merely
by the power of his moody thoughts. It is believed that strong
thoughts (ihumaquqtuuq) can kill or cause illness; and people
take great pains to satisfy others’ wishes so that resentment
will not accumulate in the mind. A happy person, on the other
hand, is a safe person. I wondered whether Inuttiaq felt an
exceptionally strong need to show himself a happy person be-
cause he was not.

II. Religious Leader: Assertiveness

The quality of Inuttiaq’s assertiveness, and the community’s
reaction to it, appeared clearly in the manner in which he ex-
ercised his religious leadership. The Utku have been exposed
to a minimum of missionary influence, so little that in Ottawa,
in Cambridge Bay, and even in Gjoa Haven I had been told
by knowledgeable kaplunas that the people were pagan. My
first hint that this was not the case came from Ikayuqtuq in
Gjoa Haven, who told me that the Utku, far from being pagan,
were “too religious.” They are devout, if not exactly orthodox,
Anglicans, and their religion is one of the two or three central
interests in their life (others being hunting-and-fishing, and
eating). They were converted to Christianity some twenty-
five or thirty years ago, largely through contact with Christian
1. At the time this fieldwork was done (1963-1965) I was under the impres-
sion that there was just one word, ningaq(tuq), which meant both “he is angry”
and “he fights.”” On my return visit to the Utku in 1968 I discovered that I was
mistaken. These two ideas are conveyed by two different words: ningaqtuq,
which can be glossed as “‘he fights,” and ningngaktugq, “he is angry.” In spite
of this error, I have decided to leave the base ningaq in the text, considering that
this is preferable to giving no indication at all of the Utku concept to which the
text refers. The reader should bear in mind, however, that wherever the base
ningaq occurs in the text it may represent either the word ningaqtuq or the word
ningngaktuq, and in no case do I know which of these words was actually used
by the Utku speaker.

48 Never in Anger
Eskimos whom they met on trading trips to Repulse Bay and
Baker Lake. Occasional white missionaries, Catholic and
Anglican, had passed through Chantrey Inlet on proselytizing
trips, but none had ever stayed with the Utku. The nearest res-
ident missionaries were in Gjoa Haven: a European Catholic
priest and the Eskimo deacon, Nakliguhuktuq. Nakliguhuktug
was responsible in turn to a kapluna missionary in Spence Bay,
a community somewhat under a hundred miles northeast of Gjoa
Haven. One or the other of these men made the long trip down
by dogsled to visit the Utku once every year if possible (it often
was not possible), and it was Inuttiaq’s job to conduct the every-
day religious observances of the band under Nakliguhuktuq’s
tutelage.
I never found out how Inuttiaq had been chosen lay leader.
Nakliguhuktuq did not know, either. I gathered that Inuttiaq
had been leader for two years or less at the time I came there.
Two, and possibly all three, of Nilak’s brothers had preceded
him, but when two of these men died and the third was hospital-
ized for treatment of tuberculosis, Inuttiaq became the leader.
Inuttiaq’s duties were to conduct two services on Sunday,
at 11 A.M. and at 7 P.M., and a prayer meeting on Wednesday
evening at seven. Deviations from this ideal pattern were
frequent, however. Inuttiaq canceled or rearranged services
not only when practical exigencies required but also when
it suited his personal inclination. If it got dark at five o’clock
and fuel was scarce, or merely if Inuttiaq were impatient, we
would pray at four instead of at seven; and if someone happened
to be busy building an iglu on Wednesday we could pray just
as well on Thursday. Inuttiaq sometimes decided not to hold
services, saying that he was tired or had a bad cough. Occasion-
ally, when he was planning to leave for Gjoa Haven on Monday,
he would even cancel a Sunday service in order to prepare the
dog food for the trip, in spite of the fact that work of any sort
was forbidden on Sunday. At other times he gave no expla-
nation at all for omitting a service. No one ever inquired or com-
mented.
Such irregularity was perfectly in line with the pragmatic
adaptability that characterizes much of Eskimo behavior. If
circumstances make it difficult to realize a plan, well, it can’t

Inuttiaq 49
 be helped (ayuqnaq). But I read more than pragmatism into
Inuttiaq’s behavior. I was annoyed by an intuition that when
he exercised his prerogative in ordering religious observances
he enjoyed the power inherent in his right to direct community
behavior. He held the community in his hand, and it seemed
to me that he savored the fact in a way that was quite improper
in Eskimo eyes. It is difficult in retrospect to say exactly what
gave me that impression. I question whether perhaps I saw
Inuttiaq’s motives through the blur of my own dislike of arbitrary
orders. There was little to criticize in the manner in which he
made and communicated his decisions. When he dismissed the
congregation, saying, “We aren’t going to pray today; I have
a cough,” his quiet matter-of-factness was exemplary. Yet others
besides myself had the impression that Inuttiaq enjoyed telling
them what to do; they complained to Nakliguhuktuq that
Inuttiaq was overzealous in his attempts to regulate their be-
havior.
Sunday was Inuttiaq’s day of leadership. I felt the weight
of his presence more on that day than on others, possibly be-
cause work was forbidden on Sunday, so he was more at home.
Possibly, too, the fact that Anglicanism is uncongenial to me
increased the oppressiveness of the atmosphere. I object more
powerfully to being told to say “amen” than I do to being told
to make tea.
The day used to begin pleasantly enough. We slept later
than usual, as there was no need to harvest the daylight hours.
Similarly, because there was no rush, the usual three or four
mugs of morning tea might be followed by a kettle of coffee,
if we had any. Coffee in turn was followed by the element of
Anglican ritual that held strongest appeal for me: a wash and
hair-combing. The iglu smelled delightfully of soap on Sunday
mornings. The only drawback to the procedure was that all the
dormant itch in my scalp was roused by the combing. There
was nothing to prevent one from washing one’s hands and face
or combing one’s hair in midweek, too, but usually people did
not—except for the young girls who, perhaps for the friend-
liness of it, liked to comb each other’s hair out and rebraid it.
Inuttiaq’s daughter Saarak almost always objected violently
to having her hair braided. Allaq, her mother, lulled her by

50 Never in Anger
talking to her throughout the process in a low, saccharine voice
whose flow never stopped, telling her how pretty she was going
to be and how lovable (niviuq) and cute, and how her father
and her mother’s brother and her mother’s sister were going to
see her and tell her how pretty and lovable and cute she was—
and so on and on till the braiding was accomplished. Then Allaq
would tell Saarak to show Inuttiaq the stiff new braids and
Inuttiaq would obligingly admire with a warm “‘vaaaaaa!”’
By this time people were usually beginning to gather for
church, which was held in our home unless one of the other
dwellings happened to be larger or better lit. Church was held
promptly at eleven by whichever of the three watches in camp,
Nilak’s, Inuttiaq’s, or mine, happened to suit Inuttiaq best.
If he was still washing or felt like having another cup of tea
when his watch said eleven, he went by mine, which was an
hour slower. It must be admitted, though, that he rarely kept
people waiting very long. He would order us, his wife and
daughters, to hurry up, and we would hastily straighten the bed-
ding and push the duffel bags to the wall to make room for the
women and children to climb onto the sleeping platform with
us. The men and boys stood jammed together on the floor, seats
of oil drums and boxes being brought only for a few of the older
men. Everybody in camp, except for the few Catholics, came
to church on Sunday mornings, so there were twenty-nine
people at church in our ten-foot iglu during my first winter there.
In the main, Inuttiaq imitated Nakliguhuktuq’s ritual and
manner in conducting a service. The various parts followed
one another in orthodox Anglican fashion; Inuttiaq read from
more or less the same passages as Nakliguhuktuq in the prayer-
book, used the same formulae in his extemporaneous prayers,
and painstakingly followed the weekly schedule of Bible
readings that was circulated to all outstations by the mission in
Spence Bay. Both Nakliguhuktuq and Inuttiaq created a tone
that was much less dramatic, more muted, and a tempo that was
slower than that of a kapluna service. I was reminded of Eskimo
services I had witnessed in Alaska. The leader’s presence never
dominated the congregation, as a kapluna clergyman’s does.
Hymns were announced and the sermons or textual explana-
tions delivered in a voice as quiet as inward musing.

Inuttiaq 51
 Inuttiaq preached very seldom, except when he had just come
back from visiting Nakliguhuktuq in Gjoa Haven, and his ser-
mons were necessarily less sophisticated than Nakliguhuktuq’s.
Nakliguhuktuq was well versed in Anglican doctrine; Inuttiagq,
like the other Utku, was relatively untutored. He almost always
covered the same basic points in his sermons, without elabora-
tion. Satan wants us (piyuma), he used to say, but God, who
loves (naklik) us as a father, will protect us as long as we pray,
regularly and don’t get angry (ningagq, urulu), steal, or lie. We
should try to learn more and more of God’s words—you should
and I should, too. Otherwise we will burn forever and it will
hurt very much. We all know that; you know it, and I, too.
It was some time before I realized that Inuttiaq did occasion-
ally preach, since he always did it after announcing the closing
hymn and without raising his eyes from the page. As the sermons
were always very short, I thought he was reading the words of
the hymn before starting to sing. Nakliguhuktuq’s manner of
preaching was equally quiet, but there was a difference; he, un-
like Inuttiaq, looked at his audience as he talked. At the time I
thought nothing of this difference; but now, fitting together the
bits and pieces of Inuttiaq’s behavior, I wonder whether it might
have been an unconscious suppression of a wish to impose him-
self, to dictate, that kept Inuttiaq’s eyes lowered.
In one other significant respect Inuttiaq’s manner of conduct-
ing the services differed from Nakliguhuktuq’s: Nakliguhuktuq
allowed the congregation to choose almost all of the hymns in
the two evening services; Inuttiaq almost always chose them
himself.
But it was not only the differences between Inuttiaq’s services
and Nakliguhuktuq’s that imbued the former with Inuttiaq’s
assertive spirit. The ritual elements that he chose to imitate and
his manner of teaching them to the other Utku were also signifi-
cant. I particularly remember two innovations in ritual: one in
Inuttiag’s own behavior, and a second that affected the whole
congregation. Though I am unsure of Inuttiaq’s reasons for mak-
ing these changes, it seemed to me in both cases that the effect
of his act was to enhance his visibility.
The change in Inuttiaq’s personal ritual occurred during my
first winter in Chantrey Inlet. We had moved church from our

52 Never in Anger
iglu to Pala’s because the latter was brightly lit by a gasoline
pressure lamp. Inuttiaq had recently returned from a trip to
Gjoa Haven where he had attended a service at Nakliguhuktuq’s.
Nakliguhuktuq held services in the large main room of his
house, which ordinarily served as living room, kitchen, and chil
dren’s bedroom. Within the limits imposed by these quarters,
he adhered as closely as he could to orthodox Anglican practice.
While the congregation gathered, Nakliguhuktuq used to sit
sociably at the kitchen table, which doubled as altar and prie-
dieu, but shortly before the service was to begin, he would dis-
appear into the little back bedroom. When he reappeared in his
white deacon’s robe, clasping his prayerbook formally in both
hands, the congregation rose and he announced the first hymn.
Inuttiaq, like Nakliguhuktuq, had used to sit chatting with the
congregation while they assembled; but after he came home
from his midwinter trip to Gjoa Haven, I noticed that he no
longer did so; though he had no robe to don, he now sat silently
at home, reading his Bible, ritually washing his hands or merely
idling, until the rest of us had had time to gather—and usually
to wait a little. Then he appeared and took his seat on the oil
drum reserved for him in the center of the floor, and the service
began.
I will never know what was in Inuttiaq’s mind when he made
this change, since, so far as I was aware, he himself never re-
marked on his innovation, nor did the others give any sign that
they had noticed it. To be sure, it must have seemed to Inuttiaq
only right and proper that the ritual behavior of Nakliguhuktuq,
the religious teacher, should be imitated. The Utku do have a
conception of propriety in religious behavior; in certain respects
they follow quite closely the proper Anglican procedures, re-
moving their caps or hoods in church, and praying with folded
hands and lowered head. Inuttiaq in a communicative moment
once showed me the way the Utku used to sing hymns in the
early days of their Christianity, jogging rhythmically from foot
to foot: ‘““We thought we should do it that way; we were very con-
fused,” he laughed, with some embarrassment, I thought.
But it seems to me that mere conscientiousness concerning
ritual detail is not enough to explain Inuttiaq’s innovation. As I
have said, Inuttiaq was often irregular in his adherence to ritual.

Inuttiaq 53
 I think, therefore, that his adoption of Nakliguhuktuq’s manner
of entry into church must have had a more personal meaning for
him, and three thoughts concerning this have occurred to me. ]
wonder whether perhaps he sensed in the act and found appeal-
ing its ritual meaning: the formalization of the religious role of
the lay leader and the separation of this role from his everyday
secular life as husband, father, and neighbor. A second possi-
bility is that he wished, unconsciously, to be more like the power-
ful leader he imagined Nakliguhuktugq to be. Inuttiaq, like other
Utku, appealed to Nakliguhuktug for support when neighbors
(and kaplunas) became too difficult to cope with; he believed
that Nakliguhuktug wielded a bigger whip and had the ear of
more powerful “kings” than he himself did. Might he not, then,
have wished to adopt Nakliguhuktuqg’s behavior as his own?
This second speculation, of course, would apply as well to any
behavior of Nakliguhuktuq’s that Inuttiaq adopted. My third
thought has reference specifically to Inuttiaq’s new manner of
entry and was inspired by the effect that the innovation had on
me when I first saw it. I sat among the women on Pala’s sleeping
platform, waiting for the service to begin. Inuttiaq was late. The
other women read their Bibles silently on either side of me or
exchanged quiet remarks with the men standing close and
patient in the tiny floor space. The gasoline lantern tacked to the
snow wall glared and hissed aggressively, melting the dome so
that it dripped coldly down our necks and messily onto our
prayerbooks, and soaked our parkas so that later they would
freeze. “Iq (ugh),” someone said in a neutral voice, and from the
block in readiness by the door cut a square of frozen snow to
attach as a blotter to the offending drip. The wooden door of
Inuttiaq’s iglu across the way slapped against its frame and foot-
steps creaked vigorously across the snow while the men squeezed
closer together on either side of the door to make room for
Inuttiaq’s entrance. Conversation stopped and eyes lifted from
Bibles as Inuttiaq dove with a flourish through the knee-high
entrance, stood for a moment to let the young men dust the snow
off his back, then took his seat with a smile and a joke on the
central oil drum. There was no doubt that Inuttiaq had arrived.
The effect of the other innovation I recall was equally assertive
to my eye. I am no more certain than in the other instance that

54 Never in Anger
Inuttiaq was motivated by a conscious desire to dominate, but
in this case the reaction of the congregation seemed to show that
the innovation offended their dignity as it did mine. Whereas
people took no overt notice of Inuttiaq’s new manner of arriving
in church, seeming to define it as Inuttiaq’s own business, it was
another matter when he tried to alter their behavior.
It happened in early November, after I had been at Back River
two months. The Utku had just assembled at the winter campsite
and we were holding our first service of the winter season, all
twenty-nine of us crushed into Inuttiaq’s ten-foot iglu, contorted
by the curving walls, by the uncomfortable proximity of foreign
elbows and feet, and by the attempt to avoid the most relentless
drips from the dome. It was under these awkward conditions
that Inuttiaq suddenly decided to bring our ritual more into line
with what he had observed in Gjoa Haven. Whereas previously
the whole service had been conducted without change of pos-
ture, the women sitting and the men standing or sitting as room
allowed, now we were to conform to more orthodox practice,
standing, sitting, or squatting (in lieu of kneeling on the snow
floor) during appropriate parts of the service.
I am not sure what triggered Inuttiaq’s decision; though he
had had many opportunities to observe the Anglican ritual in
Gjoa Haven, he had not been there since the previous spring.
The innovation seemed to be a spontaneous thought, as it oc-
curred not at the beginning of the service but toward its close.
Inuttiaq had conducted almost the entire service as usual: the
opening hymns, the responses, prayers, and Bible reading. Then,
as he opened the hymnbook for the closing hymns, he instructed
the congregation to stand. Everybody except Piuvkaq’s wife and
I obeyed. Huluraq was sitting on the edge of the sleeping plat-
form and could have stood up on the floor; but she was elderly
and frail. I was jammed against the sloping rear wall of the iglu
and could not have stood except curved double against the wall.
But my situation was different only in degree from that of the
other women who did stand on the sleeping platform; they too
had to stand with bent heads in what looked like a most uncom-
fortable position. Inwardly, I seethed at the “inconsiderateness”
of Inuttiaq’s order, but nobody protested.
Later, however, a reaction that looked to my foreigner’s eye

Inuttiaq 55
 like passive resistance gradually developed. What happened
during the first month following the innovation I do not know,
as I was away in Gjoa Haven. When I came back in mid-Decem-
ber I had the impression that standing for hymns, responses, and
the creed had become standard behavior. People stood, on the
whole, without being told to. But within a week of my return the
rebellion (if that is what it was) had set in. I do not know whether
I was the cause of the resistance; certainly I may have strength-
ened it by concurring in it. In any case, at each service now about
a third of the women in the congregation remained seated, and
by mid-January, services in which nobody at all stood alternated
with ones in which four women rose: three pious adolescent
girls and Nilak’s always unpredictable wife, Niqi. The end came
in February. For several services Inuttiaq seemed to ignore the
fact that the congregation remained seated; he made no sign
that they should rise. The following Sunday he whistled the
congregation up with an imperative jerk of his chin; but only the
three faithful young women, Inuttiaq’s young brother-in-law,
Ipuitug, and Niqi, obeyed. He never ordered them up again; the
status quo ante prevailed. And all without one word, to my
knowledge, being spoken.
This was not an isolated case; Inuttiaq’s other attempts to
influence Utku behavior and belief tended to meet equally sad
fates, except when he could credibly cite the higher authority
of Nakliguhuktuq and, through him, the authority of Goti (God).
The emphasis is on “credibly.” Though most of the Utku are
enthusiastic students of Anglicanism, they are not easily con-
vinced of the validity of new doctrines. The basic doctrines they
understand very well: that the many people who get angry, lie,
or steal are used by Satan as firewood and that the happy few
who refrain from such evil activities will be taken up to heaven
by Jesus when He returns. They know that shamans
are to be
feared (kappia, iqhi) because their power is from Satan,
but that
they need not fear as much as they used to
because Jesus has
more power than any shaman and he, like a
good elder brother,
“will love (naklik) and protect us if we pray.”
I found that
people freely admitted that their knowledge of
the Bible and of
the proper Anglican behavior prescribed
by the Bible was still
limited, and they were eager to learn.
They liked to be certain,

56 Never in Anger
however, that the doctrines they were taught really originated
with the Lord and not with some overbearing minion with an
urge to tell other people what to do. Local voices were suspect.
Nakliguhuktuq, on the other hand, was trusted to speak for God
and not to lie for the purpose of self-aggrandizement. But so
great was the reluctance to be led by mortal man that people
were careful to make certain I knew it was not Nakliguhuktuq
himself they were attending to; Nakliguhuktuq was only ex-
pounding the Lord’s words as written down in the religious
texts by God’s people in heaven “because they love and care
for (naklik) us.” All words found in the Bible, prayerbook, and
hymnal were to be faithfully believed, whereas those in my
Eskimo-English dictionary which, they knew, had been pub-
lished by the Oblate Fathers, were in mortal error.
Inuttiaq was the first to insist that he learned his doctrines
from Nakliguhuktug and through Nakliguhuktug from God, but
sometimes the community seemed unwilling to accept his state-
ment. “Have you heard?” he said once on his return from a
trading trip to Gjoa Haven, “Jesus says we should knock on iglu
doors before entering when we go visiting.” (Most iglus nowa-
days do have waist-high wooden doors if wood is available and,
as a result, are much warmer than in the past, when the entrance
was left open all day.) I asked Inuttiaq if Nakliguhuktug had said
this. “I heard it from Nakliguhuktuq,” he replied, “but it’s Jesus
who says we should do it.” For the next few days, whenever
anyone came in to visit, he reported the news to the visitor,
very matter-of-factly, as though he were reporting the day’s fish
catch. ‘Have you heard? When we visit we should knock; I
heard it.” And he added with a laugh, “Uyuqpa too.” Uyuqpa
was one of the less convinced Anglicans in the community; he
vacillated between Anglicanism and Catholicism, a fact that may
have exacerbated the dislike in which he was held because of
his bad temper.
But somehow the doctrine never gained a foothold in the
community. Uyugqpa was not the only one who ignored Inuttiaq’s
pronouncement. Nilak and Qavvik, leaders of the two other
family factions in the community, questioned it, but unfortu-
nately I did not know enough Eskimo at the time to understand
either the questions or Inuttiaq’s answers. Other people, when

Inuttiaq 57
 instructed, merely murmured “eeeee (yes),” indicating with the
customary bland impassive smile that they heard. Inuttiaq’s
wife, Allaq, alone of the people I observed, received the doctrine
with apparent enthusiasm, helping Inuttiaq to instruct her
younger sisters and me. But as she rarely went visiting except
to Pala’s household, which had no door that winter, she had no
occasion to put the doctrine into practice. Once in a while during
the next few weeks, Inuttiaq’s good friend Mannik, and once
Mannik’s brother Putuguk, both humorous young men, did
knock when they came to visit us, then entered, laughing.
Whether they were obliging Inuttiaq or teasing him, I do not
know. But within six weeks the only sound that announced a
visitor was the approaching creak of his feet on the hard-frozen
snow.
A year later, when I went back to Gjoa Haven, I inquired into
the origin of the doctrine that Inuttiag had tried unsuccessfully
to introduce at Back River. I found that Ikayuqtuq and Nakli-
guhuktuq had decided it would be a good idea to teach the Gjoa
Haven Eskimos something of kapluna manners so they would not
annoy kaplunas, like the priest and the teacher, by walking un-
announced into their houses. Moreover, said Ikayuqtuq, “people
are beginning to be shy about having others see them when
they’re sitting on the urine pot; and if people knock before they
come in, one can get ready.” The suspicions of the Utku were
well-founded; Jesus had nothing to do with the doctrine in its
original form. And Inuttiaq had not heard the teaching from
Nakliguhuktugq at all, but from Nilak’s brother, who was living
in Gjoa Haven.
The question is, how did Jesus come to be associated with the
teaching in Inuttiaq’s mind? Did Inuttiaq—or Nilak’s brother—
misunderstand the informal nature of Nakliguhuktuq’s sugges-
tion to the Gjoa Haven Anglicans, confusing his secular with his
religious teachings or assuming that because it was Nakli-
guhuktugq, the missionary, who spoke, the words were therefore
from God? Or do all rules, of whatever source, ultimately have a
religious sanction? Perhaps the Utku do not make the distinction
we do between religious and secular rules. This possibility
occurred to me on another occasion when Inuttiaq told me that

58 Never in Anger
the police and God forbid the shooting of musk oxen except in
case of starvation.
A fourth possibility is that Inuttiaq consciously or uncon-
sciously embroidered Nakliguhuktuq’s dictum in order to pre-
sent it with greater forcefulness to the community. There were
a number of occasions on which Inuttiaq appealed to an imagi-
nary superior power to support him; and I think that this be-
havior may have been characteristic not of Inuttiag alone but of
people in his position of religious leadership. In the old days it
was not unusual for a shaman to elaborate on the formal funda-
mentals of belief to enhance his own power or prestige, or to
strengthen the force of his words; and in more recent times,
Anglican lay leaders have done the same thing. It was said that
one of Inuttiaq’s predecessors used to make journeys into the sky
to talk to God, and he once preached to the Utku that if they
persisted in pagan ways a very black man would come and eat
them. In this case, too, people were skeptical; they searched
their Bibles to see if it were true, and when they found nothing
they wrote for confirmation to the kapluna missionary in Spence
Bay.
The most dramatic instance of Inuttiaq’s appeal to superior
force was the time he was lecturing me on his role as religious
leader. Nakliguhuktuq had appointed him king over the Utku,
he told me; the deacon had told him that if people resisted his,
Inuttiaq’s, religious teachings, then Inuttiaq should write to him
and he would come quickly and scold (huaq) the disbelievers.
Moreover, Inuttiaq added, “If people don’t want to believe
Nakliguhuktug either, then Nakliguhuktuq will write to Cam-
bridge Bay, and a bigger leader, the kapluna king in Cambridge
Bay, will come in an airplane with a big and well-made whip and
will whip people. It will hurt a great deal.”

Il. Father to Kapluna: Protective Dominance

Self-assertiveness was not Inuttiaq’s only salient trait. As hus-
band and father he showed a much gentler face than he did as
religious leader; even his authority when expressed toward his
wife and children was molded into a strong protectiveness. In

Inuttiaq 59
 adopting me, he extended his fatherliness toward me, as well.
The manner in which the adoption was carried out—indeed, his
treatment of me from the very first—exemplifies the interplay of
warm concern and dominance that characterized his relation-
ships with his own family.
It was with characteristically Eskimo indirection that Inuttiaq
accomplished my adoption, but with the highhanded twist that
I later found to be his trademark. He and his family came to
visit me for the first time almost immediately on their return to
the Rapids following the autumn caribou hunt. As soon as their
tents had been set up, the dogs chained, and the welcoming tea
drunk in Pala’s tent, Inuttiaq’s sun-browned face appeared in
the crack of my tent flap. Behind him appeared all the rest of
his newly arrived family, accompanied by the already familiar
households of the two patriarchs, Pala and Piuvkaq. The four-
teen people silently filled my eight-by-ten tent to the point of
explosion; the canvas bulged, and I trembled for the primus and
cups balanced on a none-too-flat rock perilously close to the
shifting feet. But Inuttiaq very shortly had people sorted out
onto duffel bags and boxes, and I breathed safely again. In addi-
tion to Inuttiaq there were five strangers: Inuttiaq’s gentle-
smiling wife, Allaq, who, they said, was Pala’s eldest daughter;
Inuttiaq’s youngest daughter, Saarak, carried as always on her
mother’s back, inside her parka; Pala’s two adult sons, Mannik
and Putuguk, who had accompanied Inuttiaq on the hunt; and
Putuguk’s wife, Kanayugq, a girl remarkable for her cascading
giggle... usually directed at me. Saarak, gazing over her
mother’s shoulder, screamed with terror (kappia, iqhi) at the
strange kapluna and was put to nurse in the comfortable darkness
of her mother’s parka. Inuttiaq’s six-year-old daughter, Raigili,
who, rather against her will, had been left during the hunt in
the care of her grandfather, Pala, and her young aunts, had now
deserted Pala’s company for her father’s and was leaning against
his knee. J noted with surprise and a slight feeling of offense that
Inuttiaq seemed oblivious of her presence; but he allowed her
to lean.
I offered tea and bannock, a fried bread that is an arctic deli-
cacy not often enjoyed by the Utku during the long season of
open water when they are cut off from Gjoa Haven. Inuttiaq and

60 Never in Anger
Pala took care of the distribution, each man seeing first to the
wants of his small children and liberally covering their bannocks
with jam. Inuttiaq saw to it that I got a proper owner’s share (an
embarrassingly large one) of the feast, telling me to pour my tea
before my guests’ and not to distribute the last bannock but to
keep it for my breakfast. He was in general very much in charge,
then as on later occasions: suggesting that as my teakettle was
very small we would do well to make another kettleful; sending
one of the young men to fetch water for it from the river; offering
to light the primus stove, which I was quite capable of doing
myself; making sure I had a fresh fish for my breakfast and fillet-
ing it for me, which I was not quite so capable of doing myself.
He also constituted himself my language teacher, with laughing
assistance from the two young men, Mannik and Putuguk, who
served as his stooges. Together they acted out words while
Inuttiaq asked me, “What are we doing?” When I confessed
ignorance he would tell me the answer, speaking slowly and
clearly, paring all superfluous elements from the word, and
repeating with infinite patience until I had written down some
semi-intelligible variant of what he had told me: “He is jumping/
spitting/burping/lying-with-his-feet-toward-the-door/wrinkling-
his-nose,”” and so on. He was a jolly and ingenious teacher, but
he endeared himself to me even more by his imaginative capac-
ity for understanding my efforts to communicate. Indeed, all the
adults of the Piuvkaq-Pala-Inuttiaq contingent had an astonish-
ing ability to communicate with me, though at the time I knew
at most twenty words of Eskimo. Their perceptiveness was set
off the more vividly by the absolute lack of any such quality on
the part of Nilak’s household. Nilak, the other man who had
been suggested as a possible father for me, had returned from
caribou hunting two days before Inuttiaq and, like Inuttiag, was
eager to adopt me for the winter. The lengthy visits of Nilak and
his wife to my tent were always a misery to me. Not yet aware
of the friendliness of silence, I could only sit woodenly smiling,
with chilblained fingers tucked into my sleeves, alternately
shivering and brewing the kettles of tea that Nilak, it seemed to
me endlessly, hinted at, while I brooded on the alarming de-
pletion of my fuel supply.
Inuttiag and his family came to visit me at great length several

Inuttiaq 61
 times a day—oftener than Nilak, who lived on the far side of the
river; and with far more imagination than Nilak, Inuttiag courted
me as a daughter, by waiting on me, anticipating my every wish
and some that I did not have at all, by teaching, and by under-
standing me. Several times during this first day or two Inuttiagq
asked me whether I wanted to be his daughter; but still unsure
of the wisdom of being adopted by any family, I put him off,
telling him as well as I could that I would decide after a while.
Two or three days after Inuttiaq’s return to the Rapids, while
the decision was still unmade, I went to pay Inuttiaq’s family a
return visit. I had not been to his tent before, and my view of it
and its occupants was still that of a foreigner. It was a tiny ragged
tent, stained with turf and caribou blood. The worst rips had
been pulled roughly together with sinew, but drafts jabbed at
the dim flame in the lamp, intensifying the murkiness of the
place. I had a sinking impression of damp, sticky, animal filth:
greasy quilts, caribou bones, and remains of fish strewn on the
gravel floor. Involuntarily, my thought flew thankfully to my
own bright tidy new tent up on the bluff. The whole family was
at home, waiting for Allaq’s sister Amaaqtuq to brew the evening
tea. Allaq was skinning fish bellies to cook for oil and food; hold-
ing one end of the oval belly skin between her teeth, she pulled
it down to the ventral fins, bit each fin neatly through, and ripped
the skin the rest of the way off the flesh with four quick move-
ments; then she tossed the flesh into a fire-blackened oil-drum
pot. Her chin was shining with oil to which milky scales had
stuck. Inuttiaq was writing with a scrap of pencil on the salvaged
inner lining of a tea package, the paper carefully spread out on
the cover of his Bible. The children played around their parents,
and Pala sat on a rock by the entrance, visiting. Saarak, seeing
my strange face, screamed and ran to thrust her head, ostrich-
like, inside her mother’s parka; but Inuttiaq and Allaq wel-
comed me with warm smiles, and Inuttiaq indicated a seat ona
soft duffel bag, handing me his folded parka to make the seat
even softer. He told me that since Putuguk and his wife were
leaving the next morning for Kalingujat at the mouth of the river,
he was writing a letter to Nakliguhuktuq to send with them.
Perhaps one of the Gjoa Haven Eskimos fishing near Kalinguiat
would take the letter along when he went home later in the

62 Never in Anger
autumn. “I am telling Nakliguhuktuq that you are going to live
in my household; he wants to know.” I docilely agreed, and so
the decision was made.
My sense of relief told me then that for reasons both personal
and anthropological I had been leaning toward adoption by
Inuttiag’s household ever since they had arrived, in spite of
Saarak’s screams, my initial impression of Inuttiaq’s “arrogance,”
and my general qualms about the wisdom of being adopted at
all. Inuttiaq’s genial and patient helpfulness to me and Allaq’s
gentle warmth, appealing to a shame-faced wish to be taken
care of in that wild land, overruled my doubts—the more so
when contrasted with my growing feelings about Nilak and his
wife, Niqi. Not only was communication hopeless in their case;
I was also very much put off, I was ashamed to realize, by the
way Niqi giggled at me. Everybody laughed at me; she was not
unique in that; Putuguk’s young wife, Kanayuq, laughed with
her whole body. But whereas all the others laughed openly
and, I felt, warmly, Niqi tittered behind her hand and whispered
to the others. Fortunately for my prejudices, the suspicion that
I had earlier acquired in Gjoa Haven, to the effect that Nilak was
a relatively isolated member of the Utku band, had proved cor-
rect; his household was camped across the rapids, a quarter of a
mile or more from all the other households, which belonged to
Pala’s group. There was no question in my mind that both an-
thropology and I would benefit more if I lived with Inuttiaq.
Still, it was clear that it was Inuttiaq who had chosen me, rather
than vice versa.
When I accepted Inuttiaq’s pronouncement, he gave a quick
nod which I read as satisfaction and said with disarming warmth:
“Our daughter, have some tea.” In that moment the physical
surroundings that I had just been loathing faded in importance,
suddenly and permanently.
From that time on, I was “Inuttiaq’s daughter” in the com-
munity, insofar as I would permit myself to be so defined. With
much laughter I was taught the kinship terms by which it was
proper for me to address people: grandfather, mother’s brother,
little sister, and so on; it became a game, as it was with the tin-
iest children, to see whether I would recognize the terms—
though I noted that it was only my parents and sisters who used

Inuttiaq 63
 such terms with any consistency when addressing me. Mostly
the others addressed me by my own first name, “Yiini” in their
speech, and when they referred to me they called me “kapluna.”
Inuttiaq saw that I did not lack for fish, and Allaq sent me large
family-member-size hunks of caribou tallow, which was eaten
like candy, and which I, too, much later came to savor. Allaq also
became my “leader,” as a mother should; she decided the extent
to which I should be permitted to join the daily activities, an
extent determined by my limited abilities and stamina. She
took charge of my education, teaching me how to cut out fish
bellies (I never learned to skin them), how to scrape the caribou
hides that I would use as winter sleeping skins, and how to rec-
ognize the difference between brittle birch twigs good only for
firewood and new growth suitable for use as under-mats on the
sleeping platforms of the winter iglus. If I wandered away from
the others when we were out twig-gathering among distant
knolls, Allaq sent her sister Amaaqtuq after me to make sure I
did not lose my way; but she never told me she had done so; it
was Amaaqtuq who, a year later, told me about it.
Inuttiaq watched my progress as a daughter, sometimes ap-
provingly, sometimes not so approvingly, and I learned much
about equanimity from his reactions to my struggles. I found
skin-scraping more difficult to learn than some of the other skills,
as unaccustomed muscles were used; and my slowness was
aggravated by the frequent interruptions I made to record vocab-
ulary. Inuttiaq, coming in from a day’s fishing, would look at the
small square of skin I had scraped in his absence and say in a
neutral tone: “You have written more than you have scraped
today.”’ And he would sharpen the blade of my scraper encourag-
ingly. Occasionally, though skin-scraping is largely woman’s
work, Inuttiaq would even take the hide and work on it briefly
himself, showing me how to hold it and demonstrating how
much force I should exert. Once in a while, exerting a little too
much energy, he would push the blade through the hide by mis-
take instead of along its membranous surface. ‘““Eehee! I am a
bad person!” he would exclaim cheerfully, and laugh. When I
made the same mistake, as I often did in my clumsiness, my
exclamations reflected none of Inuttiaq’s equanimity—rather,
intense frustration, alarm, and sometimes poorly suppressed

64 Never in Anger
rage, born of the ridi¢ulous conviction that my sleeping skin was
all that stood between me and death from exposure. Once I
remarked that it was frightening to ruin one’s winter sleeping
skin by poking it full of holes, and Inuttiaq comforted me by
saying matter-of-factly, “It’s not frightening (kappia); the holes
can be sewn up.”
But my successes were also noted. When, forcing myself to
disregard my chilblained fingers, I joined the fish-gutting circle
on the icy beach, or when I carried home a heavy load of birch
twigs from a distant hill Inuttiaq looked on and a woman said
to me: “He is watching his daughter.”’ Once in a while on such
occasions he would look at me with warmth in his eyes and make
an approving remark of which I understood only the tone and the
word “‘daughter.”” And when in October I caught my first fish,
jigging as he had taught me through the ice, the pleasure in his
eyes and in his voice made me glow, though all he said was:
“You caught a fish.”
During the two years that I was Inuttiaq’s daughter, I felt this
warmth gratefully many times: when my nose turned dangerously
white with frost, Inuttiaq noticed and thawed it in his hand, al-
ways warmer than my own; if I innocently walked too close to
thin black ice, Inuttiaq warned me; if, when we moved camp,
no one offered to help me carry my heavy boxes to the sled or
canoe in which they would be transported, Inuttiaq saw and
directed one of the younger men or some of the older children
to help me. Looking back, I now realize with intense respect and
gratitude how very willing Inuttiaq was to adopt me as a daugh-
ter, not merely as a superficial gesture—for the novelty of being
father to a kapluna or to enjoy the rewards of my tea, tobacco,
and kerosene—but in a profoundly genuine sense, with responsi-
bility and warmth. I realize this with dismay, too, because I was
so much less able than he to fulfill the obligations of the relation-
ship. To be sure, unlike Inuttiag, I had to learn my role: he al-
ready knew how to be an Eskimo father; I did not know how to
be an Eskimo daughter, and the proper docility was hard to
learn.
My feelings toward Inuttiaq’s fatherliness were complex. |
was grateful for his many small solicitous acts: when he had
filleted my hard-frozen fish as he would have done for Saarak,

Inuttiaq 65
 I was only too happy to respond when he later asked for a hand-
ful of raisins “for Saarak” or told me to make bannock. But my
gratitude was sometimes soured by a suspicion that the respon-
sive warmth engendered in me by Inuttiaq’s concen had been
in a sense engineered by him. I felt his solicitude was prompted
partly by a wish, conscious or unconscious, to foster in me feel-
ings of obligation. When he was so fatherly he left me no alter-
native but to want to be daughterly—or to be needled by guilt
when I could not be. And I was irritated both by what I felt to
be a “crass” expectation of reciprocity and by the indirection
with which he phrased his wishes, so much more devious even
than the manipulative tact that annoys me in my own culture.
It rankled that he took for himself a small share of the raisins he
had asked “for Saarak”’; I asked myself why, if he was hungry for
raisins, he didn’t say so directly. And when he told me I was not
to go fishing with him because my feet would freeze or because
I would hurt myself when the sled bumped over rocks, I men-
tally accused him of using concern for me as an excuse for re-
lieving himself of unwanted company.
The situation became particularly tense when daughterliness
required that I submit unquestioningly to his decisions concern-
ing me. When, without explanation of any sort, he told me to
leave my precious fieldnotes in their heavy metal case and my
equally precious and unwieldy tape recorder on the top of a
knoll during flood season while we moved downriver for an
unstated length of time, I felt not daughterly trust but frightened
fury at the expectation that I should relinquish control to any-
one—least of all to one who, I could be sure, did not share my
view of the value either of material possessions in general or of
fieldnotes and tape recorders in particular. After I had learned
something of the language, I was sometimes so rude as to ques-
tion: how long would we be gone? and would the water reach
the knoll top when the river flooded? But I thought I read in the
terseness of Inuttiaq’s polite answer a controlled resentment at
my presuming to question his judgment.
I puzzled over how to interpret Inuttiaq’s treatment of me. It
occurred to me that my anxiety concerning dependence and my
dislike of deviousness were leading me to read more manipula-
tiveness and autocracy into Inuttiaq’s behavior than were there.

66 Never in Anger
 Did I only imagine that expectations of reciprocity underlay his
solicitude and that he used the latter as a cloak for the expression
of his own wishes? Did I imagine that Inuttiaq wanted unques-
tioning obedience from me? I think not. My intuitions were quite
consistent with others’ descriptions of Eskimos; the elements of
the situation: the strong value that Eskimos place on responsive-
ness to others’ needs and on reciprocity, the indirect manner in
which they habitually express their wishes, and the public sub-
ordination of women to men, have been remarked many times by
other observers (Freuchen 1961; Gubser 1965; Jenness 1922;
and Vallee 1962, among others). Though I have not seen de-
scribed the particular concatenations represented in Inuttiaq’s
behavior, I noted them many times among Utku other than Inu-
ttiaq, in situations in which I was not personally involved:
ee

kind, obliging behavior toward others was expected to generate

similar behavior toward oneself; concern for others was used as
ee

an excuse to obtain something for oneself; daughters did obey

their fathers without question.
—

But though I was ultimately convinced that the behavior that,

ve

in Inuttiaq, I defined as “manipulative” and “autocratic”” was

both real and Eskimo in its general shape, I am still unsure
whether in some elusive manner Inuttiaq infused the Eskimo
patterns with his own assertive spirit, whether in some subtle
ways he went too far in his dominance or exerted on me more
pressure than others did to be submissive.
It was an Eskimo friend in Gjoa Haven who initially led me to
suspect that this might be so. I had spent the month of November
1963 on holiday in Gjoa Haven, and now Inuttiaq had come to
fetch me, as he had reassured me he would “when we run out of
tea and tobacco.” My friend heard him tell me to get up at six
the next morning so we could make an early start on our long
sled trip to Back River. Waiting until he had left to go to bed, she
asked me: “Does he always order you around like that?” I hes-
itated, thinking of all his warm, helpful acts. “Sometimes,” I
said, “but he’s very good to me; he takes very good care of me.”
We continued to chew on the lining of my fur parka, which had
become rigid as wood because I had ignorantly kept it in a hot
dry house for three weeks. After a few minutes she said: “Do
you mind if I tell you something? Inuttiaq is a show-off. Maybe

Inuttiaq 67
 he likes to tell other people what to do.” I agreed inwardly that
that might be so, and from that time on for many months IJ al-
ways felt a cautious hesitation when he told me to do something:
was the order appropriate—legitimized by cultural expectations
—or was it an “Inuttiaq-order’’? Was he taking advantage of my
ignorance of proper fatherly behavior? Did he enjoy, perhaps a
bit too much, exerting power over a kapluna—a situation in
which the usual Eskimo-white relationship was reversed? |
wanted to be a good daughter, but I did not want to be used by
Inuttiaq for his own ends, however kind he was to me. I noted,
perhaps with exaggerated sensitivity, the tiniest differences be-
tween Inuttiaq’s behavior to me and that of other fathers to their
daughters. Other fathers issued orders with quiet confidence.
Inuttiaq’s orders were also quiet, but to my suspicious ear had
an added fillip of assurance. And whereas other fathers might
express concern with a question: “Are you tired? Shall I carry
your load?” Inuttiaq tended to do it with a command: “You are
tired; Mannik will carry that for you.” (It was characteristic of
Inuttiaq, too, that it was his cousin Mannik, about fifteen years
younger than himself, who was his best friend. Inuttiaq fed him,
joked with him, traveled with him as friends do—and ordered
him around as was his right as an older man.)
I could never be sure that the difference I sensed between
Inuttiaq’s fatherliness and that of other men was real, partly
because of my personal involvement in Inuttiaq’s behavior with
all the attendant feelings I have described, and partly just be-
cause I had much greater opportunity to observe Inuttiaq than
I had to observe other men. The hint given me in that conversa-
tion in Gjoa Haven was the only one I ever had from another
person; never once did I see a telltale flicker in an Utku eye
when Inuttiaq gave me an order. It was not proper to react
openly to interactions in which one was not directly involved.
But I did learn that Inuttiaq was not singling out his kapluna
daughter for special domination. When fourteen-year-old Kamik,
one of his favorite daughters, came home from boarding school
in May, I found that Inuttiaq was even more peremptory toward
her than he was toward me. He had been expecting the obedi-
ence of an adult daughter from me, but his directiveness had
been tempered by quick concern for my kapluna weaknesses—

68 Never in Anger
a concern that, of course, he did not need to show on Kamik’s
behalf. In this open solicitude he was treating me, I saw, much
as he treated his three- and six-year-old daughters—not as an
adult. I learned, too, in the last months of my stay, that by no
means all of Inuttiaq’s concern for me was dominating or ma-
nipulative. In those months, when I had nothing to offer him
materially and when, because of a misunderstanding, my com-
pany was anathema to him as it was to the rest of the community,
he nevertheless consistently warned me away from thin ice and
made sure that I had enough to eat and a warm place to sleep.

IV. Father to His Own Children: Affection

Inuttiaq’s warmth was most evident when he was with his own
children. Eskimos are reputed to be devoted to their children
and very indulgent of them, and the Utku are no exception. But
Inuttiaq had an unusual reputation for even-tempered affection.
Both his wife and his father-in-law told me several times what a
good father Inuttiaq was: “He loves (naklik) his children deeply;
he is never angry (ningaq, urulu) with them.” “Inuttiaq is the
only parent who is never angry with his children,” Allaq said.
And Pala said that because Inuttiaq was never angry with them,
his children loved (unga) him very much. It was highest praise.
Inuttiag and Allaq had had seven daughters, the last born
while I was with them, but three of these had died in infancy or
early childhood. I wondered sometimes how Inuttiaq felt about
the fact that he had no son. Utku, like many Eskimos, tend to
want sons perhaps more than daughters. Inuttiaq, as he himself
occasionally observed, had no one to help him in his work except
his young friend Mannik. Mannik’s primary obligation was to
his own father, Pala, and it was for Pala that Mannik traveled,
fished, and hunted; nevertheless it is possible that Inuttiaq’s
lack of a son intensified his fondness for Mannik; perhaps in
some small measure Mannik’s company was a compensation to
Inuttiag.
But if Inuttiaq inwardly wished for a son it did not seem to
detract from his affection for his four daughters. The warmth
Inuttiaq felt for these children charmed me totally, especially
as it was expressed toward the two youngest: Saarak and the

Inuttiaq 69
 newborn, Qayaq. At first it was sometimes more difficult for me,
as a foreigner, to perceive his affection for Raigili and for Kamik,
when she came home from school for the summer. It is toward
small children that Utku express affection (naklik, niviuq) most
openly, most completely. They are snuffed, cuddled, cooed at,
talked to, and played with endlessly, the men as demonstrative
as the women. In part, the tenderness felt for small children is a
protectiveness born of their smallness and helplessness. In
households where there are no small children, young puppies
sometimes receive the overflow of this desire to protect and
nurture; instead of being kicked and cuffed in the usual fashion
and turned out to fend for itself, a pup in such a household may
be as lovingly treated as a baby. The Utku have a word for ob-
jects that rouse their protective feelings: naklingnagtug (naklik),
“it is lovable or pitiable [the word has both connotations] and
to be taken care of.” This word is not restricted to small children
and pups, but is used for anything that one feels a desire to pro-
tect: a frost-bitten ear, a lone kapluna woman in the wilderness,
a person who is very sick. At least, sick Eskimos are nakling-
naqtuq; Inuttiaq told me that sick dogs are not, and he was not
sure whether sick kaplunas are: “Because I’ve never seen any
sick kaplunas,” he said.
There is also another word for objects that rouse affectionate
feelings, and this second word is largely restricted to small chil-
dren: niviuqnaqtug (niviuq), “charming.” Allaq once defined the
difference between the two words in this way: ““‘When somebody
is naklingnaqtuq one wants to feed him, keep him warm, keep
him safe; when somebody is niviuqnaqtuq one wants to kiss
him.” When children first begin to respond to others—when they
smile or gurgle, when they begin to try to talk or walk—they are
said to be niviuqnagqtuq, kissable. As they grow older they stop
being so charming, and gradually, in theory, they become a little
less naklingnaqtugq, too.
Theory does not prevent affections among the adults of a
family from being very strong; when Utku talk about their rela-
tionships with husbands or wives, parents and children, brothers
and sisters, it is clear that they often love (naklik) each other
deeply. But Utku do not feel altogether at ease with affectionate
feelings, other than those that are directed toward young chil-

70 Never in Anger
dren. Though, ideally, concern (naklik) for others is good and
commendable, nevertheless, among adults other values and feel-
ings conflict with affection, inhibiting both the feeling and the
expression of tenderness. One such conflicting value is that
placed on reason (ihuma). Adults are expected to keep their
feelings under the control of reason. The physical display of
affection among adults is considered unpleasant (hujuujaq) to
see, and the very feeling of affection (naklik, unga), when too
strong, is derogated because it is painful for the person who
loves. The person for whom concern is felt may also be of two
minds about it, because of the value placed on independence.
An Utku adult wants to be self-sufficient, and not a cause of con-
cern or an object of pity to others.
My first hint of these complicated attitudes about affection
(naklik) lay in a puzzling remark that my friends often made to
me. “We'll miss (hujuujaq) you when you first leave,” they used
to say warmly, and then they always added matter-of-factly:
“But it will be all right (naamak); only Saarak will be unhappy
(naamangngit), poor dear (naklik).” I never failed to be startled
when I heard this, and a little wounded. But I think really people
were reassuring me that I need not worry about causing them
pain when I left, because all of them who were old enough to
reason would understand and accept my departure. They were
expressing the facts as they saw them: emptiness does heal, and
it is good that it should be so.
The same attitudes are even more clearly expressed in the
idea of loving (naklik) someone “too much (-pallaaq-).” It was
Allag and Inuttiaq who described this to me. They were explain-
ing the feelings that parents have for their children, telling me
that the strong affection (naklik) one has toward a small child
gradually lessens as the child grows up. “But sometimes people
love (naklik) their grown-up children very much too,” said
Allaq, blushing. “My father, Pala, was like that; he used to love
me too much. But it’s all right now; he has stopped loving me so
much.”
Because the idea of loving a child too much struck me as
strange, I asked Inuttiaq and Allaq about it. Inuttiaq said, indi-
cating his daughters: “I love (naklik) Saarak and Kamik a little
bit more than I love Raigili and Qayaq. I love them too much.

Inuttiaq 71
 When I am away on trips, hunting or trading, I want to see them.
I sleep badly. When Kamik is away at school I miss her; it makes
me feel uncomfortable (ihluit, naamangngit). If I love a child
too much I am concerned (naklik) if she cries a lot; otherwise I
don’t mind (huqu). People don’t like to feel uncomfortable. If
one doesn’t love too much it is good.”
Inuttiaq may have regretted loving Saarak “too much,” but
I found his tenderness when he was with her very endearing.
His presence was important to her too. Though Saarak was con-
sidered too young to feel mature, protective affection (naklik),
people said of her love for Inuttiaq: “She wants to be with him
(unga).” She was always cranky when he was away on trips, cry-
ing over “who knows what,” as they said. Allaq explained then
that Saarak was lonely for her father. When he came home she
was transformed, bouncing with excitement and making sweetly
coy faces till he shook her hand and took her on his lap to kiss
her. He sometimes played with her and always at night he cud-
dled her beside him in bed, cooing at her tenderly as she slept.
One of the techniques for persuading Saarak to go to bed at night
was to tell her Inuttiaq wanted to nurse at her breast, which he
would jokingly pretend to do. For a while after her baby sister
was born Saarak would not go to bed at all unless Inuttiaq were
in bed to cuddle her.
Raigili was past the age of being kissed or held, but her life
also revolved around Inuttiaq. In January she drew me a picture
of the August afternoon when Inuttiaq had taken her fishing—
just the two of them in his canoe. One night she dreamt that he
had scolded (huaq) her; we found out about it the following
afternoon when, remembering the dream, she burst into tears.
At first, the seeming indifference of Inuttiaq’s treatment of
Raigili froze me. When she leaned against him or stroked his
hand, as she often did, he seemed not to notice her touch. When,
in bed beside him, she stroked his naked back softly, he would
occasionally tell her to scratch an inaccessible louse bite; but I
detected no tenderness in this command. As my eye grew ac-
customed, however, I saw affection in other acts: in the moun-
tains of jam he put on her bread and the two heaping spoonfuls
of sugar he put in her tea, in his making her a little sled and
straightening out the string figures in which her fingers were

72 Never in Anger
hopelessly tangled. Once in the spring when traveling was easy
he took her with him and Mannik on the long trip to Gjoa Haven.
I can imagine them crossing the empty white sea, Raigili a tiny
silent glowing-eyed bundle in a cocoon-quilt tied onto the top
of the sled load. She was only about five at the time.
Inuttiaq’s eldest daughter, Kamik, was, like Saarak, loved
(naklik) “‘too much.” Eldest children are often loved “too
much” among the Utku; they say it is because they look forward
so much to having children that when one finally comes it makes
them very happy (quvia). Kamik, at her own request and for the
first time, had gone away to school on the plane that took me in
to Back River in August 1963. One day in December, traveling
between Gjoa Haven and Chantrey Inlet, I happened to ask Inu-
ttiaq and his friend Mannik what they were talking about over
the evening meal. “About my affection (naklik) for Kamik,”
Inuttiaq said. In April they began to talk about her return for the
summer. Inuttiaq bought a sleeping bag for her and flannel for
a new parka cover. And for her arrival he saved cne of the eight
caribou he had killed the previous August. All through May we
waited for the government plane, but it did‘ not come. We did
not know that it was marooned for much of the month by bad
weather in Spence Bay. Inuttiaq thought that the plane might
have left Kamik by mistake with Qavvik, who was sealing at
an island called Umanak about halfway down Chantrey Inlet,
instead of bringing her all the way south to the Rapids where we
were; and he went to look for her, traveling three days through
soggy spring snow. He found neither Kamik nor Qavvik. He was
very silent on his return. He lay in his place in the tent, smok-
ing, drinking tea, and seemingly oblivious of the family around
him. But when that afternoon the hum of a motor was at last
heard in the distance and Allaq and I from the top of the hill
shouted out the camp below: “Plane! Plane!’’ Inuttiaq was the
first to appear in his tent entrance and was in the forefront as
we floundered down through the soggy, knee-deep snow to meet
the plane, which was bouncing to a stop on the river ice. The
greeting between parents and daughter was as shy, as restrained
as Utku greetings always are; I am not sure they even shook
hands, and nothing was said. But Inuttiaq showed his pleasure
by taking Kamik’s light duffel bag from her to carry it up to the

Inuttiaq 73
 tent; and only on the second day after her arrival did he, brusque
in his ebullience, order her for the first time to make tea and to
perform other daughterly duties. On that first afternoon he stayed
at home, participating in the welcoming feast of tea and bannock
and silently listening to his daughter’s tales of the strange kap-
luna world where people are always loud and angry (ningaq),
where they hit their children, let babies cry, kiss grown-ups,
and make pets of dogs and cats. And that night I heard the figures
in Inuttiaq’s restless dreams shout the English phrases with
which Kamik, to impress her uncomprehending relatives, had
punctuated her speech.

74 Never in Anger
 Family Life: Expressions of Closeness
It was October when I moved in with Inuttiaq’s family. As
long as the camp was housed in tents, I had lived alone in my
own; but as soon as the river froze and the round, ice-walled
qaqmags were built, Inuttiaq and Allaq invited me to join them.
Allaq pointed out as mine the wall-edge opposite hers in the
sleeping area and helped me lay my twig mats on the gravel
floor. I spread out my bedding on the twigs and settled down as
the eldest daughter of the household.
An Eskimo dwelling, whether tent, qaqmagq, or iglu, is divided
into two parts by drawing a line parallel to the entrance. The
iklig, the family’s sleeping and living area, occupies the rear
half or two-thirds of the dwelling; the front part of the dwelling,
just inside the door, is the natiq or floor. The latter is a general
utility area: larder, kitchen, and storage space; it is also the area
where visitors stand—or sit on bags of clothing or piles of de-
frosting fish, the latter hospitably covered by the host with a
burlap bag or scrap of hide to protect the guest from chill and
damp. In a snow iglu the ikliq is a platform built up often two

75
 ew box

SLY YS rT
Allaq (mother) ( larder:
Qayagq (baby) Hers meat sto,
i Saarak (three-year-old)
storage: }
household goods Inuttiag (father) ~~ entrance
clothes
Raigiti (six-year-old)
he storage:
Kamik' (fourteen-year-old) household zonal
-— \ (™ clothes

IKLIQ: sleeping, living area | NATIQ: floor

Plan of Inuttiaq’s Tent

lamp & drying rack

kitchen box
Allac
Qayag prder:
Saarak sh, meat storage
storage:
household goods Inuttiag -—~entrance tunnel
clothes
Raigili

Yiini'

Nees Es
IKLIQ NATIQ
Plan of Inuttiaq’s Iglu

1. This is the place of the eldest child or of a guest. Kamik occupied it when
she was at home. I occupied it in her absence.
or three feet above the floor, but in tents and qaqmags it is at
floor level, separated from the latter only by a row of stones or a
tentpole laid down to serve as edging. Only specially privileged
guests such as old people, close friends, or kaplunas are invited
to sit on the ikliq with the family, unless one of the family mem-
bers is absent, in which case his place may be temporarily occu-
pied by a visitor. Each member of the family has his own place
on the ikliq, by day and night, and the ordering of these places
is standard in all Utku families, as it is, with occasional varia-
tions, in other Eskimo groups, as well.
The arrangement of our qaqmaq was typical. On one side,
next to the wall, was the place of my mother, Allaq, and beside
her that of the youngest child, Saarak. Saarak’s place was not
quite as established as other people’s; she tended to roam a bit:
to seek a kiss from her father, to snatch a toy from her sister or,
after she grew accustomed to me, to beg raisins from me. But at
night she slept on one side or the other of her mother, and often
she played beside her mother during the day, when she was not
actually inside Allaq’s parka. Next to Saarak was Inuttiaq’s
place, more or less in the middle of the ikliq, and on his other
side was Raigili. Finally, between Raigili and the wall, opposite
Allag, was my place, the place appropriate both for an oldest
child and for a house guest.
That spot, just the length and breadth of my sleeping bag, very
quickly became my home, in a real sense. I possessed my spot,
and from it I always looked out on the same view. The sameness
of it gave me a sense of stability in a world of shifting dwellings,
a feeling of belonging in a family; it even gave me a sense of
privacy, since no one ever encroached on my space without per-
mission, and sitting there I could withdraw quietly from conver-
sation into an inner world, reading or writing, or observing the
doings of the rest of the family and their friends without distur-
bance.
Sitting in my corner of the ikliq, I watched each member of the
family in his accustomed orbit. Inuttiaq, ensconced in the center
of the ikliq, held court with the visitors ranged along the edges
of the floor, enjoying his jokes at least as much as they did. Home
from a cold morning of fishing or net-checking, he cradled his
enamel mug gratefully in both hands as he drank his strong

Family Life 77
 sugarless tea before taking out the afternoon’s craftwork. I never
tired of watching him work—though when he was in an uncom-
municative mood he occasionally irritated me by nose-wrinkling
refusals to answer my rude questions about what he was doing.
If I had been polite I would have waited to see for myself when
he had finished:a new pipestem or a handle for an ice-fishing
line whittled out of a bit of caribou antler, the key of a powdered
milk can transformed into a needle, a nail into an elegantly
barbed fishhook, or half of a primus valve into a new gunsight.
His tools were a penknife and a file, his workbench a flat rock
laid across his thighs. I could never accustom myself to the Utku
right-angled sitting position: legs stiffly outstretched, back
straight—no bending at the knee and no back rest—but Utku
seemed to find it perfectly restful.
Allaq, too, spent much of the day in her corner of the ikliq, her
hands deftly busy while she listened, silent but attentive, to the
men’s conversation, gossiped with her visiting brothers and
sisters, and kept a sixth sense tuned to Saarak’s mood. Her work
varied with the season, but there was always something: worn
boots and mittens to be mended or new ones to be made, caribou
hides to be scraped and softened for winter parkas and trousers,
or yards of dried sinew to be braided into fishline. If Inuttiaq
were home there was tea to brew and, with luck, bannock to fry
or fish to boil; Inuttiaq rarely let more than two hours go by with-
out suggesting something to eat, and the frequent visitors had to
be offered tea, too.
Saarak, a little rabbit in her fur suit, revolved around her
mother or was wooed by an aunt with a morsel of caribou tallow.
More often she stood securely resting inside Allaq’s parka
against her back, the naked flesh of each warming the other while
Allaq sewed or smoked, rhythmically rocking her body back and
forth and humming to quiet Saarak’s restlessness. It was some
time before I had a closer view than this of Saarak, because al-
though she soon stopped shrieking with terror at the sight of
me, as she had in my first days in camp, it was a month before she
dared to approach my side of the ikliq or ceased to shrink away,
whimpering, if I approached hers, and it was midwinter before
she came to sit on my lap.
Raigili was the least visible member of the family in those

78 Never in Anger
October days; often I was hardly aware of her existence. For
large parts of the day she was out playing or “visiting” in other
homes with her slightly younger cousin Qijuk and her ten-year-
old aunt, Akla. Children do not really visit, Utku say; they never
stay; they duck in through the low doorway and stand shyly
smiling, looking to see who is there and what they are doing, and
perhaps stopping to accept a cup of tea or a bite of fish before
darting on to the next home. They are like waterbugs, skimming
erratically over the surface of camp life. Even when Raigili was
home, her presence was rarely distracting. Gentle and unob-
trusive, she sat beside me on the iklig, arms drawn in out of the
threadbare sleeves of her parka for warmth, and quietly watched
the gathering, humming hymn tunes or talking to herself, as she
waited for the tea to brew.

I. The Inner Circle: Intimacy and Informality

The atmosphere of Inuttiaq’s household was entirely different
from the way I had imagined it in the days when I ventured out
from my tent on the bluff to visit in the camp below and then re-
turned safely to my isolation. Savoring solitude during those
evenings in my tent, after the camp was asleep and I lay warmly
reading in my sleeping bag, I had dreaded the lack of privacy
that I thought would be my lot in Inuttiaq’s household. Life in
a ten-foot room with two children under the age of seven! And
it was not only noisy children that I imagined would irritate me
—just the mere presence of people from waking to sleeping, the
lack of respite from low-voiced, giggling, constantly cheerful
conversation, the absence of a place or a time in which to be un-
mannered. My fears were groundless. To be sure, there were
moments, even days, of depression which only a long walk in the
empty windiness of the tundra could assuage. But on the whole,
to my surprise, the human warmth and peacefulness of the house-
hold, and the uncanny sensitivity of its members to unspoken
wishes, created an atmosphere in which the privacy of my tent
came to seem in memory a barren thing.
In my first days in the qaqmaq it was during the evening, when
our visitors had gone home and we were preparing for bed that
I felt most strongly the special warmth of the family, its closeness

Family Life 79
 as a unit. During the day, when the houses were full of visitors,
I had the impression that Eskimo men and women largely ig-
nored each other, except when a man gave instructions to his
wife (or daughter or sister) to perform some service for him:
make tea or boil fish, pick lice out of his undershirt, or fetch
him a little tobacco from next door. Women did not participate
in men’s conversations; they sat at the periphery and listened.
Or else while the men were gathered in one circle, playing cards,
joking, reminiscing, and planning hunting and trading trips, the
women brought their sewing to another spot, where they gos-
siped together, reminisced, and played with their babies. But
at bedtime, or at other times when close relatives were alone
together: early in the morning; on stormy days when our iglu
entrance was buried in drifting snow; or in leisurely weeks in
remote spring camps which we shared only with Pala’s family,
the separate circles meshed. The division then was not between
Men and Women but between Family and Outsiders.
When our visitors had one by one excused themselves with
yawns and with references to pressures on the bladder, Inuttiagq,
too, would decide it was bedtime. “One is so sleepy!” he would
remark, yawning dramatically and straining at his boots, which
had molded themselves like living skin to his feet. It was a
struggle to get them off at night, even when exercising the proper
technique: one foot crossed over the other so that the ankle of
the upper foot can be pulled against the lower while pushing on
the instep with the hands. I found this impossible to do when
my boots were wet; so did Inuttiaq when he was lazy with fa-
tigue. “Pull my boots off,” he directed Allaq, and she did, losing
her balance when the boot slipped off and toppling backward
with a startled giggle into the pile of fish by the door. ‘“‘Weak!”
Inuttiaq teased. “Here, wrestle with me!” and he held out a
crooked wrist. Allaq, embarrassed, demurred, wrinkling her
nose, laughing. “Wrestle with me!” Inuttiaq was insistent. Allaq
crooked her wrist with his, and they tugged apart, laughing, till
Allaq, quickly vanquished, fell toward Inuttiaq and broke away,
giggling.
Inuttiag, too, laughed quietly and resumed preparations for
bed. Swiftly standing up on the ikliq, he bent over so that his
parka, falling forward, would shield his genitals, pulled off his

80 Never in Anger
two or three pairs of trousers as one, knelt under the quilt, pulled
his parka and shirts over his head, rolled his clothes into a pillow,
and tucked them under the caribou mattress. The whole process
was accomplished in a few seconds, as one smooth efficient
gesture. “Cover me up, child,” he directed Raigili and, glowing
with pleasure at the request, she tucked the quilt carefully
around his naked back. Inuttiaq’s next order was to Allaq:
“Move the tea things over here before you take your boots off
so I can make tea in the morning when I wake up, while you
lazybones [jokingly] are all still asleep.” Allaq, too, complied,
then undressed the waiting Raigili, who hunched sleepily on
the edge of the ikliq. She made the child’s pillow and tucked
her in between Inuttiaq and me, pushing the quilt-edge firmly
under the mattress hide so that Raigili would not roll into me in
her sleep. Last to undress was Allaq herself, Saarak having been
tucked in on the other side of Inuttiaq as soon as he lay down.
Allaq had to wait until we had drunk our bedtime tea so that she
could refill the kettle with fresh water for the morning. Had I
been a proper daughter I should probably have fetched the water
myself, but I did not know that. I often sought the warmth of my
sleeping bag even before Inuttiaq gave the signal for bed.
While Allaq went about her end-of-evening tasks, Inuttiaq lay
with his head on the pillow beside Saarak, making tender over-
tures to the daughter he loved (naklik) “too much (-pallaagq-).”
Saarak was just learning to repeat, recognizably, the sounds of
Eskimo speech, and Inuttiaq, in these bedtime moments, en-
joyed coaching her in the sounds of the syllabary: the system of
symbols in which Canadian Eskimo speech is written. Adults
recite the syllabary in a patterned, slightly nasal, singsong, al-
u-pa,
ways in the same quadruple form: “Ai-ee-u-ah, pai-pee-p
tai-tee-tu-ta, mai-mee-mu-ma, and so on through all the conso-
each
nants of the language, the voice rising as if inquiringly after
quadruplet. Inuttiaq, teaching Saarak, repeated the syllables one
after the other, waiting for her to mimic him in her docile chirp
before continuing with the next: “Ai.” “Ai.” “Ee.” “Ee.” “U.”
“UY.” And so on. Allaq, Raigili, and I always listened with sound-
less absorption to these exchanges, and when occasionally Saa-
rak took a step ahead of Inuttiaq or stumbled on the step be-
hind, saying “‘pu’’ when she should have said “pee,” or “‘tai’

Family Life 81
 when she should have said “tee,” a murmur of affectionate gig-
gles arose. After the syllabary the lesson would continue with
names: family names and those of the family’s dogs—mostly far
too complicated for Saarak’s tongue: Allag, Raigili, Piuvkaq
(that was one of Raigili’s names), Amaaqtug (her aunt), Inuttiagq,
Pala (her grandfather), Yiini (my own name). She pronounced
these last three very well, and her success drew warm “vaaa’’s
from her parents. But Inuttiaq seemed to take a mischievous
pleasure in inserting now and again an absolutely impossible
name or term of kinship: Qijuaaqjuk (one of Saarak’s own names),
Qignariq (a dog), aqnaqvinnuara (a kin term meaning “my
mother’s sister”). “Avavi?”—Saarak’s inquiring little echo.
“Aq-naq-vi-nnua-ra”—Inuttiaq patiently laying each syllable
before her again. And so on and on, until Inuttiaq tired of the
game or, as often happened, the pupil fell asleep. Inuttiaq’s
voice stroked her endearingly as she slept. The words I never
understood; it was baby talk he cooed (aqaq) at her so gently;
but the tone diffused a tenderness over all of us.
Evenings were a time for story-telling, too, especially in the
iglu months of winter, and in spring, when families were lonely
in their dispersed camps. Only once did I hear Inuttiag tell one
of the traditional stories that other people told, the histories of
ancient days when there was little difference between animals
and people. Allaq said he never had told those tales. He claimed
not to know them and always responded to my inquiries with a
curtness that I read as embarrassment. But I never understood
his feeling. That he really knew as little as he claimed seems
highly unlikely, as everyone else in camp over the age of fifteen
or so knew many stories. Perhaps he had learned some hesi-
tance about repeating “pagan” beliefs from his brief contacts
with missionaries or had heard that kaplunas laughed at such
notions. Pala, too, was reticent in my presence; I never heard
him tell ancient stories, though he did know them, and people
said he told them in other winters. Once, in a more than usually
open moment, Inuttiaq asked me whether it were true that there
are two kinds of Indian: the human-looking sort that people
meet when they are taken to the hospital and an animal-like
variety that lives in the tundra, where kaplunas hunt them like
wolves, from airplanes. He must have seen the quick surprise

82 Never in Anger
Ri.
in my face, though I merely said that I had not heard about the
aot te

second variety and asked him to tell me what people said about
them. He replied that he had not heard the stories very well.
a

And he never again shared any cosmological ideas with me,

other than Christian ones; he merely said he did not know.
But in other respects Inuttiaq was most communicative with
his womenfolk in the evenings, and much of my best understand-
ing of Utku life comes from these family hours when Inuttiaq,
who often largely ignored me during the day, questioned me
about life in my country, recalled past events in his own family’s
life, and explained Utku ideas and words. Sometimes small
Raigili, in her quaintly prim little voice, described her sojourn
in the kapluna communities of Baker Lake and Chesterfield Inlet
when she was taken out to the hospital. (Could she possibly
have remembered? She was only two or three at the time.) And
when Inuttiaq’s adolescent daughter, Kamik, came home for the
summer—frenetic, sulky, pretending deafness—these private
evening hours were almost the only time of day in which she
permitted herself to speak to her parents at all; then, while they
lay in bed, she told them long tales about Inuvik, the big govern-
ment school near the Alaskan border where she had spent the
winter. I had moved into a separate tent for the summer, but I
heard the sound of her voice next door. Her parents said she
even spoke English to them then, something she could never be
persuaded to do in public.
Allaq, unusually self-effacing wife that she was, rarely initiated
conversations in these hours, except when Inuttiaq was away on
trips. But she added threads to her husband’s stories, correcting
him when he made mistakes, answering his queries when he
could not remember, and inserting additional facts. In the easy
companionship between the two of them at these times I felt
something of the bond that common experience can create be-
tween a husband and wife. It is occasionally said that the major
ties that exist between Eskimo spouses are those of sex and eco-
nomic cooperation.! Of the marriage I knew best I had a quite

1. E.g., Spencer (1959:249). A number of authors, however, present a fuller

picture of the relations between Eskimo spouses, one that is more in accord with
my own observations. These include Gubser (1965), Jenness (1922; 1928), Lantis
(1946), and Washburne (1940). This is not to gainsay the probable importance of

Family Life 83
 different impression, one compounded of a hundred small inci-
dents: a note that Inuttiaq, stormbound one day on the sea ice
halfway to Gjoa Haven, wrote to Allaq and sent back with a re-
turning dog team: “You [he meant his wife and daughters] who
remain behind are people to be cared for (naklik)”; the quiet
pleasure that I felt in Allaq’s smile when she repeated to me:
“He says we're to be cared for’; and the prayers she offered on
evenings when Inuttiaq was away: ‘“‘God, be with the travelers,
hold their hands, and let them come home”; the question Inu-
ttiaq asked me one day when I was inspecting the dainty, precise
sinew stitches in the pair of caribou boots Allaq was making for
me: “Do you think you'll be able to sew like that when you leave
here?” I felt closeness in the shared eagerness with which Inv-
ttiaq and Allaq pored over my maps together, pointing out
distant lakes and rivers in whose vicinity they had hunted au-
tumn caribou “before we had children,” and in their mutual
amusement at the memory, years old, of the stone-walled qaq-
maq that one night shed its stones onto their sleeping heads.
And I felt it in the suddenness with which Inuttiaq one evening
said to me, breaking a long silence with a brusque nod in Allaq’s
direction: “I saw her being born.”
Hardship was a thread in the memories, too. One story was
particularly vivid. It was about the famine of 1958, “when Rai-
gili was a baby on Allaq’s back.” Inuttiaq and Allaq together
told me about it. It happened when the days were getting longer,
and the Utku had dispersed to their spring camps. In those days
they depended on the migrating caribou to provide them with
food during the fish-scarce weeks of spring. But the caribou did
not take their usual route that year. When the food was gone,
Piuvkagq, the old man, was left alone in a tent in Amujat because
he was too weak to walk. He had one cartridge with which, from
his bed, he managed to shoot one ptarmigan. With that he sur-
vived till help came. The rest of his household: his more vigor-

economic cooperation and sex as binding forces in Utku marriages. Of the for-
mer there is certainly a great deal. Of the latter I cannot speak, since as a woman
I was not in a good position to be told about it. Sexual attitudes and behavior
are not subjects of conversation among Utku women, and the inquiries I tried
to make of Allaq, concerning the spacing of children, for example, drew only
blushes. Moreover, whatever sexual activity there was was completely inaudible.

84 Never in Anger
ous wife, his daughter, and small grandson, went off on foot up
the Hayes River to look for caribou. Inuttiaq had six .22 car-
tridges and that was all. He set up a tent on the ice over a hole
that somebody else had cut, as he himself had no ice chisel;
there he fished all night from his bed while the rest of his family
slept. He caught five fish: “It made one very grateful (hatuq).”
He also saw caribou but was unable to shoot them. “It made one
feel like crying,” Inuttiaq said in a voice without apparent emo-
tion. After a while the government learned of the famine and
sent a plane to drop supplies to the stranded people: food and
caribou hides and ammunition. Piuvkaq’s life was saved by the
drop; and Inuttiaq, with a fresh supply of ammunition, set off
up the Hayes River to hunt, with Allaq, Kamik, then about nine
years old, and Raigili. All but one of their dogs had died, so they
had to carry their goods on their backs. Eventually, far up the
river, they shot fifteen caribou. Inuttiaq carried the skins, most
of the meat and tallow, and the raw fat. Allaq carried Raigili,
the tent, the sleeping skins, and a little meat. Kamik carried one
hide and some of the tallow. “She was lovable (naklik),” said
Inuttiag. “Starving is not pleasant (quvia).”
Such memories of dependence, of sacrifice, of happiness,
private jokes, too, were threads in the intimacy that I felt bind-
ing and giving security to the members of Inuttiaq’s family in
these private hours. Another important strand was religious.
I felt the family’s closeness not only in the prayers that Allaq,
sometimes haltingly assisted by Raigili, said for Inuttiaq’s safety
when he was out in the night, but also in the prayers that Inu-
ttiaq led when he was at home. Households varied in their pri-
vate religious exercises; not all held evening or morning prayers.
During the summer, when sound traveled from tent to tent, Ni-
lak’s heavy voice, counterpointed by his adolescent daughter’s
softer one, was heard regularly every evening at bedtime:
“Ataatavut qilangmiitutit...(Our Father, Who art in Heav-
en...).” Pala, on the other hand, though he and his children
seemed among the most devout of the Utku, never to my knowl-
edge led prayers in his household. Instead, the members of his
family read their Bibles or their prayerbooks silently to them-
selves in peaceful moments during the day, and often they sang
together hymns from the book. Inuttiaq’s household quite often

Family Life 85
 prayed aloud together, to ask protection or to give thanks, not
regularly every evening like Nilak’s but as the spirit
moved
Inuttiaq,. Occasionally his prayers were so informal, his voice
so ordinary, so conversational, that in the early days, when I
understood few words, I did not realize he was praying till Allaq
stopped buttering the bannock for which Saarak was whimper-
ing, clasped her hands in her lap, and bent her head. Once I
lacked even that clue, because Allaq for some reason did not
join in as usual. Inuttiaq had made a remark—talking to him-
self, I thought, or perhaps to Allaq—in which I heard all our
names listed: “Piuvkaq [that is, Raigili], and Yiini, and Allaq,
and Saarak...” When I asked what it was he had said, he re-
plied, “I’m praying.”
But usually Inuttiag’s devotions were not so completely casual
as this. And usually Allaq and Kamik, if she were at home, each
in turn added a prayer of her own to Inuttiaq’s. Small Raigili
rarely contributed a prayer, but always, faithfully and to the
best of her ability, she joined in the chorused formulae that
framed the extemporaneous prayers: the Lord’s Prayer, and a
benediction from the prayerbook: “The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with us all evermore, amen.” Saarak, too, if she were
awake, would add a birdlike “amen.” If she did not, Inuttiaq
might prompt her: “‘Amen, Saarak.”’
The sense of family intimacy that I had at these times derived
partly from the fact that the prayers were shared—that Allaq
bowed her head and hushed Saarak with a persuasive murmur:
“Look, we're going to pray.” I felt closeness also in the very
spontaneity with which religious feelings were expressed within
the family circle; I never heard Utku spontaneously pray aloud in
the presence of strangers or aliens. And there was solicitude in
the prayers themselves: for Piuvkaq, that she should grow and
learn; for Saarak, that she should learn not to cry; for Allaq,
that she should be safe while Inuttiaq was away; for me, that I
should not forget the Eskimo words I learned; for all of us, that
we be protected while we sleep.
Pala’s family, alone among the other Utku households, shared
in the family intimacy of Inuttiaq’s household. The other families
had their own circles. Pala’s family belonged to us, because
Pala was Allaq’s father and Inuttiaq’s uncle. The two families

86 Never in Anger
were very close. Allaq’s grown sisters, who lived much of the
time with Pala, were her confidantes; one of them, her still-
unmarried sister Amaaqtuq, about eighteen years old, had slept
in Inuttiaq’s household instead of in her father’s until I took her
place; and her brother Mannik was Inuttiaq’s constant compan-
ion. Inuttiaq and Pala almost always camped together, even
during the spring and summer dispersal, often setting their
tents or building their iglus so that they opened into each other,
forming a two-roomed dwelling: one room for Inuttiaq’s family,
the other for Pala’s. One of the times when this was done was
during my second winter at Back River.
On the whole, during the year and a half of my stay, the two
families lived side by side but their dwellings were not con-
tiguous. It was the younger members of Pala’s household: his
youngest child, Akla, a girl of about ten; his son Ukpik, about
fourteen; and his granddaughter Mitqut, somewhere between
her young aunt and uncle in age, who, to my annoyance, woke us
in the morning, letting the wooden door slam against its frame
as they entered. They stood silently by the entrance, shifting
from foot to foot till Inuttiag, roused by the door’s thump, raised
a groggy head and ordered them to make tea. It was Pala’s sons
and daughters who stayed latest in the evening or who ran in
at bedtime to fill their father’s pipe from our tobacco can, to
borrow our frying pan in which to make bannock, or to fetch
Saarak for a visit. But though we saw a great deal of Pala’s family,
there were still moments or hours of separation, when the mem-
bers of each household sewed, skinned fish bellies, and drank
tea alone, joking and gossiping in privacy.
There was no separation during the second winter. In October
of that year, Pala and Inuttiaq decided that when they moved to
the winter campsite at Amujat they would build a double iglu.
It was then that I saw most vividly that the two families were
halves of one whole. The creation of our joint household was
an expression of the affection that bound them; only the closest
of friends ever built together like this. But there were practical
as well as emotional reasons for the move. The explanation I was
given was that it would save Inuttiaq the trouble of shoveling
out the entrance when the snow drifted into it, as all too often
happens in winter winds. A joint iglu such as Inuttiaq and Pala

Family Life 87
 proposed to build has only one entrance tunnel, which leads
from outdoors into the first-built iglu of the pair. The second
iglu has one wall contiguous with the first and opens, like an in-
ner room, into the latter. In our case, Pala’s was the outer iglu,
Inuttiaq’s the inner one. Perhaps for this reason, and certainly
also because Inuttiaq was older than the two young men of Pala’s
household (Pala’s son Mannik and son-in-law Ipuituq), he was
less directly in line for the unpleasantly heavy task of shoveling.
And this was not the only practical consideration, I think. The
extent to which both goods and activities are shared among the
Utku varies considerably under different living conditions and in
different seasons. During the spring and summer weeks of the
year I am describing, the members of the small tent camps sat or
worked together most of the time outdoors. They also cooked and
ate together: in the spring in order to make sure that all had a
share of the fish, which are often scarce at that season, and in
the summer I think partly in order to make efficient use of the
limited supplies of birch twigs and lichen that the women col-
lected for fuel after the winter’s purchases of kerosene had been
exhausted.” Some of the lines between households and between
families were blurred then; on the surface the camp seemed al-
most a communal unit, whether or not the families that com-
prised it were closely related. In winter, on the other hand,
when the scattered families of the band drew together on a com-
mon hillside, the camp lost its semblance of communality. Para-
doxically, when the families joined one another, each iglu-house-
hold to some extent withdrew, economically and socially, from
the others. Even close kin withdrew from one another in this
way, so that relatives who shared their work and their meals
during the summer now worked and ate separately—unless they
had a joint iglu.?

2. During the summer of 1968 both plants and kerosene were used for fuel.
When plants were used, we cooked and ate our main meal of the day commu-
nally, as described here; when kerosene was used, we did not.
3. The Utku pattern of seasonal variation that is described here contrasts
with that of certain other Eskimo groups, in which winter camps are said to be
more communal in one way or another than summer ones. In some cases it is the
housing that is described as more communal in winter (e.g., Boas 1888; Jenness
1922; Freuchen 1961:61). In these groups, joint iglus, or even communal iglus,
in which each family has its own sleeping niche around a central floor space,

88 Never in Anger
 During the first winter, when Inuttiaq and Pala lived sep-
arately, their two households were economically distinct enti-
ties. Mannik and Ipuitug served Pala’s household, checking
their fishnets together; and together the women of the house-
hold, Amaaqtuq and Ipuituq’s wife, Amaruq, cut out the fat
fish bellies and boiled them up for oil. Inuttiag, lacking male
assistance, checked his nets with the help of Allaq and myself;
and when oil was needed, Allaq, with clumsy help from me, pre-
pared the fish bellies. Mannik and Ipuituq stored their fish to-
gether in a hole cut into the entrance tunnel of Pala’s iglu;
Inuttiaq stored his fish in his own vestibule. Pala’s iglu was cold
that first winter, while Inuttiaq’s was usually warm with the
heat generated by the frequent brewings of tea made possible
by my kerosene supplies. Pala’s children came often to ask for
cardboard or paper scraps so that they could make a tea-fire in
their stove, a sawed-off oil drum; but they rarely asked for kero-
sene, and they never had enough fuel so that they could brew
tea on a whim, as we could. Neither did Pala’s household share
equally with Inuttiaq’s in my kapluna food and tobacco supplies,
in spite of their frequent visits and more frequent small requests;
they received little more than the other chance visitors, who
shared nibbles, but certainly not equal portions, of whatever
meal they happened in on.
are usual. In other cases communal hunting is described, or rules for the distri-
bution of meat in winter camps, such that each household in the camp has the
right to claim a share of any animal caught (e.g., Balikci 1964; Rasmussen 1931;
Van de Velde 1956). In still other cases, communality of both housing and food
distribution are described (e.g., Holm 1914). Mauss (1904-05) bases his inge-
nious argument concerning seasonal variations in Eskimo social structure on data
such as these. Among the Utku, however, joint iglus are rare; I saw only three in
two winters. And there is only one sense in which food is more communally
shared in an Utku winter camp: there are more people to solicit from. Summer
and winter, the rule holds that anyone who feels a desire for a certain food that
he does not have, or who lacks tobacco or fuel, may occasionally request “a
little bit’ from one who does have some. In the summer there are few people
around to ask from; in the winter one may ask from anyone in the band. But re-
quests are always modest in the extreme, and never come close to equalizing the
food supply. Rasmussen (1931:482) did describe the Utku as living (in 1924) in
a “state of pronounced communism” both summer and winter, all meals being
eaten in company by all the members ofa village. If this was true in Rasmussen's
day, the situation has now changed. I think it is possible, however, that Rasmus-
sen was extrapolating from the “communism” he observed in the late spring
camp he visited.

Family Life 89
 In our joint iglu, the situation was strikingly different. We lived
almost as communally within our snow wall as we had lived
in our summer tent camp. Not only did Mannik and Ipuituq
take it upon themselves to shovel out the entrance, they also
helped Inuttiaq (and he, them) with the daily net-checking
chore; and Inuttiaq’s fish were stored with the others’. Allag
and I no longer helped with the outdoor work at the net, but
when the fish were brought in we worked with Amaruq and
Amaaqtuq at the oil-making. Most significant of all the changes,
from the point of view of the kapluna provider, was the fact that
in our joint household, all cooked meals were eaten in common.
Whereas in Inuttiaq’s household of three adults and two small
children a twenty-five pound bag of flour had lasted two weeks,
our joint household of twelve (not counting Inuttiaq’s new
infant) used sixty pounds of flour for bannock during the one
week in which that amount was available.
The two months during which I lived in this common house-
hold were the last two of my stay at Back River, and perhaps
it was partly the imminence of my departure—the loosening
of my involvement and, simultaneously, my desire to hold every
moment permanently—that caused the ordinary domestic scenes
of those days to take on something of the quality of a stage set.
Every detail was sharp with the clarity of distance, but by the
same distance it was made unreal. As always, I watched the
comings and goings from my corner of Inuttiaq’s ikliq. From
that position the round, waist-high hole through which one
stooped into Pala’s iglu gave me a truncated view of his early
morning visitors, all of whom I learned to recognize by their
boots as they stood in front of the hole, drinking their mugs of
tea before setting out to check their nets or their fox traps. When
the men left, Pala’s daughters—Allaq, too—began their morning
housekeeping activities: chipping away the filthy gray layer of
frozen mucus, fishbones, and other remains that had accumula-
ted underfoot and resurfacing the floors with fresh white snow,
or stripping the bedding off the ikligs to spread snow or gravel
in the uncomfortable hollows melted by warm buttocks. The
return of the men from the nets was announced by the thud
of frozen fish—several hundred of them—tossed down the
entrance tunnel into a smoking pile on Pala’s iglu floor, the men

90 Never in Anger
in frost-crusted furs following after to warm themselves with
tea before going out again to feed the dogs or repair a sled.
As our ikliq was at right angles with Pala’s, all I saw of the men
as they ate and drank was a row of caribou boots protruding
stiffly along the edge of Pala’s ikliq. (Only visitors sit tentatively
on the edge of an ikliq with their feet on the floor; contact with
the snow floor is too cold. The family sits well back with legs
outstretched, a warm height above the floor.) The women, bent
in a circle around the huge pile of fish on the floor, gutted each
one with two smooth strokes of an ulu and tossed it toward
the storage hole in Pala’s iglu wall, handing up choice fatty
morsels to the men on request.
In the afternoon, when outdoor work was finished and dark-
ness falling, family and visitors gathered to talk and eat, or just
to sit together in sociable silence. Then the unreal quality of the
view from our iglu into Pala’s was intensified. People and fish
were almost invisible in the gray dusk that weighted the ice-
block window, a gloom made deeper by the mingled steams of
breath and tea and boiling fish, and by the smoke from numerous
cigarettes. The fish-oil lamp, a thin line of yellow light, only
deepened the murkiness of the scene. But my view was a foreign
and a personal one. Cheerful reality lay in the quiet flow of gut-
tural conversation and in the sounds of a card game: the play-
fully aggressive slap of cards on a board, a mock-annoyed ex-
clamation: “E he!’’—followed by runs of giggles.
I had feared that the presence of Pala’s family in our second
winter home would destroy the relaxed evening hours, which in
the first winter I had valued both as expressions of family camara-
derie and affection and as sources of data. I had thought that
perhaps with seven additional people in the iglu the daytime
barriers between men and women would be maintained even af-
ter visitors had left, which would prevent Inuttiaq from en-
gaging in the long informative conversations we had formerly
had. I had once asked Inuttiaq and another, younger, man about
the reasons for this social separation between the sexes. They
had been telling me about the feasts that the Utku used to have
when the group was large, and how the men and women ate
separately “because there were so many people.” Rasmussen
(1931:66) says that in the old days, among the Netsilik neigh-

Family Life 91
 bors of the Utku, men and women used to eat separately, be-
cause they believed that unclean women could endanger the
hunting if they ate with men. He says (1931:482) that Utku
men and women also always used to eat separately. Though
at present there appear to be no menstrual restrictions among
them, I had assumed that formerly there had been, and that, as in
the case of the Netsilik, these had influenced the eating patterns.
Inuttiaq and Putuguk, however, said that Utku men and women
had eaten separately (as they still do when both sexes are present
in numbers) because each sex feels freer to talk and laugh when
it is by itself—not because they are shy (kanngu), or unwilling to
have their words heard by the other sex, but merely because
that’s the way it is: “It’s pleasanter; together we are unhappy
(hujuujaq).” But the feelings that urged separation did not seem
to apply to the extended family any more than they did to the
smaller household of parents and children. The presence of
Pala’s family did not detract, as the presence of outsiders did,
from the intimacy of private hours. For reasons not clear to me
there were no longer any family prayers, but in other respects,
closeness seemed enhanced and extended: there was a great deal
more joking than when we lived alone; there were delightfully
exclusive midnight feasts of scarce and hoarded commodities
like rice and bannock; and in other respects, too, some of the
more formal aspects of the relations between men and women
seemed in abeyance.
I often wakened in the cold pre-dawn gloom to hear Pala qui-
etly making the rounds of the household cups, pouring out the
morning tea while Inuttiaq, still sleep-fogged, fumbled for his
pipe under the pillow. Others, Allaq especially, seemed to sleep
more soundly than the two senior men, but if the clink of the
mugs as Pala placed them in position near their owners and the
metallic splash of the tea failed to rouse his wife, Inuttiaq
might prompt her: “Allaaq! Tea!’’—nudging her verbally until
she groggily raised her head from the pillow to grasp the mug
Inuttiaq handed her. I sometimes needed prompting, too.
Though always awake by this time, I never found it easy in the
early morning chill of the iglu to disturb the cocoon of warmth
in which I lay. “Yiini! Are you asleep? Have some tea!” I used
to resent this arousal, on Allaq’s behalf as well as my own, but

92 Never in Anger
 perhaps there was more kindness in Inuttiaq’s act than I felt:
concern lest we forfeit our share of the precious, heat-producing
tea. Or perhaps it was simply proper that when the head of the
household got up, the other members should also rouse them-
selves.
The first cup was drunk in sleep-heavy silence; but by the
time Allaq, or more often Ipuituq’s wife, Amarugq, bestirred
herself to make the second kettle of tea, the two iglus were
coming gradually to life. One person, then another, pulled him-
self up out of the quilts, slipped his parka on over his head, and
sat with sleeves dangling empty while his arms sought the
warmth of his bare belly. I was never among the first to dress, and
once, in the guise of teaching me a new word, Inuttiaq chided
me jokingly for my laziness: “Youare still-in-bed-in-the-morning-
ee

when-the-first-visitors-come,” he said.
epee FO

Banter flew between the iglus while we waited for the tea
to brew. “Yiini was very funny (tiphi) last night,’”’ Amaaqtuq
reminisced, “when she said putuqariik instead of putuqliriik—
very funny.” And she dissolved into giggles, followed by every-
body except Inuttiag, who scorned to join in the laughter of
women, unless he had initiated the joke. Mannik, Ipuituq, and
Pala had no such inhibitions; they laughed gaily. “Saarak!”
Allaq coaxed. “‘How did your elder sister [she meant me] fart
last night? Imitate it again, you're going to be very cute (niviuq)
and have a piece of bannock and jam.” Saarak obliged with a
loud bronx cheer, which was greeted with more gales of laughter,
from everybody but Inuttiaq. But attention returned to Inuttiag
when he said, “Listen!” and proceeded to break wind himself
with elaborate vigor. “It stinks in here,” he said, turning to me.
“Did you cause it?” Then he was the first to laugh. And pulling
himself up to dress, he shielded his genitals carefully from
women’s view with an edge of quilt, whistled to draw the atten-
tion of the men in Pala’s iglu, displayed himself briefly, and
laughed again with his audience.
Rather to my surprise, Inuttiaq tended to play as dominant a
role in our large, joint-iglu household as he had in his own
smaller one. Though Pala directed activities only in his own
room of the iglu, while Inuttiaq remained master in his room, I
had imagined that the immediate presence of the older man, who

Family Life 93
 was at once his father-in-law and his uncle, might inhibit him
somewhat. I was wrong, with the possible exception of the family
prayer sessions that were no longer held. Pala, a quiet and rather
inert man who, when among other men tended to follow rather
than to initiate activities and who often preferred to sit at home,
smoking his impressively large and curving kapluna pipe rather
than engage in active pursuits at all, was very much in the back-
ground. It was Inuttiaq who, on a day of few visitors or in the
evening, after the visitors had gone home to bed, would suggest:
“Let’s make bannock, yes?” or, “One feels like rice,” whereupon
one of the women with a delighted smile would hasten to com-
ply, and we would have a delectably selfish feast.
Family conviviality was even greater at such times than in the
cold and busy mornings. In the morning, as soon as tea had been
drunk, the household scattered to the work that had to be done
while the short daylight lasted. In the evening there were no
such pressures. There were many ways of whiling away the time
until the food was cooked, although the Utku, not as restless as
kaplunas, do not feel the need to fill every moment with an
activity. One day Allag, her brother Putuguk, and Pala spent a
giddy hour shooting a paper plane at the ventilator hole in the
iglu dome. Often the card games were renewed, and at these
times only Pala was a bystander, watching, pipe in hand, overa
player's shoulder. In sharp contrast to the exclusively masculine
games of the visitor-filled afternoons, all the younger members
of the household: brothers and sisters, brothers-in-law, parents
and children, played together with much hilarity. Sometimes
even Saarak screamed to play and was permitted to disrupt the
game, though Inuttiaq would tell her, teasingly, “You don’t play
well,”
One card game was especially hilarious, though not very fre-
quently played. It was not exclusively a family game, but the one
time I saw it played there was only one outside visitor present,
an adolescent girl friend of Amaaqtuq’s, who played with the
rest. The humorous object of the game, quite obviously, was to
insult. One player suggested in advance an offensive label with
which the loser was to be tagged: “The one who loses is too lazy
to make morning tea’; “cries easily”; “wets his pants’; and
so on. Then they drew cards, compared them according to a prin-

94 Never in Anger
ciple I never fathomed, and laughed at the loser, who laughed as
heartily as any.
Once in a while, when there were no visitors in the house, the
women would laughingly try an acrobatic stunt that was usually
for men only. It was during the Christmas season, when the men
had set up an uyautaut in Pala’s high-domed iglu. An uyautaut
is a rope stretched taut between two points, above the head of
a man. In this case it was passed through the walls of the iglu
and fastened outside. A man grasps this rope with both hands
and pulls himself up and over the rope in a somersault or series
of somersaults. Most of the young men could complete three or
four revolutions without touching the ground, and even Pala and
Qavvik turned an occasional stiff somersault to the accompani-
ment of huffs and laughing groans. The adolescent boys, urged
on by their elders, wrinkled their noses in shy (kanngu) refusal,
or else rushed at the rope, clowning in parody of a successful
predecessor, dangled briefly with wildly thrashing legs, and
dropped off into the laughing audience. Women never tried the
stunt on these public occasions; they performed only privately,
spurred on by their husbands and brothers with much amuse-
ment. They always failed—as I’m sure the men were aware they
would. Inuttiaq urged even his self-effacing wife to try it, but
when she reluctantly did make a comical half-hearted attempt,
he watched the female nonsense with characteristically expres-
sionless face, not joining in the general laughter.
It was when we were all in bed at night, drinking our final
mugs of tea and searching our underwear for lice, that the joking
reached its climax. It was Inuttiaq’s game, with Saarak his willing
stooge. “‘Saarak,’’ he whispered, “‘say “Pala’!’’ “Pala!” The old
man’s name had an oddly impertinent sound in Saarak’s tiny
voice. I was never sure whether this impression derived from my
own world, where the children I know do not call older relatives
familiarly by their first names. But in Utku society almost every-
one uses terms of kinship more frequently than names, and
ordinarily Saarak called Pala “Grandfather.”
“Louder—much louder,” Inuttiaq urged her.
“PALA!”
“WHAT, Saarak?” Pala’s scratchy old voice called back.
‘How many lice do you have?”

Family Life 95
 “IT haven’t got any lice; how many do you have?”
Again, Inuttiaqg whispered: “Call your mother’s brother.”
(That was Mannik, Saarak’s favorite uncle and Inuttiaq’s friend.)
“Mother’s brother!”
“What, Saarak?”’
“You have no testicles.”
“You're mistaken. It’s you who have no testicles.”
And so on, until Saarak’s tongue tangled with sleepiness. Pala
and his married daughter Amaruq, who occupied opposite wall-
edges of their iglu, had already blown out the lamps beside them;
the voices came out of the darkness weighted with sleep, and
one by one were silent. Allaq, bent over the one remaining lamp,
pored inch by inch over the gray-brown surface of Inuttiaq’s
erstwhile white longjohns, cracking all visible intruders be-
tween her teeth. Finished, she laid the garment aside, undressed
with the same smooth quick movements as her husband, pulled
the quilts over her and, raising herself on her elbow in a final
gesture, blew out her lamp.
I liked being the last to sleep at night. I savored the darkness
that swallowed the daytime jumble of boxes, cups, clothing, and
oil cans, the soot-grayed, icicled walls, corroded into burrow-like
ugliness by the ordinary processes of life. Gradually, as my eyes
adjusted, the empty blackness was replaced by a suffusion of
moonlight which glowed through the ice window at my head so
faintly that its blue glimmer served mainly to heighten the sense
of darkness. In those few moments before sleep the iglu, filled
with visible night and quiet breathing, was filled also with peace.

II. Men and Women: The Warmth and Luxury

of Male Dominance
The easy conviviality that I saw among the members of the
family in their private hours revealed an important aspect of the
warmth that underlay the formal, somewhat distant, public rela-
tionships between the sexes. In a more literal sense, too, warmth
was enhanced when the men and women of a family were to-
gether. “Iglus are cold when the men are away,” people told me,
but the words meant little to me until in January of my first
winter Inuttiag went to Gjoa Haven to trade.

96 Never in Anger
 The Utku looked forward to trading season. In late August the
breeze began to bite and the ground to crunch underfoot; the
drums of boiled fish bellies stored in the tent entries became
granulated with ice, and the used tea leaves froze to the flat rock
on which they had been piled to dry for re-use. Then the men,
sitting flat-legged around their card games, and the women,
rocking their babies on their backs and tucking stiff fingers into
the hollows of their necks to limber them for sewing, began to
talk about Gjoa Haven and what they would buy there when the
strait froze in November and the men made the long sled trip
in to trade. The lists were always the same: fresh tea to replace
the jaded old leaves (and the weed-stalks that we brewed up as
tea-substitutes when there was no life at all left in the old tea
leaves); flour for bannock to supplement the staple fish; real
tobacco and cigarettes to replace the bits of twig and trouser
pocket that the people were smoking in thimble pipes; duffel
for a new parka; cartridges... These trading trips were the
events of the winter, the peaks of an otherwise even-flowing life.
As Amaaqtugq, her eyes shining, told me once during my first
autumn: “You will see: when the men come back from Gjoa
Haven we stay up all night. It’s tiring!’ Feasting on bannock
and more bannock, she meant; drinking tea, coffee, cocoa, one
after the other, while listening to news of the world across the
strait, a world accessible only during the winter. Any one Utku
man would make the trip only once or twice in a winter, but
somebody was always coming or going, and usually two or three
traveled together, as without companions the journey of a week
or two across jagged, empty sea ice would have been arduous and
lonely.
The women appeared to look forward to the trips as eagerly
as their men. They reported to each other again and again what
their brothers and husbands had been overheard to tell the other
men about their plans: how many sleeps they calculated the trip
would take, and what they planned to trade their foxes for. If a
woman was fortunate enough to have caught a fox or two on her
own trapline—always shorter and laid closer to camp than a
man’s line—she, too, would outline her projected purchases,
her pauses seeming to give weight to her choices as she listed
each item thoughtfully against a finger: powdered milk for the

Family Life 97
 children; jam; butter; embroidery thread for decorating cloth
boots ... On the eve of a trip, women sat late at night over their
lamps, scraping and cleaning the foxskins, while the travelers
prepared dogfeed for the trip, stuffing burlap sacks and ragged
old caribou hides full of the woodenly frozen whitefish without
which a trip was an impossibility.
Gear for the trip had to be settled too. “I'll take one of Yiini’s
primus stoves because mine is cached in my trapping shelter,”
Inuttiaq would decide. (He referred to the tiny iglu at the far
end of his trapline, a day’s journey from home, where he was
accustomed to spend the night when he went to check his line.)
“T’ll take the frying pan so I can make bannock on the way home,
and the big teakettle for the trip home, too, because I’m going
to buy tea. The little kettle will be all right for you while I’m
gone because you won’t be in a hurry; when you want tea you
can heat water several times in that little pot and it will be
enough.” Allaq never demurred at these decisions which always,
I am sure unjustly, seemed to me so highhanded. Without
comment she packed everything Inuttiaq designated in the
wooden box that ordinarily served us as kitchen table. She
seemed completely involved in the bustle and excitement.
Sleep was short on the night preceding a trip. On the morning
of his departure, Inuttiaq always roused Allaq long before dawn
had grayed the ice window. The sequence of events was almost
always the same. “Allaaq! Make tea.” Allag, clumsy and speech-
less with sleep, dressed—parka and trousers—then pulled the
primus toward her and filled its tray with alcohol. While the blue
flame burned she pulled on her boots; and when the primus was
roaring steadily under the kettle, Inuttiaq, still comfortably in
bed with his pipe, spoke again: “Go out and look.” Allaq, as
on every other winter morning, obediently went to test the
weather, of which neither sight nor sound penetrated our snow
walls. “It’s still completely dark,” she reported, ducking in
again; “magnificent weather; no wind; no ground drift.” “It
makes one grateful (hatuq)!”’ Inuttiaq, suddenly electrically
awake, threw off the quilts and pulled his parka on over his
head. On the morning of a trip Inuttiaq never waited quietly in
bed, as he usually did, to sip his first cup of tea in lazy relaxation.
Fully dressed and booted, he gulped the tea as fast as its tempera-

98 Never in Anger
ture allowed, then, catching his snow knife out of the wall by the
door as he passed, he ducked out to see to the sled. Allaq,
abandoning her tea, hurried to collect her husband’s gear. Some-
times—I regret to say, not always—I, too, shamed into activity
by the general bustle, dressed and helped Allaq. Together we
pulled one of the two mattress hides out from under the sleeping
children. Saarak stirred. “Kahla!” her mother whispered. “‘Care-
ful! She’s waking up.” She laid a hand on Saarak’s head, trans-
ferring quiet through her touch till the child once more slept
securely. One mattress; one quilt pulled off the children and
stuffed into a bag with Inuttiaq’s Bible and prayerbook; the
wooden kitchen box, which had to be hammered and wrenched
free of the floor to which it was frozen—one by one I passed
the things to Allaq, who shoved, tugged, and carried them along
the passage to the slope outside where Inuttiaq waited to arrange
them on the sled. Packing the sled itself was the driver’s work.
Allaq hurried, so as to be in time to lay out the harness in a neat
pattern on the ground in front of the sled, before Inuttiaq should
be ready for her to help him with the final tying-on of the load—
tossing the rope back and forth to each other across the sled and
hooking it firmly under the crossbars. The final job was harness-
ing, and this Inuttiag and Allaq also did together, dragging and
kicking the reluctant dogs one by one down the slope to the
harness, while those still chained above clamored and leapt at
their chains, their enthusiasm completely out of keeping with the
resistance they would show when their turn came to be har-
nessed. Most of the dogs had settled positions in the tandem
harnesses, but Inuttiaq occasionally shifted two or three of the
animals around. “Where to?” Allaq would ask, with difficulty
collaring a wildly cavorting pup, and Inuttiaq would tell her.
I stood helpless and embarrassed during the hitching-up. In
the beginning I had tried to learn, but, though unharnessing was
easy, the reverse process I found impossible. Simple as the
harness seemed when I helped to lay it out on the snow, as soon
as I straddled a prancing dog the bands lost any semblance of
pattern; the head went through the tail hole, the leg through the
head hole; the poor dog yelped and struggled to escape. If I took
off my mittens the better to unravel the puzzle my fingers started
to freeze, and finally in the fury of frustration I roared, ‘“‘Stand

Family Life 99
 still!” and kicked the dog as brutally as my soft boots would
allow, in emulation of Inuttiaq and Allaq. Several times Allaq
had tried to demonstrate the proper technique, stretching the
harness between her hands so that I could observe its pattern,
moving her arm through it as if inserting the head of a dog so
that my slow eye might follow, then with painstaking delibera-
tion placing the dog in the harness. Emphasizing each move—
“like this, like this’—she slipped one loop over the animal’s
head, raised the right leg and inserted it in the second loop,
raised the left leg and inserted it in the third loop, and pulled
the whole contraption straight over the tail. It was no use; I was
all blind thumbs, my natural clumsiness with ropes aggravated
by the atmosphere of haste. Then the others left me alone to
struggle with my one dog while they dealt with the rest of the
team, until finally, ready to start, Inuttiaq came, took the harness
out of my hands, and expertly slipped it over the dog. He never
commented on my ineptitude, but his silence humiliated me
more than any joke or criticism could have done. I was grateful
when he assigned to me the far less taxing job of standing on the
clawed anchor, which dug into the snow beside the sled, adding
my weight so that the dogs in their early morning enthusiasm
could not run away with the sled before Inuttiaq was ready.
Meanwhile other iglu doors slammed, other teams yowled and
leapt on their chains, and the frozen snow creaked underfoot as
Inuttiaq’s traveling companions—almost always Mannik, some-
times Putuguk or Ipuituq, more rarely Nilak—assisted by their
households, made similar preparations for departure. There was
never any farewell and rarely a backward glance; neither did
any man wait for any other, but as soon as his last dog was in
harness the driver leapt for the anchor, yanked it up out of the
snow, shoved at the side of the sled to dislodge it, and breathing
a hardly audible command to his team—“ai (be off)!” —flung him-
self sideways onto the sled and was off, careening at a gallop
down the slope and out onto the flat river ice. Wives, sisters, and
fathers, who had helped to harness, stood singly in front of their
own iglus or moved to join one another, women to women and
men to men. Full light was just growing on the southern horizon,
infusing sky and snow alike with the soft winter brilliance of
blue and rose. Arms withdrawn from their sleeves for warmth,

100 Never in Anger

women watched the sleds dwindle and be absorbed into the
distant landscape. The old man Qavvik was a still silhouette
alone on the hilltop by the farthest iglu, watching his adopted
son, Putuguk, disappear. “Inuttiaq has climbed up,” Allaq
observed, her eyes intent on a moving speck that, veering to the
west, had ascended the river bank and disappeared across a neck
of land on the horizon. She stood silently for another moment.
“On the far side of Sunday,” she said, “we will see him coming
again.” She waved in imaginary greeting at the empty river and
smiled at me. “Uunai!” she said. “It’s cold. One feels like drink-
ing tea.” And she followed her sisters indoors.
From the beginning I shared in the excitement of these trips
to Gjoa Haven, but I did not at first appreciate what life was like
for those who stayed at home while the men were away. The
events that should have given me my first insights into the chill
discomfort of these occasions I misinterpreted. Two such mis-
understandings occurred, the first at the very beginning of the
autumn traveling season, about two months after my arrival at
Back River. In need of a holiday and unaware that, except in the
spring, the Utku ordinarily considered the trip to Gjoa Haven
and back too arduous for women, I had asked and received from
Inuttiaq permission to go along on the first trading trip that was
planned in November. He was not going himself at that time, but
he arranged for me to go with three other, younger, men. He said
that when he went to trade in December, he would bring me
back. Inuttiaq and Allaq supervised my preparations regarding
equipment and provision: a sleeping bag, a mattress hide, sugar
to drink in our tea—‘‘for warmth,” said Allaq. But when I men-
tioned that I planned to take my kerosene storm lantern and
primus stove I thought I sensed a flicker of disconcertion pass
between my parents. Perhaps I imagined the fleeting expression,
it was almost nothing, but it moved me to explain that I would
need these things in Gjoa Haven because I would probably be
living by myself in an iglu there. I imagined simply that they
did not like relinquishing the kapluna luxuries to which they had
become accustomed since I had moved in with them. It did not
occur to me that my independence in taking my own stove and
lamp instead of using those carried by the men I was to travel
with might be unusual behavior for a woman. Neither did it

Family Life 101

 occur to me, since Inuttiaq and Allaq themselves owned both a
primus stove and a fish-oil lamp, that I might be working hard-
ship on them. Because the Utku, when they felt cold, generally
chose to stoke their own bodies rather than to heat the air around
them, and stoves were therefore almost never run steadily
throughout the day but were used only periodically for brewing
tea, I was unaware how great a difference my equipment could
make in the temperature of the iglu.
The second incident that I misinterpreted happened as I was
returning to Back River with Inuttiaq and Mannik after my
holiday in Gjoa Haven. It was early in December; the dark and
cold were bitterer than when I had traveled north three weeks
earlier, and, after an interlude in overheated houses and warm
beds, I was feeling somewhat less hardy than usual. Inuttiaq,
having predicted that the trip would take three sleeps, was now
pushing to cut it down to two, driving Mannik and me vigorously
from dawn till long after dark each day. “Raigili and Saarak are
cold,” he explained. Resentful of being urged out into the black
midwinter morning after only four hours’ sleep, I privately
accused him of using that unselfish pretext to cover his desire
to rush home and display his new acquisitions. The meticulous
honesty of Eskimos does not extend to public expression of one’s
motivations, and it is common practice to phrase one’s own
wishes in terms of concern for others.
Only when I was left for the first time with Allaq and the
children in the iglu during Inuttiaq’s absence in Gjoa Haven
did I realize how genuine was the concern with warmth thatI
had crudely interpreted as an excuse for self-display. And then
I realized, too, how complex were the causes of the chill that
prevailed when the men were away.
My first experience of this chill was unusually impressive. It
was, as I have said, in January of the first winter, when Inuttiaq,
Allaq, the children, and I were living by ourselves. Though I
enjoyed the cosiness of our life, the private family hours, and the
conversations with Inuttiaq and Allaq, nevertheless I had looked
forward to the trip Inuttiaq proposed making to Gjoa Haven in
January as a much-needed opportunity to bring the typing of my
fieldnotes up to date, unplagued by the changes in iglu tempera-
ture that Inuttiaq’s presence caused. When he was there, it was

102 Never in Anger

impossible to maintain the iglu within the temperature range of
twenty-seven to thirty-one degrees at which typing was feasible;
either the iglu steamed and dripped so that my work was lost
in a wet fog as a result of his demands for tea, boiled fox, bannock,
and soup in rapid succession, or my fingers and carbon paper
froze as a result of his drafty comings and goings at jobs that
seemed to necessitate propping the door open. Allaq never
initiated eating orgies, never suggested that I interrupt my
typing to cook just when the temperature had arrived at twenty-
eight, rarely hinted that a contribution from my kapluna family’s
latest gift of soup might be welcome. She never came and went
through the door with such abandon as Inuttiaq, nor sat in the
open door to drink her tea. Many were the frustrated moments
when I heartily wished him gone. But only when he was gone
did I learn how essential his presence was to us, how dependent
we were for warmth on the very demands I so resented.
In his absence that January, life seemed almost to be in
abeyance. Perhaps it was partly the weather, of a solid, tangible
cold that seized face and feet and hands in a burning, dry-ice
grip. Indoors the cold, though much less intense than outdoors,
had an aching, relentless quality that, in my first experience of
it, I felt as a physical weight—the weight of the snow dome
drawing down over me and numbing my energy. One of our two
primus stoves had gone with Inuttiaq and one of our two kero-
sene storm lanterns; but it was not just the cold weather and the
absence of some of our accustomed heating equipment that
lowered the iglu temperature so spectacularly. It was Allaq’s
behavior, too. She became a different person; her passivity was
beyond belief. She never boiled fish, rarely brewed tea, and
never lit the lamp to dry clothes—any of which activities would
have heated the iglu. Neither did she go out to warmer iglus to
visit. She just sat in her corner of the iklig, waved her feet, blew
on her hands, and endlessly observed that the iglu was cold.
She decided that one reason for its temperature was that she had
not banked it thoroughly enough with loose snow when it was
built; but she did nothing about it beyond pointing out to me the
thin spots. She merely blew on her hands and remarked that
they were too cold to sew, as she would like to do. One day when
the temperature was eight degrees indoors (a full twenty degrees

Family Life 103

 lower than when Inuttiaq was home) Allaq spent the entire day
searching for lice in Saarak’s sweaters and her own and remark-
ing that her knees were cold. We did not eat, because the fish
on the floor were frozen too solidly to cut and Allaq did not light
the lamp, which would have thawed them. I retreated to my
sleeping bag during this period, and even so I froze the gloved
fingers which, in order to hold my book, protruded from the
sleeping bag. The children also stayed in bed most of the time,
playing quietly and apparently happily under the quilts. Allaq
never stayed in bed, even when there was no practical need for
her to get up, a fact curiously out of keeping with her other be-
havior, I thought. She slept late—we all slept about sixteen
hours as compared with the usual nine or ten—but then, having
drunk her morning tea, she would say reluctantly but with a
smile: “I ought to get dressed. The cold makes one lazy but one
ought to get dressed.”’ And she would pull on her parka and her
thin boots and sit blowing on her hands and searching for lice.
But when the dogs’ howling signaled Inuttiaq’s return, bleak
passivity vanished in a flash; the iglu filled with visitors come to
share the feast and hear the news. Allaq made tea, coffee, ban-
nock, tea and more tea, till the thawing dome dripped again,
while Inuttiaq, enthroned on the ikliq with Saarak on his lap,
recounted the Gjoa Haven news and the comic vicissitudes of
the trip, and listed his purchases in detail to all comers.
Looking back on this incident, I find it even more puzzling
than I did at the time, so contrary was Allaq’s behavior to her
usual quiet industry. Perhaps her pregnancy, then unknown to
me, ate at her energy, intensifying the numbing effect of the cold
and making it seem too effortful even to go next door for a visit
and a cup of tea in Pala’s iglu. She did visit, I thought, far less
often than usual that winter, whether or not Inuttiaq was at
home, and once she explained to me that she did not feel like
visiting, because standing, as visitors do, was tiring and made
her feet cold. But this does not explain why she rarely visited
in her father’s iglu, where she was privileged to sit down fa-
miliarly on the iklig. Allaq’s failure to make more than the
minimal morning and evening tea while Inuttiaq was gone was
also puzzling. Perhaps it was because both the primus and the
tea belonged to me; perhaps in the absence of her usual leader,

104 Never in Anger

Inuttiag, Allaq, still a little shy of me, was waiting for me to
give directions, as Inuttiaq usually did, concerning the use of
my belongings. I, on the other hand, curious to find out to what
extremes her passivity would go, had refrained from interfering
or from taking the initiative myself.
In other camps and at other seasons the effect of Inuttiaq’s
absence was less dramatic. Whether that was because the weather
was warmer on other occasions; or because Allaq had had her
baby; or because in most other camps we lived in closer associa-
tion with Pala’s household, and Pala’s requests for tea and food
substituted for the absent Inuttiaq’s, I do not know; in any
event, I experienced then some of the pleasure I had anticipated
in vain on the occasion of Inuttiaq’s January trading trip. True,
it was chilly because the primus or the Coleman had gone with
the travelers; but life proceeded at a more relaxed and leisurely
pace than normally. “We will sleep late when Inuttiaq is gone,”
Allaq said, smiling; and so we did, every day, undisturbed by
Inuttiaq’s early morning monologues and tea-brewing clatter.
Inuttiaq never liked to be behindhand when the men went out
to their morning tasks. When the men were gone, only a mini-
mum of fishing and net-checking had to be done, because there
were fewer mouths, human and canine, to feed.
Allag, except on that first occasion, seemed closer to her own
family during Inuttiaq’s absences. Her sisters Amarug and
Amaagtuq, always freely in and out of our iglu in any case,
seemed at these times to visit longer and more talkatively, oc-
cupying Inuttiaq’s place on the ikliq with comfortable familiarity.
Once, during the winter when we lived in a joint iglu with Pala,
Amaagqtuq announced that she would spend the night on our side
of the wall for the pleasure of it, and she did. She lay awake for
a long time after we were in bed, gazing up at the dome and
dreamily telling Allaq, as she had countless times before, the
story of her household's recent trip from autumn camp to winter
camp: “... It was very cold... the wind was blowing the snow
along the ground, and then it began to storm... and one of the
puppies climbed out of the box where we were carrying them
and fell off the sled and we had to go back for him... it was
funny (tiphi)...”
I enjoyed the enhanced conviviality of Allaq’s family at these

Family Life 105

 times: the family presided over by Pala, a benign patriarch,
placidly puffing at his enormous curved pipe while he watched
the activities of his children and grandchildren, laughed with
them at their amusements, and periodically reminded Saarak
of his love for her. “Ee ee! Did you mistakenly think you weren't
lovable (niviug, naklik)? Ee ee!” I enjoyed also the respite that
Inuttiaq’s trips gave me from what I perceived as his “domineer-
ing self-centeredness.” I have mentioned already the difficulties
I personally encountered when my interests clashed with his:
when, for example, he destroyed the painfully achieved typing
temperature of the iglu. In addition, I was irritated by his
peremptory manner toward Allaq and the children and by the
lack of consideration I felt he showed them. He seemed to have
no compunctions about interrupting their activities, and oc-
casionally even Allaq’s sleep, to order them to do things for him:
make tea, make bannock, fetch his pipe, help feed the dogs, chip
the stalactites off the walls. If the wall developed a hole and
snow began to accumulate on the bedding, or if a dog broke
loose from its chain during the night, it would always be the
soundly sleeping Allaq, not her wakeful husband, who had to go
out and repair the damage.
Once I myself was unwittingly the occasion for Inuttiaq’s dis-
turbing Allaq’s sleep. It was toward the end of my first winter
when, frustrated to the point of desperation by the typing situa-
tion in the iglu, I had set up a double-walled tent behind the
camp, a delightfully cosy cranny just large enough to hold the
three boxes that served as desk, stool, and lampstand, and the
primus with which I heated the tent. I often spent seven or eight
hours a day there in January and February, trying to complete
the notes that I had not been able to bring up to date, as I had
hoped, while Inuttiaq was in Gjoa Haven. Coming home then
late at night when the rest of the family was already asleep, I
occasionally indulged in the luxury of frying my supper fish.
Somehow, it was harder to eat it raw when I was alone than when
I was surrounded by other raw-fish-eaters. Moreover, fried (as
opposed to boiled) fish was a treat impossible to have during the
day, both because the frying pan did not hold enough so that
everybody could have a share and because the smoke from the
frying smothered the other occupants of the iglu. In order not

106 Never in Anger

 to disturb the sleepers on these midnight occasions, I used to
carry the primus out into the unheated storeroom and cook
there, jogging from foot to foot as I had been taught, to keep
my feet from freezing while the fish fried. One such night when
I came into the iglu bearing my smoking fish, I found Allaq
sitting up in bed, eyes bleared with sleep, mixing bannock.
Inuttiaq lay beside her, smoking a cigarette. He explained, “I
told her to because I’m famished.”’
If Inuttiaq’s intention was to make me feel the pinch of guilt
for my private feast, he was successful; but I never found out
whether his midnight demand for bannock was indeed a re-
proach to me or whether he was merely awakened by the smell
of frying fish (very like that of frying bannock) and was, as he
said, famished.
Inuttiaqg rarely went so far as to make Allaq cook for him in the
middle of the night; and most, if not all, of the demands he made
were quite within the rights of a man in his position as inde-
pendent head of a household. On one occasion I nonplussed
Allaq by asking why it was that men “bossed” women and made
all the daily decisions. Allag, very resourceful when confronted
with idiotic kapluna questions, was silent for only a minute,
then said: “Because the Bible says that’s the way it should be.”
Wanting to know whether the situation was rationalized in terms
of women’s inferiority, I prodded her, telling her that some
kapluna men also boss their women because they believe that
women have less ihuma (judgment or mind) than men. She
assured me that this was not the case among Eskimos: “It’s just
because the Bible says women should obey men; that’s the only
reason.” She did not, of course, mean that in pre-Christian days
women obeyed men less. She meant that it is in the natural
ordained order of things for men to boss women, and always has
been.
Utku women, as far as I could tell, did not feel beleaguered by
the demands of their men. A woman did not resent it when her
husband took the best of the lighting and cooking equipment
with him on his trips to Gjoa Haven, leaving her to suffer from
the cold. She did not feel unjustly put upon when her husband
waked her in bitter darkness to chase a loose dog, usually in
vain, through the camp. She rationalized these vicissitudes in

Family Life 107

 terms of the feeling that it is the men who have the hardest work
to do, going out in the coldest weather to fish or hunt and making
long difficult sled trips under the most adverse conditions. “We
want to do what we can to help them because they take care of
us,” was the way Ikayuqtuq put it to me. She was not an Utku,
but the latter also phrased their performance of everyday duties
in terms of “wanting to help.” Whenever Amaaqtuq abandoned
a half-sewn seam or a half-written letter and rushed out at the
sound of her brother’s approaching team, it was because “I want
to help Mannik unharness.” And when Allaq, once achingly,
wheezingly ill with a grippy infection, refused to take off her
boots and lie down, it was “because I want to help Inuttiaq
unload,” when he returned from a trapping trip.
Moreover, I had the impression that many of the demands
men made were welcome for their own sake. A woman who
would not have presumed to cook a rare delicacy like rice on
her own initiative was delighted when her husband or brother
told her to do so. Even tea was drunk in greater quantity when
the men were around to order it. A woman herself would
modestly claim to be satisfied with one cup; but if her husband
were thirsty for a second kettleful, she would be more than
happy to have a second cup.

108 Never in Anger

Playing the recorder in imitation of Yiini
Returning from the autumn caribou hunt: unloading the dogs

OSE EEE’

oo { ra

ae wane

Late summer at the Rapids

 _wAtitge
ve
-

Setting off on the autumn caribou hunt

Making tea: younger sister imitating elder
 Inuttiag’s Children
I. Saarak: Temper and Reason in Child Nature
Next to Inuttiaq himself, the most important person in Inuttiaq’s
household during my first winter at Back River was Saarak, the
three-year-old baby of the family.1 Indeed, in some respects
1. During my 1963-1965 field trip, I had occasion at one time or another to
observe seventeen Utku children, six boys and eleven girls, who were divided
by age as follows:

Age Boys Girls

Under 2 years 2 2
3-4 years 0 3
5-6 years 0 2
10-15 years 4 4

There were also two boys and two girls who were considered almost adult
(sixteen to nineteen years old) and whom I therefore do not list as children. Un-
fortunately, of these seventeen children, only six lived for more than a few
months in the camps in which I lived, and these were all small girls. Many of
my impressions of child life were thus based on the behavior of these six little
girls, although, as far as possible, ! checked my intensive observations of them
against my more irregular observations of the others.

109
 Saarak was more important than her father. She was the lode-
stone not only of her household but also of her whole kin group.
Members of Pala’s family: Saarak’s grandfather, aunts, and
uncles, often excused themselves after a visit to my tent that
first autumn by explaining: “I want to see Saarak.” Similarly,
coming in to visit in Inuttiaqg’s iglu, they would announce: “I
wanted to see Saarak.” Saarak, small, pretty, eagerly responsive,
was greeted with snuffs and endearments and courted with
specially hoarded delicacies: fish eyes and skin, bannock, jam,
and spoonfuls of dry milk. Every wish was catered to if at all
possible or soothed away tenderly if not. And when the source
of her trouble could not be determined or when she refused to
be assuaged, people, hearing her rending wails, murmured sym-
pathetically, “Naaaaklingnaqtuq (poor dear).”” Small wonder
that in Saarak’s view her family existed to serve her. Small
wonder, too, that, being a child of vivid moods, she expressed
her feelings both frequently and strenuously.
Long before it was time for me to leave, Saarak had bewitched
me as completely as she had bewitched the rest of her family.
People had taken for granted that this would be so: “You'll re-
member Saarak after you leave,” they predicted, ‘“‘and will want
to see her.” And so I did, intensely. But at first I found her far
from enchanting. When others were a little slow in bending to
her will, she screamed in anger and frustration, and when con-
fronted with the unfamiliar, she screamed in fear. The pity of it
all and the effort not to show my feelings left me breathless.

During my return visit in 1968 I saw again eleven of the

same children. In
addition, six children had been born, two boys and two
girls under the age of
two, and two girls between two and three years old. On this
second trip I saw
more variation in child-rearing practices than I had observed before,
variations
both among families and within one family in the treatment of different
children.
However, these were all variations on the theme described
here, and consisted
mainly in the timing and severity of the training in emotional
control. Tears and
demands on the part of favorite children tend to be tolerated considera
bly longer
than the same behavior on the part of less favored children.
Saarak’s public
behavior is now very much like the behavior of Raigili that I describe
here, but
in the privacy of her family she is far less controlled than her
sister was at the
same age, and her lack of control is indulged to a far greater degree,
even though
she now has two younger sisters.
Ages given in the text are approximate, as has been mentioned earlier,
as Utku
do not keep track of birthdays.

110 Never in Anger

Worst of all was the fact that in the early days the screams were
very often directed at me. Saarak was terrified of me, as she was
of all strangers—perhaps doubly afraid in my case, since every
detail of my appearance and manner was so foreign to her. If
her mother, Allag, brought her to visit in my tent, she whim-
pered, a tiny, tentative sound, mounting shortly to an insistent
wail. Allaq would try in vain to soothe the child at her breast,
and I, knowing the lure of kapluna delicacies, would contribute
raisins or a bit of bannock, to no avail. In a few minutes Allaq
would give in. “Saarak wants to go home,” she would say, smil-
ing an apology, and home she would obediently go. IfI tried to
visit in Inuttiaq’s tent the situation was similar. Usually my
head had hardly appeared in the entrance before a screech of
anguish shattered the peace, and I hurriedly withdrew to the
neutral company of my books and papers.
Saarak’s Eskimo family and neighbors took a more objective
and tolerant view of her temper than I did. The Utku expect
little children to be easily angered (urulu, giquq, ningaq) and
frightened (ighi, kappia) and to cry easily when disturbed
(huqu), because they have no ihuma: no mind, thought, reason,
or understanding. Adults say they are not concerned (huqu,
naklik) by a child’s irrational fears and rages, because they know
there is nothing really wrong; they are concerned only when a
child is hungry, cold, ill, or in real danger. They may laugh ata
child’s fear or anger; nevertheless, at least while the child is
small, there is affection in the amusement, an affection expressed
in caressing words and tones: “Naaaaklingnaqtuq!’’ Because
children are unreasoning beings, unable to understand that
their distresses are illusory, people are at pains to reassure them.
And similarly, because children cannot understand the exigen-
cies of the real world: shortages of food and needs of other
people, people feel it is hard (ayuqnaq) for them to be deprived
of anything they may want.
In the Utku view, growing up is very largely a process of ac-
quiring ihuma, since it is primarily the use of ihuma that dis-
tinguishes mature, adult behavior from that of a child, an idiot,
a very sick or an insane person. Ihuma has many manifestations.
When a child begins to respond to the social world around him:
when he begins to recognize people and to remember, to under-

Inuttiaq’s Children 111

 stand words and to talk, when he begins to be shy and self.
conscious (kanngu), to learn restraint in self-expression, and to
want to participate in socially useful activities, people remark
affectionately that the child is acquiring ihuma.
Utku consider, I think, that the growth of ihuma is internal and
autonomous to a degree. They believe that ihuma needs to be
informed, instructed, in order to develop along proper lines, but
that there is no point in trying to teach a child before he shows
signs of possessing it. So in many respects the child is permitted
to time his own social growth. The belief is that the more thuma
the child acquires, the more he will want to use it. Adults just
wait for him to conform, or say “I told you so” when he burns
himself or is bitten as a result of ignoring warnings. By the age
of five or six the child has usually given evidence of possessing
considerable ihuma. Then if he misbehaves in some egregious
way—if he loses his temper, for instance—one of his elders may
inquire with scathing quietness: “Does one think, mistakenly,
that he is using his ihuma?”
Saarak, during that first winter at Back River, was beginning
in small ways to acquire ihuma, but she had not yet become sub-
ject to criticism. Soothed and indulged, her tempers and fears
still reigned in their full vividness. However, Allaq was preg-
nant that winter, and the birth of a baby sister in April was to
mark the fading of Saarak’s innocence. Watching Saarak, the
outspoken princess, with her successor, and contrasting Saarak’s
life with that of her predecessor, her quiet, shyly sweet sister,
Raigili, taught me much about the growth of adult restraint and
about praprieties of self-expression.

II. Saarak’s Charm: Spontaneity; The Expression of Affection

toward Small Children
I became aware of Saarak’s charm only gradually. That first au-
tumn my journal curtly noted that Saarak was one of the two least
lovable children I had ever met, the other being Saarak’s small
cousin Rosi, whose moods were even more violent and who
enjoyed similar freedom of expression. It was, not surprisingly,
when Saarak began to court me that I discovered how very de-
lightful she could be.

112 Never in Anger

 Saarak’s affection for me was initially purchased with raisins
and chocolate; her love for these delicacies preceded by weeks
her affection for me. It was immoral to deprive a child of Saarak’s
age of anything she set her heart on. Saarak exploited that situa-
tion to the full, and I resented it, since Saarak’s appetite was
insatiable and my supplies finite. In my early days with Inut-
tiaq’s family I was unaware of Saarak’s growing passion for kap-
luna sweets. She was much too afraid of me then to make her
wishes known directly to me as she later did, holding out her
hand and chirping like a petulant sparrow: “Mmm? mmm?”
Instead, she demanded the goody from her mother, who was
herself so shy (ilira) of me at first that she tried, usually in vain,
to substitute a fish eye or a bite of caribou tallow for the coveted
raisins, without calling my attention to the situation. Only when
importunate wails arose and I looked up from my writing to
find out what was the matter, would Allaq apologetically ex-
plain: “Saarak wants raisins; she hasn’t enough sense (ihuma)
not to ask for things she wants; she’s funny (tiphi).” I always
produced the raisins then from their hiding place in my knap-
sack and doled out a half-frozen handful to Saarak and another to
Raigili. Raigili had already learned not to make demands of
people other than her mother; she never gave a sign of wishing
to share in the bounty, even when the box was brought out, but
when I handed her her share the silent shine in her eyes was
expressive enough. Her less restrained sister bounced and co-
quettishly pursed her lips with pleasure, while Allaq murmured
to her a warm “vaaaa,” a long release of breath like a sigh of
fulfillment. It was Allaq’s idea that the raisins be kept hidden
in my belongings; she hoped, on the whole vainly, that Saarak
would think of them less frequently this way. And whenever the
box was emptied, which happened quite often, she showed it
dramatically to Saarak, murmuring with a sympathy that was
partly guile: “Look, they're all gone, no more raisins, all gone.”
The maneuver rarely worked for long; Saarak was convinced
that if she screamed importunately enough, another box would
materialize from some mysterious corner. She continued to be
convinced of this long after my supply was really gone.
It was on an afternoon about a month after I had moved into
Inuttiaq’s qaqmaq that another dimension first appeared in my

Inuttiag’s Children 113

 relationship with Saarak. I was sitting, as usual, in my place on
the ikliq, my chilblained hands thankfully tucked into the shelter
of my wide duffel sleeves. Tea was brewing on the primus. The
thread of steam from the kettle’s spout mingled with the breath
of the visitors, and the warming hum of the stove underlay the
murmured talk of the day’s catch, the impending move to the
winter campsite, and the trading trip to Gjoa Haven which would
follow the move. Saarak was, as usual, entertaining with tricks
that her aunts and uncles had taught her. Children of her age
were the adults’ playthings. People amused themselves by teach-
ing the children to sing fragments of hymns and to repeat with
perfect adult inflection phrases whose syllables their unac-
customed tongues hopelessly stumbled over. Saarak’s stock
phrase for almost the entire winter of 1963 was an imitation of
my own most joyful phrase. “Oh oh!” Saarak would say with a
kapluna lilt in her voice, “Tukihivu-u-unga ( I understand)!”
That phrase she had picked up by herself, to the amusement of
the adults: “What? What did you say, Saarak? ‘Oh-oh-tukihi-
vungaa’? Say it again, Saarak, you’re going to be so cute and
lovable (niviug) and have a piece of bannock to eat. Do tell us
again what it is your elder sister is always saying: ‘Oh-oh.. .’”
And Saarak would obligingly repeat, rewarded by laughing
snuffs and perhaps by the promised bit of bannock.
Saarak and Rosi were also taught to make comical faces on
request (one, with down-drawn mouth and raised eyebrows,
reminded me of an arrogant English butler) and to imitate a
variety of gestures, some invented for the occasion, others char-
acteristic of all Utku. Thus, as a game, Saarak was taught how to
say “yes” as Utku do by raising their eyebrows and how to say
“no” by wrinkling the nose. She was taught to groove her tongue
in the manner of an adult tending a campfire or blowing out the
lamp at night, a gesture vastly more effective than my flat-
tongued blow, which the Eskimos found entertainingly inept.
Saarak was also taught how to rock back and forth from one foot
to the other, bouncing a bundle of rags or a limbless and head-
less rubber doll pressed into the back of her fur suit, like a
mother bouncing her baby to sleep. Occasionally Saarak’s
mother or one of her aunts tried to tuck a live puppy into the

114 Never in Anger

 back of Saarak’s suit, but this Saarak resisted with screams, to
. ~
ent ele

the amusement of the adults.

.

The children were taught these gestures by example. “Do it

, AS

like this,”’ the adult would say, rocking back and forth, or groov-
aeLs Clee
ao

ing her tongue so that the child could see. Saarak and Rosi were
2

extraordinarily observant; after a few tries both children usually

produced comically accurate facsimiles of the adult’s gesture.
I noted the same keenness of observation in older children and
adults, all of whom were much more skilled in imitation than I,
accustomed as I am to verbal instruction. The imitative attempts
of the small children, both the successes and the failures, were
greeted with warm laughter and affectionately drawn-out mur-
murs: “Eeeeeee eeee!”’; “vaaaa!”
On this particular afternoon, instead of responding to adult
directions to do this or that, Saarak had reversed the procedure
and was directing her family and visitors to do as she did. She
(t
pattered from person to person in the qaqmagq, stopping in front
of each, folding her hands into her neck as adults do to warm
them, and instructing each person as she herself was wont to be
instructed: “Do this! like this!” Each person obediently tucked
his hands into his neck in imitation of Saarak and laughed with
her. Usually when Saarak ran around the qaqmaq, summoned
to sit on an uncle’s lap or to be kissed by an aunt, she made a
wide detour around me, but on this day, to my delighted aston-
ishment, she included me in her circuit. “Do this!’ she in-
structed me, and when I, like her other admirers, docilely tucked
my hands into my neck, she beamed and chirped at me as hap-
pily as if I were really a member of her family. She had never
smiled at me before; I was elated, suffused by a warmth I had
not previously felt for her.
After that, there were many incidents that drew me to Saarak.
There was the night in midwinter when I came home after one
of the first days that I had spent working in my writing tent,
pitched on the slope behind our iglu. The tent was a blessing,
but it meant that I was at home much less often than formerly,
and Saarak noticed the change. She met me, on this particular
night, when I crawled through the low iglu doorway, shoving
ahead of me all the unwieldy paraphernalia that anthropologists

Inuttiaq’s Children 115

 need to keep them happy: primus stove, lantern, tin box of field-
notes, typewriter, teapot, cup, ulu for scraping the previous
night’s accumulation of frost off the tent walls. Saarak bounced,
pursing her lips in the self-conscious gesture that her parents
interpreted as “being a child: wanting to be loved (niviuq).”
She ran to take each object as it appeared in the doorway and
with amusing but precarious dispatch carried it over to my side
of the iglu, where it belonged. The primus landed wrong-side-
up, the storm lantern clattered on its side, while Allaq, laughing,
instructed Raigili to repair the situation. Then Saarak ran for
the snowbeater, the wooden stick used to knock the dry snow
out of clothes before it has time to thaw and soak the clothing.
She laid about my legs with such enthusiastic warmth that I
feared for my shins and toes. “Do this,” she ordered me, squat-
ting down. Allaq, anticipating Saarak’s next move, hastily sub-
stituted a large fur mitten for the wooden stick, and when I
obediently squatted on the floor, Saarak beset my shoulders and
back with the mitten like a determined little whirlwind.
“That’s enough, Saarak,” Allaq laughed. “Enough! Enough!”
I echoed, laughing. But Saarak chirped, “Just a minute!” and
continued to beat me, thoroughly enjoying the performance.
Saarak (and her elders) used “just a minute!” the way American
children use “no!”—but she always said it in the most enchant-
ing, birdlike voice; one could not help laughing. And nobody
tried not to laugh.
I was profoundly refreshed by the fact that people did not try
to suppress their amusement at the antics of small children like
Saarak and by the fact that the children were permitted to enjoy
the entertainment together with their audience without fear
that they would become “self-conscious” or “spoiled.”’ When
Saarak bounced for attention like a quaint rabbit, nobody seemed
to worry that she was learning the bad habit of showing off; she
was merely expressing a childlike wish for affection (niviuq),
a wish in which her family happily acquiesced, nodding their
heads at her lovingly and murmuring, “Eeeeee eeeee,” in the
soft cadence of affection. Later, when she developed reason
(thuma), restraint and shyness (kanngu), a wish to be properly
inconspicuous, would, in their view, grow naturally. The adults’
freedom to express enjoyment and admiration, and Saarak’s

116 Never in Anger

 freedom from soul-shriveling disapproval, were, I am sure, im-
portant elements in my enjoyment of Saarak. I was simultane-
ously Saarak and parent, in both roles reveling in a spontaneity
unfamiliar to me.
In another way, too, the relaxed warmth between Saarak and
her elders was delightful to me. Utku husbands and their wives,
children older than five or six and their parents, never embrace
or kiss, never sit with arms entwined, do not hold hands or lean
against one another, and rarely touch one another in any way,
except insofar as they lie under the same quilts at night. I missed
the clasped hands, the comfortably leaning shoulders that in
; my own society I was accustomed to in these relationships. I
felt frozen, isolated, by restraint, and so the love so tangibly
bestowed on Saarak was a balm. It was a joy to watch her with
her family, and I, like her family, delighted in luring her onto
my lap, in feeling her warm, wriggly little body in my arms, and
in snuffing her small dark head. I delighted in society’s permis-
sion, more accurately, in its injunction, to respond to all Saarak’s
commands—except, now and then, to her commands for raisins.
I do not know whether the relief that was a part of my love for
Saarak was shared by her Utku family. Perhaps not, since I,
unlike the Utku, suffered from the contrast between the restrained
Utku ways of expressing affection: the glance or the smile, the
matter-of-fact offer of a cup of tea, or the unasked attention to
a ripped mitten, and the ways that were a part of my own nature.
Moreover, for the Utku, not all physical warmth was channeled
into these relationships with small children. Though it was
lacking in the relationship between husband and wife and be-
tween parent and older child, where I missed it, there was some
in relationships among brothers and sisters, who sometimes
rough-housed gaily with each other, leaned close together to
look at a picture, or deloused each other’s shirts, pulling the
garment up, section by section, to inspect it under the lamp while
the wearer bent patiently into the light. I saw it among little
girls, who walked hand in hand or leaned against older people,
who never appeared to notice; among older girls who, as a
friendly gesture, combed each other’s hair out and carefully
braided it again; and among young men who, idling away the
evening in a tiny travel-iglu out on the sea, lay with their arms

Inuttiaq’s Children 117

 around one another or sprawled across one another as they
laughed over word-guessing games or told each other again and
again what they would buy with the foxes they were taking to
Gjoa Haven. Still, all of these demonstrations had a much more
casual tone than the affection shown to Saarak, and to Rosi by
her family, and I think it is possible that the intensity of these re-
lationships with small children may be in part a reaction to the
restraint so prevalent in other relationships.

III. Raigili’s Charm: Mildness

Raigili, on first acquaintance, was as mild in manner as her sis-
ter Saarak was forceful, as docile as Saarak was unruly. Paradox-
ically, it was her very invisibility that made me notice her and
that in the first months drew me to her more than to the vividly
assertive Saarak. In the first weeks Raigili’s normal quietness
was intensified by fear of me; she never spoke to me unless I
spoke to her, and then her answers came in the tiniest of whis-
pers. Often she did not even manage a whisper but replied to
my questions only with an affirmative lift of her eyebrows ora
negative wrinkle of her nose. Strangely, though I remarked the
intensity of her shyness, I was not clearly aware that I was its
cause until weeks later, when the fear had lessened. I must have
sensed something of her uneasiness, so strong was the protective
warmth that IJ felt for her; but consciously I thought her soft un-
obtrusiveness a natural gentleness with which all Utku children
seemed, however incredibly, to be favored after the age of five or
so. The other children of Raigili’s age and older seemed equally
retiring; even their play, from the distance at which I first ob-
served it, seemed noiseless, the laughter and the cries of excite-
ment absorbed by the huge tundra spaces.
In part, my impression was right: the older Utku children
were usually gentle-mannered, even when they did not feel shy
(ilira) and afraid (iqhi). They were never chittery in the noisy
manner of children in my own world, never buzzed inside the
tents and iglus with the young restlessness that would have
been so distracting in those close confines; but normally there
was a gaiety, a spontaneity—a childlike aliveness—in their quiet-
ness, which was obscured at first by their fear of me. And perhaps

118 Never in Anger

 not only by fear. In retrospect, it seems to me that even after the
fear was allayed, I was blind for some time to these other quali-
ties in the children. I think the vividness of the contrast be-
tween the children’s quietness and the clamor that I had hitherto,
with a mixture of irritation and resignation, expected of children
may have exaggerated my perception of the silence. It was
peaceful; I accepted it gratefully and unanalytically, inwardly
blessing and ignoring my small benefactors.
But if I was slow to discover Raigili’s aliveness, I was more
than ever charmed by her when I did so. The bubbling giggle
that convulsed her when I attempted bumblingly to talk to her
was very endearing, and so was the funny little air of maturity
with which she told stories of her life in the hospital or made
solemn pronouncements: “The weather doesn’t feel cold to me
because I am a child.” It was delightful to hear her beside me
on the ikliq, humming and talking, often to herself, as she rocked
idly back and forth or amused herself in small ways. I never
ceased to be amazed at her capacity for absorbing herself in
zp.
st

scarcely perceptible pursuits for hours on end, sitting or lying |

quietly on the ikliq and demanding no attention from anyone.
She might scrape a discarded bit of hide with her mother’s scrap-
ing tool, wave a sock vaguely in the air, twist and untwist an
empty plastic bag, or run cardboard dogs, which her mother had
made for her, up and down the tent pole that edged the ikliq.
One of her favorite activities was drawing. Sometimes, early in
the morning, when I opened my eyes and rolled over in my
sleeping bag to face the rest of the family, I would find myself
looking into Raigili’s wide dark eyes. Lying silently beside me,
she was waiting for me to wake. “Titiraut...” With a hardly
audible whisper that trailed off into silence before the word was
finished, she would beg a pencil from me, and, pulling out from
under her parka-pillow the discarded cover of a lard package
or a grimy scrap of cardboard the size of a pocket mirror, she
would draw—mostly figures of parents and children—or pains-
takingly attempt to write her names and those of her relatives in
the syllabic characters that her parents and aunts were teaching
her. I found her shy glow completely captivating when, after
she was finished, she explained to me in her trailing whisper
what it was she had written or drawn.

Inuttiaq’s Children 119

 Raigili responded to the warmth I felt for her—as well as to
my frequent small gifts of raisins and chocolate. She showed her — if
liking first with characteristic quietness. One night at bedtime.
about a month after I had moved in with Inuttiaq’s family, she
appeared in front of me as I was writing in my place on the iklig,
Clutched to her chest she held my urine pot, a tin can almost
half as big as she herself was, and over the frosted top of the can
her wide eyes, very like Inuttiaq’s in their contour, smiled at me |
with melting warmth. During the day it was customary for al] __
except the very young and very old to go outdoors to urinate,
but at night large cans: a gasoline drum for Inuttiag’s family
and a smaller powdered milk can for me, stood in front of the
iklig. In the evening, after the family went to bed, a smaller can
was passed around, and each member of the family filled it in
the privacy of his sleeping bag or quilt and emptied it into the {|
communal can. It was an efficient and inoffensive system, since
the indoor chill quickly canceled any odor. Raigili was often p
sent at bedtime to bring in her family’s can from outdoors, where or
it lay during the day, but she had never brought in mine, nor had
U
anyone asked her to on this occasion. Raigili said nothing, but res
the beaming smile that appeared over the rim of the can made | dir
her mother’s explanation superfluous. “She likes you (pittiaq),” eve:
Allaq said. “The children like you because you give them kap-
ing
luna food to eat.”
dat
pez
IV. Raigili and Her Family: The Expression of Affection lit
mn
toward Older Children
ni
I was slow in sensing the quality of Raigili’s relationship with ne
her own family. She was past the age when affection for her k
could be exuberantly expressed, as it was toward Saarak, and ex
many of its manifestations were too subtle for my unpracticed ttig
eye and ear to catch. My initial impression was that, except for lhe
attending to her physical needs, the members of her family were Witt
as unaware as I was of her gentle presence on the periphery of the
their activities. During that first winter, Allaq still boned Raigilis |
fish for her and cut it into bite-sized pieces, as she did for Saarak
tid,
(and occasionally for Inuttiag when he remarked that he was vg
feeling lazy). Daily she dried, stretched, and mended Raigilis ‘On

120 Never in Anger

 clothes, and when Raigili had lost her fur mittens or worn holes
in her boots, as frequently happened, Allaq made her new ones
out of whatever scraps of hide were available. At night the sleepy
Raigili would sit hunched on the edge of the ikliq or stand im-
mobile in the middle of the floor, her parka sleeves dangling
limp and armless, while she waited for her mother to undress
| her. Allaq, usually without a word, would come and lift the inert
child into bed, folding her parka and trousers under her head
for a pillow, and pulling the quilt over her shoulders. “Have
you peed, child?” Inuttiaq would ask her, and when she mur-
mured that she had not, he would pass her the can: “Pee, so
you won't wet the mattress.”
It seemed to me in my first weeks that most of Raigili’s ex-
changes with her parents were of this matter-of-fact, overtly
unemotional sort. It was not that I thought her unhappy or re-
jected; she never gave that impression. She was simply there—
pleasantly, comfortably, taken for granted, to be responded to
or overlooked as convenient, never intrusive or obstreperous.
Unlike Saarak, Raigili seldom, if ever, insisted that her parents
respond to her remarks or play with her; she rarely pressed
directly for any sort of notice, except when she was hungry, and
even then her apparent patience amazed me. If Allaq were sew-
ing busily or scraping the floor, she might simply ignore her
daughter’s soft-voiced request for tea or fish. Raigili would re-
peat her request at intervals: ““Uuumak! [her word for “mother”;
| literally, ““Hey you!’’] one feels like tea,” but she seldom grew
_ insistent and even less often petulant. If she did, her mother
‘ might respond with a sound of disapproval in her voice like the
' mooing of a cow: “Mmmmmmn, Raigili! Always hungry!”
But Raigili was by no means unloved, and her parents were
_ explicitly concerned that she should feel their affection. Inu-
ttiag, voicing this concern one autumn day, taught me how wrong
I had been in thinking that Raigili was ignored. He was standing
with some of the members of Pala’s household on the bluff above
the camp, keeping Allaq company while she boiled fish for the
camp’s supper on a wind-sheltered fireplace built into the cliff-
side. Raigili, who had been playing down by the shore, started
to come up to join the group on the bluff, but Inuttiaq, seeing her
coming, called to her to fetch his parka from the beach and take

Inuttiaq’s Children 121

 it home. Not hearing Inuttiaq’s shout clearly, Raigili started to
bring the parka to him on the cliff instead, and he redirected her
to the tent. Obediently she carried the heavy parka to the tent,
from our height a tiny figure waddling almost invisibly behind
the bulk of duffel. Again she started up toward the cliff, and again
Inuttiaq sent her back, this time to fetch his pipe from the tent;
but at the same time, watching her retreating back, he remarked
to his wife in a low voice: ““We’d better not send her on any more
errands. If we send her away every time she gets close she'll
think we don’t like to have her near us (niviugq).”
As I learned more of the language, I became increasingly
aware of the affection that was expressed for Raigili. Often it
was the little signs of her growing up that elicited the affection.
When she offered for the first time to fill the big teakettle with
water from the river, her mother watched from a distance. Seeing
Raigili, small and inept, slip on the stones at the river edge and
spill the water half out again, Allaq called to her: “Rai! That's
enough!” And watching the child approach across the gravel,
tilted heavily to one side under the weight of the half-empty
kettle, she murmured, while the child was still too far off to hear,
a warmly amused “vaaaa!”” When Raigili went fishing in three
feet of water with a hookless string for a line and a stone that
refused to stay in place for a sinker; when she wandered off to
hunt ptarmigan, as small groups of children often did, but this
time going by herself much farther than children of her age us-
ually cared to go; when, staggering and falling, she carried a
nearly adult-sized load of plants for fuel up to the fireplace on
the bluff; when she heated water for tea on the lichen-fed fire-
place—her parents, her uncles and aunts, her grandfather, noted
her behavior from a distance with affectionate murmurs: ““Vaa-
aaa!” “Eeee eeeeee!”’ “Naaaaaklingnaqtugq (she is lovable)!”
A good deal of the solicitude that people felt for Raigili seemed
to be expressed at a distance in this way—so much so that I did
not always see how Raigili could be aware of the affection that
her parents wished her to feel. There were isolated occasions
on which, I am reasonably sure, she was not aware of being affec-
tionately observed. When one day Allaq noticed her daughter
vomiting behind the qaqmagq, she only said to me: ‘“‘Naaaak-
lingnaqtuq (poor dear), she’s vomiting’; she did not approach

122 Never in Anger

 the child. And when, another time, Inuttiaq noticed Raigili out-
doors by herself, without playmates, he too said only, “‘Naaaak-
lingnaqtuq! She’s all alone”; he did not inquire into the situation
| or take steps to alter it.
; But in general I think she could not fail to feel the love that
. surrounded her. Hearing other children privately remarked on
‘by their families, she may have guessed that she was, too, even
when no direct sign was given; and on many occasions when she
was observed, echoes did reach her. People would ask her later
with a smile: “Raigili made tea today?” or: “(How many ptar-
migan did you get?” She would beam, and the adult would smile:
“Vaaa!l” Once in a while I was refreshed by a communication
of more than usual directness: the pleasure Allaq several times
expressed as she listened to Raigili singing and talking beside
her on the ikliq; the note Inuttiag sent once when he was away
on a trip to Gjoa Haven: “Kiss Saarak for me and speak lovingly
(aqaq) to Raigili.”
One incident is especially memorable. It occurred one winter
ee

day when, going outdoors on an errand, I noticed Raigili in the

distance, helping her mother to carry big chips of ice for drink-
{ ing-water up to the iglu from the river, several hundred yards
away. It was not an easy task; the ice, as I knew well, had an
unpleasant propensity for freezing one’s fingers, even through
fur mittens. Admiringly (and a little guiltily, because I was not
| myself helping with the job that day), I mentioned Raigili’s
helpfulness to Inuttiaq. “Eeeee,” he said, in the flat monotone
characteristic of Utku. It always baffled my untrained ear, that
tone; remarks were engulfed by it and vanished without a ripple
of response. But when an ice block dropped with a thud in the
storeroom outside and Raigili’s small, red-clad form appeared in
the door, Inuttiaq looked up from his filing: “Were you fetching
ice?’ And when she raised her eyebrows: “Yes,” he took her
hands out of their mittens—“vaaaa!”—and held them against
his naked belly to warm them.
To be sure, under ordinary circumstances, Raigili had out-
grown this physical form of tenderness as she had outgrown
being kissed, and explicitly affectionate words, too, would be-
come increasingly rare as she grew older. Most expressions
were already very discreet—chillingly so to me, by contrast with

Inuttiaq’s Children 123

 the lavish cuddling and cooing that Saarak reveled in. Conscious
that Raigili’s feelings for her sister were not always of the friend-
liest, and hungry for affection myself in my isolation, I wondered
whether Raigili felt her diet as thin as I would have in her place.
J think, on the whole, she did not. Discretion was inherent in the
adult way of expressing feeling to which Raigili was being as-
similated and, as a child of her people, she must have been at-
tuned to it as I could never be. Even to me, the matter-of-fact
questions and comments, the smiles, the silently considerate
acts, spoke clearly enough when I was the recipient. And the
glow that I felt at such times I thought I sensed also in Raigili’s
smile when she reported how many ptarmigan she had stoned
or when she responded to Allaq’s pleasure at hearing her chatter.
Moreover, not only did Raigili understand adult ways, she also
wanted, like other children, to be part of them. She must have
felt some pang at the passing of childish privilege, but perhaps
for that very reason her tolerance for those more extravagant
forms of affection was nil. Nilak, a frequent visitor of Inuttiagq,
took advantage of her reticence for his amusement. The ritual
was always the same. Lowering his handsome face toward Rai-
gili, he would tease: “Want a kiss?” At this Raigili would always
draw away in silence, wrinkling her nose, while her tormentor
laughed. I noted Raigili’s behavior, thinking it an expression of
the shyness characteristic of her age. Raigili’s small cousin
Qijuk was subjected to the same joke and responded similarly.
But I had no suspicion of how deeply Raigili felt about being
kissed until one day when her own mother teased her. Allaq’s
baby, Qayaq, was several months old at the time and, enthroned
on her mother’s back, she already received a good deal of affec-
tionate homage. On this occasion Raigili had lifted her face
toward the baby, who stood looking down at her, over Allaq’s
shoulder. ‘“Kunik (kiss)? asked Raigili, tenderly. But Allaq
joked, “Raigili wants to be kissed,” and she raised her face in
imitation of her daughter: “Kunik...” Raigili’s face contorted
in furious shock. With a loss of control startling in her, she
shrieked, “My little SISTER!” (not you!) and, crushing her
eyes shut, stuck out her tongue at her mother, who giggled.
Raigili’s parents showed their affection for her in one funda-
mental and consistent way that would probably not be out-

124 Never in Anger

 grown: in responsiveness to their daughter's own feelings of
affection (unga) for them, her wish not be separated from them.
The sensitivity that Inuttiaq showed on the day when Raigili
tried to join the sociable group on the bluff was not unusual in
his relationship with her. One of the other occasions on which I
observed it occurred shortly after Qayaq was born. A night or
two after the event, Inuttiaq remarked that the family quilt under
which he, Allaq, Raigili, Saarak, and now Qayaq all lay, had
become a bit small. The usual solution in such cases is to suggest
to the oldest child that he or she might use a separate quilt. Inu-
ttiaq said nothing specifically to Raigili that night, but next morn-
ing, lying in my sleeping bag beside Raigili, I heard her father
murmur a question to her. The words were unfamiliar to me,
and her reply, a wrinkle of the nose: “No,” gave me no clue to
what he had asked. Later, when Inuttiaq and Raigili had gone
out, I asked Allaq for an explanation. She said, “Raigili should
sleep separately, but she wants to be with us (unga). When
Kamik comes back from school next month, they two will sleep
together.” In fact, Raigili was still sleeping under the same quilt
with her parents nine months later when I left Back River.
Raigili’s wish to be with her parents was heeded also at the
time of the autumn caribou hunt. Every August, when the able-
bodied members of the camp went off into the tundra for a week
or two to hunt caribou for their winter clothing, most of the chil-
dren and old people were left behind. In the first autumn of my
stay Raigili had been left behind at the Rapids with her grand-
father, Pala, and her aunts Amaaqtuq and Akla, but in the second
autumn, little as she was, she went along. She was a valiant
little figure in her red parka as she plodded off over the hum-
mocky tundra, already far behind the others before they were
out of sight of the camp. I wondered why she had gone, instead
of remaining behind again with Pala and the other children.
Pala told me: it was because she had been so sad (hujuujaq)
last year when she was left behind.

V. The Lives of Children: Sibling Relationships

In the weeks before I saw Raigili very clearly, I thought her life
idyllic. There seemed to be no pressure on her to be anything

Inuttiaq’s Children 125

 other than what she was: a charming little girl with shyly glow-
ing eyes and a cascading giggle that erupted at the slightest
amusement. Casually, in the interstices of my day, I watched
her with her two friends Qijuk and Akla; I was aware of the trio
in the background of my other concerns—giggling together,
darting through the camp on unknown chases, or bending to-
gether over various absorbing occupations. They seemed never
to lack for amusement. Sometimes they accompanied the adults
on their fuel-gathering, net-checking, or fishing expeditions.
If the spirit moved them, they might gather a few handfuls of
lichen or heather, pull a fish or two from the net, or take a turn
at jigging; if it did not, they would occupy themselves with their
own pursuits at the edge of the adult group or wander off by
themselves. In the autumn they slid on the smooth fresh ice of
the inlet or harnessed themselves to a toy sled, taking turns in
pulling one another over the river, urged on by the shouts of
the “driver”: “Ui! ui! ai!’ Sometimes the three little girls har-
nessed themselves together to the sled while a young uncle, or
perhaps Saarak, rode in style; and sometimes an older uncle
harnessed himself and gave them all a ride. Crouching in imita-
tion of the adult hunting posture, they would stalk the clucking
ptarmigan that ran ahead of them over the uneven ground and
that finally stood stupidly waiting to be stoned. They chased
lemming and ermine with wild torrents of giggles in and out and
around their stony burrows, prodding the animals out with sticks
whenever the cowering little things thought themselves safe
under a rock; or else they took turns at being caribou, stalking,
“shooting,” and “butchering” each other in the field behind
camp. They played at being dogs, allowing themselves to be
chained to a rock as the real dogs were, watered, and fed with
fish, which they ate in canine fashion, holding the fish on the
ground with both “paws” and tearing at it fiercely with their
teeth. Sometimes they walked on all fours with the aid of bird
legs or caribou rib-bones for front paws and pretended, never
very ferociously, to snarl and snap at each other.
Often, too, their games were domestic. The adolescent girls
made stuffed dolls out of scraps of cloth and hide, sewing tiny
skin boots and fur-ruffed parkas for them with minuscule stitches
that spoke well for their future prowess as seamstresses, and

126 Never in Anger

sometimes the younger girls would clumsily imitate them, to
the silent amusement of their elders. At other times the little
girls fried bannock for themselves and for the children who were
still too young to play, miniature bannock cooked on a tin plate
precariously balanced on three pebbles that served as a fire-
place. And in the long spring and summer nights when the sun
never set and the air was heady with light, the children wandered
on the tundra or along the water’s edge, occasionally until
nearly morning, before they retired to the rickety play tent they
had built out of canvas and quilts behind the camp. In the tent,
which they filled to bursting, they lay close together under their
quilt, giggling or telling each other stories, and the adults, hear-
ing a child’s soft voice in the background, would smile as they
sat together in front of the tents, drinking tea and chatting: “‘Rai-
gili. She’s telling a story.”
Accustomed as I was to the ordinary frictions of American
child-life, I was refreshed in those early weeks by the apparent
peacefulness of Raigili’s life. Though some of the children’s
entertainments were, literally or figuratively, murderous, there
seemed remarkably little strife among the children themselves:
little competition and less quarreling. I was refreshed also by
Raigili’s apparent freedom of action. I heard none of the adult
directives, the “do’’s and “don’t’s, that constantly prick at chil-
dren in my world. Raigili was asked to run errands occasionally,
but beyond that she was not called on to take a consistently
useful part in social life. There seemed remarkably few things
that she was not permitted to do, and if she did rummage in the
household storage box, eat the lump of tallow that had been
saved for Saarak, or fail to run an errand, her small misdemeanor
never earned her more than a passing titter or a moo of disap-
proval, and often it seemed to be ignored altogether.
Raigili’s peace and freedom were not as pervasive as I had at
first thought. It became clear later that what seemed to me a
“mild” note of censure or of amusement was not necessarily so
to Raigili. But at first, as unattuned to the highly modulated ex-
pression of friction as I was to the discreet expression of affec-
tion, I failed to note either the signs of tension or the context in
which they most often occurred: Raigili’s relationship with her
sister Saarak.

Inuttiag’s Children 127

 During much of the time when I knew Inuttiaq’s family, the
relationship between the two sisters was highly turbulent. Rai-
gili did not welcome intrusions on her activities, and most often
it was Saarak who, so far innocent of restraint, was the intruder.
Moreover, Raigili, being older, was always required to submit
to her tyrant-sister. In later years, when Saarak acquired more
reason (ihuma), Raigili, as the elder, would be rewarded by
having Saarak at her beck and call; but for the moment her satis-
faction must lie in her own knowledge of having used her reason
maturely and in the approval of her relatives.
Raigili’s behavior was, of course, not always guided by reason.
She was only six or seven; her unhappiness and displeasure
could not always be concealed. But so angelically demure was
she on first acquaintance that it was some time before I realized
that the lesson of control was still imperfectly learned.
During my first weeks with Inuttiaq’s family, Raigili and
Saarak seemed to me to have little importance for each other.
Even when Raigili was at home, which she often was not,
Saarak’s activities rarely seemed to interest her; and Saarak was
still far too attached, physically and emotionally, to her mother
to pay attention to Raigili except when Raigili had something
that Saarak wanted. She seldom turned to Raigili when she
wished something to eat or needed to be placed on the urine
pot. As I recall, she did not always include Raigili in her atten-
tion-seeking games either, and Raigili for her part rarely ad-
mired or laughed or cooed at Saarak, nor did she usually help,
as other children did, to offer distraction when Saarak was ina
temper. Much of the time I had the impression that the two
sisters lived in separate worlds. Increasingly, however, as
winter limited Raigili’s roamings—or perhaps it was partly that
my senses became more keenly attuned—there were moments
when the two orbits impinged on one another. The collision
was sometimes resounding, but not always. Sometimes, snug
under the quilts on a cold moming, or on a day when Raigili
was awaiting the repair of her boots, the two children played
together quite happily, singing snatches of hymns, poking each
other teasingly in the navel, playing “cards” with little squares
of cardboard, in imitation of their elders—throwing the cards
down one after the other, picking them up and repeating the

128 Never in Anger

 process—or running the cardboard dogs that Allaq cut out for
them along the edge of the iklig. Sometimes, pulling the quilts
up over their heads, they just lay and giggled together.
The peacefulness of the children, lying together in bed, and
their ingenuity in entertaining themselves on such occasions
was as amazing to me as Raigili’s own capacity for solitary ab-
sorption. Their elders were amused by the games. One of the
words for play, pinnguujaqtuq, means to “pretend to do,” that
is, to imitate; and the children were marvelous mimics. I was
one of their favorite models; all aspects of my behavior were
copied and, as far as possible, my speech as well. One morning,
a few weeks before I left Back River, I was working to fill in a
few of the most flagrant gaps in my data, when Allaq, with a low-
voiced “Yiini’” and a surreptitious nod toward the children,
pulled my attention from my notebook. Raigili was lying in bed
on the ikliq and Saarak was sitting astride her sister’s stomach,
tapping absorbedly with all her fingers on Raigili’s chest. Rai-
gili’s folded arms moved slowly across her chest as Saarak tapped,
until they extended far to one side, at which point Saarak ab-
ruptly shoved them back again so that they protruded on the
other side. Then the process was repeated. Intermittently,
Saarak interrupted her tapping to tug the neck of Raigili’s under-
shirt a little higher up on her sister’s chin. She was typing, with
Raigili a most efficient instrument!
There were other games, too, that mirrored my behavior in
illuminating ways. There was the asking-for-raisins game, for
example, in which one of the children, Saarak, or Raigili, or per-
haps their ten-year-old aunt, Akla, sat “typing” on an imaginary
machine at an invisible box-table while the other player came
and stood beseechingly beside her. “Kaglali (berries)!’’ the
petitioner pleaded in a thin baby voice that stumbled over con-
sonants; but the typist blandly continued to type, ignoring the
increasingly importunate voice at her elbow. Finally, she leaned
down, rough with impatience, pulled an imaginary box of raisins
from inside the “box” on which she was “typing” and brusquely
thrust it at the importuner: “Uvva (here)! Over this game, too,
Allaq and I exchanged secret smiles, but I felt more than a
twinge of guilt, witnessing the all-too-accurate portrayal of my
kapluna selfishness.

Inuttiaq’s Children 129

 Of all the roles the two sisters played, perhaps the commonest
were those of mother and child. The game took various forms.
Often in the mornings, when the two were playing together in
bed, Raigili would suggest to Saarak that she “carry” her (using
the word that refers to the act of a mother carrying her child on
her back). Saarak would climb onto the back of her crouching
sister, and Raigili would attempt to cover them both with the
quilt. And when Saarak fell off, as she always did, the game
would begin over again with happy giggles. Or if one of the
family’s bitches had recently whelped, the children would plead
to have a puppy or two brought to them in bed, and they would
play with the tiny, half-blind things as if with babies: snuffing
their noses lovingly, feeding them bits of cut-up fish, holding
them in their laps and tapping their penes to make them urinate,
as mothers do with their infants.
Occasionally, Raigili and Saarak played together in these
ways for an hour or more at a time, but oftener the games ended
abruptly in mutual outrage. The events precipitating the clash
were rarely visible to my eye; Saarak in some imperceptible
way would annoy (urulu) Raigili, who would retaliate by sur-
reptitiously shoving Saarak, or merely by ignoring some demand
Saarak made of her, and Saarak’s shriek would effectively sum-
mon the adult world to her aid. It was, of course, always Saarak’s
aid and not Raigili’s to which people came, since Raigili, as the
elder, should have known better than to annoy (urulu) her still
irrational (lacking in ihuma) little sister.

VI. Raigili and Saarak: Sibling Friction

According to Allaq, Raigili’s clashes with Saarak occurred ex-
cessively often. Though jealousy between sisters seemed an
ordinary enough feeling to me, Allaq denied that it was usual
for Utku children to feel consistently hostile toward their
brothers and sisters. The word tuhuujugq (tuhuu), which denotes
adult “jealousy” and “envy,” is not used to describe children’s
feelings about their siblings. People are aware that a child who
is displaced from its mother’s breast and back by the birth of a
younger sibling may feel distressed (ujjiq), and reassurances of
food and attention are offered to assuage its suffering; it is rec-
ognized that children get annoyed (urulu) with one another at

130 Never in Anger

 times, and also that children may love (naklik, niviug) some of
their siblings more than others, just as parents love (naklik,
niviuq) some of their children more than others; but these phe-
nomena are seen as quite different from the consistent antag-
onism that Raigili showed toward Saarak. Raigili, rightly or
wrongly, was said to be an unusual case. As Allaq put it, when
Saarak was born Raigili “didn’t acknowledge her as a younger
sister,” and often she did not “feel like an older sister,” affec-
tionately protective (naklik) and amused (tiphi), toward Saarak.’
I was not convinced that Raigili’s feelings for Saarak were as
unusual as her mother claimed. Allaq’s statement may have been
an expression of the Utkus’ embarrassment in the face of hos-
tility, their inclination to minimize it or to deny it altogether
(like the English-speaking informant who, when I asked him to
translate the word “hate,” flushed and denied that there was
such a word in Eskimo). Though Allagq could not conceal Rai-
gili’s antagonism to Saarak while I lived with the family, she
may nevertheless have wished me to believe that in general the
Utku did achieve their ideal of amity. Or possibly, prompted
by a mother’s irritation at her daughter’s slowness in learning to
control her feelings, she really did believe Raigili unusually
difficult. Allaq’s mild smile gave me no clue to her thought.
My doubts concerning the idiosyncratic nature of Raigili’s
feelings stemmed in part from the remarks people made about
their “less loved (naklik, niviuq)” siblings. Though variations
in the quality of affection (naklik, niviug) felt for one’s siblings
was taken for granted, and though remarks made about the less
loved brothers and sisters were always temperately phrased,
there was occasionally something in their quality, or in their
context, that made me wonder how much more was felt than said.
Allaq’s remarks about her own siblings are illustrative. Pala had
had twelve children, of whom Allaq was the eldest and a favorite

2. Inuttiaq’s daughter Kamik, who was as dear to him as Saarak,

also behaved
most of the time in a very “unsisterly” manner toward Saarak: stepping
on her
foot, snatching her toys, deliberately tormenting her to the screaming point,
which, in Saarak’s case, was always quickly reached. But because Allaq
averred
that Kamik’s teasing of Saarak had been much worse since
her return from board-
ing school, and because the school experience had made her behavior
aberrant
i‘ other ways, I have not considered Kamik illustrative
of ordinary Utku child
ehavior.

Inuttiaq’s Children
131
 with her father. Five of her brothers and sisters were dead and
a sixth brother, Putuguk, had been adopted as a small child by
Qavwvik and his wife, who had no children of their own. Once,
watching the two men, Putuguk and Qawvik, steer their loaded
sled down the river on their way to a new camp, Allaq remarked
that Putuguk had been a very sweet (niviuq) little boy. And she
named her baby, Qayaq, for another brother who had drowned
a few years earlier: “Because I loved (naklik) him very much.”
But she remembered less affectionately (niviuq) the babyhoods
of her three youngest siblings, two sisters and a brother, who
were still living with Pala. The youngest of all, Raigili’s play-
mate Akla seems to have been the least favored (niviuq), both
by Allaq and by her brother Mannik, who was a few years
younger than herself. She was recalling one day the endearing
(aqaq) phrases that Mannik had used for his various small nieces
and for his younger sisters, years ago, when they were of an age
to be caressed. These forms of endearment are highly individual
refrains, affectionate links between two people, one older, one
younger. Occasionally, they may even replace a kinship term
as a way of addressing or referring to a person. Once, on an ear-
lier day, Allaq had amused herself by prompting Saarak to recite
in their characteristic, tender tones the affectionate phrases by
which she, Saarak, was addressed.
“What does Qavvik say to you?” Allaq had asked Saarak.
“Dub-dub; dub-dub.” (These were tender but meaningless
syllables.)
“What does your father say to you?”
“Taipkuat, taipkuat (those, those).”
“What about your grandfather?”
“Niviuqnaittuhugilutiit (did you mistakenly think you weren’t
lovable [niviuq])?”’
“How does your mother’s sister [Amaruq] speak to you?”
“Nu. Nivi.” (These were the first syllables of “sister’s daugh-
ter, sweetheart [niviuq].’”)
I was startled to hear my own name in the recital, as I had
been unaware of the affectionate refrains in my speech. “What
does your eldest sister say to you?”
“Saaaaarak qaplunaatut ugqaluttiaqtug (Saarak speaks English
beautifully).”

132 Never in Anger

 Allaq remembered the phrases that Mannik had used for all
of his younger sisters and sisters’ daughters, except Akla. “He
didn’t speak lovingly (aqaq) to her much,” said Allag. “She
wasn't very charming (niviuq).”
Another time, when Allaq was discussing the comparative
prettiness of various infants, she mentioned her other younger
sister and brother disparagingly: “I didn’t care much for (niviugq)
them as children; they weren’t very pretty; Ukpik had a big
nose.” I asked whether she had loved (niviuq) all of her other
brothers and sisters. “Yes,” she said, “all of them.” I reminded
her of her earlier remark about Akla: “You said she wasn’t lov-
able (niviug); Mannik didn’t find her charming (niviuq).” Allaq
corrected me, as she occasionally did when I neglected to modu-
late my expression: “I said he didn’t find her very charming.”
But she added, “I didn’t find her very charming either.”
There were, to be sure, experiences in Raigili’s life that might
conceivably have caused her to find Saarak even less charming
than Allaq found her siblings: Amaaqtuq, Akla, and Ukpik. In
the first place, while Raigili was still very small, she had a severe
illness and was flown out to the hospital in Chesterfield Inlet,
three hundred miles to the south. She was gone for about a year,
not in the hospital all the time, but staying with her future
mother-in-law, Ukalik, in Baker Lake, near Chesterfield Inlet,
while she awaited transportation home. Ukalik’s own children
were fairly well grown; in her household Raigili had probably
been the baby, treated with all the tenderness usually lavished
on children of her age. When she finally came home, Allaq said,
she was severely distressed. Her parents seemed unfamiliar to
her at first, and she cried to go back to Ukalik; she cried for
milk and candy and gum—all the delicacies to which she had
become accustomed in the kapluna settlements in the south;
she suffered from nightmares and from unusually intense fears
(kappia). “It’s all right now,” Allaq told me; but Raigili had not
forgotten her experience away from home. In the evenings, when
the family lay in bed comfortably talking, Raigili sometimes
told us fragmentary stories about the hospital and about her
future mother-in-law’s family at Baker Lake.
It was while Raigili was away that Saarak was born. Small
wonder, I thought, that she should resent her; not only had she

Inuttiaq’s Children 133

 been violently tom away, she had been supplanted in her ab-
sence. She had gone away a pampered baby, had probably been
adored and pampered as a baby in Ukalik’s household, and then
had been transplanted suddenly into a family in which she was
not princess, a family not even clearly hers, in her childish mind.
But Allaq never phrased it this way, and it is impossible for me
to know what Raigili really felt when she returned to find a new-
born sister. |
A second reason why Raigili may have felt unusually antago-
nistic toward Saarak is that her parents loved (naklik) Saarak,
as Inuttiaq put it, “a little bit’? more than they did her. This
may also be another reason for Allaq’s sensitivity to Raigili’s
hostility. Though the preferences parents felt for some of their
children over others were, in general, accepted as straightfor-
wardly, spoken of as matter-of-factly, as were the preferences
that siblings felt for one another, nevertheless, for some reason,
Inuttiaq and Allaq did not at first tell me of their preference for
Saarak (and for their eldest, Kamik). Allaq did one day ask me
which child I preferred (pittiaq), Raigili or Saarak. It was only
about three weeks after I had moved in with Inuttiaq’s family.
I was still at that time far more charmed by Raigili than by the
whiny, demanding Saarak, but, inhibited by the kapluna sense
of indiscriminate “equality” that seeks to deny differences, I
was embarrassed to admit the truth. Even though Raigili was not
at home and Saarak was too young to understand, I said I liked
(pittiaq) them both. Allaq then candidly remarked: ‘““My younger
sister Amaruq likes (pittiaq) Raigili best.” I was surprised to
hear of Amaruq’s preference, because my impression had been
the reverse: she, like everyone else who came to visit, always
made much of Saarak, cooing (aqaq) at her, holding her, teaching
her cute tricks with which to entertain the adults; and almost
every morning she came to carry Saarak to her grandfather’s
qaqmagq for a visit, tucking the child under her parka for warmth
and crawling out through the low doorway with Saarak clinging
like a huge protuberance to her belly. To Raigili she seemed to
pay no attention at all beyond addressing her with an occasional
teasing remark to which Raigili responded with a self-conscious
grin. But Allaq said no, Amaruq liked Raigili more; she knew
because when Raigili was younger and kissable, ‘‘at the darling

134 Never in Anger

 (niviug) age,” Amaruq had snuffed her with deep, long, vigorous
intake of breath—Allaq demonstrated by snuffing Saarak—
whereas when Amaruq snuffed Saarak (which she frequently
did) she did it, said Allaq, with less ardor. Moreover, as Allaq
demonstrated, there was less intense affection in Amaruq’s tone
when she cooed (aqaq) at Saarak than there had been in the days
when she cooed at Raigili.
Why Allaq was reluctant that day to disclose her own prefer-
ences, I do not know. Possibly such favoritism, though more
easily accepted than it is with us, is nevertheless not quite ideal.
Or perhaps she was embarrassed by my own reluctance to name
Raigili. Though I flattered myself that my hesitation had been
invisible, I did not allow for the extraordinarily sensitive an-
tennae that Utku have for others’ expressions of feeling. In any
case, when in turn I asked Allaq about her affectionate feelings
for the children, she told me that she loved (naklik) both children
sometimes and was annoyed (urulu) with both sometimes.
“Everybody is like that,” she said, slightly embarrassed, I
iid,

thought, at admitting annoyance; “everybody gets annoyed

in

(urulu) at children sometimes—except Inuttiaq; he loves

fe

(naklik) his children, so he is never annoyed (urulu) with them

be

and never scolds (huaq) them.”

It was a year later that Inuttiaq and Allaq, discussing with
me the feelings parents have for their children, agreed—in
Raigili’s presence—that they loved (naklik) Saarak “a little
bit more” than Raigili. Raigili, quietly occupied as always,
showed no sign of distress. Knowing of her “unsisterly”’ feelings
for Saarak, I felt a tug of sympathy for her. But again I have no
idea what passed in her small dark head just then, whether
resentment was a strand in her feeling as she sat beside her
father, listening to our conversation. Perhaps her parents’
preference for Saarak was unrelated to her own feelings about
her sister. Perhaps Raigili, like her parents, accepted individual
differences in the quality of affection as part of the natural order,
an acceptance warmed by Inuttiaq’s further explanation: that
he loved (naklik) Saarak and Kamik “too much,” so much that
it was uncomfortable, whereas his love for Raigili, and for the
baby, Qayaq, was comfortable and good (naamak).
But even if her parents’ preference for Saarak, or her own

Inuttiaq’s Children 135

 difficult hospitalization, did not give Raigili unusual cause to
dislike Saarak, it seemed to me there was ground enough for
antagonism just in the ordinary nature of the relationship be-
tween Utku siblings. Sibling relationships are extremely im-
portant in the life of an Utku child. Though in adulthood, and
in the later years of childhood, too, these relationships may be
very close—the bond between siblings is said to be one of the
strongest in Utku society—nevertheless, when a child is small,
his brothers and sisters are responsible for many of his growing
pains, a fact that makes even more interesting the Utku view
that hostility between siblings is unusual.
Three important lessons in particular are related to the birth
of a younger sibling:* learning consistently to walk instead of
being carried, to eat adult food instead of being nursed, and to
control feelings.
Utku children are usually born about three years apart. How
this spacing is managed I do not know; I found no evidence
either for abstinence or for infanticide, and direct inquiries
about birth control elicited only embarrassed smiles. Utku are
aware that kaplunas and the Netsilik Eskimos who live in Gjoa
Haven sometimes have babies more frequently, “even before
the elder one can walk!” Allag once disapprovingly remarked;
and they feel strongly that this must be difficult (ihluit) not only
for the child who is still unable to walk easily but also for the
mother. “Too much crying, I should think,” Allaq observed.
In the Utkus’ own practice, on the other hand, since a child is
ordinarily both nursed and carried by its mother whenever he
wants to be until the next baby is born, the latter’s birth repre-
sents to the older child a double crisis; he is simultaneously
weaned and set on his own feet.
Control, the third and perhaps most difficult lesson the small

3. The toilet training that is considered such a critical experience in the life
of a kapluna child does not appear to be a crisis for the Utku child, who from the
time he is born is held over a can at appropriate moments: when he wakes, after
(and sometimes while) he eats, before he goes to sleep, and in general when-
ever he shows signs of discharging. I did not observe the transition from this
stage to the next, in which the child learns to call attention to his need for the
can. Allaq told me that children lear a verbal signal by themselves, by imitat-
ing slightly older children, and this seems quite in line with the autonomy that
children are granted in other areas of their development.

136 Never in Anger

child learns, is not physically connected with a sibling’s birth,
but it is related in other critical ways. It often happens that by
the time the baby is born the elder has acquired enough ihuma
to warrant pressure, just a little, at first, being placed on him to
begin to moderate his demands and control their expression a
bit. The baby’s birth may well provide an incentive to begin
this training, not only because the crying of two children is hard
to bear, as Allaq observed, but because the mother has the needs
of a younger, more helpless being to attend to now. Further-
more, and herein lies the most direct cause of friction, it is toward
this younger sister or brother himself that the elder child is
first taught to exercise control, to practice the Utku virtues of
generous self-subordination, patience, and helpfulness. More
and more, as the younger child’s demands increase, he un-
wittingly provides the elder with opportunities for improving
the control of his temper. It is not easy to learn to relinquish
one’s toys or one’s chewing gum to an insistent little hand, or
laughingly to permit the baby to destroy one’s proud handiwork.

VII. Raigili’s Troubles: Hostility in Older Children

Control did not come easily to Raigili, but so strongly was an-
tagonism disapproved that she took care to express it with ut-
most surreptitiousness: a pinch under the quilt, a snatched toy
when the adults’ backs were turned. More often her hostility
took the form not of attack but of sullenness: a passive, but total,
resistance to social overtures. Her feelings were never con-
sidered justified; all of the adults and older, more socialized
children agreed that when Saarak ordered Raigili to give or to
take, to do or not to do, Raigili should obey.
Although Raigili very rarely resisted these pressures actively,
some incident or other almost every day attested to her displeas-
ure. One of the few instances of open conflict that I noted con-
cerned a plastic bag that Raigili was playing with as she lay in
bed, absorbedly turning it inside out and back again, blowing
it up and pressing the air out again, laughing at its squeaking
reluctance to be forced. Saarak, lying beside her sister, was
fascinated; but when she tried to appropriate the marvelous bag
Raigili, amazingly, held fast. Saarak characteristically tried to

Inuttiag’s Children 137

 enforce her will by battering at Raigili, who, uncharacteristically
but exasperated this time beyond endurance, hit her back. Allaq
quietly instructed Raigili to give her sister the coveted bag,
but the instruction was lost in the commotion. Allaq, giggling,
remarked on the humor of the situation, and for a while she
waited for the problem to dissipate itself, or for Raigili to use
her reason; but when neither child showed any sign of weaken-
ing determination, Allaq mildly cautioned Raigili against hurting
Saarak and tried to distract her attention from the battle. Raigili,
enraged, broke into loud wails, most unusual for her, which were
promptly echoed by her sister. Allaq with soothing murmurs
took the weeping Saarak onto her lap and offered her breast in
consolation, while Raigili, her tears ignored, lay reproved.
The same plastic bag featured in a second incident as well. As
before, Raigili had it and Saarak wanted it. This time Inuttiaq
intervened. “Give it to Saarak,” he said quietly. Raigili sat
immobile with lowered head, while Inuttiaq waited. “Give it
to Saarak,”’ Inuttiaq repeated in the same still voice. Raigili sat,
frozen. Saarak danced shrieking on the ikliq, flailing her arms
in the direction of her sister. Inuttiaq took hold of the end of
the bag that Raigili held unyielding in her hands and gradually,
but equally unyieldingly, tugged, fixing his recalcitrant daughter
with a steady stare but saying nothing. Raigili held tightly and
silently to her possession, but Inuttiaq was stronger; the plastic
bag changed hands. But then, perhaps moved by a twist of sym-
pathy for Raigili, he divided the bag in half and gave one half
to each child—a rare gesture, which Raigili accepted, still in
silence.
Silent sulkiness was Raigili’s characteristic response not only
to problems caused by Saarak but to all the distresses to which
she was subject, and a dramatic response it was. I had never
imagined that sulking could be such an aggressive act, that one
could feel so directly attacked by inertness. In such moods
Raigili might stand for an hour or more facing the wall, her arms
withdrawn from her sleeves—the latter pose a characteristic
Utku expression of hunger, cold, fatigue, and grief. If her mother
tried to tempt her with a piece of jammy bannock she dropped
it or ignored it. If her father tried to move her she was limp in
his hands. Only gradually, very gradually, would the mood lift,

138 Never in Anger

and when she finally turned around in acceptance of a cup of
tea her wet face would betray her silent tears. And Raigili was
not the only child who behaved in this way; I was struck by how
little overt hostility was expressed by Utku children of Raigili’s
age and older, as compared with our own children. To be sure,
of the seventeen children who lived in our camp at one time or
another there was only one other of Raigili’s own age, her cousin
Qijuk, with whom to compare her; but the behavior of Qijuk,
who was a few months younger than Raigili, was comparable
to the latter’s in every way; when she was happy, her gentle
spontaneity was charming; when she was unhappy, her silent
tears were as devastating as her cousin’s. In the older children:
in Akla and in her fourteen-year-old brother, Ukpik, I saw traces
of sulkiness in the impassivity with which they sometimes
countered requests that they fetch a kettle of water from the
river or help to harness the dogs. Looking straight ahead with
blank eyes and chewing vigorously on the gum that circulated
eternally from mouth to mouth, pulling it in long pink strands
from between their teeth, wrapping the strands around grimy
fingers and thrusting them back between their teeth, they would
appear totally engrossed in their private activity and unaware of
their elder’s request. Kamik carried withdrawal to an extreme
on her return from school. Apparently intensely unhappy at
home after her winter in a kapluna settlement, she pretended
for most of the summer that she was deaf. The noise in the school
diningroom (which was certainly louder than any she had pre-
viously heard) had deafened her, she claimed. And toward the
end of my stay I could see the same pattern developing even in
Saarak when, suffering from a fall, a slight, or a frustration, she
would sit motionless on the ikliq with her arms withdrawn from
her sleeves, unresponsive to affectionate inquiry.
To be sure, the silence of childish rebellion was not absolute;
there were outbursts. But even the occasional shriek that tore
the silence was wordless. Only once during the time I lived with
the Utku did I hear a child shout reproaches at anyone (and that
child was Kamik, during the difficult summer after her return
from school). I never heard a child say “I won't!”; though when
accused of a misdemeanor, they frequently did moo a denial:
“rm not!” or “I didn’t!” And the hostile flailings with which

Inuttiaq’s Children 139

 Raigili and Qijuk occasionally emphasized their resistance were
never more than the most ineffectual of symbols: a swat with a
wool sock or a slash of the arm, which carefully fell several feet
short of the offending elder.
The responses of the more socialized children and of the adults
to these displays of hostility seemed on the whole as mild as the
displays themselves. Often, childish misbehavior was met by
silence, not the heavy silence of gathering tension but an ap-
parently relaxed and rational one that seemed to recognize that
the child was not being reasonable but that sooner or later he
would come to his senses and behave more maturely again.
Compliance with adult demands in any specific instance was
generally not enforced; though obedience was valued, parents
rarely made issues out of incidents by insisting on obedience.
Inuttiaq’s duel with Raigili over the plastic bag was an excep-
tional case.
It was with some sense of shock that I contrasted this relaxed
attitude toward discipline (which most kaplunas visiting in
Eskimo communities distortedly view as “spoiling” the chil-
dren) with our own insistence on parental consistency, our feel-
ing that parental demands ought to be “followed through” on
pain of punishment. If an Utku child played with fire or wan-
dered too close to a dog, an adult might reinforce the painful
consequences by unsympathetically reminding the child that
he had only his own folly to blame; but the child was not pun-
ished in our sense of the word. Adult disapproval of children’s
actions was often clear to see, and sometimes, especially if a
child were persistently obstreperous and tended not to heed
ordinary instruction, strong pressure to conform might be exerted
in the form of false threats, repeated often, even when the child
was not being unruly at the moment: “The kapluna will adopt
you, he likes disobedient children.” “Do you know why it’s
gotten dark? It’s because you’re disobedient.” ‘Watch out!
Yiini has adopted a pet marmot and she keeps it under her sleep-
ing bag.” And very rarely: “We'll tie you to the dog chain.”
But often adults seemed to make a sort of game out of the threat-
ening situation, smiling secretly at each other over the head of
the wide-eyed solemn child, and finally letting the child into
the secret: permitting him to look under the sleeping bag or

140 Never in Anger

 reassuring him that they had been lying to him. And if the child
chose to pay no attention, the subject was dropped; penalties
were not inflicted on him, either in retribution for his wrong-
doing or to “teach him a lesson.”
Nevertheless the Utku methods of bringing up their children
were, in their own way, highly consistent. Their consistency
lay in the nature of the demands themselves, the requirements
for maturity. They were always the same: control of emotion-
ality, generosity, helpfulness, honesty, independence. There
was never any doubt which aspects of the child’s behavior
were reprehensible; and sooner or later the child, with the
help of his reason (ihuma), would take the initiative in bringing
himself to conform. There was consistency also in the calmly
rational quality of the adults’ responses to childish misbehavior.
To me, the adults seemed refreshingly relaxed, though my for-
eign eye may have misled me. Was it amusement born of tension
that was responsible for the secretive smiles exchanged by
Raigili’s family behind her sulking back? Allaq, passively per-
mitting Saarak in her lap to assault her in a tornado of fury be-
cause the chewing gum was all gone, laughed, as did the visitors,
at the buffets, screams, and bites while she offered her the breast.
When Saarak hit at her face with a spoon, she turned her head
away, saying calmly, “She has no reason (ihuma).” And when
Saarak was finally nursing peacefully, laughter released the
audience.
Laughter, like silence, was a common response to childish
misbehavior, not only as a reaction to the ruffling of the smooth
social surface, but also sometimes as a device for encouraging
more mature behavior in the child. After once or twice witness-
ing the merciless teasing to which Raigili was subjected when,
overcome by some unspoken woe, she stood staring into the
lamp, almost inaudibly sobbing behind the wall of her misery,
I no longer envied the lot of Utku children or thought them
blessedly untormented by adult pressures. At first her elders
would ignore her, smiling behind her back, but if the mood did
not quickly dissipate itself, and usually it did not, her parents
would intervene. The sobs were often so silent that I, on the
far side of the ikliq, was not aware she was crying until Allaq
—:

or Inuttiag, in a voice as neutral as if they were asking Raigili

—

Inuttiaq’s Children 141

ee
 to hand them a fish, said, “Stop crying. You are loved (naklik),
Drink some tea. Stop crying.” If these efforts to thaw Raigili’s
barricade were unsuccessful, then they would say, “Listen!
There’s a dog howling—Maktak, I think’—to which Raigili
would respond with redoubled sobs, vehement and angry now,
and Inuttiaq, laughing slightly, would imitate each inflection
of her tone, every catch in her voice, until the poor child was
shrieking wordless fury at the wall. Inuttiaq would reply to
each shriek with an amused “thank you; thank you” and then
quietly start to sing hymns to himself, while Raigili relapsed into
muffled sobs and finally silence.
Inuttiaq’s hymn-singing seemed primarily a way of demon-
strating to Raigili that she was being ignored, and perhaps also
a way of soothing his nerves. Occasionally, religion was invoked
more directly as a sanction against Raigili’s outbursts. One
incident in particular stands out. It was a chilly November
afternoon, shortly after we had moved into our new winter
iglu. Raigili and I were alone at home while the others were
out, visiting neighbors. Raigili, feeling the pressure of several
cups of afternoon tea (and perhaps imitating the lazy and not
altogether approved habits of her kapluna sister) had urinated
into the indoor pot, volunteering the excuse that it was too dark
to go outdoors into the snow as she should have. Unfortunately,
when Raigili rose, the hem of her parka snagged on the edge of
the pot, overturning it and spilling warm urine all over the
snow floor. Raigili surveyed the pocked yellow floor, and with
truly adult calm observed: “How annoying,” or “Too bad’—
the word (urulu) has both meanings; and with equally adult
matter-of-factness she proceeded to repair the damage. Pulling
the snow knife—nearly half as big as she was—from the wall
where Inuttiaq had stuck it, she went out, cut a block of hard
snow—also half as large as she was—struggled in with it, hacked
it into pieces with the knife, just as her mother did when she
repaired the floor, and spread it evenly over the concavities. She
surveyed the floor critically: as good as new. Beaming at me,
she ran out to play. When Allaq came home and noticed the
fresh floor I explained what had happened. “Eeeee,” said Allaq,
smiling in amusement. And when after a while Raigili reap-
peared, her mother looked up from her sewing and said to her

142 Never in Anger

with a trace of smile: “I dreamt last night that Raigili urinated
in the pot, saying it was too dark to go outdoors, then spilled
the pot on the floor, brought in snow, and fixed the floor.” Raigili
looked blank; then a sheepish grin grew over her face as her
mother and I broke into laughter at her puzzlement.
But alas for Raigili’s pride in her housekeeping prowess. At
that season it was Saarak’s custom every evening for an hour or
two to run wild over the iglu, round and round the floor, burrow-
ing in the larder, poking at the fish, piling up the cups, trying
to light the primus, hacking with her mother’s ulu at the box that
constituted our kitchen; she was into everything, to the helpless
amusement of the adults. “She buzzes,” they observed, using
the word that is used for the circlings and divings of mosquitoes.
“Saarak!”” her mother and aunts would protest, laughingly try-
ing to distract her from her most destructive goals. On this
particular evening, her goal was Raigili’s proud new floor, and
she attacked it with absorbed persistence, wielding Allaq’s
ulu. Unfortunately, while she was so engaged, Raigili came in
from one of her many visits. She said nothing but kicked once
ineffectually at the ulu in Saarak’s hand and stood sulking. When
Saarak paid no attention, Raigili tried, at considerable peril,
to interpose her foot in her sister’s hacking. Saarak shrieked in
wordless fury, and Allaq, as usual, quietly instructed Raigili not
to interfere. Raigili’s sulks ended of their own accord, and later
that evening when, cheerful again, Raigili was sitting in her
place on the ikliq, turning the pages of the religious comic book
that her uncle had brought back from boarding school, Allaq
took the opportunity to teach her daughter a lesson. “Look,”
she said in a soft, pious voice, pointing out a lurid picture of
Jesus on the cross, “Yisusi was crucified because he loved
(naklik) people. It hurt very much. His head hurt and they made
holes in his hands and put nails in. It hurt very much. If he
hadn’t loved us he wouldn’t have been killed. He says to love
(naklik) one’s little sister.” Raigili questioned her mother with
interest on the details of the crucifixion but gave no sign of hav-
ing heard the admonition.
It was difficult to tell how Raigili responded to this training in
the use of reason. I often had to stifle pity as I watched her
small figure standing in motionless distress on her mother’s

Inuttiaq’s Children 143

 side of the iglu or noted the dampness of her lowered face be-
side me on the ikliq. The demand for control, though clothed
in the mildest voice, was so relentless, and Raigili was still so
little. The lesson takes a remarkably short time to learn, judging
from the almost infallible control of the children I knew who
were ten years old or more. But the learning must entail suf-
fering.
One hint that this was so lay in Raigili’s nightmares. Adults,
as I have mentioned, are said not to have nightmares, and the
suggestion that they might have them was met with a laughing
shudder: “‘O-h-h-h! how frightening (kappia)!””» Though some
people do have dreams that they characterize as “unpleasant
(hujuujaq)” or “startling (tupak),” I rarely heard any adult ex-
cept Inuttiaq actually cry out or talk in his sleep. But children—
“some” children, they told me with characteristically Eskimo
concern for accuracy—do have nightmares. Inuttiaqg did when
he was a child, and Raigili often did. Toward the end of my
stay, the dreams seemed to plague her more rarely but Saarak
was beginning to be afflicted. The Utku seem to believe that
nightmares are caused by too intense emotion (or perhaps it
is by too intense emotional expression), whether the emotion
concerned is giddy lightheartedness or anger. Often when
Raigili and her playmates were convulsed in giggles over their
games, an adult or an older child would caution them: “Care-
ful, you’re going to have nightmares!” Once I even heard Raigili
cautioned at a time when she was not excited. ““Don’t have
nightmares,” Allaq said to her in the saccharine, persuasive voice
in which she more often spoke to her other daughter, Saarak,
“it's so noisy.” It was as though ihuma, reason, the governing
principle of behavior by day, could also be invoked to control
nightmares.
I never heard Raigili warned that her hostility would cause
her to have nightmares, but Saarak, shrieking with rage, was
once so cautioned, in the time when her baby days were begin-
ning to come to an end. Perhaps in the Utku view Raigili’s out-
bursts of distress were already mild enough so that she need
not fear nightmares on their account. But I did associate her
frightening dreams with her hostility: with those very struggles
to contain the anger that had almost no legitimate outlet.

144 Never in Anger

ees

Though often it was impossible to guess what visions caused

ere

Raigili to shriek out in her sleep, there was one night when
her woe was quite explicitly expressed. Bedtime had not been
peaceful that night. Allaq had, as usual, undressed Saarak with
coaxing endearments (aqaq), whereas Raigili, her arms with-
NP

drawn in fatigue, had sat silent, motionless and ignored, in

her place on the ikliq. This was the first winter in which Raigili
had been expected to undress herself, and the expectation was
too much for her when she was tired. For a while her unvoiced
request for help received no response; but eventually, with
protest in the brusqueness of her touch and in her characteristic
mooing murmur of disapproval, Allaq did pull off Raigili’s tight
boots and fur trousers, fold her clothes into a pillow, and settle
her under the quilts beside Saarak. “Your little sister can take
off her boots better than you can,” Allaq mooed at Raigili. Al-
most immediately Saarak broke into a wail, and Allaq chided
Raigili: “Raigili annoys (urulu) her little sister.” Raigili, her
cheeks wet with silent tears, fell asleep. Suddenly she reared
up, as she always did in her nightmares, her body tensed into
an arc and her head weaving, emptily searching from side to
side as she wailed over and over: “Mother, mother! Bad bad
Saarak! I’m bad, bad! Saarak is bad! I’m bad!’’ She was, as al-
ways, frozen in her vision; it was impossible to wake her. It
always seemed to me incongruous, and not a little cruel, that
her parents habitually responded to her misery by shouting at
her to go to sleep—a command that Inuttiaq reinforced, es-
pecially if Raigili’s cries had waked him, by pounding her on
the back with his fist or roughly shoving her, not in anger,
perhaps, but with force. The treatment never waked her. Allaq
and other observers rarely struck the unconscious child as
Inuttiaq did, but laughed as they urged her to “lie down and go
to sleep!” Eventually, without waking, Raigili, her cries fading
into whimpers, subsided onto her pillow and slept quietly.
Sometimes traces of these dreams remained to mar the day.
One afternoon, Raigili, at home in the iglu, was overcome with
silent tears. Her tears were ignored, as they often were; but that
evening, when Raigili was again playing happily, Allaq asked
her: “Why was Raigili crying this afternoon?” The shy smile
that I found so bewitching came into Raigili’s face as she looked

Inuttiaq’s Children 145

 up at her mother and in her soft voice explained: “I dreamt last
night that my father scolded me, saying, ‘Stop wanting to eat!’
and when I remembered it I cried.” It was a cruel dream, as
eating is one of the greatest delights of Utku life. Moreover,
the dream father may have been understood to tell his daughter
to restrain her demand not only for food but also for affection,
since affection often takes the tangible form of food. The dream
accorded well with the realities of Raigili’s world. Though I
never saw Raigili or any other child threatened with loss of
food as a punishment, it was true that since Raigili had out-
grown the “darling (niviug)” age, she was learning restraint
with regard to affection and patience with regard to food.

VIII: Saarak’s Changing World: Recalcitrance in Small Children

During the time I was at Back River, Saarak was largely immune
to the griefs that her older sister suffered, but toward the end of
my stay her world was beginning to change. It was possibly
Allaq’s pregnancy as much as the coincident growth of ihuma in
Saarak that brought about the change.
For a long time I did not suspect that Allaq was pregnant. Her
voluminous parka camouflaged her condition the more effec-
tively because Saarak was so often sheltered inside the garment
with her mother, playing on Allaq’s warm dark lap or watching
the world from Allaq’s back, cheek to cheek with her mother.
Allaq was not the only woman to conceal her pregnancy. Her
sister Amaruq, who lived next door to us and visited us daily,
had given birth to her child before the neighbors, including
Allaq, knew she was pregnant. But Amaruq’s behavior was ex-
treme. And in any case Saarak must have sensed, though ob-
tuser adults did not, that her mother had changed. Youngest
children cry a lot and eat a lot when their mothers are pregnant,
Allaq told me. She guessed that one reason for the child’s hunger
might be the loss of its mother’s milk as it dries up during the
course of pregnancy. By the time Allaq was four months preg-
nant I noted (though I did not know the reason at the time) that
Saarak was being nursed much less frequently than her cousin
Rosi, who was Saarak’s own age, but whose mother was a widow.
More and more frequently, when Saarak sobbed in rage or

146 Never in Anger

 misery, Allaq soothingly offered not her breast but substitute
delicacies: a spoonful of jam or dried milk, a fish eye, or a bit
¢ of bannock hidden away especially for such emergencies.
|

In another way, too, Saarak’s growing up was proceeding

faster than Rosi’s. Both Saarak and Rosi had had winter suits
of fawnskin made for them in the autumn of their third year,
charming one-piece garments so constructed that the fawn’s
head formed the hood of the suit. The fawn’s ears tucked into
the hood and the perky triangular tail of the suit, left open for
| practical purposes, gave the children the air of small brown
rabbits as they bounced about the iklig. But Rosi did not often
_ wear her suit that first winter; she preferred the familiar
' warmth and closeness of her mother’s back. Saarak liked to be
. carried too; but whether because she was uncomfortably heavy
for Allaq to carry, weighed down also by the baby in her womb,
or because Allaq wanted gradually to accustom Saarak to her
approaching displacement, more and more frequently during
the winter, she encouraged Saarak to dress. Often now in the
ta ‘t
morning, Allaq, her voice saccharine with blandishment, would
try to induce Saarak to put on her fawnskin suit and “run-run”
around the iglu or go visit her relatives.
Saarak did not always take kindly to this innovation. There
"| ~were days on which she demanded to be dressed in her suit, but
i there were other days on which she protested vehemently when
f the suit was brought out. “It feels cold!’ she would screech,
“it feels cold!’ and with reason, since, in the midwinter chill
1 of the iglu, donning one’s frosted clothes gave one the gasping,
' cringing sensation of an icy plunge; it required an effort of will.
~ So I always silently felt Saarak’s protests as my own. On only
' two or three occasions did I ever see Allaq try to impose her
will physically on Saarak, and in each of these instances Saarak
ultimately won; her mother laughed, snuffed her, and said ten-
derly, “How lovable (naklik) she is.” Nevertheless, Allaq did
employ all sorts of techniques short of physical coercion to
manipulate Saarak’s will. Inducements of all sorts, false and true,
were urged in that honeyed tone, which was characteristic not
only of Allaq but also of all adults and older children when
addressing Saarak and her peers: “You'll be so sweet and lovable
and cute (niviug); you'll go to visit your uncle; you'll run and

Inuttiaq’s Children 147

 play; you’ll have bannock to eat...” Mother and aunts coaxed
together. Sometimes Allaq would instruct one of her sisters to
carry Saarak and her clothing off to her grandfather’s iglu in the
hope that getting dressed might prove a more attractive prospect
over there. One day Allaq, her sister Amaruq, and a neighbor
woman spent the better part of the short morning trying to per-
suade Saarak to dress, so that she could be left in her aunt’s
care while her mother attended to the daily chore of removing
the fish from the nets. The two women drained their repertoire
of inducements: a bottle of deodorant Saarak could play with
when she was dressed; another toy; a playmate, a little girl that
Amaruq was also tending, to “run-run’” with in the iglu; goodies
to eat; but the only sign of impatience Allaq vouchsafed was a
meditative remark addressed to the teakettle: “Bad Saarak
—sometimes a sweetheart (niviug), sometimes a nuisance
(hujuujaq).”
On other occasions threats, all false, were used to bring
Saarak’s will into line with her mother’s, and then Allaq in-
variably played the role of protector. Sometimes she invented
animal bogies: wolverines, mad dogs, or lemmings, from whom
to “‘protect’” Saarak. More often she invoked Saarak’s fear of
strangers. One little drama in particular was often enacted.
“Listen!” Allaq would murmur in a conspiratorial tone, buzzing
in imitation of an airplane motor: “Wissy-wissy-wi [that was
what Saarak called kapluna fishermen] are coming. ‘Hello, hello,’
they’re going to say [demonstrating the way they would shake
hands]. ‘Is that Saarak crying?’ they’re going to ask. ‘Give her
to us, we want to adopt her,’ they'll say. So, hush, then they
won't hear you; come, put on your suit, then they won’t see you.”
This often had an effect. Saarak would murmur a questioning
“hmmm?” in her baby voice and stand listening for approaching
sounds, then docilely, though without sign of anxiety, permit
Allaq to pull the cold suit over her naked body.
The kapluna fishermen who visited the Inlet during the sum-
mer were not the only bogy foster parents. Until Saarak stopped
being afraid of me, I was a convenient scapegoat. “Shhh,” Allaq
would whisper protectively, “your elder sister over there will
hear you and adopt you.” Or perhaps one of the other women
might hold out her hands in mock enticement to the recalcitrant

148 Never in Anger

 child, or raise the edge of her parka as if to take Saarak inside,
fully aware that the gesture would frighten her: “Come, let me
carry you!” she would say, coaxingly; “do you want to come
home with me? Come, climb into my parka.” Saarak would
shrink, whimpering, against her mother while the adults
laughed, mildly. The effects of this ‘“joke’’ seem to persist for
years in the fear of being adopted by someone outside the
family. I saw it in both of Saarak’s older sisters: in the stricken
look in Raigili’s face when a visiting police officer swung her
in a friendly way in his arms; and in Kamik, when Nakliguhuktuq
and Ikayuqtug, with whom she was temporarily staying on her
way home from school, teased her by offering to adopt her per-
manently. But the adults had little sympathy with the social
fears they inculcated or fostered in the children; they laughed,
both at the fear and at its expression: “She really believed she
3 would be adopted,” they would tease; “she almost cried.”
Fears of adoption were invoked in a variety of situations in
which Saarak was of contrary mind and not only when Allaq
wanted to get her dressed. But there was one other social fear
that was exploited, indeed, in Saarak’s case, learned, primarily
in the dressing situation. That was physical modesty. Though
adults were extraordinarily modest, even when dressing and
undressing in the close confines of the iglu, small children,
carried naked on their mothers’ backs, were exempt from these
prescriptions. Saarak, when I first knew her, and later her tiny
sister, Qayag, were encouraged to display themselves; and a
great deal of affectionate admiration was focused on their bodies.
When Qayaq was only a few months old her mother, playing
with her, pulled her upright in her lap and held her there,
facing outward, each tiny fist clinging tightly to one of her
mother’s fingers; and as the baby’s wobbly body arched out
toward the audience they greeted her movement with admiring
“vaaal’s. “She is increasingly female,” they explained to me,
and when a baby boy makes the same gesture they say, “He is
increasingly male.” 4 The baby smiled with responsive delight.
Saarak had outgrown this baby gesture, but she was still urged
4. | am uncertain whether to translate the words, aqnaq and angut, as “‘fe-
male” and “male,” respectively, or as “woman” and “man.” The words have
both meanings.

Inuttiaq’s Children 149

 by her affectionate relatives to offer her navel or her breast, her
armpit, nose, or cheek for a kiss. “Let me kiss you, let me kiss
you, here, here,” they would coo, and she would smilingly
comply, rewarded by warm laughter. Her cheeks and her nose
were all jokingly “named” with her several names, and when
someone inquired of her, “Where’s Qijuaagjuk?” “Where's
Aqnariaq?” “Where’s Saarak?” she would present the appropri-
ate segment of her face to be kissed, amid general applause at
the accuracy of her response. One of her favorite games consisted
of poking and being poked in various delicate and always naked
regions, especially in the navel, on which a good deal of Eskimo
sexual interest focuses.5 “Laah! Laah!’’ somebody would tease,
advancing on the happily frightened child with outstretched
finger, while she danced on the ikliq, screaming with laughter,
uncertain whether to expose her belly or to hide from the
searching finger. Sometimes she descended on her tormentor in
turn, seeking a spot to “laah,” while her victim pretended to
squirm away, laughing.
But the day came when these games were turned against
Saarak and became, indirectly, a means not of gaining attention
and love but of learning modesty. The issue was never phrased
as one of decency. Training in modesty seemed largely a by-
product of attempts to secure obedience, for family convenience,
in dressing and undressing. But the fear of being seen, exposed,
was nonetheless successfully inculcated. Previously, Allaq had
laughed encouragingly when Saarak’s aunts and uncles, sisters
and cousins had coaxed the child for kisses and for pokes; now,
when the iglu was cold and she wanted Saarak to dress, Allaq
began to warn her in the familiar protective whisper: “Watch out,
your uncle’s going to poke you if you don’t cover up and get
dressed! He’s going to poke you here and here and here.”
Whereupon her uncle obligingly appeared with outstretched
finger to support Allaq’s tale, and Saarak shrieked at him in fear
and rage, hastening to dress. Similarly, if the rest of the family
were ready to go to sleep and Saarak resisted being undressed,
Allaq or Inuttiaq would whisper: “Your uncle’s going to kiss
you!” Or if there were a visitor in camp, they might capitalize
5. Personal communication from David Damas. He was speaking of the Perry
River and Bathurst Inlet areas to the west of Chantrey Inlet.

150 Never in Anger

on Saarak’s fear of strangers, warning: “Nimiqtaqtuq is going
to see you!” And Saarak would hurry to undress and cover her-
self with the bedclothes.
There was nothing sudden or drastic about the changes in
Saarak’s life before her sister's birth; the quality of her life
seemed much the same as it had always been. She still lived ina
private world insulated from annoyance: soothed and gratified
more often than not; cuddled and cooed at (agaq) by all her rela-
tives; bounced to sleep on her mother’s back when restless and
tired; nursed often when she asked and always when she in-
sisted. In January, four months before Qayaq was born, Saarak
caught a feverish cold that was going the rounds of the camp, and
it was then, when I saw her ill, that I realized how far she had
grown during the time I had known her. While she was sick, and
even for a time after she was better, she was again in every
respect the infant she had been when I came. For three weeks
Allaq never left her sick daughter. The fawnskin suit lay un-
touched in the pile of household goods that lined Allaq’s edge
of the iglu. Saarak, by turns passively content and crankily de-
manding, lay under the quilts beside her mother’s seat, leaned
against her mother’s naked back, or sat cradled on her lap in the
shelter of the voluminous parka while Allaq talked to her
tenderly (aqaq), made sure that she was warm, made her bannock
whenever she cried for it, and carried her to her grandfather's
iglu when she cried to visit there.
At the time, I was impressed by Allaq’s solicitude and by her
willingness to let Saarak return to babyhood at will, but it did
not occur to me to question her reasons. Only now in retrospect
I wonder whether perhaps she was afraid that Saarak would die.
Though, on the whole, Saarak did not seem very ill to me, she
was nevertheless not very hungry and often refused the diced
bits of fish that Allaq offered her. “Eat some fish? Don’t you want
to eat? Mmm?” Later I learned that loss of appetite is considered
an ominous sign; when a sick person is no longer interested in
eating, he is close to death.
I do not know whether Allaq was in fact so concerned about
Saarak; she may simply have felt sympathetic with her daughter's
discomfort. Inuttiaq’s absence on a trading trip—the January
trip described earlier—and Allaq’s resulting lethargy may also

Inuttiaq’s Children 151

 have played a part in prolonging the period of Saarak’s babyish
behavior beyond the week or two when she was really sick.
Inuttiaq left while Saarak was still convalescing, and Allaq, in
her chill, may have felt no desire to do other than sit and hold
Saarak warmly against her. In any case, Saarak eventually re-
covered and Inuttiaq returned; and the evening that he returned,
when Saarak was ebullient with the joy of seeing him, she was
coaxed into putting on the fawnskin suit once more.

IX. Saarak’s Crisis: Loss of Mother’s Closeness

Qayaq was born on the night of April 28. Looking back after-
wards, I was amazed that she had not been born a week earlier.
We had moved on April 21 from the winter camp at Amujat to
our spring camp with Pala and Nilak at Itimnaaqjuk, near the
rapids. It was about a six-hour sled trip, and the going was
arduous. The outsize load created by the addition of my goods
to Inuttiaq’s was always difficult, but this time the spring weather
made the situation worse than usual. The sun, already above
the horizon for much of the night, had a balmy feel, and the
breeze, too, was exhilaratingly gentle after the constricting chill
of the winter wind. Unfortunately, the sled runners also felt the
effects of the new warmth. The thin layer of ice that glazed their
turfing quickly melted, so that instead of slipping smoothly over
the surface we ground resistingly forward, sullying the snow
with a trail of two parallel brown lines. Moreover, the snow itself
was no longer frozen solidly through, as it was in winter, when
its surface was as trustworthy as that of the earth itself. On the
contrary. Every time the sled encountered a rise, a dip, a bump,
a drift, the runner tips bored deep into the snow and had to be
hacked and heaved and tugged out again to the accompaniment
of bellows and blows aimed at the struggling team.
I was, to my shame, no help on these occasions. In fact, I was
a decided hindrance because, owing to the ignorant instructions
I had given Allaq when she sewed my caribou traveling clothes,
the fur socks were so bulky around the knee that I was unable to
move freely. As a result, if I jumped off with the other adults
to help strain and push at the sled, I was unable to scramble up
again when the sled started up with a lurch and careened away

152 Never in Anger

 at six or seven miles an hour. There was nothing for it but to
1] stay perched ignominiously in my place atop the high load,
‘| ineffectually trying to alleviate the feeling that I was a burden
| by taking charge of one of the squirming puppies that almost
, always shared our trips, a job usually bestowed on children of
| Raigili’s age, who were too young to walk. Given my propensity
for sliding off in my slippery caribou trousers when the sled
leaned too far to one side, it was a wonder that I avoided the
ultimate disgrace of being tied onto the load as Raigili and
Saarak were, wrapped snugly in quilts.
In any case Allaq, advanced in pregnancy as she was, took a
full share of the rigors of the trip. For a good part of the way she
jogged beside the sled, as adults do to lighten the load, and
whenever the sled stuck fast in the snow she jumped down with
-

Inuttiaq and exerted all her force to get it moving again. And
when suddenly the efforts took effect and the sled lurched into
_ motion again, she would run beside it for a moment or two
_ while it gained momentum, then throw herself belly first onto
the load, pulling herself up, bit by bit, with the help of the
« lashings, as the sled bumped forward.
| The exertions of the move did not end with the sled trip,
either. There was still an iglu to be built and moved into, and
Allaq’s task, after we had drunk a welcoming cup of tea in Pala’s
iglu, was to bank the walls with loose snow as Inuttiaq and
Mannik cut the blocks and raised them. To be sure, she was
4 helped by her younger sister Amaaqtugq, by Nilak’s wife, Niqi,
4 and by me. But Amaaqtuq, who was still a girl, and Niqi, who
4 was childish, rarely concentrated long on any piece of work;
14 and I, though eager to atone for having sat like a clod on the load
most of the way from Amujat, was nevertheless not very adept at
4 tossing the heavy shovelfuls of snow up over the highest parts
| of the iglu in such a way that they stayed where they were
thrown instead of cascading down again to the ground. So, as
before, the heaviest work fell to Allaq. And on her devolved, as
| always, the responsibility for building the sleeping platform,
' once the iglu was finished: she arranged the snow blocks that
Mannik cut for edging and shoved in to her through the entrance
hole; she filled in the inner area of the platform with loose snow
obtained from other blocks, which she heaved into the area and

Inuttiaq’s Children 153

 hacked into powder with the two-foot snow knife; and whenthe-— :
platform was filled to a depth of about two feet, level with the
top of the edging blocks, she climbed up onto it and trampled it
down hard and even with her feet before arranging on it the twig
matting, the caribou mattresses, and the various boxes and bags
of household goods that unseen hands, Inuttiaq's and others’,
thrust through the entrance hole into a helter-skelter heap on
the floor.
None of this work was out of the ordinary for Allaq, and she
had not behaved as if it cost her undue effort. Nevertheless, the
activity was so foreign to my middle-class American prejudices
concerning the way a pregnant woman should behave that,
looking back on it all later, I was, as I have said, surprised that
Qayaq had not made her appearance that very night.
The baby was born in the middle of the night, and Inuttiaq
was the only person who shared the experience with Allagq. None
of the other women in camp: the adolescent Amaaqtugq, the
childish Niqi, and the inept kapluna, was roused. It had been
an exceptionally pleasant evening. The festive mood that we
had brought with us when we moved from the deserted camp at
Amujat, the elation of unaccustomed company, was still with us.
Allaq had spent the evening frying bannock for our household #*
and Pala’s while the tape recorder blared Inuttiaq’s favorite it
music: “I] Trovatore.” “The music that makes one want to cry,”
he called it, and he always wanted it played at a volume that
jarred my eardrums and severely taxed the capacities of the tape
recorder. Allaq had been fully one of the company; she had
shared in the feast, had joked with her sisters as usual when
they came in to share the bannock, had nursed Saarak tenderly
to sleep at her breast as always, blown out the lamp, and ap-
parently settled down to sleep. That was at 11:30. At 1:30 I woke
to hear the wavering cry of a newborn baby. A short length of
wick had been relit; the fresh snow wall glimmered in the light.
Allaq, dressed in her parka, knelt in her place on the ikliq, bend-
ing forward with her elbows resting heavily on a pillow built of a
rolled-up sleeping bag with Inuttiaq’s parka folded on top of it.
Inuttiaq, dressed except for his boots, was standing barefoot on
the ikliq, near Allaq. He was leaning forward with one hand on
Allaq’s pillow, saying something in an unusually rapid, vigorous

154 Never in Anger

 voice. “It doesn’t come out,” he explained, seeing me watching
eo

him; “the bad placenta doesn’t come out.” And he continued

tt

rapidly and emphatically to “call it out”: “Hurry up! Bad pla-

oF

cental Hurry up!” There was more to the exhortation, which I

gh

did not understand. Allaq knelt against her pillow with an air of
wt

fatigue and silent concentration. After a while Inuttiaq stopped

talking, sat down beside Allaq and lit his pipe; but now and
again he interrupted his puffing to ask Allaq in a low voice a
question to which she murmured a response. In a little while he
ge "4

pulled on his boots, stood up on the snow floor by his wife’s

head, and prayed to God: “... because you are God . . . because
Ao

you are able to do all things .. .”; I understood only this much
of the brief prayer. Very shortly after that the placenta came.
Inuttiaq sharpened Allaq’s ulu, the same knife with which she
7

performed all household chores, and she cut the cord, tying the
end with a bit of sinew.
a

The baby all this time had been lying on the caribou mattress
hide between Allaq’s knees, under the dark warmth of her parka.
4

Waiting for the placenta, Inuttiaq had once lifted the edge of the
wr

parka and peered in at his baby daughter. “Naaaaklingnaqtug

J
Wo

(lovable),” he had murmured, drawing out the vowel tenderly.

Now Allaq took the baby up, wiped her fragile body softly with
~~
it
lave

a bit of caribou fur, and handed her to Inuttiaq, who drew his
Re

arms in out of the sleeves of his parka to hold the baby, with a
OL
ee

gentleness extraordinary in so vigorous a man, against his warm,

r

oD

naked belly. Allaq slowly, moving with effort, cut out the square
’
. ‘ay!
wh

of mattress hide on which the placenta lay, folded it over the

placenta without touching the bloody mass, and tied it up with
string. Then Inuttiaq, with another murmur of affection, gave the
baby back to the warmth of Allaq’s belly, took up the bundle of
hide and his snow knife, and went out.
This was not the first daughter Inuttiaq had helped to deliver.
Though often older or experienced women are called upon to
assist, sometimes there are none in the vicinity. Saarak, like
Qayaq, had been born in the spring, the season at which people
are most dispersed. That spring Inuttiaq’s family had been
camped completely alone, so Inuttiaq and Kamik, who must
have been about ten at the time, had helped with her delivery,
Inuttiag warming Saarak against his belly, as he now had

Inuttiaq’s Children 155

 Qayagq, while the cord was cut. Perhaps he had delivered other
daughters, too; certainly he was practiced and efficient and
seemed not at all ill at ease in the situation. And his absorption—
the intensity of the support he gave Allaq when the placenta was
delayed, the tendermess in his voice when he lifted the edge of
the parka to look at his child and in his arms when he held her—
was wholly touching. I watched him as he worked, wondering
what his reaction was to the appearance of a seventh daughter
in place of the son I knew he would have valued. The one remark
he made, next day, concerning the baby’s sex was impossible to
read, said, as it was, in his ordinary, matter-of-fact voice: “Lots
of daughters.” But there was no doubt of his feeling at the
moment of her birth; there was no hint of indifference or dismay,
nothing but protective tenderness. And when he returned from
burying the placenta, his mood was one of festivity.
It was three o'clock by then. Allaq rested, sagging, against her
high pillow, the baby still held in her arms against her body. I
lay in my sleeping bag, suppressing yawns. I was chagrined that
I had slept through the actual birth; doubly so because it was the
third and last that could possibly occur among the Utku while I
was there, and I had missed the others, also: the one through
ignorance that Amaruq was pregnant (so voluminous was her
parka), the other through a probably unnecessary reluctance to
intrude. So this time, sleepy though I was, I was determined to
miss nothing else that might occur. There was no question of
sleep. Inuttiaq was ebullient: unusually energetic, talkative,
busy. He heated water to wash his hands and face, and with what
remained of the water, he made tea for the three of us, then
bannock. We feasted there for nearly three hours in the middle
of the night. Allaq, too, ate with appetite. And while we ate, the
baby, in a manner as informal as that of her birth, received her
first name: “Qayagq,” in memory of Allaq’s loved (naklik) brother,
who had drowned a few years earlier.
The children were introduced to their baby sister also in the
course of our festive meal, the one exuberantly, the other re-
luctantly. Raigili was wakened while our tea was brewing.
Shaken into semiconsciousness by Inuttiaq in the efflorescence
of his excitement, she raised a groggy head from her pillow.
“Child! Look at your baby sister!” She gazed unseeingly for a

156 Never in Anger

 moment in the direction her father indicated and grunted some-
thing unintelligible. “Do you love (naklik) her?” her father
persisted. “Yes.” Inuttiaq tried to teach her the kinship term by
which she should address the baby, but her head had already
sunk back to the pillow, and she was fast asleep again.
Saarak was another matter. She was allowed to sleep soundly,
and when she did stir after a while, Inuttiaq rhythmically rubbed
her back in an attempt to lull her back to sleep. His efforts were
futile, and when he saw that she was really awake, he pointed
out the baby to her. I held my breath. But there was no outburst,
not for the first minute. Saarak chirped and cooed and poked at
the baby with friendly interest. It was only when she saw her
mother put the baby to her breast that the storm broke: a storm of
wails and slaps. Allaq, holding the baby protectively, said in a
tender voice, “Don’t hurt her.” Whereupon Saarak demanded
her endangered right: to be nursed.
Tactful as I knew Utku to be, I had never imagined that the
crisis, when it came, could be handled as gently as it was. Allaq
assumed a tone that I was to hear often in the next few days, a
false but sympathetic tone of disgust. “It tastes terrible,’ she
said. And the tone surrounded the words with affectionate pro-
tectiveness. But when Saarak continued to scream and slap at
her mother and the baby, Allaq gave in, took her distressed
daughter into the accustomed shelter of her parka, and nursed
her, albeit briefly, at one breast while she nursed the baby at the
other. I neglected to notice whether Saarak came away from the
breast voluntarily or by persuasion; in any case, a little later
she began to wail again. This time Inuttiaq took a hand. “You're
very much loved (naklik),” he assured his daughter, soothingly;
but Saarak was too distressed to heed him. “Go to sleep!”
Inuttiaq then said, loudly and more gruffly. “You're very sleepy!”
And eventually she did cry herself to sleep. Inuttiaq looked at
the little face on the pillow beside him, the cheeks still damply
streaked and the small dark braids awry. “Poor little thing
(naklik),” he said, “she realizes and she is troubled (ujjiq).”
When we finished our midnight feast, a little after 5:30,
Inuttiag went to visit (and doubtless to wake) Pala’s iglu, pre-
sumably to announce the baby’s birth, while Allaq and I, like
Saarak, went back to sleep. But when Inuttiaq returned, three

Inuttiaq’s Children 157

 hours later, Allaq roused herself again, put on her parka, and sat
for the rest of the day, dozing once or twice, but mostly super-
vising with her usual interest the activities of the household.
Her sister Amaaqtug came early in the morning with the rest of
her family to see the baby and stayed most of the day to help,
making tea and bannock again, fetching water, and attending to
Saarak’s and Raigili’s needs, all under her elder sister's direc-
tion. Allaq, as usual, chatted with Raigili and played with
Saarak, speaking to the latter always in her most tender (aqaq)
voice.
Saarak cried four times to be nursed that day, and each time,
when bannock and other distractions were rejected (once Allaq
even fed Saarak water, mouth-to-mouth, as she fed the baby),
Allaq complied with her wish, pulling her breast out of the neck
of her parka for Saarak to reach. But each time, after Saarak had
sucked briefly, her mother or aunt would try again to distract her
attention, and after Saarak had had her way for a minute, it was
not hard to do.
That evening, while Saarak was playing happily, her parents
expounded the new doctrine to her. In the same false but sym-
pathetic tone of disgust that Allaq had earlier used, Inuttiaq
said, “Your little sister has nursed and gotten the breast and the
inside of the parka all shitty and stinky; it smells [or tastes, the
word has both meanings] horrible.” Allaq murmured sympa-
thetic agreement.
Saarak had no visible reaction at the time, but it was not more
than four days after the baby’s birth that she stopped asking to be
nursed. Or so her mother said. It was true that during the day the
pathetic wail “apopo-o-0-o” was no longer heard; but at night
sometimes Saarak did wake and cry, restlessly, as if expecting to
be offered a suck, as formerly she had been. The suck was no
longer forthcoming; Allaq simply waited for her to go back to
sleep, and once in a while Inuttiaq would add a sleepily gruff
injunction to go to sleep. After the first of these incidents Allaq,
to my surprise, observed: “Saarak didn’t really want to nurse
last night; she didn’t cry much at all.” And three weeks later,
after a particularly prolonged bout of midnight tears, when I
asked Allaq why Saarak had cried, she said: “No reason; she just
cried spontaneously.” I wondered. Could pity, or perhaps a

158 Never in Anger

characteristically Utku tendency to minimize crises, have urged
Allaq not to notice Saarak’s wish?
It was true, however, that Saarak did seem less intent on ob-
taining nourishment than on maintaining her closeness with her
mother. It was not as difficult to divert her from the breast as it
was to convince her that the dark sanctuary of her mother’s
parka was no longer desirable. The wish to be taken inside was
expressed dramatically enough to leave no doubt of its presence
fully a month after the baby’s birth. In the first days, the storms,
like those of weaning, had been daily affairs, and some had been
violent—one especially when Saarak, weeping, had tried her
utmost to invade the parka, tugging at the hem in an effort to
raise it and lifting her leg up in an attempt to insert it in the neck
of the garment. In the past she had entered both ways, from the
top and from the bottom. This time, Allaq simply sat still, resist-
ing her daughter’s assaults with imperturbable immobility and
silence, seeming neither to feel nor to hear her. After a bit, how-
ever, she softened and, speaking gently to the weeping child,
she invited her to come and sit in her lap outside the parka,
circled by her arms, a blanket, and a quilt—a position as closely
as possible approximating the one Saarak had lost. But Saarak
would accept no compromise, and eventually her mother gave in
and took her in where the baby also lay. Immediately, Saarak was
transformed; happiness itself, she cooed and chirped at the baby
who shared the space with her. In a few minutes, Allaq sug-
gested to Raigili, who was lying in bed, that she invite Saarak
to join her under the quilt. Raigili did, and Saarak, to all appear-
ance still perfectly happy, came to play with her.
Allaq dealt with all these early storms as she dealt with
Saarak’s desire to nurse, by turns resisting and soothing, some-
times laughing at the buffets, and briefly giving in before finding
some way of distracting Saarak’s attention. And as in the case of
the weaning crisis, the daily upheavals had come to an end be-
fore the week was out. But the most difficult time was yet to
come.
Toward the end of May, just a month after Qayaq’s birth,
Saarak came down with a bad cold. The men had made one last
trip to Gjoa Haven before the summer thaws should cut us off;
and always when they returned from Gjoa Haven they brought

Inuttiaq’s Children 159

 respiratory infections. “The disease travels on the sleds,”
people said. We were in tents by this time; we had moved on
May 1 when our iglu melted away in a warm rain. I was in my
own tent, set beside Inuttiaq’s, since Inuttiaq’s was too small
for all of us, and I spent my newly solitary days mostly at home,
surrounded by inch-long slips of vocabulary, which paraded
precariously over the hummocks of my sleeping bag. I was try-
ing to work more systematically than I had been able to before
on the language; but on this particular day I found it exception-
ally hard to concentrate, because from next door, off and on all
day, came the sound of Saarak, sobbing. She cried steadily for
at least an hour in the morning, and if Allaq offered consolation
or distraction it was inaudible; I heard no sound but Saarak in
the other tent, except that once in a while Allaq commented
with an annoyed moo on the persistence of the tears. Once
Inuttiaq, listening too, remarked affectionately, ““She’s lovable
(naklik)”; but he was not at home to help; he was visiting me in
my tent. And at length Allaq restored peace by taking the child
to visit at her grandfather’s.
In the afternoon, when I heard her sobbing again, I went to
investigate. She was crying insistently and seemed to have some
object in mind, which Allaq was doing her patient but frus-
trated best to determine and gratify. She offered her chewing
gum, ordinarily Saarak’s favorite sweet; Saarak so delighted in
chewing the sugar off the outside of a stick, then discarding it in
favor of a fresh one that Allaq used to keep the true amount of the
supply a secret from her, so that it would not all disappear in one
day. But this time gum availed nothing. Allaq asked if she
wanted her clothes put on. No. She screeched. Inuttiaq offered
to let her smoke the pipe he had just finished making for Raigili,
and he filled and lit it for her. She hit it away. Inuttiaq went to
Pala’s to visit, and Saarak screamed at Allaq to stand up. She
did. Then Saarak screamed at her to take her boots off. She sat
down again and obeyed. Then it appeared that what she really
wanted was to get inside Allaq’s parka with the baby. As before,
she tried forcibly to lift up the edge and crawl in; and as before,
Allaq sat silently, impassively, preventing her entry simply
by holding her parka down with her arm. Though she offered to
call Amaaqtuq to come and carry Saarak inside her parka, Saarak

160 Never in Anger

would have none of it. Finally, Allaq did take her inside on her
lap where the baby also was, and immediately peace descended.
The happiest of voices could be heard from under the parka,
chirping at the baby. But when, after a minute or two, Allaq ina
tender voice persuaded Saarak to crawl under the quilts again,
serenity was lost at once. Out and in and out again—the drama
was re-enacted, but the second time Allaq admitted Saarak to the
sanctum there was more annoyance than tenderness in her voice
when she said “all right!” and the brusque gesture with which
she lifted the edge of her parka was eloquent.
The ordeal continued for the rest of that day and the next.
When Saarak was urged for the second time to lie under the
quilts instead of under the parka, she seemed in a way to accept
her eviction but not yet the loss of physical closeness with her
mother. Her demand changed. “Get into bed!” she screamed at
Allaq, over and over again, her words lost in the frenzy of sob-
bing: “Get into bed!” Allaq, as always, did her best to soothe,
to offer other solace or diversion, to compromise. This time she
did send for Amaaqtuq to come and carry Saarak on her back; but
Amaaqtugq, too, had a cold and refused, saying that she was tired
and Saarak was heavy. Allaq warned Saarak tenderly that she
would injure herself by crying so hard. She sang hymns with
determination—to drown the wails, I thought, as Raigili’s much
less violent sobs were sometimes drowned. And once, just once,
on the second day she startled me by saying pleasantly but def-
initely: “I’m not going to lie down.” The rarity of the direct
refusal, mild though it sounded, gave it for me the impact of
much harsher words. Allaq must have despaired of peace, I
thought. I offered a precious square of chocolate, which would
ordinarily have had a magical effect, but the distracted child
hurled it away. I made her a paper bird with wings that flapped,
and Allaq sailed it in front of Saarak, crying, “Kuttiigq, kuttiiiq,”
as the gulls did when they stole from our fishnets in the summer.
Saarak shrieked louder. Allaq tried lying down beside Saarak
with her clothes on, but Saarak shrieked louder still. Once Allaq
actually undressed and lay down beside Saarak as she demanded,
and there was peace for a moment. But shortly she had to get up
again in order to bounce the baby to sleep in the back of her
parka, and the sobs broke out anew. Once or twice in the course

Inuttiaq’s Children 161

 of the two days, Saarak cried herself to sleep and later woke,
crying. Once, toward the end of the first day, she seemed to cry
herself completely dry. She lay in bed under the quilts, perfectly
quiet and passive.
In Pala’s tent, and in Nilak’s, they heard Saarak’s distress.
Amaaqtuq remarked on it the second day with the discretion
characteristic of Utku: “She wants her mother to get into bed.”
That was all. The previous day, though. she had been too tired
to carry Saarak, she had gone in, briefly, to invite the child to
come and visit in her grandfather’s tent; but when Saarak rejected
the offer she had gone home again. This second day neither she
nor anyone else went to proffer assistance, whether from a fear
of intruding, or from a feeling that the situation was beyond help,
or from some other motive that I, with my outsider’s understand-
ing, could not guess, I do not know. Surely it was not indifference
in the case of Pala’s household; they were ordinarily so solici-
tous.
I found my own inability to help painfully frustrating; and
painful also was my sympathy with Saarak as an older child and
my knowledge of her loss. I contrasted her situation during this
present illness with that which had obtained during her last
illness, in January, when Allaq had cuddled her for hours on
end at the slightest whimper. But inevitably the tears stopped;
and when they did, the crisis was permanently over. A month
later when Amaaaqtugq, delighting, I think, in hearing her niece’s
newly learned word of protest, turned Saarak toward her mother
and teased: “Have a suck,” Saarak rejected the suggestion with
shrill vehemence: “Nooo!” And when three months after that
Allaq herself one day teased her: “Come, let me hold you on my
lap inside my parka. Have a suck,” Saarak paid no attention.

X. No Longer a Baby: Transition to Older Childhood

Saarak’s desire for affection expressed in physical closeness did
not simply vanish, however, and her family knew that it would
not. The Utku have a custom that helps to ease the loss of the
mother’s lap. On the birth of the next child a member of the
household other than the mother “adopts” the elder child,
which means primarily that he or she sleeps in warm contact

162 Never in Anger

 with the child, in the same way that the child has been used to
sleeping with its mother. Sometimes such adoption can create
a special bond that lasts into adulthood, and sometimes the cud-
dling itself lasts well into childhood. In the case of one of Allaq’s
sisters, who was adopted in this way by a blind uncle who lived
with her family, it lasted until the girl was married. And Allaq’s
youngest sister, Akla, who was about ten, still slept under her
father’s quilts and was so closely bound to him (as possibly he
was to her, as well) that she never slept with the other children
in the play tents that they set up. Pala, looking at his sleeping
child, once remarked in a tender voice: “Poor dear (naklik);
she’s very attached (unga) to me.” On another occasion he told
me that the affection of all of his children for him had intensified
since his wife died, and it is possible that Akla’s love was es-
pecially strong, since she was only a baby at the time of her
mother’s death.
It was Inuttiaq who took the place of Allaq for Saarak, and for a
period her dependence on him was very strong. The night after
the baby’s birth, when we were all in bed and Saarak, lying, as
always, between her parents, was absorbed in her mother and
tae

the baby, Inuttiaq spoke to her affectionately: “Turn over to-

ward me.” And a night or two later, when Saarak woke in the
eked,

morning, she found herself lying on the far side of her father,
ee

between him and Raigili, instead of between him and Allaq.

eb

She resisted the change at first, scrambling over her father, back
rt

to her usual place as soon as she woke. Her parents did not insist;
~~
be

for as long as I was with them, Saarak more often slept between
her parents than between her father and sister. But by the sixth
or seventh week after Qayaq’s birth, Saarak’s attachment to
Inuttiaq had become so strong that she refused to go to bed un-
less he also was in bed. And for three or four months she main-
tained her stand. Sitting there on the ikliq, fully clad, her eyes
glazed and apparently unseeing, she clung to the remnants of
consciousness with a touching stubbornness. Allaq would in-
quire in her tenderest, most persuasive tone: “Want to go to bed?
Shall I put you to bed? Mmm?” No. The sagging little figure
would not be seduced; she resisted until she toppled into her
mother’s arms, sound asleep. And even then, if she woke while
Allaq was, as gently as possible, removing her clothes, she

Inuttiaq’s Children 163

 screamed to be dressed again and would listen to no contrary
arguments. Once when Inuttiaq was at Pala’s, Allaq, hearing
Amaaqtuq come in to visit, tried to pretend that it was Inuttiaq
coming home, but Saarak, her eyes only half open, was firm:
“He’s not here.” Whether Inuttiaq was at home or out visiting,
however, it was all the same to Saarak; she would not lie down
until he did.
Saarak’s attempted regulation of his bedtime was, I think, a
little too much for Inuttiag. When Allaq went, as she several
times did, to tell him as he sat playing cards with Mannik:
“Saarak won't go to bed until you do,” he did not always heed
the summons. Even when he was at heme, lying idly on the
ikliq and obviously about to fall asleep himself, he more than
once ignored his daughter’s tears and the hints of his wife. But
once he was in bed, no child could have had a more tender father.
Inuttiaq was by no means the whole of Saarak’s world at this
time, however. The horizon of her life was expanding rapidly
beyond the confines of her own dwelling. It was spring when
Qayaq was born, and for Utku children, spring and summer are
seasons of growth.
The Utku world expands and contracts with the seasons,
though not in the same way for everybody. Autumn is the most
constricted and unpleasant season for everyone: windy, wet,
gray, increasingly dark. The temperature hovers around the
freezing point, never holding clearly enough to one side or the
other to permit people to adjust their clothing, their housing,
or their activities to the situation. But the wind is the worst.
It ruffles the water so that the fish do not bite, and on some days
there is nothing to eat except rotting whitefish from the dog-
food caches—not bad for a change but still a less desirable food
than the boiled heads of salmon trout and char that usually pro-
vide the evening meal in summer and early winter. Even when
there is cooking to be done, the wind does its best to hinder,
blowing the smoke from the twig fires in every direction so that
the women, coughing and twisting to shield their watering eyes
from its onslaughts, are hard put to keep the flame burning. The
bite of winter in the wind feels doubly cold by contrast with
summer warmth; people who have sat outdoors all summer in
sociable clusters on the gravel beach now withdraw into their

164 Never in Anger

separate tents and barricade the entrances with windbreaks of
quilts or last year’s ragged tent. There is little activity outside
of the tents at this season, except for the warming game of ball
that is played by everybody nearly every afternoon on a nearby
level space.
Conversation turns then to the comforts and pleasures of
winter. When the frosts set in, the primus stoves and lamps that
were left in the spring on convenient hilltops up and down the
river can be fetched again to light and heat the qaqmaqs, and
later the iglus, that will be built. Then, too, some of the caribou
that were shot and cached far from camp at the time of the August
hunting trips can be fetched for eating. Shortly, the season for
trapping foxes will begin, and then will come the trading trips
to Gjoa Haven, which mean tea and tobacco and flour for ban-
nock: all commodities that people have been hungering for. For
men, winter is in one sense the most expansive season; it is the
season of mobility. When wind-packed snow and ice have con-
verted tundra and water alike into a highway for their sleds,
they will travel hundreds of miles up and down the river: fetch-
ing and carrying, visiting, fishing, hunting, trapping, and trading.
For the women and children, who share few of these sled
trips, winter, however pleasant, is very largely an indoor sea-
son. And even when they go out, they tend to stay considerably
closer to home than in spring and. summer. The children play on
the slope of the camp among the iglus, or out on the flat expanse
of the river, and only the older ones go over the hill, out of sight
of home, to check an occasional trap or to follow the prints of a
fox. The smallest children are indoors most of the time, and when
they do view the white world outside it is almost always from the
snug vantage of their mother’s back. Women visit from iglu to
iglu, or venture out to fetch water or to help in checking the

6. The difference between summer and winter may be more striking now-
adays. Formerly, when caribou were plentiful, everyone had winter clothing of
fur. Now the women and older children usually wear duffel clothing in winter,
which, though warm, does not compare with caribou as a protection against
wind and therefore does not encourage prolonged outdoor activity. Formerly,
too, it was necessary for women to make lengthy excursions to find birch for
fuel, even in midwinter. Nowadays, kerosene is available in winter, brought by
the men from Gjoa Haven; unless kerosene is in very short supply, women
gather plants for fuel only during the summer.

Inuttiaq’s Children 165

 fishnets or in harnessing the dogs; like the older children, they
may have a fox-trap or two within a short walk of the camp, but
rarely are they beyund the shelter of an iglu for more than an
hour or two at a time during the height of the winter.
It is in the spring and summer that the world of the women and
children is widest. When the tents are set up again on emerging
gravel patches, it is sheer delight to sit outdoors in the blinding
spring sun, absorbing all the myriad life of the vast tundra; to
search the wet-black hills for motion that might be caribou; to
watch the men stalk the migrating waterfowl] that land in the
thawing ponds and on the swampy tundra; to stone ptarmigan
on the knolls; even to gather plants again to feed the outdoor
fires. The children’s caribou suits are stuffed into sacks to be
put away until next winter; now they wear cloth trousers and
rubber boots under their duffel parkas. Secure in their boots,
they go for long walks across the uncertainly thawing river snow
to explore for ptarmigan or to gather rabbit dung to smoke in
their pipes. And as the season progresses and the days become
longer and warmer, their freedom is limited only by their fa-
tigue.
It is at this season that babies learn to walk, that children of
Saarak’s age begin to roam, and that their older brothers and sis-
ters increase their knowledge of adult skills. So many things are
easier in the summer. Cloth clothes and rubber boots pull on
and off without a struggle; fish, no longer frozen, can be filleted
without the help of a stronger arm; lichen or heather can be
gathered and tea brewed, if the weather is calm, on makeshift
fireplaces of three stones; and if the children wander far away
there is no danger of their freezing or getting lost in blowing
snow and darkness. But when winter comes, some of this new
independence will be lost again, since the frozen fish will still
be too hard to cut, the wet hide boots will still be too sticky to
pull off, and the dark and cold will still be dangerous.
About the time that we moved into tents, Saarak began to
follow Raigili and Akla around the camp instead of staying at
home with Allaq and the baby. Now and then Allaq would sug-
gest to her: “Why don’t you go visit your grandfather,” or “Go
tell your mother’s brother to give me a cigarette.”’ But often it

166 Never in Anger

was on Saarak’s own initiative that she went trotting off after the
others.
Her life was not made easier by this development. Allaq spent
many hours sitting on the sun-warmed gravel by the tent, with
Qayaq in her lap, a tiny bulge under the parka. From there she
quietly watched the doings of the camp, or now and again, lower-
ing her face into the wide neck of her parka, communed privately
with her baby. Protective as always, she kept an eye or an ear
attuned to Saarak, and often she would tell Raigili and Akla to
watch the child: not to let her climb the boulders at the top of
the hill, not to let her walk too close to the dog chain when she
was carrying food in her hand, and not to leave her behind when
she was trying to follow them. But the older children did not
always take kindly to these instructions. Though at times Saarak
could be an amusing playmate, often she was a burden. Unable
to keep up with the others and used to having her own way, her
cries reverberated from one end of the camp to the other when-
ever she was abandoned. Akla would say to Raigili, “Go get
Saarak”; Raigili would reply, “You get her’; and neither would
do it. A favorite trick of both was to lure Saarak into a tent, then
run away and leave her—a trick that was sometimes ignored by
their elders but that on occasion, when Saarak’s screams were
particularly rending, earned the girls a disapproving moo.
The changes in Saarak’s life were watched by her family, a
little proudly, a little regretfully. One evening when I went into
Inuttiaq’s tent, Allaq greeted me: “Tonight Saarak got undressed
all by herself and made her own pillow.” Her tone was warm,
and she nodded (aqaq) at the sleeping child in the character-
istic gesture of tenderness. She watched, pretending not to
notice, these first efforts of Saarak’s to manage her clothes by
herself and “‘vaa’d her successes warmly, but she never inter-
fered or proffered help unless frustration reduced her daughter
to screeches. When once she saw Saarak, some distance off on
the beach, whimpering with the effort of replacing a duffel sock
and pulling up her fallen trousers, Allaq said, not loud enough
for Saarak to hear: “Poor little thing (naklik)’—and permitted
her to struggle until she succeeded.
One day Saarak decided to make tea on the outdoor fireplace.

Inuttiaqg’s Children 167

 It was her own idea, and she executed it almost entirely by her-
self, placing the very empty kettle (it had only about two cups
of water in it) over the smouldering fire, feeding it with lichen,
and prodding it awkwardly into a blaze with the metal-tipped
stick used for that purpose. She was charming in her absorption,
squatting on the gravel beach in her new white duffel parka,
poking at the fire with her stick, and now and then, with a smile
of delight, seeking recognition from the watching adults and
older children, who responded with the most affectionate
“vaaa”s. Once when she was a little too enthusiastic with her
stick, the kettle tipped off the stones on which it was balanced,
and Amaaqtuq came and replaced it; but otherwise no one
moved. When the tea was hot, Saarak herself labored with the
sooty kettle—huge it seemed beside her minute figure—up the
incline to the tea-board, which was laid in front of the tents.
People hurried to fetch cups, and Saarak, her motions cocky
with pleasure, poured the tea as Allaq instructed, so that every-
body had a tiny sip. “Go take tea to your grandfather,” Allaq
told her then, and the kettle bumped over the gravel as Saarak
hurried off to the tent where Pala lay. Allaq, watching her re-
treating figure, which seemed so full of the happiness of accomp-
lishment, remembered another small figure: “Raigili made a
full kettle of tea year before last,” she said. And from Pala’s
tent came the laughing echo of our own appreciation: “Eee
eeeee! Did you make tea?! Eee eeeee!”’
But Inuttiaq and Mannik one day took Saarak with the other
children on a sled trip four miles downriver to visit a neighbor.
Allaq, Pala, and I, the only three left in camp except for the baby,
stood on the gravel spit and watched Saarak dwindle in the dis-
tance, only the peak of her white hood protruding from the
wooden box in which Inuttiag had placed her to protect her from
the flying slush of the river surface. Then amused affection at
her new venture was tempered by the tug of separation. We sat
together in the sun. The camp was very quiet; the stuttering
cries of an invisible loon only enhanced the stillness. Every
now and then Pala’s deep old voice sighed: “Ee eeee!” And
once Allaq, sitting, as always, with the baby in her lap, remarked
with a little laugh: “I feel left behind; I’m lonesome (pai) for
Saarak.”

168 Never in Anger

 Bit by bit, Saarak’s babyhood was passing in another, most
important, way: she was losing to her infant sister some of the
attention, the open demonstrativeness, that she herself had
formerly enjoyed. It happened so gradually that I was not aware
of it until I heard Allaq one day coo at (aqaq) the uncompre-
hending Saarak: “My little Saa, your mother’s brother no longer
coos at (aqaq) you very much.” Saarak made no response.
There were two games that Saarak’s family played with her
that seemed to me to dramatize this transition. It was in the
autumn, when Qayaq was about five months old. Saarak at this
time had begun to enjoy games in which she and her fellow-
players took turns in assuming false identities, then pretended
to discover their error. Thus, when Saarak entered her grand-
father’s tent for a visit, her aunt Amaaqtuq would greet her with
mock ferocity: “Bad Kanunga! Bad dog! Get out of the tent!”
Saarak, disconcerted not at all, would stand there, beaming, till
Amaaqtuq, with equally mock surprise, suddenly said, “Why,
it’s Saarak!’’ Saarak would repeat her entry several times, each
time telling Amaaqtuq to say “bad Kanunga!” Then she would
take her turn at telling Amaaqtuq, at the top of her lungs, that
she was a bad dog.
The two games that involved Qayaq were also identity games.
In one, Inuttiaq and other relatives pretended to mistake Qayaq
for Saarak. Bending over the baby as she lay in her mother’s
lap, Inuttiaq would coo (aqaq): ‘““Saaaraaaak...’ I held my
breath each time, but although this game never seemed to amuse
Saarak as did the “bad dog” game she played with her aunt, her
reply was rarely ruffled, only firm. “Here she is,” she would
announce, pointing a grubby finger at her own chest. And then
her teasing relative would pretend to see her: “Why, there’s
Saarak!”
The second game involving Qayaq I considered even more
perilous than the first, but Saarak did not seem especially
threatened by this one, either. “Where’s the charming (niviuq)
little one?” one of her relatives would ask. “Here.” Saarak
would point to herself. “No,” the other person would say gently,
“here,” pointing to Qayaq. “Here?” Saarak would chirp, point-
ing at the baby. “Eeee (yes).” But when, after a few repetitions,
Saarak had learned to point to Qayaq, then her interlocutors

Inuttiaq’s Children 169

 asked her: “And where’s the other charming (niviuq) little one?”
Then when Saarak docilely pointed to Qayaq, they would cor-
rect her: “No, here,” pointing to Saarak herself.
Saarak may not have been quite old enough to be alarmed by
the implications of this game; she participated in it with exactly
the same eager interest with which she participated in the kin-
ship guessing game that it resembled, even when her relatives
teased her by asking instead: “Where’s the annoying (urulu)
little one?” and laughing at her when she innocently pointed
to herself. A month later when Amaaqtuq, whose Christian name
was also Saarak, pointed out to her small namesake the similarity
in their names, Saarak, to Amaaqtuq’s immense amusement,
shrieked in furious self-affirmation: “NO! HERE is SAARAK!!!”
She would have nothing to do with any imposter. And when
Allaq once at that time teased her daughter: “You’re not charm-
ing (niviug); you’re an old lady,” Saarak cried, and was snuffed
and comforted by her laughing mother.
In any case, once the initial crises had passed, Qayaq did not
seem to be a major menace to Saarak. Saarak was never overtly
hostile to the baby. When Qayaq was asleep, Saarak ignored the
little bulge on her mother’s back; when the baby woke and was
shifted around to the front of the parka to be nursed, Saarak
chirped and cooed, asked to see the baby, to kiss her, and some-
times to hold her (a gesture that Allaq always prevented for
fear of the baby’s safety) or to cuddle (iva) her in bed, as she her-
self was cuddled. Allaq said all small children, except Raigili,
treated their younger brothers and sisters as Saarak treated
Qayaq: “They feel protectively affectionate (naklik).”
There were only two signs that there was another side to
Saarak’s feelings about the baby. One I noticed only when Allaq
pointed it out to me. When Qayaq was about six months old, I
happened one day to ask whether children ever refused to eat.
Allaq said, “Yes, when a child first has a younger brother or
sister, that is, when the younger child is about Qayaq’s age.
Then the older child’s stomach becomes small; if it is summer
he will eat only the marrow and the tongue of the caribou
[which are delicacies}, and if it is winter he will eat only kapluna
food, when the men come back from Gjoa Haven—as Saarak
does.”

170 Never in Anger

 The other clue lay in the nature of Saarak’s favorite game, a
game in which she impersonated, now a mother, now a baby. She
had played this game before the baby was born; all children do,
packing on their backs limbless fragments of dolls, or bottles,
or puppies (Saarak one day twisted her own arm into the back of
her parka, bounced it to sleep, then brought it around to her
breast and nursed it); anything that will create the familiar bulge
in the back of the parka will do. But now, since Qayaq’s birth,
whenever Saarak played this game, whether she was bouncing
her legless rubber doll to sleep with realistically vigorous fist-
pats on its buttocks, or was herself being bounced on the back of
her young aunt Akla, invariably, her eyes and voice alight with
pleasure, she called her mother’s attention to the “baby”: “Look,
it’s little sister!” And her mother would smile and nod (aqaq)
with affection.
When I saw Saarak again, three years later, she and Qayaq
were inseparable, and Allaq, watching the two playing together
by the shore one day, remarked: “They are friends. That’s the
way it often is between brothers and sisters who are close in
age.” But what happened to the peace between Saarak and her
little sister during the time when Saarak was learning the hardest
lessons, I do not know. At the time I have described here,
Qayaq was still so small, her wants so few, that Saarak was not
yet called upon to give to her sister what she herself wanted.
Neither was she called upon to control her temper with any con-
sistency while I was there; the two lessons would go hand in
hand; the one in restraint, the other in generosity. But harbingers
of the change were visible. In the month before Qayaq was born,
patience with Saarak’s screams was already beginning to lessen.
Though most of the time she was soothed as she had always
been, she occasionally had to wait a bit before Allaq took notice
of her howls; and if the first attempts to soothe did not pre-
vail against the screams they were once ina while followed by an
annoyed “ssssk,” the noise that is made to discourage puppies
from prowling around the entrances of tents, or by the order so
often given older children: “Stop crying!” And already once or
twice the path that Saarak was to follow had been pointed out
to her.
Often it was done not when Saarak was in a blind rage but

Inuttiaq’s Children 171

 when she was playing happily, oblivious of crisis. The day be-
fore we moved to join Pala’s household in the spring camp in
which Qayaq was born, when the household was electric with
the happy bustle of packing, Allaq, in the sweet tone of per-
suasion, told Saarak: “You're not going to cry tomorrow; you're
going to see your mother’s sister.” And another time, when the
wet spring snow had soaked Saarak’s caribou trousers along the
tops of her boots, Allaq pointed out the dampness to her and said
in the same tone: “Look, your pants are all wet with your tears.
You mustn’t cry; you'll make your pants wet and then you'll
freeze.” Occasionally, too, warnings were issued when Saarak
was actually crying: “Don’t cry; you'll hurt yourself; look, your
eyes are bleeding.” The warnings were almost always of the
gentlest, but after the baby’s birth the admonitions increased
in frequency; and just once, with a startled, pitying twinge, I
heard Allaq briefly imitate Saarak’s wails, as Inuttiaq did
Raigili’s. The sound struck sharply through Saarak’s immunity.
There was another sign, too, that Saarak’s feelings were no
longer considered quite as babylike as they had been. Although
in Utku society, children are rarely the victims of genuine physi-
cal aggression, it does happen occasionally that adults play at
physical attack with a small child, as they do with each other.
The poking game (laah!) described earlier in this chapter is such
an aggression game, but that game is enjoyed by the child
“attacked” as well as by the attacker—until, eventually, adults
teach the child to flee in earnest. There are other games, much
more rarely played, which the child clearly does not enjoy.
These games are always kept within the most careful bounds,
yet they are nonetheless striking in contrast with the usual
pervasive gentleness. Indeed, the aggressive nature of the
games is enhanced by the fact that the players never exert
any force; the caution seems to cry danger. One old grandmother
was particularly given to these games. “Hit me,” she would
urge, holding out her face toward her granddaughter; “hit me.”
The child, Rosi, who was Saarak’s age, would hesitatingly stretch
out her tiny fist and lightly touch her grandmother's cheek. Im-
mediately, the old lady would tap Rosi’s face with her own fist,
then again hold out her cheek: “Hit me again.” Another of her
favorite pranks was to tap her granddaughter lightly on her back

172 Never in Anger

or leg when she was not looking, then to pretend unawareness
when the child turned to investigate. She would repeat the
game until Rosi screamed in anger, whereupon her expression-
less old face would wrinkle with laughter.
Saarak’s family, too, had occasionally teased her in similar
ways. They had offered her objects or activities she was sure to
reject, for the amusement of hearing her shattering screech:
“NOOOOO,” as when Amaaqtuq had offered her Allaq's
breast. Occasionally, they had pretended to do battle over her,
Amaaqtugq “hitting” her while Inuttiaq or Allaq “protected” her
by “attacking” Amaaqtuq in turn, batting their fists at the empty
air. Sometimes Amaaqtuq would hit in Raigili’s direction in-
stead, while Saarak, apparently in great distress, waved her arms
ineffectually at her aunt and shrieked until Amaaqtug, whimper-
ing as if in injury, retreated to the door. Allaq explained Saarak’s
actions to me with an amused smile: “She feels protective
(naklik) toward her sister.”
Inuttiaq once in a while teased Saarak by holding out his hand
for a piece of food that she was about to put in her mouth, laugh-
ing when she whimpered in fear and gave the food to her mother
to hold in safety. On one never repeated occasion he did some-
thing that I thought really cruel: he pretended to eat Saarak
herself, snuffing with open mouth at her naked neck and breast
like a hungry dog. The stricken child sat limp in his arms, while
quiet sobs shook her body. Her father, to my horror, laughed
gently and continued his sport for a while, but finally, still with
quiet laughter, he took his daughter’s hands and held them
against his belly in a warming gesture of affection, and shortly
Saarak, too, laughed.
These physically teasing games that are not enjoyed by the
children are abandoned as children grow older. When older
children are teased, as they often are, it is most often by subtler
taunts, with rarely a physical overtone. The only physical attack
game inflicted on Raigili was Nilak’s: “Want a kiss?” and in the
last months I knew her, Saarak, too, seemed largely to have out-
grown these forms of joking.
To what extent Saarak felt the changes in the atmosphere I
cannot say, but every now and then I began to see emergent in
her behavior the outlines of a personality like her older sister's.

Inuttiaq's Children 173

 Raigili one day squeezed a longspur until its heart burst through
its skin and, like the other children, she enjoyed killing the
unwanted newborn puppies, dashing them with squeals of
excited laughter against boulders or throwing them off the high
knoll edge into the rapids below. Killing puppies was a child’s
job; adults said they found it too revolting to do themselves.
Saarak one day, her eyes gleaming with pleasure, beat two smal]
puppies with a stick until they cried piteously. Allaq paid no
attention. Raigili had nightmares; Saarak now sometimes wept
in her sleep, and one day she half roused from a nap, crying,
“Uuuumak! uuuuumak!” (her word for “mother’’). Allaq said
tenderly, “Are you starting to have nightmares? I’m here,” and
Saarak went back to sleep. Like Raigili, too, Saarak one day in
November spent the entire day in bed, by choice. She seemed
perfectly happy, and though she was never actually alone in the
iglu during the day, for long periods of time she asked no
attention at all. Indeed, she resisted it. She buried herself, head
and all, under the blanket, holding the edge down firmly and
repelling with shrieks her aunt’s sociable taps and laughing
attempts to penetrate the barricade. A comical little bump on
the ikliq, she sang and talked to herself, while Allaq now and
then bent her head surreptitiously to listen, smiling, to the
monologue.
Most of all like Raigili, Saarak was beginning to mope. The
first time I noticed it was three weeks before Qayaq’s birth.
Raigili was lying in bed playing with an undershirt, drawing it
over her head as a hood. Saarak watched her sister. “Laalaa too!”
she demanded, her still babyish tongue stumbling over the con-
sonants. “Laalaa too! Laalaa TOOOOO!” Her voice was shrill,
but Raigili ignored her, and after a bit, Saarak lapsed into sulks,
putting her finger in her mouth and pouting. The pathetic trans-
formation of Saarak’s expression, the sunless gloom that I had
never seen darken her face before, struck me suddenly as funny,
and I laughed. Inuttiaq, reached by the laugh as he had not been
by Saarak’s insistent voice, looked up from his work. “Vaaa,
vaaa, he said, noting his daughter’s expression, and immedi-
ately, warmed by her father’s affection and my laugh, Saarak’s
face cleared. She bounced and pursed her lips, soliciting further
attention, and the shirt was forgotten.

174 Never in Anger

 On the next occasion, six months later, the cause of Saarak’s
distress was different, and she was not so easily revived. She had
fallen and hit her chin on the gravel floor of her grandfather's
qaqmagq, and there I found her, in the company of Amaagtugq,
sitting motionless on the edge of the ikliq. Her legs in their
caribou trousers stretched stiffly out before her, her sleeves
dangled limp while her arms were wrapped around her body,
her dark eyes stared at nothing, and her face was still streaked
with tears. Amaaqtuq was sewing silently beside her. I was not
amused this time; Saarak’s expressionless face was desolate.
“Saaraaaak,”’ I said, offering the only solace I knew, “come sit
on my lap.” Saarak signified by the faintest wriggle that she had
heard and accepted, and when Amaaqtuq helped her off the
ikliq, she trotted, as if propelled without will, her empty sleeves
flapping, across the qaqmaq to the oil drum where I sat; but in
my arms she lapsed again into inertia; only the warmth of her
little body and the rise and fall of her breath were alive.
There were other occasions, too. When Allaq went fuel-
gathering and left Saarak behind in her aunt’s care, Saarak knelt,
ostrichlike, on the ikliq with her head buried in the bedding:
“Because ‘she’s’ not here.” And when she was told not to fold
the photographs she was looking at, pictures of herself that I
had taken and given to her family, she sat with hanging head,
batting at her mother and at me when we tried to touch her.
But for Saarak it was the exception still, and not the rule,
this silent withdrawal in the face of adversity. Her parents had
not yet begun to criticize her as they did Raigili in mooing tones
when she sulked: “Always annoyed (urulu), always angry
(qiquq).” Allaq, observing Saarak’s hanging head, laughed at the
nascent sulk, murmured, “Ee eeee,” and snuffed her warmly.
Perhaps her parents never became as severe with her as they
were with Raigili. Amaaqtuq’s letters for two years regularly
reported: “‘Saarak still cries, poor little dear (naklik).”

Inuttiag’s Children
 Two Kin Groups: Expressions
of Separateness and Hostility
The closeness that marks relationships between households
belonging to the same kin group contrasts with the social dis-
tance between households that belong to different kin groups:.!
As Inuttiaq’s daughter I saw the contrast most clearly in the way
my household related to Pala’s on the one hand and to Nilak’s
and Qavvik’s on the other. Pala’s household was, of course, part
of our own family circle; Nilak’s and Qavvik’s were not. The
separateness of these three kin groups, Pala’s, Nilak’s, and
Qavvik’s, the feeling of ““we” versus “they,” that had first been
expressed for me in the distance between camps and in the spac-
ing of tents and iglus took many other forms, as well. Once,
during the first August days at the Rapids before the caribou
hunters had returned, I asked Amaaqtuq and her cousin, Maata,
where the absent people were. They gestured in a northwesterly
direction: ““Over there.”’ But when I asked whether Nilak had
1. A kin group, it will be remembered, consists of genealogical or adoptive
siblings and the children of those siblings. See also section VI of the Introduc-
tion and Appendix III.

177
 gone in that direction, they pointed to the opposite direction,
It was their own kinsmen Inuttiaq and Mannik who had gone
northwest. And during the spring, when Allaq looked forward to
the return of the schoolchildren, it was not Nilak’s nephew she
spoke of; it was her daughter and her brother: “Soon, I think,
Kamik and Ukpik will be coming.” It was only when small
Raigili asked: “And Tiriaq too?” that Allaq added the outsider
to the list: “And Tiriag.” One’s own family was always present
in one’s thoughts, as others were not. Even the dreams that were
shared over breakfast tea were peopled with kinsmen, not with
others.
Distance was expressed more tangibly, too. When Saarak
began to venture out alone into the camp, Allaq would say to
her: “Go visit your mother’s brother,” or “mother’s sister,” or
“grandfather.” She never said: “Go visit Nilak” or “Qavwvik.”
Adults visited kinsmen more often than they visited others;
they sat down comfortably on the ikliq with the family, helped
themselves to the pile of fish in the corner if they were hungry,
perhaps lent a hand with a fishnet that was under construction
or with a pile of fish bellies that was being skinned, or brought
their own sewing, plaiting, or toolmaking to work on while they
visited. Outsiders, more formal in their behavior, usually stood
just inside the door, unless invited to sit down; they ate when
invited to do so (though they were not always averse to making
their hunger known); and they watched but did not help spon-
taneously with the household work. If a mother wished to be
relieved of her baby for a bit, while she went to check a fishnet
or bring in a load of twigs, it was her sister, her mother, or her
brother’s wife she asked, not an outsider. If a man wanted a
companion for a fishing or trapping trip he usually invited a close
relative. If he needed to use a bit and brace or a saw, if his wife
needed a frying pan or a cupful of fish-oil for the lamp, they
would send to their parents or to their brothers and sisters be-
fore they approached others.
In certain respects, expressions of closeness and of separate-
ness among households and kin groups varied with the season
and with the size and membership of the camp. I have mentioned
that during the time I lived with the Utku, summer camps were
more communally organized than winter camps. Almost every

178 Never in Anger

activity was performed by a larger group in summer than in
winter. In winter, the members of each iglu household checked
their fishnets by themselves, cached their fish separately, and
cooked and ate their own food in their own iglu, independently
of close relatives who might live in nearby iglus. When visitors
were present during a meal, they, too, were served, but their
portions tended to be smaller than those of their hosts, even if
the visitors were the host’s own kinsmen. Only in the rare case
when more than one nuclear family belonging to the same kin
group shared a joint iglu did they collect and cache their fish
together, or cook and eat as a single unit.
But when the same households joined one another in summer
tent camps they ceased to be so independent. Then al! the house-
holds belonging to one kin group checked their nets and cached
their fish together; and all the women in the camp, whether or
not they were kin, shared in gathering fuel and in preparing
meals, which the whole camp ate together.
In another respect, too, summer camps were more communal
than winter camps: there was less privacy. In winter, though the
hillside under its snow covering swarmed with people as it
never did in the summer, each iglu constituted a snow monad.
Some clues to the activities of the neighbors came from the
squeaking footsteps that passed nearby or overhead (depending
on how deeply buried one’s iglu happened to be); all footsteps
were recognized. But the creak of snow underfoot and the faint
howl of dogs heralding an approaching sled or meal were the
only sounds that penetrated the muffling snow walls. Most news
was brought by the children, who acted as messenger-scouts.
All day, swallowlike, they darted in and out. When they came
into an iglu they were always thoroughly interrogated. Inuttiaq
used to do an exceptionally detailed job: “Where have you
been? What were they doing? Do they have visitors? Who? Did
you eat? What are they cooking? Boiled wolverine? Vaaaaa! Is
there any left? I want to eat boiled wolverine!” and hastily
pulling up his hood, out he would go to visit.
In summer there was no need for interrogation; the tent
camps were porous. Much of life was lived outdoors. Even when
one was indoors there was little private family life. Nilak saying
evening prayers, Amaaqtuq chanting Responses from the prayer-

Two Kin Groups 179

 book, Inuttiag’s nightmare and Saarak’s temper tantrum, the
anthropologist’s tape recorder, and someone starting the primus
for tea—al] were audible.
Paradoxically, while the porousness of a tent camp erased
some of the divisions between families, it accentuated others.
In such a camp, the intimacy of communication among members
of a kin group was publicly apparent as it never was in the win-
ter. It was at night after people had retired to their tents that I
noticed it. Then the silence that separated some households was
eloquent in contrast with the spoken warmth that bound others.
This was never more vivid than in the spring camp that Inuttiaq’s
household shared with Pala’s and Nilak’s after Qayaq’s birth. If
Allaq failed to wake when the baby cried, Pala next door would
hear and shout: “Little daughter, wake up! One is crying and
crying.” Nilak’s family never gave a sign of having heard the
baby. Inuttiag, feasting on bannock and jam, would call to his
cousin Mannik: “Don’t you want some?” and in a moment
Mannik’s smiling face would appear in the doorway. Usually
one of his sisters would come, too, to fetch a piece for Pala.
But Nilak’s family was never summoned. Sometimes, lying lazily
in bed, Inuttiaq would institute a question-and-answer game be-
tween Saarak and her relatives in the other tents, like that which
they played during the winter in our double iglu. “Mannik!”
she would call to her favorite uncle at Inuttiaq’s dictation. “Are
you asleep?”
“Yes,” he would joke.
“Why?”
Was the rude question “why?” that Inuttiaq dictated to
Saarak, a parody of my own persistent, impertinent questioning,
intended for me to hear in my tent next door? I wondered.
Laughter followed the nonsensical exchange, but Nilak’s family
never shared in it.
Again, Inuttiaq told Saarak to call to her grandfather: “Pala!
Do you love me?”
“No,” came the answer, with mock harshness.
“That makes one feel like crying.”
More laughter followed, as Pala, in a voice of amused tender-
ness, called: ‘I was joking; I love (naklik) you very much, you're
very sweet(niviug); did you think you weren't lovable (niviug)?”

180 Never in Anger

 Or Saarak might call to me: “Elder sister! What are you
doing?”
“Writing.”
“Go to sleep!” and again laughter from all tents except Nilak’s
would follow the rudely imperious order.
Such closeness among kin was the embodiment of an Utku
ideal. This was the way people should feel and act toward their
kinsmen: with kindness and concern, helping them, sharing
with them, and enjoying their company. A similar ideal of har-
mony, forbearance, and charity applied to relationships with
all people. One should help anyone who required it—at least
a little. One should be mild, sociable, and, of course, never
under any circumstances angry or resentful. But the ideal did
not prevent the separateness between kin groups, in itself
acceptable and expectable, from being tainted, more often than
not, by hostility. The hostility was subtly expressed and often
strongly denied, but it was there.
Occasionally there were tensions among close kinsmen as
well, but these, when they existed, were even more strenuously
denied and rigorously controlled. To the superficial eye, har-
mony reigned within Pala’s family circle. No discord was ever
communicated directly or indirectly to the anthropologist in
the house. I learned of the undercurrent of fear engendered by
Inuttiaq’s impeccable control of his temper not from the mem-
bers of his family but from people in Gjoa Haven; and it was
only after they had enlightened me that I read any deeper
meaning into Allaq’s docile behavior. When Pala’s other son-in-
law, Ipuituq, joined the household, the harmony seemed on the
whole extended to him, although he belonged to the family only
by marriage. Again it was in Gjoa Haven that I learned of the
tensions existing between Ipuituq and Pala, with regard to
Ipuituq’s excessively independent tastes in residence. The story
was that at one point Ipuituq’s reluctance to live in Pala’s house-
hold had nearly broken his marriage with Pala’s daughter Ama-
ruq. He left her; she followed him to Gjoa Haven; and there the
marriage was formally cemented by the Anglican bishop on his
annual visit. But Ipuituq and Amaruq seemed a most affectionate
couple at the time I knew them, and no member of their family
revealed their history to me. Once attuned, to be sure, one did

Two Kin Groups 181

 hear occasional critical comments, very matter-of-fact in tone,
to the effect that Ipuituq was unpredictable, lazy, or inclined to
untruthfulness. But so subtly was the disapproval expressed that
a foreign observer would have noticed nothing. No one ever
shouted, or even sulked visibly, at anyone else. And if occasion-
ally someone felt “too lazy” to do a job requested of him, no one
seemed to take it seriously. It did not happen often—except in
the case of the children, who, after all, could not be expected to
obey consistently, since “their minds (ihuma) were not yet fully
developed.”
I did sense strain between the household of the old man
Piuvkag and the others of Pala’s circle, but I never learned
whether my feeling was correct. Though Pala and Piuvkaq were
half-brothers and each considered the other a member of his kin
group, Piuvkaq seemed somehow only formally accepted by
Inuttiaqg and Pala. I thought this might have been because
Piuvkaq, through the frailty of age and the lack of an adult son,
was to some extent dependent on the others. The two younger
men, Pala and Inuttiag, recognized their family obligations to
share food with Piuvkaq and to help him move when they mi-
grated, but the assistance rendered seemed more dutiful than
joyful. Piuvkaq’s tent, or his iglu, stood next to his brother’s, but
when Pala and Inuttiag joined their dwellings together to form
an intimate whole, Piuvkaq’s small home seemed rather lonely.
Piuvkaq’s household consisted of himself, his elderly wife,
Huluraq, their daughter, Maata, who was about twenty-five and
had already been twice widowed, and Maata’s two small daugh-
ters, one from each marriage. There was also an adopted son,
Pamiuq, about fourteen years old, the only cheerful, bouncy
member of the household. He was actually Piuvkaq’s grandson
but had been adopted as a son when his own parents died.
Piuvkagq and Huluraq were sweet old people, but one did not
see much of them because they were both “tired,” as the Utku
put it, that is, elderly and unwell; they spent most of their time
at home. Their daughter, Maata, was often silent and aloof. The
smiles with which she responded to the smiles of others were
seldom reflected in her eyes. I had the impression that she was
not well liked, or that she herself disliked people. She came
occasionally to visit in Inuttiaq’s household or in Pala’s, but

182 Never in Anger

usually stood quietly by the door for a little while, without
speaking or being spoken to, and then left. More often she came
to beg a bit of tobacco for her mother or a little oil for the lamp,
as her own household was always short of everything. Maata and
Pamiuq between them did the best they could to help Piuvkagq
provide for the household. They fished, they set a net, they ran
a short trapline, but the three of them could not equal the work
that would have been done by a young and vigorous man. The
small requests they made of Pala and Inuttiaq were never re-
fused, but on the other hand very little was spontaneously offered
to Piuvkaq’s household. The spirit of the relationship between
Piuvkaq’s household and these others was symbolized for me
by an incident that occurred one day in the winter camp. Hear-
ing Piuvkaq’s approaching footsteps on the snow outside,
Inuttiaq quickly cut off a small piece of an especially fat and
desirable fish he had just caught and, laughing, hid the rest
under a hide. The small piece he generously urged on Piuvkaq
when he entered.
Piuvkaq and his wife both died of respiratory infections while
I was at Back River, within a few days of each other. Maata and
the children moved in with Pala for a little while, but then
Nakliguhuktuq arranged for Maata to marry a man from another
community, and she moved there, taking her daughters and
Pamiuq with her.
The tensions that existed between one kin group and another
were more visible than those that existed between the house-
holds of a single group. The loyalties that sealed the tongues of
close kinsmen were less binding on remote relatives, so between
extended families hostility found expression in gossip and
slander, as it never did within the family itself. It was always the
Others who were accused of untruthfulness, theft, laziness,
stinginess, unhelpfulness, jealousy, greed, lechery, and bad
temper. Qawvik stole, the other families said; he gossiped evilly;
he talked a great deal about his plans but rarely carried any of
them out. The picture was not wholly black. He was an excellent
hunter and trapper, they said; he was industrious and kind. But
on the other hand, he was not very religious and he had too great
a fondness for women. “Those people are always wanting a
woman, Nilak would tell me, jerking his head toward the other

Two Kin Groups 183

 iglus: Qavvik’s, Inuttiaq’s, and Pala’s. “We don’t do that; we’re
all right (naamak).” And Allaq would tell me, “The men don’t
like to travel to Gjoa Haven with Nilak, because he never shares
his tea and tobacco with the others on the way home. Inuttiaq
and Mannik always say that. He is stingy and jealous (tuhuu).
We are not like that; we are all right (naamak).”
Of course, there was sometimes a factual basis for these re-
marks. But often it seemed to me that the Outsiders were merely
scapegoats for the release of hostility that had built up in the
course of day-to-day living, regardless of the original cause of
the anger. If Nilak stayed at home one day instead of going off
trapping he was “lazy,” said Allaq. If Inuttiaq stayed at home he
was “tired.”
Similarly, appropriation of other people’s property was dif-
ferently defined depending on who did it. The Utku have very
clear concepts of personal property. However, in theory it is
quite all right for someone who lacks a particular item, say, tea
or flour, to take a little from the cache of someone who has a
great deal of that item. Such behavior is defined as “stealing”
only if the taker fails to report to the owner of the cache, or if
he uses the cache all up. If Inuttiaq and Mannik, members of
my family, helped themselves from my supply cache, my family
viewed that as legitimate sharing, as long as the takers reported
the act to me, the owner. But if Outsiders took something, my
family invariably told me of the “theft,” even though the takers
had themselves announced their deed to me.
In actual fact, all of the Eskimos I encountered were punctili-
ously honest. Every accidentally spilled drop of kerosene and
every teaspoonful of tea taken was reported. But when a tangible
act like stealing was not involved, it was sometimes difficult to
know whether an aspersion was true or not. I was never sure
whether the Utku themselves believed their slanderous remarks;
people occasionally seemed embarrassed by my tendency to
take them literally. My family often told me that Nilak com-
mented behind my back about how heavy the letters I wrote
were and how reluctant he was to carry them to Gjoa Haven for
me: “It is only Nilak who thinks they are heavy and who doesn’t
want to take them. Inuttiag and Mannik and Ipuituq would
agree to carry them.” If I happened to be feeling beleaguered

184 Never in Anger

that day, I would believe them, and would meet their Zowip
with silently burning resentment: how could anyone consider
five or six half-ounce letters heavy! But if I then agreed ‘hat
perhaps I had better not ask Nilak to carry them, Inuttiaq sr
Allaq would say anticlimactically, “I think he will carry them :f
you ask him.”
Similarly, members of my household would report to me ‘hat
Qavvik did not want his adopted son, Putuguk, to carry on his
sled the heavy load of flour I wanted to order from Gjoa Haven.
But if these reports deterred me from making the request, some-
body was sure to reassure me: “I think he will do it if you ask
him.” And indeed he did. When I went once, apprehensively. to
ask Qavvik’s permission for Putuguk to carry the flour for me,
he said with utmost warmth: “You mustn’t be afraid (ilira) to
ask us to carry things for you; we are not frightening (ilira).
You are a kapluna, a woman, and alone here among people; you
are someone to be taken care of (naklik).” I thanked him and
went home to meditate on the meaning of Utku slander. Were
Qavvik and Nilak really as reluctant to carry my letters and sup-
plies as they were said to be? Were their warm reassurances to
me merely a polite veneer overlying the reluctance that they ex-
pressed behind my back? If so, were the ungracious remarks that
were reported to me to be taken literally? Did Nilak really think
my letters were heavy, or was he, perhaps, expressing in figura-
tive terms resentment against me because his household tended
to receive less than Inuttiaq’s of my kapluna benefits? Or, on the
other hand, did Inuttiaq and Allaq simply invent Qavvik’s and
Nilak’s ungracious words, perhaps attributing to their neighbors
resentment that they themselves felt concerning my incon-
venient requests?

Two Kin Groups 185

 Nilak’s Family
During the months in which I lived as Inuttiaq’s daughter, the
social world of my family was to a large extent my own world.
Though for the sake of my work I made some effort to visit in
other households more widely than my family did, the pattern
of their associations could not help but influence mine: my visits
were limited to the households that shared our camp, and I saw
more of the people who visited frequently in our home than I did
of others. Pala, with or without Ipuituq, was almost always with
us, as was Piuvkaq until his death. Qavvik, on the other hand, al-
most never shared our spring, summer, or autumn camps; we
saw him only in the winter, when all the ‘:ouseholds gathered
in Amujat. Of the families who were not closely related to us, we
were most in contact with Nilak’s.
It was a small family, Nilak’s, the smallest in the band. It con-
sisted only of Nilak, his wife, Niqi, and their adopted daughter,
Tiguaq, a girl of about seventeen; they had no children of their
own. Nilak was the last remaining one of a group of brothers
who used to camp together in Chantrey Inlet. Two of the

187
 brothers had died, and the third, crippled by tuberculosis, lived
in Gjoa Haven, where life was not so rugged as it was in Chan-
trey Inlet. Niqi’s parents and siblings, too, had all either died or
moved south to Baker Lake, so Nilak’s household was left with-
out any close relatives at Back River. It was a lonely situation,
and the loneliness was exacerbated by the personal peculiarities
of Nilak and his wife. It was not that they camped far from other
families, as I had been led to expect; they did not. Nilak was
one of the “Itimnaaqjuk-people,” those who habitually camped
at Itimnaaqjuk, the Rapids, during the summer, as did Pala and
the two associated households of Inuttiaq and Piuvkaq; but his
isolation was all the more visible for that very reason. It was
especially visible to me the autumn I first arrived in Chantrey
Inlet, when his tent stood alone on the far shore of the river,
facing, across the rapids, the clustered tents of the other families
a quarter of a mile away. The howling of his dogs came to us on
the breeze, and we watched the household like puppets coming
and going about their toy tent, gathering their fuel, fishing, and
setting their nets on their own side of the river. Within sight, as
they were, and yet out of the range of immediate neighborly con-
tact with the other tents, they seemed more distant than if they
had been miles away.
My first meeting with Nilak’s family occurred just a week after
I joined the two elderly brothers, Pala and Piuvkaq, at the
Rapids. Nilak, like Inuttiaq, was away inland, hunting caribou
when I arrived, but snow flurries already whitened the ground
at night, and the occupants of the camp at the Rapids daily
scanned the empty tundra expectantly for signs of their missing
kinsmen and neighbors. I, too, was expectant, but my anticipa-
tion was colored by anxiety. I wondered what my prospective
fathers, the absent hunters, Inuttiaq and Nilak, would be like,
and how they would react to the discovery that a strange kapluna
woman had materialized in their midst during their absence. |
felt, guiltily, a little resistant to the prospect of increased de-
mands on my work-time and privacy, on my good humor, and
especially on my limited food supplies, which the presence of
newcomers would entail, so soon after I had become reconciled
to the incursions of Pala’s kinfolk.

188 Never in Anger

 About noon one day, Piuvkaq’s daughter, Maata, and I were
sitting together in my tent. I was trying with cold-stiff fingers to
record vocabulary while Maata sewed me a pair of duffel socks
as protection against the frostbite that I feared was imminent.
Pala’s daughter Amaaqtugq parted my tent flaps and gestured in
the direction of the distant hills across the river: ‘“‘Nilak.”’ Pencil
and sock in hand we ran to look. “Where?” My eyes are good,
but they could not match the Eskimos’ sensitivity to moving ob-
jects in the landscape. For some time my neighbors tried vainly
to point the travelers out to me, but it was some minutes before
J saw a white team of dogs running down toward the opposite
shore. Watching them come, Maata and Amaaqtuq instructed
me. “Nilak and his wife, Niqi, are called nuliaqtaariik, ‘the
married couple.’ Nigqi is little and her adopted daughter, Tiguagq,
is biiig.”” They laughed.
Pala and Piuvkaq watched Nilak’s approach with as much
interest as their daughters, and as soon as the figures were seen
to have reached the opposite shore, the old men, probably
spurred by the startling news they had to impart, paddled over
to greet them and to escort them across the river to drink tea
with us.
The details of that first meeting are still vivid in my mind,
partly because the warmth of the greeting the family received
was so strikingly out of keeping, both with the expectations that
had been engendered in me regarding Nilak’s isolation and with
the confirmation that these expectations received later that
evening when I stood with Pala’s and Piuvkaq’s daughters on
the beach and watched Nilak and his womenfolk organizing their
camp again in the remote spot across the river where it had stood
all summer. Later I found that an appearance of warmth charac-
terized most Utku reunions, regardless of the tensions that would
emerge when the euphoria of meeting had dissipated; and, as
I look back now on that day, I see other tokens of Nilak’s isola-
tion in the welcoming atmosphere. At the time, however, I was
blinded by preoccupation with my own feelings: strangeness and
self-consciousness in the Eskimo world and anxiety regarding
what my own future relationship with this newly arrived man
and his family might be. Curiously, I recognize now that it was

Nilak’s Family 189

 precisely to these personal concerns that I owed my first experi-
ence of the relationship between Nilak’s family and the others,
had I only been sensitive to it.
The newcomers were met on the same strip of shore where a
week earlier I had been met. The same silent, smiling knot of
Eskimos stood waiting for the canoes to be beached, then went
forward to shake hands with the three who stood, also silently
smiling, at the edge of the shore. The resemblance of the scene
to the earlier one of which I had been the focus struck me, per-
haps because as yet there were so few acts that were familiar
to me in this new life. I felt, moreover, though it may have been
a trick of my self-consciousness, that I was almost as focal an
actor in this second scene as in the first. I had followed the two
women of the camp when they beckoned me to go with them to
the shore and had stood a little apart and behind them while the
hunters shook hands with their welcomers and distributed
presents of caribou tallow to the children. Then Pala sum-
moned me from my shy retreat: “Shake hands.” I obeyed, and
Nilak, with a beautiful smile, handed me, too, a generous piece
of tallow. Afterwards I had occasion to think longingly of that
tallow, but at the time I had not the least idea what the grubby
suet-like lump was; I feared only that I would be expected to
eat it, as indeed I was. I felt that at that moment the reunion of
Nilak’s household with Pala’s and Piuvkaq’s was of less interest
to the Eskimos than my own introduction and display. To Nilak
I was a stranger, a person to be courted. At the same time, to
Pala’s family I was a curious acquisition to be shown off. I felt
a protectiveness, perhaps a little possessiveness, toward me in
the manner of my recent friends, which contrasted with the timid
stares and smiles of the newcomers, and it is my memory now of
that possessiveness, the feeling I had that suddenly I “belonged”
to some people as distinct from others, that makes me realize
that, unaware as I was of its real meaning, I experienced then the
fact that the Utku are not a cohesive, unitary group.
The feeling that I belonged with or, better, to Pala’s kin, a
little in the manner of a pet, continued when the women beck-
oned me to the tents to share in the welcoming meal of tea and
bannock, which Maata with hospitable haste ran to cook, and I
felt only the exhilaration of gratitude even when, on the way,

190 Never in Anger

Maata and Amaaqtuq, amused as always, put me through my
linguistic paces, encouraging me to perform publicly all the
words they had taught me in the past week—especially the plant
names, which they knew I found impossible to pronounce. I had
the impression that my friends also dictated silly or comic
phrases for me to repeat, playing with me the way they some-
times did with small children whose tongues tripped amusingly
over complicated words; but the laughter—I felt it excessive—
that followed my obedient repetitions of their phrases may have
been due simply to my execrable pronunciation, not to the verbal
content per se.
Nilak and his family did not participate in these games. They
seemed amused but were too shy, or perhaps too polite, to laugh
at me loudly as the others did. Overtly, they paid no attention
to me at all. The men swapped news, with occasional interpola-
tions from the women: Nilak had shot twelve caribou; the gulls
were eating the fish out of our nets; some kaplunas had come in
a plane; I myself had come to live with them for a year. I under-
stood little else and soon gave up straining to mold the stream of
sound into words. The quietness of the talk, its slow tempo, and
the running laughter on which the words were threaded lulled
me. Silences were long, as is usual in Eskimo conversation, and
few questions were asked. People waited for news to be offered.
Sitting as an honored guest on Piuvkaq’s ikliq, I sipped the
bitter tea and ate bannock that tasted overwhelmingly of the fish
oil in which it had been fried. Surreptitiously, I observed Nilak,
his wife, and adopted daughter, seeing them through very
kapluna eyes. They eyed me in turn, equally surreptitiously with
the exception of Niqi, who stared when she thought I was not
looking. I was pleasantly impressed with Nilak, a handsome
man of about forty (I thought him somewhat younger). He had a
warm smile and a bowl haircut and was well dressed in a wom
duffel parka and fairly new store clothes: jacket, shirt, chinos,
and rubber shoe-pacs, all of which I later discovered had been
presents from kapluna sportsmen who had fished in Chantrey
Inlet earlier in the summer. Nilak’s adopted daughter, Tiguagq,
seemed charming, too. She was really his niece, Nilak told me,
the child of one of his brothers. Eskimos who have no children
of their own or whose children are grown often adopt children,

Nilak’s Family 19)

 partly just because they enjoy having children around and
partly for the help that the child can render its adopted parents
as it grows up. Nilak and Niqi, being childless, had adopted
Tiguaq when she was still so little that she had to be carried
next door to be nursed by her real mother. She was now a pretty
adolescent with heavy, neatly braided hair and knee-length hide
waterboots like a man’s, which drew my eyes because of the
thrifty way they were constructed. Sealskin, very scarce at Back
River, had been used only for the soles, while the uppers were
made of the less waterproof but more readily available caribou
hide.
It was on Niqi, however, that my attention centered. My
foreigner’s eye was much less kind to her than to her husband
and daughter, partly because of her unkempt appearance and
partly because her uneasiness concerning me manifested itself
in ways that irritated my kapluna sensibilities. She unwittingly
deepened the gratitude I felt for the proprietary attitude toward
me of Pala’s and Piuvkaq’s households. Her appearance was
ludicrous and repellent. She was a funny little creature, with
sparrowlike gestures, quick and jerky. Her age could not be
determined from her appearance, but I calculated that she must
be about forty, like her husband. She was unusually short, even
for an Eskimo, and I think this may have contributed to the
childish impression she created; as Maata and Amaaqtuq had
told me, Nilak and Tiguaq both towered over Nigqi by a foot or
more. She was wearing an indescribably grimy, ragged cotton
parka cover (filthier by contrast with the fairly clean clothes of
her husband and daughter) and a dime store necklace of huge
luminous beads which, like Nilak’s clothes, was a present from
the summer sportsmen. She was one of the very few Utku women
who preferred pipe to cigarette smoking, and the first such
woman I had met. She alternately smoked and spat incessantly,
as did everyone else, but when Nigqi spat she let the saliva roll
out of her mouth onto the gravel floor at her feet instead of shoot-
ing it vigorously out the door like other people. To be sure, I
later found that other people, on occasion, also spat on the
floor, but it was Nigqi in whom I first noticed this behavior. Per-
haps others were more discreet at first, out of regard for my

192 Never in Anger

“civilized” weaknesses, or perhaps I was merely more aware of
Niqi's spitting because I disliked her.
Niqi hid her shyness of me and her curiosity about me much
less successfully than did the other Eskimos. Instead of laughing
warmly and openly like the others at my execrable speech, Niqi
snickered behind her hand and whispered to her neighbors. She
also covered her mouth in an outburst of giggles and looked
away when I smiled at her or when somebody pointed her out
to me in conversation. I discovered soon enough that the manner
that annoyed me so was in reality an expression of excessive,
uncontrollable shyness (ilira). When the shyness lessened in a
day or two, she made efforts to teach me words, which, though
unsuccessful, made me aware that her intent was friendly, how-
ever ineptly it was translated into action. In later months, warmer
feelings for Niqi came to be mingled with my antagonistic ones,
but at first, even when she was friendly, I could not like her. In
spite of myself, I defensively felt her manner hostile. I missed
the warm smile, however superficial it might be, that others,
including Nilak and Tiguag, controlled to perfection.
As I sat in the tent that first day, listening dimly to the quiet,
humorous exchange of news, I felt alone in my hostility toward
Niqi. To my ear no antagonism marred the friendly cheer the
others seemed to share. But before many days had passed I
found that Pala’s kin shared my aversion. They disliked Nilak
as well, and when I came to see the darker feelings that underlay
the superficially gracious relationship between Nilak’s family
and the others, I appreciated more fully the quality of the isola-
tion that was symbolized by Nilak’s distant tent site.
It was possible, to be sure, that the situation of Nilak’s tent
that summer had a purely practical explanation. In other seasons
and other years the division between Nilak’s family and the
others was less dramatic. We often shared the same campsite;
but even when we did so, Nilak’s tent or iglu was usually set at
a relatively great distance from those of Pala’s family. Pala’s
daughter Amaaqtuq, a year later, when we were all camped on
the same side of the river, did give me a practical reason for
Nilak’s unusually isolated camp that first summer. In the spring
of that year, members of Pala’s, Piuvkaq’s, and Inuttiaq’s house-

Nilak’s Family 193

 holds had gone out to the coast to hunt seal. Walking back down
the west side of the river after the ice had gone out, they had
arrived at Haqvaqtuug on the northern side of the rapids and had
decided it was too much trouble to ferry the dogs across by canoe
to Nilak’s campsite on the other side. So they had stayed at
Haqvaqtuuq while Nilak, who had not gone sealing, stayed at
the more usual site on the southern side of the rapids.
Perhaps that was all there was to it. But I noted that although
Nilak’s family almost every afternoon paddled over to visit
Pala’s camp until nightfall or canine pandemonium sent them
home again, return visits from the larger group were rare, and I
suspected that Amaaqtuq’s family had considered Nilak’s com-
pany not worth the effort of ferrying the dogs across.

I. Unpleasant People: Utku Dislike of Volatility

I was never sure exactly in what manner the absence of close
kin ties between Nilak and other Utku combined with his own
and his wife Niqi’s unpleasant personalities to make the other
families dislike them. Nilak and Pala were cousins, Pala’s
mother and Nilak’s father having been brother and sister; but
this was not considered a very close relationship, and so it is
possible that some of the gossip directed against “the married
couple” was merely scapegoating, gossip of the sort to which
people outside the protective pale of family loyalties were often
subject. But my own observations of Nilak and his wife indi-
cated that much of the gossip was based on fact. And the personal
quality of the hostility was also attested by the fact that Nilak’s
adopted daughter, Tiguaq, a pleasant girl who gave no cause for
offense, was exempt from the malicious gossip, even though her
kinship connections with Pala’s group were one degree more
remote than Nilak’s own. Both of these facts seem to indicate
that personality rather than lack of kinship was the determining
factor in the dislike. Pala’s kin certainly perceived it so. On the
other hand, I sometimes wondered whether some of the testiness
for which Nilak was disliked might itself stem from his insecure
kinship position in the larger group, though my friends in Pala’s
group assured me that he had been just as nasty in the days when

194 Never in Anger

his brothers were around: nasty to his brothers as well as to
members of Pala’s family.
In any case, the unpleasant characteristics of Nilak, and
especially of Niqi, provided endless conversation in other
households. Nilak’s warm smile, I was told, concealed bad
temper (huaq, urulu, ningaq), stinginess, and unhelpfulness,
three of the most damning traits that one Eskimo can ascribe to
another. But it was his wife, Niqi, who bore the brunt of the
attack. It is possible that even Nilak himself resented her and
that her defects contributed to his own irritability. In my pres-
ence he was the most considerate of husbands. In the early days,
the pair always came visiting together to my tent, paddling over
from their camp across the river, and I was impressed by the
solicitude with which Nilak sugared Niqi’s tea and kept her
supplied with bannock and jam as I cooked it. But people said:
“Nilak doesn’t love (naklik) his wife; he just wants kaplunas to
think he does.”
The neighbors’ view of Nigi was summed up in two critical
judgments: “She seems a child (nutaraqpaluktuq)’ and ‘She
hasn’t much sense (ihumakittuq).’” There was a real basis for
these judgments in that Niqi seemed unable to behave in a
properly adult manner. I think it probable that she was mentally
deficient. She was the only adult under the age of fifty who was
illiterate in syllabics; and I was told that she spoke incorrectly
sometimes. She had had a brother who was clearly defective;
people said he hardly spoke intelligibly.
Dislike of Niqi, like that of her husband, centered on her bad
temper; she had a reputation for being easily provoked to angry
tears or sulks (qiquq). Once when I returned from a trip to Gjoa
Haven, Allaq informed me that while I was away Niqi had
assaulted Tiguaq, shaking her in anger (ningaq). “Even though
Tiguaq is a big girl,” said Allaq disapprovingly. What truth there
was in the story I do not know, but it indicates the low esteem in
which Niqi was held.
I once asked Allaq whether other people “of little sense
(ihuma)” were disliked, as Niqi was. I named two other Utku
of recent memory who had been even more incapable than Niqi.
No, Allaq said; they were liked as long as they were pleasant

Nilak’s Family 195

 people and did not lose their tempers (urulu); it was only Niqi
who was disliked, because she had no control of her temper.
Interestingly, though Niqi’s bad temper was as much disliked
as anyone else’s, in one respect the reaction to hers was unusual:
she was the only person whose anger did not alarm people. They
just shrugged it off as they would the passing ill humor of a half-
grown child, only perhaps a bit more scornfully: “Niqi is annoyed
(giquq, urulu) again; just like a child, she has no sense (thuma);
she’s not frightening (iqhi).”
I knew one other notoriously bad-tempered person at Back
River, a Netsilik man named Uyuqpa who, by marriage, had
become a peripheral member of the Utku band. Uyuqpa’s temper
was also called “childish (nutaraqpaluktuq)’ and “lacking in
sense (ihuma),” but nobody ever said it was not frightening.
Quite the contrary.' I wondered what made the difference. Per-
haps people recognized that Niqi really was more like a child
in many respects and that her behavior was as inconsequential
as the Jatter’s. Her irritations, like those of a child, tended to
come and go in a flash.
An Eskimo friend of mine, a Netsilingmiutaq who had had
considerable acquaintance with kaplunas, once characterized

1. The Utkus’ attitude toward ordinary ill temper seemed different from their
attitude toward the violence of insanity. Ukalik, the widow of one of Nilak’s
brothers (Tiguaq’s real mother), was insane and, on occasion, murderous. She
was in a mental hospital in Winnipeg during the time I was at Back River, so
that it is difficult accurately to compare reactions to her rages with reactions to
common anger, but the tenor of remarks about Ukalik was quite different from
the criticisms directed toward Niqi and Uyuqpa. Though Ukalik was very much
feared during her psychotic periods, she did not seem to be disapproved of in
the same way as the others. She was not said to be a person of “little sense
(thumakittuq),” but when she was psychotic her reason was said to disappear
altogether (ihumaqaruiqtuq). These episodes were thought to be caused by in-
trusion of evil spirits, and the fear in which she was held at these times did not
seem to affect the regard in which she was held during her sane periods; both
Pala and Qavvik were eager to marry her, should she return to Back River.
In one point, however, attitudes toward Ukalik and toward Uyuqpa (though
not toward Niqi) seemed to coincide: Ukalik and Uyuqpa were both considered
to have power to kill, whether with the help of evil spirits or merely by the force
of their own angry thoughts (see below in this section), I am not sure, but I
believe that both of these people owed their reputations for evil power to their
evil tempers.
More detailed comparative data on attitudes toward varieties of rage remain
to be gathered.

196 Never in Anger

the difference between Eskimo and kapluna anger. “If akapluna
is angry with you,” he said, “he can be angry with you in the
morning and forget all about it by afternoon. But if an Eskimo
is angry with you he’ll never speak to you again.”
Nigi’s anger was like that of the kapluna in this comment. It
is the other, the long-lasting, anger that really frightens people,
containing, as it does, implications that the angry person is
brooding one’s destruction. Of such a person, at the opposite
pole from Niqi, it is not said that he is short of sense (thumakit-
tuq), like Niqi, but that he has too much mind (ihumaquqtuuq).
In Eskimo belief angry thoughts long fostered can harm others
simply by the force of their own festering; the wish to harm has
the same effect as a physical attack.
In any case, though Niqi’s bad temper seemed to be a central
cause of her being disliked, the dislike had such repercussions
that there was hardly an aspect of her behavior that was not
criticized. When she was cheerful, she “laughed too much,”
people said. When she went fishing or trapping, went for a walk or
to visit neighbors, people said she “couldn’t sit still,” or “never
stayed home.” When she sat at home they said she was “lazy” or
“sulking (qgiquq).” They criticized her housekeeping, saying that
her sewing and cooking were laughable, that she tended the
household lamp so carelessly that it smoked up the whole iglu,
and that because she was never home the dogs were always get-
ting in and stealing from her iglu or tent. Even Nilak complained
publicly of her domestic defects, and I expect this was one of the
reasons the neighbors judged he did not love his wife. In any
case his habit of criticizing was considered to be in extremely
poor taste and earned him much criticism.
Niqi’s physical characteristics were also the butt of private
humor. The neighbors, both men and women, secretly parodied
her mannerisms: her occasionally confused speech, her embar-
rassed laugh and jerky, hasty, often clumsy motions—the way
she darted in and out of tents, tripping over intervening objects.
Nigi’s sense of the appropriate seemed to be less highly de-
veloped than other people’s, both with regard to emotional
expression and with regard to mature feminine behavior. People
laughed behind her back at a variety of things she did that were
odd in a person of her age and sex: her fondness for playing with

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 children (who, in turn, readily accepted her); the way she rough-
housed with Tiguaq; rolled on the ground playfully with the
puppies; or sat with binoculars on a hilltop, scanning the tundra
for caribou as a man would do. I never heard anyone tease her
concerning her predilection for child-companions, but when she
returned from her expedition to the hilltop people did ask her
jokingly: “Where’s the caribou?”—to which Nigqi responded
with a characteristically self-conscious giggle.
In another respect, too, Niqi showed lack of judgment and con-
trol: she lacked patience and circumspection. Instead of waiting
quietly as she should have done till the future, or other people, of
themselves answered her private speculations about events,
Niqi asked frequent questions, as a child would do: “Where are
you going?” “What are you going to do?”
Again like a child, Niqi found it difficult to wait when some
exciting event was anticipated. In July, when the Eskimos were
daily expecting planes carrying sports fishermen to arrive at
the Rapids, Niqi would hear the hum of a plane’s motor in every
passing sound and run out to search the sky. It was the same way
in the winter when men who had gone to Gjoa Haven to trade
were expected home again. The Eskimo estimates of how long
the round trip would take were always more optimistic than
mine by several days; but Niqi’s estimates were optimistic
to the point of absurdity, and every time a dog howled or even
cocked an ear she was convinced the men were coming, though
they could not possibly arrive for another week.
Pala one day vividly described the Eskimos’ view of Niqi,
though we were not talking about Niqi directly; he was telling
me how one could recognize a person of little sense (ihuma).
Mockingly groping from side to side with his hands and open
mouth in a silly, aimless, wandering way he said: “A person
who lacks sense knows nothing. He is always playing, always
happy (quvia); he searches everywhere for caribou, for fish, for
airplanes; he is always expecting and hoping; he laughs easily, is
easily annoyed (urulu), and easily forgets.”

II. Outsiders All: My Ambivalence toward the Disliked

Many of these criticisms of Niqi and of Nilak I heard only after
I had been living with the Utku for some time; but enough of

198 Never in Anger

 Niqi’s aberrance was immediately apparent to influence quite
strongly, to my dishonor, my dealings with her and her family.
Though I tried to maintain an impartial face, internally I adopted
all too readily the attitudes of Pala’s faction toward Nilak’s house-
hold. When the morning after their return from the hunt, Nilak
and Niqi came to invite me to become their daughter and to
move my tent to their camp across the river, I refused, and
though I justified my refusal to myself in terms of Nilak’s social
isolation, I am afraid my decision was unduly influenced by the
distaste I felt for Niqi’s half-witted giggle and by the difficulty
I experienced in communicating with “the married couple,” who
lacked the extraordinary sensitivity that Pala’s family showed in
ferreting out my meanings and conveying theirs.
Maata, Amaaqtug, and Pala came with Nilak and Niqi to my
tent and explained to them the incoherent gestures and diagrams
through which I tried to convey my desires: to stay where I was
for the present and to postpone the decision on my winter
quarters. In Nilak’s presence Pala’s people showed no reaction
to my choice of camp, and Nilak himself said merely: “It can’t
be helped (ayuqnaq).”’ But as we watched Nilak’s canoe reced-
ing across the river I was conscious again of a possessive quality
in the smiles that surrounded me, an exclusiveness in the warmth
with which Pala thanked me for remaining with them. The im-
pression of Nilak’s separateness that Pala’s protectiveness had
given me on the previous afternoon was strengthened. Inuttiaq
was still two days’ journey distant, yet in effect I was already
adopted by his group. I was grateful and yet a trifle uneasy—
doubtful that I had done the right thing to align myself with any
group of families that might prove partisan. My discomfort in-
creased when, several times in the next days, Amaaqtuq, with
glee in her eyes and with full knowledge of my answer, asked
me: “Is Nilak going to be your father?”’ Much later I discovered
to my consternation that I had had good reason to feel uneasy;
Pala’s faction had correctly interpreted my decision not to join
Nilak, either because my private motives were more apparent
than I had flattered myself they were, or because the Eskimos’
perceptions were colored by their own malicious tendency to
cast others’ behavior in the worst possible terms, a quality that
often disconcerted me later. In any case, when I returned to

Nilak’s Family 199

 Gjoa Haven for a visit three months after I had first gone down to
Back River, I learned that “‘somebody” from Back River (I
suspected Amaaqtugq) had written that I had chosen to live with
Inuttiaq because I disliked Nilak.
Communication continued to be a major problem in my re-
lationship with Nilak and Niqi (though not with their daughter
Tiguaq) throughout my sojourn in Chantrey Inlet. I am still not
sure why this should have been so. Certainly Niqi’s lack of
intelligence was a factor, and perhaps Nilak, too, lacked some
of the intelligence and imagination that characterized Pala’s
family. Instead of adapting the speed and complexity of his
speech to my limited comprehension, Nilak habitually raised
his voice, bending his head toward my ear, as people so often
do when speaking to foreigners. Niqi made no adjustment in her
speech at all.
I suspect, however, that emotions, both the married couple’s
and mine, may explain more than intelligence. Many times,
tangled in Nilak’s cobweb phrases, I felt my mind closing in
irritation, a feeling compounded by my resentment at the
couple’s long, difficult visits and by their frequent oblique
references to tea and tobacco. Nilak and his wife, too, had
grounds for resentment and frustration in my obstinate lack of
comprehension, and in my preference for Pala’s camp, which
they must jealously (and mistakenly) have imagined to be flow-
ing with the tea and tobacco that I gave them in meagre drib-
lets. Their shyness of me undoubtedly also complicated com-
munication. Months later, when Tiguaq had become my most
helpful linguistic informant, she proved as imaginative in her
teaching methods as Pala’s family had formerly been. “She is
not afraid (ilira) of you any more,’ Niqi confided to me. And my
mother, Allaq, gave me another clue when she maliciously said:
“If you had lived with Niqi you would never have learned to
speak Eskimo, because she would always have agreed with you
when she didn’t understand what you said.’’ People who are
afraid (ilira) of you agree with you.
As time went on my initial dislike of Niqi was tempered by
warmer feelings, though I am afraid she never knew it. She was
a friendly soul and when she, like Tiguagq, had lost her fear of
me, her friendliness had at times an almost puppylike quality;

200 Never in Anger

if we were out walking together she would run ahead and
crouch, grinning at me as if inviting playful pursuit. I never
responded to her childlike antics, because they embarrassed me
and because I feared to augment the rather considerable reputa-
tion for childishness that I myself had acquired. But for the very
reason that I, like Niqi, was “childish” in Eskimo eyes, I even-
tually developed quite a kindred feeling for her. We were, in a
sense, children together, neither of us able to maintain the be-
havior proper to an Eskimo adult: Niqi because she lacked the
wits, I because I had been brought up in a different world. And
both of us were subject to the same disapproval from the rest of
society on account of our reprehensible volatility. When, toward
the end of my stay, I was punished for a series of blunders by
being ostracized, Niqi, darting from iglu to iglu as was her
wont, occasionally looked in on me, too, in my solitude. “My,
it’s cold in here,” she remarked on one such visit; “you have
even fewer visitors than we do.’ I pitied her as I pitied myself
at that time, but her fate was worse than mine. I could eventually
go back to a world that accepted me, but isolation was Niqi’s
permanent lot.
Another bond between us was the fact that I found Niqi’s
impulsive actions reassuring and refreshing in face of the tre-
mendous pressure to self-control that oppressed me, a volatile
alien in Eskimo society. It was because her actions were ‘“‘fa-
miliar” to me that I liked them; in my world, too, people sulk
or shout when they are angry, ask questions when they are
curious, cry when their feelings are hurt—so I empathized with
Niqi when she did these things; it was as though I were witness-
ing a fragment of my own culture, and it gave me relief.
But my later liking for Niqi was always qualified by my aware-
ness of the dislike with which the other Eskimos regarded her
and by my resultant need to dissociate myself from her. More-
over, the fact that she was disliked by other people made it
appallingly easy to make a scapegoat of her, in thought; the
hostile atmosphere seemed to give me tacit permission to snarl
at her mentally when things went wrong between me and other
members of the group. Thus, when Niqi came to visit me during
my period of ostracism, gratitude was never, alas, my sole re-
action; I also felt threatened: aware of how low I had sunk in the

Nilak’s Family 201

 eyes of the community, that Niqi should be my only visitor, and
anxious that she should leave before my irritation at her presence
took visible shape.
Another factor that complicated my relationship with Nidqi,
and with Nilak, too, was that they invariably took advantage of
any friendliness on my part to ask for things (food, tobacco,
pieces of clothing hide), and their requests were invariably for
items that were in critically short supply. I hated to refuse but
equally I hated to give. I felt more obligated to share with
Inuttiaq, who fed me, and at the same time I felt an un-Eskimo
but very kapluna pressure to be “impartial” to all families—not
to mention a selfish urge to hoard the precious, rapidly dwindling
supplies that linked me with my own world. The resultant ten-
sions made it all too easy to accept in private thought the opinion
of Pala’s group that the married couple were leeches, “always
jealous (tuhuu), always wanting, wanting (piyuma).”

Ill. Loneliness and Isolation

There was no plaintiveness in Niqi’s voice when she remarked
that there were even fewer visitors in my iglu than in hers, but
I wondered to what extent Nilak’s family shared my feeling that
their isolation was lonely. I saw Tiguagq stroll by herself along
the edge of the rapids or sit at home, cutting a jigsaw puzzle out
of cardboard while the girls of Pala’s and Inuttiaq’s families went
berry picking on the tundra. I saw Niqi wander by herself in the
dry gully under the bluff Itimnaaqjuk, searching for a bit of
soapstone to work into a pipe bowl, or bring a solitary load of
twigs into camp while the other women went fuel gathering to-
gether in the opposite direction. Nilak, too, was most often alone
when I saw him setting off on trapping or trading trips, unlike
the other men, who traveled together in twos and threes.
Perhaps Nilak and his family were people of independent
tastes, to whom periods of solitude were welcome interludes
in the constant sociability of Utku life. I think it unlikely, how-
ever, that this was so. The absence of people is synonymous with
loneliness for Utku, and loneliness, for them as for other Eskimos,
is a central concern. There is a word, hujuujaqnaqtuq (hujuujaq),
which covers a multitude of unpleasant feelings and actions. If

202 Never in Anger

a man is prevented by lack of dogfeed from making a trip he has
looked forward to: hujuujaqnaqtuq. If there is not enough to eat
one day: hujuujaqnaqtuq. If a woman cannot make up her mind
whether she prefers to sew or fish one morning, or if someone
who is disliked comes to visit: hujuujaqnaqtuq. People who lie,
steal, scold, or laugh too much are hujuujaqnaqtug. Damp,
windy weather, mosquitoes, autumn darkness, the dropping of
the water in the rapids after the exciting turbulence of spring,
all are hujuujaqnaqtuq. But ifI asked the meaning of the word
hujuujaqnaqtuq I was always told: “It is a feeling one has when
one is alone and wishes for other people.” Loneliness seems
somehow the essence of unpleasantness. It is a feeling often
complained of and one that people are solicitous, by visiting, to
prevent those they care for from suffering.
I think that Nilak’s family were not different from other Utku.
There was a one-sidedness, a lack of reciprocity, in the pattern
of their associations, which said that their solitude was not en-
tirely of their own choosing. They sought company but were not
sought in turn. Niqi and Nilak, especially, spent a great deal of
time visiting at Pala’s and at Inuttiaq’s while these others
visited them much more rarely. Tiguaq’s company was some-
times sought by Pala’s daughters Amaaqtugq and Akla, but the
extent to which this was so depended on what alternative com-
panionship was available to Amaaqtuq and Akla. During the
summer, when Pala’s granddaughter Kamik was home from
school, she and Amaaqtuq were inseparable; and when another
of Pala’s granddaughters, Ipuituq’s thirteen-year-old step-
daughter, Mitqut, was in camp, she and Akla were equally
inseparable. At these times more than at others, Tiguaq was
often alone.
There were other signs, too, that Nilak’s family was lonely.
Nilak had once expressed his loneliness, as Utku do, by building
a cairn, up-ending a stubby thumb of granite on a boulder on the
bluff above his usual summer tentsite. Cairns provide company
for people.
Children provide company, too, and the married couple had
more than once tried to compensate for their own lack of children
by adopting the children of others, but Tiguaq was the only one
who had remained with them. Two attempts to adopt daughters

Nilak’s Family 203

 of Inuttiaq had aborted. One of these children, an infant twin of
Raigili’s, had died in the married couple’s care. Perhaps Allaq
had not been able to nurse both twins. When Allaq’s most recent
child, Qayaq, was born, Niqi had asked again if she might adopt
the child, but this time Inuttiaq and Allaq had refused, saying
the baby was too lovable (naklik) to part with. An orphaned niece
and nephew had also lived with Nilak for short periods during
their adolescence, but neither of these considered himself more
than a visitor in the household. It was their other uncle, Nilak’s
brother, Nattiq, whom they considered their adopted father and
with whom they lived except when he was hospitalized. So they
said, and Nattiq and his wife, and Tiguaq too, confirmed that
view. Only Nilak and Niqi saw it differently. In their view, the
young people were their own adopted children; they lived with
Nattiq merely as visitors.
The married couple’s misperception spoke much, and so did
the tenderness they showed to small creatures other than chil-
dren. If children could not be adopted, baby birds and puppies
could. Utku children showed toward baby birds a mixture of
tenderness and callousness that I found hard to understand.
Charmed by the littleness of the creatures, the children often
sought them as pets, but a bird rarely survived the first few hours
in the home of its tender captor, and when it was dead or dying,
it was cast aside with seeming indifference. On occasion a child
might even kill the bird deliberately, as Raigili squeezed the
heart out of her captured longspur. Adults, like children, en-
joyed stoning small birds, and Nilak and Niqi were no exception.
Indeed, I once saw Niqi, like Raigili, gradually choke a longspur
to death, as if absentmindedly, while her glance and her conver-
sation were elsewhere, then toss it to a dog, who gulped it down.
But tenderness toward birds seemed rarer among adults than
among children. Was it an accident that it was in Nilak’s family
I saw the only signs of itP Nilak himself one day showed me a
striking sight. He had stunned a longspur with a well-aimed
pebble, but then instead of tossing it to the dogs, he picked it up,
stroked its head gently for a few minutes and let it go, only to
attack it again as it sat, still half-unconscious, on the gravel. It
was Nilak’s household, too, that once succeeded in keeping a
pet ptarmigan alive for more than a week in a corner of the tent,

204 Never in Anger

 carefully nourished with grass and flower stalks that Tiguaq and
her mother collected.
There was a clearer difference between Nilak’s family and
others in the way they treated puppies. Ordinarily, puppies were
ignored, except by the children, who played with them. They
were fed, to be sure, until they were old enough to fend for
themselves; they were protected from frost and from hungry
dogs; but except in the first weeks of life, when they were still
too young to steal, they were not allowed indoors. When they
broke in, as they often did to scavenge, they were sent flying.
The shrill yipping of beaten pups was a familiar sound in Utku
camps, and the animals soon learned to run, cowering, from
adults even when the latter had no aggressive intent at the
moment. By contrast, the puppy in Nilak’s household led a cozy
life. Snuffed and caressed by all the members of the family until
its head reached nearly to Tiguaq’s knee, it slept on the family
ikliq or in Tiguaq’s lap and ate fish scraps from the family
larder, which Niqi or Tiguaq cut into convenient morsels. It
rode on Tiguaq’s shoulders and romped with Niqi. Only when it
was nearly old enough to be harnessed did Nilak chain it with
the rest of his team to the dog line behind the camp. Once when
Allaq and I were talking about the difference between the two
words naklingnaqtuq (naklik) and niviuqnaqtuq (niviuq),
which describe warm feelings, I asked her whether either word
applied to puppies. “Yes,” she said, “puppies are naklingnaqtuq,
to be taken care of, but they are not usually niviuqnagqtua, caress-
able. Only people who have no small children are sometimes
tender (niviuq) to puppies.”
Tiguaq herself may have received more affection than usual,
and it may have been more openly expressed, too, because she
was all that her parents had. Nilak said as much one day. He was
sitting in my tent, watching Tiguaq help me to transcribe some
anecdotes she had recorded for me. I was playing the tape, phrase
by phrase, while Tiguaq with crystal diction repeated each word
so that I could write it down. Saarak was puttering around the
tent, too, probably in search of raisins, as she usually was; I hid
them in a different place every day. Nilak, who had been silently
_ smoking, suddenly removed his pipe and said in a tender voice
(agaq): “She’s very lovable (naklik).” I thought he meant

Nilak’s Family 205

 Saarak; people often said that about her as they watched her
trotting around the camp. But he did not mean Saarak; he meant
his own daughter, Tiguaq. I must have looked surprised. I had
never before heard affection so openly expressed to a grown
child. Nilak explained: “Because she’s my only child I love
(naklik) her.” Nilak had thought one autumn of sending Tiguaq
to the school at Inuvik where a few of the children, one from each
of the other families, went to learn English. He had had poor
success with the autumn caribou hunt, so clothing hides for the
winter were scarce. At Inuvik the government would clothe
Tiguaq. But when the time came she stayed at home. “We would
miss (unga) her too much,” said Niqi.
Tiguaq’s reactions to her parents’ isolation were never clear
to me. Though she became one of my best language teachers and
we spent many hours together, recording and writing out the
stories she told of her experiences, she never spoke to me about
people, either her own family or others. The stories were all
about events: a caribou hunt (where they camped, what they ate);
the coming of kapluna fishermen in an airplane (how many there
were, how the Eskimos visited them, what they were given as
presents); the famine (again, where they hunted, what they ate).
Occasionally she would remark that an occurrence was funny
(tiphi), or unpleasant (hujuujaqg), or made one want to cry, but
these observations, especially the unpleasant or sad ones,
rarely had to do with the relationships of people with one an-
other; they concerned bad weather, or hunger, or a caribou that
escaped. The same was true of the stories told by other Utku;
the people described in anecdotes often did amusing things, but
they seldom made one unhappy. It was in ordinary conversation
and in gossip that one heard about people’s personal qualities
and the reactions to them. And Tiguagq, unlike other Utku, never
gossiped to me. Neither did she express pleasure in people, as
others occasionally did. Perhaps because I belonged to the
Other set of families, not to hers, she was moved, by shyness or
by loyalty, to be discreet. Perhaps her loyalties were divided
because, strange as it seemed to me, given the uneasy state of
peace between the two families, Tiguaq was betrothed, had
been betrothed as an infant, to Pala’s son Mannik. Nothing
obvious either in Tiguaq’s behavior or in Mannik’s, neither

206 Never in Anger

unusual closeness nor shyness, betokened their status; I would
not have guessed it had Allaq not told me of it. Nevertheless, it
is possible that Tiguaq’s knowledge of her future may have made
her reluctant to talk against Pala’s family. So complete was her
discretion, however, that I can only speculate on its causes.
Tiguaq was never, to my knowledge, the subject of gossip,
either. From the distance at which I saw her she seemed a pleas-
ant girl, evenly agreeable to everybody as she came and went,
making tea, fetching fuel and water, helping to harness or un-
harness her father’s team, or playing ball with the rest of the
camp. It is difficult to find any vivid words to describe her; she
was not colorless, yet there was nothing remarkable, nothing
idiosyncratic about her to fasten on, either in disposition or in
appearance—except that she was big and her mother little. I
was relaxed, perhaps naively so, by this quality in her. Even
during the period when I was ostracized by the community I
never worried what Tiguaq thought of me. She was not actively
friendly, but neither did I feel her actively hostile. On the other
hand, I never felt I knew her. Perhaps it was partly this same
evenness of temper that was responsible for the seeming absence
of hostility toward her. Although she shared in her parents’ isola-
tion, yet I wondered, in her case more than in theirs, whether
some of her solitude was of her own choosing. One thing was cer-
tain: she made much less effort to remedy her solitary condition
than her parents did. Whereas Nilak and Niqi responded to the
absence of visitors in their home by going visiting themselves,
Tiguaq many times occupied herself at home instead of fol-
lowing, when Amaaqtuq went off somewhere with Kamik. Some-
times she sacrificed quite tangible gratifications for solitude. In
the summer, when the clink of cups signaled to the camp that
Allaq or Amaaqtugq or I was serving tea, Nilak and Niqi almost
always appeared. Tiguaq appeared much less often. Even when
her mother called to her where she sat alone in the tent to ask if
she did not want to come and drink with the rest of us on the
beach, her pleasant voice replied: “I don't feel like tea.”
Why did she do this? It was unusual for anyone to refuse food
or drink; indeed, the day’s comforts were counted in cups of tea.
Did she really not feel like tea, or was her withdrawal in part a re-
sponse to her parents’ situation: a proud refusal to eat, as her

Nilak’s Family 207

 parents so often did, from the larder of those who shared grudg-
ingly?
In other ways Tiguaq, though she sought out Pala’s family less
than her parents did, did not dissociate herself from her own fam-
ily. She seemed to have a most friendly relationship with her
mother. If a trip was sighted, returning from Gjoa Haven, while
Niqi was sitting unaware at home, Tiguaq ran to give her the
news. If Niqi was alone at home, which happened once or twice
when severe laryngitis made her, for once, disinclined to visit,
Tiguaq curtailed her own visits on the grounds that her mother
would be lonely (hujuujaq) without company. When Nilak was
away on trips Tiguaq even shared her mother’s quilts.
Tiguaq also seemed to have more diversions in common with
her mother than other grown daughters had with their mothers.
I often found the pair occupied together when I went to visit:
playing cards, coloring a picture book, sewing doll clothes. Once
in a while, as I have said, they even tussled together, play-
fully. Perhaps Niqi shared more of her daughter’s frivolities
because she was more childish than other women. Although
in leisure moments there was a playfulness in most men and
women that seemed childlike to my eyes and that combined
oddly with their more serious qualities, certainly in some re-
spects Niqi’s playfulness was more extreme: I never saw another
woman of her age romp with puppyish abandon, crouching and
tugging at her opponent, as Niqi did with her daughter. Having
such a small] family to sew for and no little children to care for,
she had almost as much leisure as a girl. I often thought that
this might have been a truer, as well as a kinder, explanation for
the inactivity that Pala’s family called “Niqi’s laziness.” But
it seems to me there could well have been a third strand in the
bond between the two. Whether Tiguagq felt the exclusiveness of
Pala’s family directed against herself and, in response, withdrew,
or whether she simply took it upon herself to share the emptiness
surrounding Nigqi, I do not know, but in some measure, surely,
mother and daughter owed their intimacy to the isolation that
they shared.

208 Never in Anger

IV. Stinginess and Greed
The existence of ill feeling between Pala’s extended family on
the one hand and Nilak’s household on the other seemed to be
little affected by the proximity of the two. Regardless of whether
or not they were camped together, the tension between them
existed, on our side often emerging secretly into nasty jokes
and murmured comments uttered with hostilely narrowed eyes.
I assumed that Nilak’s family privately returned all our com-
pliments in kind, but as Inuttiaq’s adopted daughter I was in
a poor position to find out, since, I think, daughterly loyalties
were ascribed to me.
Though the specific sources of tension varied with the sea-
sons, nevertheless, generally speaking, almost all the complaints
directed against the married couple were concerned with their
unhelpfulness, greed (piyuma, tuhuu), and bad temper (ningaq,
urulu, huaq, qiquq). Bad temper the couple were certainly guilty
of on occasion; but I was never sure whether Nilak’s so-called
“unhelpfulness” and “greed” were really greater than other
people’s or whether he merely acted as anyone else, especially
as anyone who lacked close kin, would have done toward people
outside his own extended family.
Although the ideal says that “everybody” should be helped,
in reality, help is extended much more willingly to close rela-
tives than to others, and people, knowing this, sometimes prefer
to do without, rather than appeal to outsiders, if what they need
cannot be provided by close kinsmen. The reluctance to ask
from people outside the extended family is phrased as a fear of
being unkindly refused. (Refusals are almost always construed
as unkind (quya).) Similarly, a major motivation for giving to
people in the larger group is the fear of being thought unkind.
Thus, I was always reassured when I hesitated to ask a favor:
“Don’t be afraid (ilira) to ask us; we are kind (quya); we won't
refuse.” These “reassurances,” to be sure, intensified rather
than lessened my hesitant feelings, which were of exactly oppo-
site order to those the Eskimos imagined, deriving, as they did,
from the fear that the person would fail to refuse in the event
that my request proved an imposition.
So great is the embarrassment of refusing and being refused

Nilak’s Family 209

 that requests are, as a rule, made most indirectly; if one wishes
to ignore the hint one can do so. But in my own experience when
requests were made they were usually of such modest propor-
tions: a handful of tea, a lampful of kerosene, half a cup of sugar,
that I, at least, found it impossible to refuse without feeling
ashamed. Perhaps this was the petitioner's intent. Very fre-
quently, moreover, the responsibility for requests is attributed
to someone else. One may say, “So-and-so told me to ask” (as-
suming a cloak of docility—a Good quality), or: “I ask because
so-and-so is cold” or “hungry” (presenting oneself as generous
and thoughtful). Appeal on behalf of a small child is particularly
effective. Inuttiaq frequently used concern for me as his excuse
for making a request, a maneuver whose true character it took
me some time to recognize. Being himself cold, he would say to
me, “You are cold; make yourself some soup.” He knew well
that when I made it he would be offered some, but as the soup
was mine, and I at best a pseudo-daughter, he was reluctant to
ask directly.
Actually, it very rarely happens that a person refuses a request
outright. Instead of saying “‘no,” he may say “I don’t know” or
“maybe,” smiling warmly the while; he may deny that he has
the item requested, or he may pass the responsibility for the
refusal to someone else, as Tiguaq did one day. Seeing that she
had become restless, apparently bored after an hour or two of
tape-recording words for me, I asked her if she wanted to play
ball with the others, whose laughing shouts were audible out-
side the tent. “Who knows,” said she, looking embarrassed; “I
don’t know.” Then turning to Amaaqtuq, who opportunely ap-
peared in the doorway at that moment: “Are you going to tell
me to go play ball?” “Yes,” said Amaaqtugq, and off went Tiguagq,
her problem solved.
However, it sometimes happens that even when there has
been no request, a failure to offer assistance spontaneously will
be interpreted as deliberate unkindness. And when people,
whoever they may be, are slow to offer help, or show themselves
jealous and greedy (tuhuu), the wider values, “people should
be good to everybody,” are invoked against them—not, by and
large, in direct accusations, but in private gossip or in the moral
generalities of Sunday sermons. I expect that these wider values

210 Never in Anger

are traditional ones, as the fear of refusing and being refused
seems profoundly ingrained; but nowadays they are phrased in
Christian terms: “Jesus says we should help everybody; we
should be kind (quya) to everybody and love (naklik) them be-
cause they are our brothers—kaplunas, too.”
Nilak’s “‘unkindness (quya)” and “unhelpfulness” often took
the form of a failure to offer spontaneous assistance. And the
Christian values were often invoked against him, as he in turn
invoked them against Qawvik, and no doubt against Inuttiaq and
Pala when I was not around to hear. I never knew Nilak to refuse
to lend a tool when asked, or to refuse to carry goods from Gjoa
Haven for the other men (though they accused him often enough
of not wanting to do it); but there were occasions on which he
failed to offer food that the others felt he should have offered.
One instance of this occurred during the springtime, the sea-
son of greatest food scarcity. For a month or more, Inuttiaq,
Pala, and Nilak had been camped together near the Rapids,
living off the fish caches that they had each made in that general
area during the previous autumn. Then one morning Nilak and
his family packed up their sled and, as is customary, departed
without saying a word of their intention or of farewell to the rest
of us. They set up their tent on a point of land two or three miles
away, just visible in the distance from where the rest of us re-
mained. They may have moved because the new campsite was
closer to their caches (which it was), or because they were tired
of our company, or perhaps (as I suspected at the time) because
they wanted to eat their bacon, newly arrived from Gjoa Haven,
in solitary peace. I do not know; they did not offer a reason and
we did not ask for one. We simply peeked out of our tents to
watch them packing and remarked to one another: “Nilak seems
to be leaving.”
It was soon after the two groups had parted company that
Pala’s and Inuttiaq’s families ran out of dog food. The autumn
fish caches were used up, and whereas it was possible to shoot
enough birds to feed the human beings in camp from day to day,
the dogs were another matter. The men of our camp went to pay
a friendly call at Nilak’s camp one day and returned home with
most of the contents of a cache of fish roe, which Nilak had given
them. It was enough for one meal for the two teams of dogs.

Nilak’s Family 211

 But it was not long after the receipt of that gift that Pala remarked
to me in the colorless, conversational voice in which people
mask their annoyance: “Nilak doesn’t offer us any dog food. It
can't be helped (ayuqnaq).” I asked how many caches Nilak
had left. “Two,” said Pala. He did not mention a cache of roe
that I next day discovered we still had, ourselves.
I felt quite in sympathy with Nilak’s unwillingness to share
his limited food supplies. It would be several weeks yet before
the fish would begin to run and food would become plentiful
again. Inuttiaq and Pala planned to try their luck at Kajat, north
at the river bend, when the fish caches at Itimnaaqjuk were
exhausted; there were sometimes a few large fish at Kajat in the
springtime, and birds were more plentiful there than at the
Rapids. After the ice went out in July, we would return to the
Rapids to spear the migrating salmon trout. But Nilak’s family
had no canoe in which to travel after the ice broke up (except
for a leaky old rowboat that Pala had lent them), and they were
apparently unwilling to make the long trip on foot, as people
had done before the government gave them canoes. So they
planned to stay by themselves at Itimnaaqjuk, eking out their
caches until the fish began to migrate. Under these circum-
stances two caches would hardly provide a luxurious diet for
three people and ten dogs, I thought.
I was in sympathy also, on the whole, with the provident spirit
that resulted in Nilak’s having proportionately more caches than
Pala’s group had to begin with. Not only had he cached fish
during the autumn, as we had; he had also checked his fishnets
nearly every day all winter instead of going jigging for trout, as
the rest of us did. The others criticized Nilak for not going jig-
ging: “He has fine warm fur clothes, but he never goes fishing.”
(That is, he had not the excuse of being cold for staying at home.)
But though trout make better eating than the disagreeable little
whitefish that are caught in the nets, far fewer of them are caught
in a day’s fishing; and as a result of Nilak’s conscientious net-
checking he still had a plentiful store of whitefish to carry with
him to his spring camp in March. Inuttiaq and Pala had none;
they had to begin using their autumn caches at once.
Inuttiaq’s and Pala’s households were not in sympathy with
Nilak’s providence. Allaq expressed their attitude one summer

212 Never in Anger

day when she explained to me why Niqi never boiled fish for
the camp to eat, as we did. Allaq said: ‘They are like children:
fearful (kappia); they’re afraid there will be a food shortage.”
Nilak always cached everything he caught, and every day he
and his family shared our meal. They were never penalized for
their failure to contribute but were given equal portions with us,
as is proper in camps where all camp members eat together.
Allaq was scornful, but I wondered whether Nilak’s prudence
might not be a natural result of his isolated social position. Per-
haps he feared—with some justification—that, in case of a real
food shortage, he would receive minimal aid from the other
households. His failure to contribute to the common pot could
also have been a form of retaliation, however unthinking, against
the treatment that he and his family received at the hands of the
others. To be sure, it might have been true, as Allaq claimed,
that he had been just as ungenerous with his own brothers. But
had he been? A lack of concern for others might well have been
heightened in Nilak’s household by the rejecting attitudes of
Pala’s kin.
I speculated, too, on whether the “greed” (piyuma, tuhuu) of
which Nilak was accused behind his back might also have its
roots in his social isolation. Having no close kin from whom to
make requests when he needed something, Nilak was forced
more frequently than were the members of Pala’s kin group to
ask favors from outsiders, who resented it and called it greedy.
“Nilak is jealous (tuhuu),” they said; “he’s always wanting
things (piyuma).” And they secretly laughed at him when he
walked along the river shores after the kapluna sportsmen had
left in the autumn, looking for fishhooks that they might have
dropped.
“Wanting” was not a trait peculiar to Nilak, no matter what
others might claim. Inuttiaq and Pala were nothing loath to join
Nilak in a minute inspection of the kaplunas’ rubbish dump as
soon as the latter had left. And when, one day as Inuttiaq was
sorting his fishhooks, I remarked on their quantity, he said with
feeling: “I don’t have a lot; they do” —pointing toward Pala’s
and Nilak’s tents.
But, as usual, Nilak’s behavior was judged by a standard dif-
ferent from the one applied to Inuttiag and Pala. Allaq one day

Nilak’s Family 213

 expressed more fully than usual the feeling she shared with
her family. ““Nilak always tells everybody when he succeeds in
trapping a fox; he wants people to be jealous (tuhuu) of him.
He himself is jealous when other people have things. He is
jealous of households whose men have just come back from
trading and of people who have fish when fish are scarce. Nak-
liguhuktug says we ought not to be jealous, we ought to love
(naklik) everybody. “We (the households of Pala, Ipuituq, and
Inuttiaq) are not very jealous; we’re good.”’ Curious to know how
Allaq would react, I replied tactlessly: “All of you tell everybody
when you acquire things, too.” “Yes,” Allaq said, “but we're
not jealous; we’re just talking sociably.”

V. Ostracism and Confrontation

None of the criticisms that Pala’s kin made of Nilak were ever
thrown directly at him. Even his tendency to scold (huaq) Nigqi
and Tiguaq, which was, from his critics’ point of view, one of
Nilak’s worst faults, was never remarked on to his face. If his
scolding was overheard at a distance, people listened with nar-
rowed eyes and murmured disapprovingly to each other,
“Mmmmm,” and that was all. Later, in the intimacy of the family,
someone might observe in a cheerful tone, followed by a little
laugh: “Nilak is angry (urulu) with his wife; it’s annoying
(urulu).”” There would be no answering comment.
Niqi was never directly criticized, either. She might be teased
if she went to the hilltop to seek caribou or if she clumsily fell
off the edge of the ikliq and spilled the fish boiling on the primus
stove. But her more serious aberrancies were greeted with
silence, and were mocked or commented on only when she and
the other members of her family were absent.
Only once did I see a positive attempt made to direct Niqi’s
behavior into more socially appropriate channels. By far the
more usual technique for coping with her was to ignore her. Not
only did people fail to comment on Niqi’s peculiarities within
her hearing; they also ignored her presence—not openly and
dramatically, but so subtly that I did not notice they ostracized
her until I had been living with Inuttiaq’s family for three
months or more. The treatment simply consisted in letting all

214 Never in Anger

initiative for interaction come from Niqi. Pala’s womenfolk
almost never visited her unless there was no one else in camp to
visit, or unless Nilak’s household happened to have something
particularly delectable in the larder that day, such as caribou or
dried fish, which could only be tasted by visiting there. But it
was more than that. People were completely passive toward her.
If she smiled or spoke to others, they smiled or spoke to her in
return; her visits were impassively accepted by her neighbors;
and if she was present among a group of visitors when tea or
food was served, she received tea or food with the others. But
that was all. I rarely heard anyone except her child-companions
initiate a conversation with her, or respond meaningfully to her
giggling remarks. The usual reply was an indifferent “yes,” or
“who knows?” which left a residue of chill perhaps all the
heavier for the deceptively warm tone in which it was uttered.
Perhaps the fact that Niqi and the others rarely addressed one
another by kin terms might also be seen as a subtle form of ostra-
cism. Almost all other Utku, including Nilak and Tiguaq, did
address one another by kin terms, real or putative. Niqi may
have been differently treated in this respect, however, only
because of her witlessness; though the others knew how to ad-
dress Niqi as a kinswoman, Niqi herself did not know most of
the terms that would have been proper for her to use. The basic
principle governing the behavior of Pala’s group toward the
married couple seemed to be that the surface smoothness of
camp life should not be ruffled, and the latter did their part, too,
in maintaining a facade of friendliness. No relationships were
broken outright, and no one saw occasion to blame himself for
unkindness. On the other hand, every occasion was taken to
blame the other faction, in secret, and tangible evidence of
friendship was hard to find.
The quality of the relationship as I saw it between the two kin
groups was especially apparent in our summer and autumn
camps at the start of my second year at Back River. I am not sure
that the interaction between the families then was typical of
their summer camps; perhaps an unusual heightening of hostil-
ity for some reason made feelings that were often successfully
submerged more visible. In any case, that season, relations, un-
expectedly smooth at first, gradually deteriorated until, by

Nilak’s Family 215

 autumn, comments on the defects of Nilak’s household were
daily fare in the other qaqmags, and the remarks were accompa-
nied by acts, too, that signaled that the air was highly charged.
It was mid-July when Pala and Inuttiag and their households
rejoined Nilak at the Rapids after the spring separation that |
described earlier. This time, unlike the previous summer, we
all camped beside Nilak on one small gravel beach by the rapids;
and here in August we were joined by Ipuituq and his family.
So the camp was ultimately composed of the four households of
Pala, his two sons-in-law, Inuttiag and Ipuituq, and Nilak.
Nilak’s family, who had been living alone at the Rapids since
late in May, greeted us on our arrival with as much apparent
pleasure as they themselves had been greeted on their return
from caribou hunting the year before. Niqi, sitting with her
binoculars on the hilltop beside the camp, had spotted us ap-
proaching in the distance, and tea was hot on the fire when we
arrived. There was much to talk about over tea: the height of
the river in the spring floods, the campsites where we had stayed
on our peregrinations along the river, the weather, the food
situation, the measles epidemic that had been brought by the
returning school children in June. Nilak’s family had had mea-
sles, as we had; all of us had run very short of food during the
worst of the epidemic; and several young dogs in both Pala’s
and Nilak’s teams had died of illness (distemper, perhaps). But
now the trout were running well, and Nilak already had a great
number hung up to dry on lines behind the camp. Inuttiaq and
Pala’s son Mannik had shot two caribou on the way back to the
Rapids. Allaq brought out some of the meat, and Niqi boiled it
for a festive dinner for us all.
For the first few days after our arrival, relations between the
two family groups were more convivial than I had yet seen them.
Inuttiaq, Mannik, and Nilak were absorbed in their fishing. Bal-
ancing on boulders around the edges of a foaming pool, they
stabbed dramatically at the leaping trout with their long tridents,
shouting, posturing aggressively, and, especially if the fish es-
caped, uttering streams of vigorous remarks for the amusement of
their companions. Pala watched them through his telescope
from the top of the bluff above the pool, and sometimes, taking
a throwline, he went down to fish alongside the spearmen. The

216 Never in Anger

women, when they had time, often wandered over to watch
with Pala, or to cast a throwline; but most of their day was spent
in splitting the fish for drying and hanging them from lines,
where their orange flesh flamed in the sunlight against the blue
river.
Fish drying was one job that the women of each kin group did
separately. Pala’s and Inuttiaq’s women worked together, and
Nilak’s worked apart, since their fish would be dried and stored
separately from those of the other families. But when dry lichen
was to be gathered for the campfires we combined forces. All of
the six women and girls went together up into the hills behind
the camp to pull the lichen and to help pack it home; and some-
times the smaller children also followed, not so much to help as
to find berries to eat and small birds to stone.
Almost every evening one of Pala’s daughters, Amaaqtuq or
Allaq, boiled a tub full of fresh trout heads from Inuttiaq’s or
Mannik’s catch, and when the cry of “patau (boiled fish)!” went
up, the whole camp gathered on the gravel beach before the
tents to eat, the men from one tray and the women from another,
while the children ran back and forth among the adults, looking
for choice morsels. Afterwards, as we lay on the beach, smoking
in the cool evening sunlight, one of the men, belching comfort-
ably, would observe to the circling gulls that he felt like drinking
tea; whereupon his daughter or his wife would slowly rise, fetch
a kettle of water from the river, and take it to one of the blackened
stone fireplaces that lined the edge of our gravel strip. Usually
one of the other women decided that one kettle was too little
for so many people, and she would start a second kettle brewing.
Soon there would be a cluster of women and children gathered
sociably around the fireplaces while the tea heated and the men,
hooded against the mosquitoes, lay smoking together on the
gravel higher up by the tents.
In the first days after we joined Nilak at the summer site, Allaq
sometimes joined Niqi at the fireplace when the latter was brew-
ing tea, and chatted with her in a friendly manner, behavior that
was in striking contrast to her treatment of Niqi in other camps
where I had seen them together. Sometimes she even visited
Niqi in her tent, as she very rarely had during the winter and
spring. My surprise at this change was the greater because, as

Nilak’s Family 217

 r camp,
we made our way back down the river toward the summe
Allaq had predicted that when we first arrived Niqi would be
“She
even more unpleasantly (hujuujaq) volatile than usual:
will smile too broadly and get angry (urulu) easily.” Perhaps
Niqi did not fulfill the spiteful prediction. Or perhaps Allaq’s
own euphoria at being with people again was stronger than her
d in her
dislike of volatility. In any case, only friendliness showe
behavior.
Bit by bit, however, the first conviviality ceased. Inuttiaq,
Mannik, and Nilak still fished in the same pool, but after the
first day, Nilak fished on one side of it while the other two, and
Pala, when he joined them, fished from the other side. Conver-
sations, which had continued until midnight the first two or
three nights after our arrival, stopped earlier; people were often
in bed by 9:30. Allaq again drew away from Nigi, only smiling
at the latter’s overtures in order to preserve the surface equilib-
rium of camp life. And soon it seemed to me that, not consistently
but fairly often, when people lay in front of the tents in the eve-
nings, I had to choose which of two kin groups to join: Nilak’s
or the other, which comprised the families of Pala, Inuttiaq, and,
in August, Ipuituq. In the days of wider sociability or when the
women formed their own circle apart from the men, there had
been no problem of choice.
I had become accustomed in earlier camps to this social cliqu-
ishness and to the simmering dislike that underlay it, so that
I accepted it as a matter of course when Allaq, feeling lonely or
wanting to soothe the cranky baby with a change of scene, took
her sewing to her sister’s tent instead of to Niqi’s, where Niqi
and Tiguaq always sewed by themselves. However, toward the
end of the summer the situation deteriorated to such a point,
especially between Niqi and the others, that I began to wonder
if something out of the ordinary was the matter. I do not know
what brought about the change. A number of factors may have
contributed: the cumulative effect over the weeks of the strains
engendered by summer life, when shared activities drew the
families together for many more hours in the day than during the
winter; autumnal vissicitudes, the dark, chill days coinciding
with increased pressure of work in preparation for winter; some
injury, real or imaginary, that rankled more than usually in Nii;

218 Never in Anger

tensions that I myself caused at this time—all of these may have
been irritants, which were reflected in increased friction be-
tween the family factions. In part, too, though I think not wholly,
the increase in hostility that I felt in the camp may have been an
artifact of my perception, which no doubt became increasingly
sensitive to expressions of dislike as a result of my own strained
position in the group. In any case, I began to see hostility in a
variety of acts, and later, words. I noticed Niqi’s behavior first.
She stopped accompanying the women of Paia’s kin when they
went to collect plants to feed the cooking fires. She preferred to
bring in her contributions separately, or in company with Tiguaq.
And one day when the autumn winds had scattered the fires
from the summer fireplaces that all had used together on the
beach in front of the tents, two new fireplaces appeared in
sheltered nooks on opposite sides of the camp: one for Nigi, the
other for Pala’s women. Nobody commented on these develop-
ments in my hearing so, as discreetly as possible, I sought ex-
planations. When Niqi returned one day with a load of lichen, I
observed: “You're all alone.” “Yes,” she said, “I want to be
alone.” Again, I remarked to one of Pala’s daughters: “Niqi
seems to have built a new fireplace of her own,” and the reply
came: “She wants to.”
But not all of Niqi’s independent actions received the same
tolerance. As autumn wore on, even behavior that had passed
uncriticized during the summer began to incur the wrath of
Pala’s womenfolk. During the summer the fact that Nilak’s family
regularly stored their own fish catch against future emergencies
while as regularly partaking of Inuttiaq’s, Ipuituq’s, and Man-
nik’s catch, and the fact that, as a natural consequence, Niqi
never helped cook the patau, did not seem to be a major source
of strain between the two groups. Pala’s group gossiped about
Nilak’s “‘fearfulness (kappia),” of course, but they seemed re-
signed to it, simply remarking that “Niqi never makes patau;
it’s very laughable (tiphi).”
But Niqi’s failure to help with the work of cooking in the
autumn camp was increasingly censured. The wrath derived
some of its force from the fact that autumn is the busy season of
sewing winter furs, and the two seamstresses in Pala’s group,
Allaq and Amarugq, had a much heavier load of sewing than Niqi,

Nilak’s Family 219

 with her tiny family, did. Under these circumstances Niqi’s
irresponsible behavior was one straw too many. It takes about
two hours to boil a five-gallon drum of frozen fish heads, and two
hours of a short autumn day is a long time to devote to cooking
when men are waiting for their winter clothing. They are un-
comfortable hours, too, as the cook shivers outdoors over a tiny
blaze, coaxing it every few seconds with fresh twigs; protected
from the worst winds, but not from the cold, by a high encircling
wall of snow, and forced by that wall to suffer choking clouds of
smoke. Indeed, the job is so unpleasant during these autumn
months that only mature women are entrusted with it. “Girls
would be too cold to cook the fish well,” they say. But Niqi, all
unheeding, went fishing with Nilak and Tiguag. So busy were
the three with fishing that they even gave up collecting a share
of the fuel, and as before, they usually failed to contribute fish
to the pot from which they ate.
Allaq and Amarugq, the unfortunate cooks, murmured mightily
behind Niqi’s back about her failure to cook, when they had so
much sewing to do. Lazy, they called her, though I was not so
sure that was the proper explanation. She kept busy enough,
fishing, and, later in the season, trapping, often walking con-
siderable distances in these pursuits. But none of her activity
was for benefit of the community—only for benefit of Niqi and
family.
Dissatisfaction with Niqi’s failure to share in the work of the
camp grew in intensity, becoming a consistent theme in the pat-
tern of hostile feeling that enmeshed the two family groups.
Other hateful remarks, directed not only at Niqi but also at her
husband, were also heard with increasing frequency. It was as
though the annoyance at Niqi’s frivolity had activated and fo-
cused all the hostility that festered under the smooth exterior
of camp life. Some of the remarks were utterly without point,
like the one Allaq made when she caught sight of Nilak’s family,
fishing in the distance along a route she had to travel on her
morning’s errand: “It will be unpleasant (hujuujaq) to pass
them.” Other comments rang the familiar notes: “Nilak’s family
is stingy; they are jealous (tuhuu); they never want to help.”
It was at this time, too, that hostility broke the surface in other
petty acts, especially acts of stinginess. Autumn is the season in

220 Never in Anger

which kapluna goods are naturally scarcest, since people by that
time have been cut off from their source of supply in Gjoa Haven
for several months. Although trout are plentiful and actual star-
vation is not ordinarily feared then, people do feel pinched by
the lack of tobacco, tea, and bannock. For me, these needs as-
sumed additional importance in the fall, because life at that sea-
son offered such a small variety of comforts, and also because the
time at which these things would become available again was
nearing but had not yet arrived. I do not know whether the Utku
shared these more intense autumn cravings, but tensions did
seem to focus increasingly around possessions as the season
wore on. Nilak’s family requested one of our last six teaspoon-
fuls of tea. It was given, but resentful comments followed: “They
shouldn’t have asked; they knew there was only a little left.”
It was the same with the chocolate from my emergency supplies,
which we drank, weak and bitter without milk or sugar, after the
tea was gone. And then there was the salt. Nilak’s household
still had salt, it was reported; so did I. Although it was never used
in the cooking itself, it gave a welcome tang to the broth that was
drunk after the fish itself had been eaten. I was indifferent to the
taste and seldom bothered to hunt out the salt at broth time, pre-
ferring to drink quickly, before the icy air had had a chance to
dissipate the comforting heat of the liquid, and also before the
possibility of a second cup had vanished into the stomachs of
the fast-drinking Eskimos. Allaq knew this, as did the others, but
such was her hostility toward Nilak’s family that when Niqi
demurred at replenishing the supply for the communal patau,
saying, “Yiini never uses hers,’ Allaq lied to her: “Yes, she
does.” So Niqi was forced to supply the salt.
There were two days when Allaq made bannock out of the
remains of my supply for the households of her own kin group,
while Nilak’s family was away, fishing. On one of these occa-
sions they came back, from our point of view, a few minutes too
soon: just as the finished bannock was being distributed. When
Niqi popped expectantly into our qaqmaq and stood there, gig-
gling, Allaq, who had been cutting the bannocks into halves,
one half per person, silently cut off a third of one of the bannocks
for Nilak’s household. She smiled with apologetic warmth as
she handed it to her visitor: “I didn’t know you were going to

Nilak’s Family 221

 be here.” On the other occasion Nilak’s family got none at all.
They arrived as we were eating; the bannock was already di-
vided. Nilak himself looked in this time, smiling handsomely,
as always. We smiled back, as always, and went on eating. It
would have been proper to offer a small share, but nobody said
anything. When Nilak had gone on his way to Pala’s qgaqmagq,
Allaq whispered: “He wanted to eat bannock.”
There was also an incident involving a caribou legskin. I knew
nothing of the matter until one afternoon Allaq, followed imme-
diately by Nigi, came into our qaqmaq, carrying an enamel cup
of the sort that everybody owned. She went over to her place on
the ikliq and drew out of the piled household goods the bundle
of legskins that she was saving for winter mitten material. One
of these she handed to Niqi with her usual warm smile. Niqi
beamed, giggled, and said: “A fine skin.” Allaq replied gra-
ciously: “A fine cup,” and Niqi darted out. When Nigqi had gone,
Allaq said to me with lowered voice and narrowed eyes: “All the
time, all the time she kept saying she wanted a legskin. They
have mitten material, but she kept saying she wanted a legskin.
She was so noisy about it, I had to give her one. Always wanting,
wanting (piyuma), those people. I gave her the worst one; the
fur is all coming out of it. Very funny (tiphi).” And she laughed.
She repeated the story of that trade several times, later, both to
her own sisters and to a neighbor woman in the winter camp:
“I gave her a bad one; it was funny.”
Niqi finally did make patau one day about this time, and on
the same day she and her family also brought in a sled load of
birch twigs for the fire. It was the only such gesture they made
during the six weeks in which we lived side by side in autumn
qaqmags; and to bring it about took an attack which, though
subtle to my ear, was nevertheless far more than usually direct.
The technique used was hinting, and the hints began some days
before they took effect. The first one I heard was ostensibly a
joke. Allaq’s brother Putuguk was visiting in camp one day.
Because he lived with his adoptive father, Qavvik, the head of
the third Utku kin group, we seldom saw him except in winter,
but he still considered Pala’s children his brothers and sisters
and was treated by them, too, as a brother. On this particular day
he had stopped off in our camp on his way to fetch some of Qav-

222 Never in Anger

vik’s fish from a cache nearby, and visiting in Pala’s qaqmaq
he had no doubt heard the story of Niqi’s delinquency. Later,
he came to drink tea with us, as well, and found his sisters Allaq
and Amarugq there, discussing which of them was going to make
the patau that afternoon. Niqi was also there, saying nothing.
“Niqi is going to make patau,” said Putuguk with a genial laugh.
Allaq also added in a joking tone a comment whose substance I
did not catch. Niqi giggled. Allaq made the patau. Ten days later
the subject was brought up again in my hearing. This time
Allaq’s sister Amaaqtugq said something to Allaq about the latter’s
making the patau that afternoon. Allaq had earlier asked Amaaq-
tuq if she would pack the baby, Qayaq, while she, Allag, cooked,
so I was startled when Allag, instead of responding to her sister,
turned to Niqi and said in a tone that to my ear rang with sur-
prised innocence: “I thought you were going to make the
patau.”” Niqi, mumbling something about having “told Tiguaq
to make it, no joke,” giggled and ran out. That day we finally did
eat patau cooked by Niqi. Some of the fish she took from her own
supply; the rest she solicited from the other households, and she
heaped a five-gallon tub as full as Pala’s women ever did. Several
times that night after Niqi had gone home, Allaq remarked on
the painfully empty state of her stomach, and the next afternoon
when she was preparing to take her turn at the cooking pot, she
remarked: “Today I’m going to make patau because yesterday
I didn’t have enough to eat.”

Nilak’s Family 223

 Kapluna Daughter
There was never any end to the mutual dislike with which
Nilak’s and Pala’s kin regarded each other. Though its expres-
sion waxed and waned, it rarely, if ever, disappeared altogether.
It made no difference whether Niqi made patau or not; if one
excuse for hostility failed, another was found, and so a steady
round of incidents provided opportunities for watching how the
Utku handled the irritations engendered by, or expressed in,
bad temper, stinginess, and unhelpfulness.
My own relationship with the Utku gave me even richer op-
portunities to observe the handling of difficult social situations,
because the differences between my behavior and that of the
Utku could not help but create difficulties, on occasion, for the
latter. On the whole, the situations that created tension between
me and my Utku hosts were different from those that disturbed
the peace between Pala’s kin and Nilak’s, because the nature of
my aberrancy was different from that of Nilak and Niqi. The
married couple were, perhaps, not very good Eskimos in the
eyes of Pala’s kin, but I was not Eskimo at all. It was not only the
 strangeness of my face and tongue that made me different. I was
incongruous in other ways as well. I was an adult, yet as ignor-
ant of simple skills as a child. I was a woman, yet I lacked the
usual womanly attributes of husband and children; a “daughter,”
yet independently wealthy and accustomed to organizing my
own life. This last incongruity, especially, gave rise to tensions
that were different from those in which the married couple were
involved. Another difference between my situation and theirs
was that whereas the standard to which their behavior should
have conformed was clear, it may not always have been so clear
in my case. Since I was a foreigner, more tolerance may have
been felt for my peculiarities than for theirs.
In one respect, however, there was real similarity between
Niqi and myself, namely in the degree of our volatility and in the
demand, which applied equally to us both, that the volatility be
controlled. Toward the end of my stay I learned much about the
way in which I was regarded from the resemblance between the
treatment accorded to Niqi on the one hand and to me on the
other. It was only by degrees, however, that the way in which
I was treated became similar to the way in which Niqi was
treated, and the evolution of that similarity was instructive in
itself.

I. Stranger and Guest: Graciousness

In retrospect, my relationship with the Utku seems to divide
approximately into three phases, in which from the Utku point
of view I was first a stranger and curiosity, then a recalcitrant
child, and finally a confirmed irritant. This does not mean that
I was never liked. I was, at times. Days and weeks passed very
harmoniously, but I want to describe here the less harmonious
aspects of the relationship, which illuminate the ways in which
the Utku handled the problems created by my presence.
The initial phase of the relationship I have already described
in part. In this period I was treated with all the solicitude that
is accorded an honored guest. When I visited in the Eskimo
tents, I was given the softest seat, often a seat on the family
ikliq, and, like the always privileged children, I was offered
milk and sugar in my tea. My interests were tended equally in

226 Never in Anger

my own tent. When I offered food to my visitors, they never took
advantage of my ignorance of an owner’s prerogatives; I was al-
ways urged to serve myself first, the largest pieces of the ban-
nock that I hospitably fried were always urged upon me, and if
I offered to share a meal with a visitor, the latter never failed to
ask whether I had finished eating, before he took the pot I held
out to him. My fish supply was always replenished before I felt
the need, and often even the usual division of labor between
men and women stood in abeyance as men offered to fetch me
water from the river or to refuel my primus.
To be sure, such solicitous acts were not wholly altruistic.
Neither did they necessarily signify that I was liked. They were,
not surprisingly, motivated in part by fear (ilira), which was
admitted only months later, and by a desire for profit, if a word
of such exploitative connotations can be used of the very moder-
ate requests that Utku make of their wealthy kapluna visitors.
My hosts expected to be rewarded for their solicitude, both by
my goodwill in a broad sense and by the tangible expression of
that goodwill: a share in my kapluna supplies. As Inuttiaq put it
once when I thanked a young man for repairing a tear in my tent
wall: “If you are grateful, make tea.” In the early days, before
I was integrated into Utku life to the point where I might rea-
sonably be expected to share my goods as a participating member
of the community, people did not often ask for gifts; however,
in addition to the services they performed for me, they besieged
me daily with small bone and wood objects, nearly all the crude
result of an hour or two of work: miniature models of fishhooks,
fishing jigs, fish spears, seals, airplanes, and sleds, which their
makers wished to trade for “a little bit’’ of tobacco, tea, sugar,
milk, flour, or oats. Generous at first, I quickly became alarmed
when I saw how quickly and in what quantity these trade goods
were manufactured; but each request was so modest, and the
Utku set such a precedent for generosity in their treatment of
me that it was difficult—as I am sure they hoped it would be—
to refuse them.
So in this early period of my stay, I was both guest and pro-
vider; and I played another role, as well, that of comedian. My
curious appearance and manner were closely, though covertly,
observed and gave the community endless amusement. The

Kapluna Daughter 227

 unpronounceable plant names that I was required to repeat for
entertainment on my first meeting with the married couple were
brought out on other occasions, too, together with other known
tongue-twisters, like the intensifying form “-hlkha,” which |
could never pronounce except as “-Izga.” “Yiini,’” someone
would observe, with a twinkle, “Niptaihlkha (it’s terribly foggy).”
And when I, knowing full well the nature of the game, obligingly
agreed: “Eee, yes, indeed, it’s terribly foggy: niptailzga,” then
my audience would be overcome with laughter, in which I was
expected to join. Amaaqtuq once remarked to me: “You're nice
(quvia) because you're comical (tiphi).”
So convivial was the laughter of the Utku and so gracious their
attempts to smooth the unknown ground for me that I am cha-
grined to remember how thorny this first period was. Of course it
could not have been otherwise. In such a new and strange situa-
tion it was impossible even to simulate the composure that the
Eskimos would have approved of and that would have made the
relationship between us comfortable and harmonious. I was
afraid in those first weeks: afraid of freezing to death, of going
hungry, of being seriously ill and unable to reach help. All of
these fears, natural enough in anyone who undertakes to isolate
himself in a completely foreign environment, were aggravated
in my case by the exaggerated warnings with which I had been
bombarded before setting out on my venture. I had been at pains
to conceal from my well-wishers that their anxieties had borne
fruit, but they had. By the time I arrived at Back River I was not
at all convinced that my undertaking was rational and feasible.
Long before the temperature reached zero, I had acquired three
frost-reddened toes and twelve chilblains on my hands, which
convinced me that I would never be able to survive the winter
temperatures of thirty to seventy degrees below zero. The fear
itself, of course, added to my chill, lowering my body tempera-
ture perceptibly and causing me to curse futilely at my anxiety.
My fear of food shortage was not quite as realistic, in a material
sense, as the fear of cold. Though I had been alarmed in Ottawa
by reports of “recurrent famines” at Back River, that myth had
been exploded by a sensible priest in Gjoa Haven, who had ex-
perience of the region. The value that my kapluna food supplies
had for me, therefore, was primarily symbolic. It was hard to

228 Never in Anger

accustom myself to a diet of raw fish, eaten skin, scales, and all.
I never did succeed in mastering the skin, but at first I tried,
valiantly, though the scales stuck in my throat and the slime
made me retch. Fish were usually plentiful, and I was rarely
really hungry; nevertheless I craved the solace of oatmeal, dates,
boiled rice, and bannock, and much of the time my secret
thoughts crept guiltily around one problem: how best to create
opportunities for gorging myself on these familiar foods with-
out having to share them with the visitors who were so generous
with their own food. It is hard for anyone who has not experi-
enced isolation from his familiar world to conceive the vital
importance of maintaining symbolic ties with that world and the
sense of deprivation that results from their absence. One can be
driven to lengths that seem ludicrous once one is safely back on
home ground. Unpacking on my return, I was amazed to find
eight sesame seeds that I had hoarded, carefully wrapped in
tinfoil, for an emergency: a time of emotional starvation. Food
provided many comforts beyond the fundamental satisfaction
of a full stomach. Whenever anything went awry; whenever I
failed to make myself understood; when Saarak wailed at the
sight of me; or when the cries of the seagulls reminded me of
home, my solace was food. Though I did not know it at the time,
my dependence on food as a solace was very Eskimo; the prob-
lems were that I preferred my kapluna foods to the plentiful
fish, and that the demand of the Eskimos for my limited supplies
was great.
Frightened as I was of cold and hunger, mishaps seemed to
occur constantly, and the smallest one assumed momentous pro-
portions in my imagination. When I discovered that I had left
my gun on the plane that brought me in; when I found that I
had bought all the accoutrements of a fishnet but had neglected
to buy the net itself; when I learned that I had been misinformed
about the date at which the Utku normally move to their winter
campsite and that as a consequence I had brought too little ker-
osene to the autumn site; when I understood Allaq to tell me that
the caribou hides I had brought were not suitable for my winter
clothing, ridiculous as it seems to me now, I was filled with
panic. I had no realistic image of what the winter would be like,
no idea whether the Utku would deal with it in ways that I could

Kapluna Daughter 229

 tolerate, and, worse, no way of allaying my apprehension, since
I could not speak Eskimo.
Equally appalling, however, was the thought of giving up and
going home, after having stubbornly resisted all those well-
meant warnings. “I told you so”’s rang in my imagination and
hardened my resolve. Nevertheless, the conflicting wishes and
fears hammered for expression and, on occasion, made it dif-
ficult to smile in proper Eskimo fashion.
My spontaneous reaction to any sort of strain is tearfulness.
I tried to suppress that reaction, knowing from previous experi-
ence with Eskimos that equanimity in the face of difficulty is a
high virtue and that tearfulness is not to be countenanced; never-
theless I am certain that all too frequently I was unsuccessful in
concealing my distress. The first such incident that I remember
occurred on a Sunday morning, shortly after the return of the
caribou hunters to the camp at the Rapids. A number of Pala’s
kin, including Inuttiag, were drinking tea in my tent at eight in
the morning when Nilak and his family appeared in the entrance.
Nilak was oddly dressed: from underneath his short parka a
plaid wool bathrobe flowed over his trousers. It was a costume
that he affected every Sunday at that time, but I had not seen it
before. He and his wife and daughter each carried a small calico
bag containing, as I later found, a Bible and a prayerbook. I was
puzzled, both by the bathrobe and by the mysterious calico bags,
but no one volunteered an explanation. People sat and drank tea,
and every hour or half-hour one of the men asked me: “What
time is it?” I suspected that a church service was in the offing;
it was, after all, the first Sunday since Inuttiaq’s return from the
caribou hunt. It was a dismal day in my private world, I can no
longer remember why, and my anticipation of the forthcoming
service did little to cheer me. On the contrary, the reticence of
my visitors intensified my depression and made me feel alto-
gether isolated. Though I very much wanted the opportunity to
observe the religious behavior of the camp, I was sure they
would not invite me to join them. So when I pronounced the
time to be 10:30, and Inuttiaq confirmed my suspicion—“we
are going to pray at 11’—I asked if I might come. Inuttiaq’s
face and Pala’s went blank. The words of their reply were in-
comprehensible to me, but their reluctance, their hesitation,

230 Never in Anger |

were evident enough. I felt a spasm cross my face. Nothing was
said on either side, but when the company rose to leave at
eleven, Inuttiaq turned to me: “We are going to pray. You, too.”
And so, restored to cheer, I accompanied the others.
Tactful compliance was the characteristic response of the
Utku in those early days, whenever resentment, fatigue, or anx-
iety brought the tears close to the surface or made my voice
sharp. Such breaches of emotional decorum occurred fairly
frequently, too, all precipitated by the fear of cold and hunger,
and by the difficulty of communicating with my Eskimo hosts.
Concerned about the effects of my untoward behavior, I re-
corded a number of these incidents even though at the time I
had no idea how right I was to worry about Utku reactions. Now
that I know how strongly they disapproved of volatility, I am
astonished that they continued to respond with graciousness
and, instead of withdrawing from me, continued to court me in
a friendly manner when I was in a mood to permit it.
My moodiness in the early days, and the reactions of the Utku
to it, are exemplified by my relationship with Pala, who sub-
sequently became my grandfather. For various reasons, Pala
attracted more of my impatience than did the rest of his kin in
those first days. Nevertheless, Pala, like his kin, gave no sign
that he was offended by my snappishness. Perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that neither he nor the others showed of-
fense in any way that was recognizable to me at that time.
In part, the friction between Pala and me arose from my un-
pleasant suspicion that he cast a covetous eye on my possessions.
Though it never occurred to me that he might actually take some-
thing of mine (and neither he nor anyone else ever did), never-
theless I did not find his attitude attractive. There was a game
he used to play with me, in which he pretended to steal from
me, always ostentatiously showing me his action: “Yiini, watch!”
or in which he pretended to reach for an object I was holding:
a boot, a spoon, a piece of bannock. “Mine? Mine?” he would
inquire, extending his hands with fingers curled in mock aggres-
siveness, his eyes and mouth wide in simulation of greed. And
when I, entering into the comedy, made a great show of pulling
the “stolen” object back, or hiding the object reached for, with
exaggerated exclamations of alarm or umbrage, Pala and the

Kapluna Daughter 231

 others present laughed with the greatest merriment. Others,
taking their cue from Pala, used occasionally to play the same
game with me, but Pala was its creator and chief actor, and it
seemed clear to me that his real wishes were being expressed
under cover of a joke.
Of all my possessions, tobacco was what Pala most craved, and
it was tobacco that created the greatest tension between us. It
was not necessarily that he craved it more than other people, but
his wish to have it was certainly more clearly expressed. His
visits were more conspicuously correlated than were other
people’s with the state of my tobacco supply; he was the only
person who ever made the performance of a service contingent
on receiving tobacco, and he was the only one who ever de-
manded, “‘More!”’ when, on request, I filled the men’s tobacco
pouches of a morning. His “greediness,” for such I felt it to be,
contrasted with Inuttiaq’s attitude; Inuttiaq more than once
stopped me when his pouch was half full: “That’s enough; more
later today or tomorrow.”
In retrospect, I am not sure why I resented so heartily Pala’s
inroads on my tobacco supply. I do not smoke; he was not de-
priving me of a commodity that I cherished. But so constant were
his demands that, imposing my kapluna sense of fairness on the
situation, I feared he would manage to acquire more than his
“share” of my limited supply. In particular, I feared that he
would acquire more than Nilak and Niqi who, camped on the
other side of the river, could not so readily “visit to smoke.”
Actually, from the Utku point of view, Pala probably should have
received somewhat more than Nilak, since I was living in his
camp and being fed by the members of his family; and even if
Pala’s share was disproportionately large I should not, in their
view, have attempted to interfere. Nilak would have seethed
quietly on his side of the river, and that would have been that.
But I tried, in my kapluna fashion, to regulate the situation,
which meant giving to Pala with obvious reluctance and in the
smallest quantities that he would accept. I will never know how
much of my unwillingness he sensed. I expect that his occasional
demands for “more” are a sign that it was noticed, but he con-
tinued to visit, to smile, to joke with me, and to offer words and
fish, as Nakliguhuktuq had said the Utku should do.

232 Never in Anger

 Unfortunately, Pala’s attempts to teach me words irritated me,
also. Whereas the rest of his kin quickly saw the need to pro-
nounce words in slow and complete syllables so that I might
write them down, Pala failed to understand what I wanted of
him. The difficulty was caused by the nature of the syllabic
system of writing, in which one symbol may represent more than
one sound, and the final consonant of every syllable is omitted.
Thus, a word that is pronounced approximately a-ngil-zraq-tuq
is written a-gi-ga-tu. When Pala obligingly dictated words for
me to write down, he always pronounced them as they were
written, with all the distortions imposed by the script, and as a
consequence, especially before I had discovered the reason why
my written versions of words never coincided with the spoken
versions, I sometimes lost patience. I would ask Pala to say a
word—angilzraqtuq—slowly. He would oblige: ‘“A-gi-ga-tu.”
I would repeat it back to him: “‘Agigatu.” He would wrinkle his
nose. “No, a-gi-ga-tu.” And so it would go, around and around,
with complete lack of comprehension on both sides, until im-
patience sharpened my voice, whereupon Allaq, Inuttiaq, or
Amaaqtuq, all of whom saw at once where the difficulty lay,
would interpose quietly: “A-ngil-zraq-tug.”” These impasses
never seemed to discourage Pala from continuing patiently to
repeat, “A-gi-ga-tu,” nor was there ever a change in the even
quality of his voice.
Occasionally, Pala was the innocent recipient of ire that was
really directed at other individuals, or at the Utku in general.
There was the day, for instance, when Inuttiaq had brought mea
delectable fresh char, the choicest of fish, for my day’s eating,
and then, with my other visitors, had proceeded to devour it
entirely, leaving me nothing to eat. With each mouthful that
disappeared, my anxiety mounted, and the cheer instilled by
Inuttiaq’s gift faded. And when I looked down at the untidy,
dismembered skeleton on the gravel floor, resentment and de-
pression choked me. My visitors also surveyed the bones, and
Pala, as he left, remarked in a tone that, to my ear, held just a
trace of chagrin: “We’ve eaten it all. But tomorrow, if it’s calm
enough to fish, we'll bring you some more.” Unable to muster
the proper cheerful gratitude, I querulously inquired: “What am
I going to eat TONIGHT?” My visitors said nothing, only

Kapluna Daughter 233

 smiled, but very shortly Pala reappeared with a large piece of
rotted fish from the caches. It was what the Eskimos themselves
were eating; it was all there was. “For tonight,” he said, holding
it out to me, “but it tastes awful.” Still angry, I accepted his
offering with a mutter of thanks, whose ungraciousness he gave
no sign of noticing.
Pala was, to be sure, not the only person who encountered my
moodiness in those autumn weeks before I moved into Inuttiaq’s
qaqmaq. My most egregiously hostile act was directed at Nilak
and Nigi. Overcome with irritation at one of their prolonged
visits, I simply turned my back on them, lay down, and pretended
to sleep. They sat on for a while, quietly, occasionally speaking
to one another in low voices so considerate-sounding that I,
lying buried in my parka, was stabbed with remorse. Then, with
a final murmur, they rose and left, tying the tent flaps behind
them and carefully weighting the entrance with rocks to prevent
the roaming pups from breaking in to steal from me while I slept.
The overt response of the Utku on each of these occasions was
always the same: they humored me, complied with my apparent
wishes, and seemed to ignore my ungraciousness. But now I
wonder just how blind I was to the real feelings of people faced
with my eccentricities. It is possible that in that early period
they were watching, weighing, not yet confirming unpleasant
judgments but puzzling how to interpret my strange behavior,
just as I puzzled how to interpret theirs. The letters they wrote in
the first two or three months to Ikayuqtuq in Gjoa Haven were
not critical of my behavior. On the contrary; they said I was
pleasant (quvia), kind (quya), and amusing (tiphi), and that they
were helping me because they felt protective (naklik) toward
me. Knowing as I do now, however, the intensity of their aver-
sion to hostile expressions, I think it unlikely that critical judg-
ment was wholly in abeyance. There was fear (ilira) in their early
feeling for me, too, as they later confessed, and I wonder if
perhaps it was partly this fear, as well as their kindlier feelings,
that made them continue to court me as they did, in spite or even
because of the rudeness that came and went so unpredictably.
Perhaps they were not sure how dangerous my moods really
were and wanted to prove themselves unthreatening in order
that I should treat them kindly in turn; I later had opportunity

234 Never in Anger

to see exactly that reasoning in their treatment of other kapluna
visitors. In any case, I think it likely that these early incidents
planted the first seeds of resentment toward me, resentment
that, I fear, in Pala’s case at least, ultimately hardened into firm
dislike.

II. Family Living: Covert Conflicts

A week or two after my arrival, after Inuttiag had adopted me
as a daughter, my relationship with his family began to take on
a different quality from my relationships with the other house-
holds. Nilak’s family, and to a lesser extent, the families of the
brothers Pala and Piuvkaq continued to refer to me as the “‘ka-
pluna’; to treat me with ceremony; and to trade with me, rather
than simply asking for small amounts of my supplies; but Allaq,
and especially Inuttiaq, began to treat me as a daughter. Some
of these changes I have described already. They were very
warming. I enjoyed the fact that I was expected to participate,
as far as I was able, in the daily work of the camp, and I basked
in the approval that met my efforts. I was grateful for the family-
sized chunks of caribou tallow that fell to my share, even though
I had not yet learned really to enjoy the waxy stuff. I was grateful,
too, that Inuttiaq took it upon himself to keep me supplied with
the staple fish, insofar as the weather permitted, and that Allaq
sometimes brought her breakfast or her sewing to my tent, to
keep me company as she ate or worked. Most gratifying of all,
perhaps, were the efforts that people made, had made from the
beginning, to teach me the Eskimo skills that Ikayuqtuq had told
them I wished to learn; and again, after my adoption, it was
Inuttiaq and Allaq who took the primary responsibility for
instructing, for encouraging, and for protecting me from too
burdensome tasks. In all of these ways and more, I was made
to feel that I belonged to Inuttiaq’s family.
Of course, my daughterly status entailed responsibilities, too,
and inevitably there were times when I failed to fulfill them
graciously. The first occasion on which I recall feeling that being
a daughter might have its drawbacks was the morning I was
awakened at dawn by a light touch on my shoulder and looked
up to find Allaq standing beside my bed. “Daughter, your

Kapluna Daughter 235

 father feels like drinking tea.” It was apologetically said, but|
seethed inwardly at the disturbance. Though Utku are ordi-
narily considerate of sleepers—I never saw one waked carelessly
or as a prank—nevertheless they do not hold sleep inviolable,
and any need, however small, is reason enough to wake a person
on whom one has a claim. To me, on the other hand, sleep is
sacred. I cherish it, and in those days it was even more precious
than usual, protecting me, as it did, for all too short periods,
from the vicissitudes of the day: the icy breezes that attacked
my fingers and toes, the raw fish, the incomprehensible words,
the giggles, and above all, the necessity to hold myself in check.
I found it exhausting to play an unfamiliar role all day long,
constantly to try to react in ways that would be acceptable to
my hosts, instead of in ways that came naturally to me, and
constantly to keep alert to cues that would tell me whether or
not I had succeeded. I buried myself thankfully in sleep at night
and in the morning withdrew myself reluctantly from its shelter.
So resentment roughened my voice when I replied to Allaq:
“Help yourself!’ and caused me to turn over sharply toward
the wall and pull the sleeping bag over my head. The tea can
was in evidence beside the entrance; Allaq could have helped
herself by extending a hand, without even entering the tent, and
I testily asked myself why she had not done so. She may have
sensed my thought; in any case she answered it: “I could have
taken your tea by the door,” she said, “but I wanted to take the
tea that you gave your father last night and that he forgot to take
home.” Permission granted, she silently filled her palm with tea
and withdrew, tying the tent flaps behind her and rearranging
the stone barricade that kept the dogs out, considerate acts wel]
calculated to make me repent my abruptness.
By calling me daughter, Allaq had justified waking me. How-
ever, there was nothing in her request for tea that distinguished
it from requests made by other members of the community for
small amounts of my supplies. Neither was there anything dif-
ferent in Allaq’s impassive reaction to my snarl. In early October,
however, when I moved from my solitary tent into Inuttiag’s
qaqmaq, the parental nature of Inuttiaq’s and Allaq’s relation-
ship with me became much more evident, and the conflict be-
tween Inuttiaq’s definition of the daughter role and mine began

236 Never in Anger

to create problems of a new order. The first such problem was
occasioned by the move itself. I had been anticipating the move
for a month, but when the time came, I was taken by surprise.
The nightly snow flurries were no longer melting in the morn-
ing air, and the inlet had lain silent under ice for several days
when I woke one morning in my tent to hear unaccustomed
sounds of chopping. Rummaging for the several pairs of wool
and duffel socks that always lost themselves in my sleeping bag,
where I dried them as I slept, I pulled myself, reluctantly as
always, out into the cold air. My boots, hung from the ridge pole,
were festooned with feathers of frost, and as I drew them down,
prickles of snow showered my neck. Shivering and cursing, I
pulled on the frozen boots and, still in my longjohns, crunched
across the gravel floor to peer between the entrance flaps. Al-
most all the men of the three households in our camp were out
on the ice of the inlet. The old man Piuvkaq was chopping rec-
tangular blocks, like huge dominoes, out of the ice. A dark oblong
of water showed where other blocks had already been cut and
removed. Pala was knotting a rope around one of these blocks,
while other people stood in readiness to pull. I had not a clue
to the meaning of the scene I was witnessing, and when Amaaq-
tug, seeing my protruding head, came to pay her morning call,
her explanation did not enlighten me: “They are making a
qaqmaq.” It was only as I saw the walls taking shape, the ice
dominoes set up side by side in a circle and mortared with slush,
that I realized what a qaqmaq was. “Qaqmaqs are warm,”
Amaaqtuq told me. “Not in winter but in autumn. They are
much pleasanter (quvia) than tents. You will see. Are you going
to live in a qaqmaq?”’
I did not know, in truth, whether I was going to live in a qaq-
maq or not; I did not even know whether I wanted to. Warmed
and protected as I had felt on the evening, a month earlier,
when Inuttiag, with the offer of a cup of tea, had welcomed
me as his daughter, I found myself filled with trepidation now
that the move into Inuttiaq’s dwelling was imminent. Could I
tolerate the company of others for twenty-four hours a day?
In the past month my tent had become a refuge, into which I
withdrew every evening after the rest of the camp was in bed,
to repair ravages to my spirit with the help of bannock and

Kapluna Daughter 237

 peanut butter, boiled rice, frozen dates, and Henry James. So
reviving were those hours of self-indulgence that I dreaded
their loss. I] prayed that Inuttiag would not invite me to join them
until he built an iglu in November.
My prayer was not granted. It was Allaq who issued the first
invitation to join the qaqmaq household. She had brought her
sewing to my tent, as she often did in those early days. She was
making the body of Saarak’s fawnskin winter suit while Amaag-
tuq, at her sister’s request, sewed the sleeves, and I, unable to
assist in such useful preparations for winter, copied vocabulary
notes. From the shore came sounds of qaqmaq construction;
Pala’s was nearly finished. “In a little while we are going to
build a qaqmag, too,” Allaq said. “Would you like to move in
with us then?” I hesitated. “I don’t know; it’s difficult; after a
while I'll tell you.”
“Eeee.” She smiled, and nothing further was said. But soon
after she had gone home, Inuttiaq came to visit: “Would you
like to move in with us when we build a qgaqmag, or would you
rather have a separate one for yourself?”
Again I hesitated; then in my halting Eskimo I tried to explain
that I thought it might be difficult to live with others, especially
at times when I wanted to work. Inuttiaq, in turn, insisted that
I would be cold if I lived alone. The conversation grew increas-
ingly confused, each of us uncertain what the other was trying
to say—uncertain, too, how to extricate ourselves from the im-
passe. Finally, I thought Inuttiaq suggested that I sleep in his
qaqmagq, for warmth, but that my tent be left standing as a re-
treat: “If you get tired.” I was relieved at this compromise, and
I accepted it gladly. Unfortunately, either my understanding was
deficient, or Inuttiaq changed his mind, or both. I still do not
understand precisely the chain of events that led to my finding
myself four days later ensconced without refuge in Inuttiaq’s
qaqmagq.
It was when Inuttiaq started to build that I began to wonder
whether I had understood aright. He began his qaqmagq, as
Piuvkagq did, on the morning after Pala had built and moved into
his. All three dwellings were to be clustered tightly together, as
the tents had been, at the head of the inlet. But Inuttiaq’s wall,
unlike the other two, for some reason refused to hold properly.

238 Never in Anger

When the first block fell, and the second broke at a touch, Inu-
ttiaq decided the ice was still too thin for building. He tumed
to me as I stood nearby, watching. “I'll go fishing today,” he
said, “‘and when the ice is better, I will build another qaqmaq,
for you (he used the singular pronoun), over there,” and he ges-
tured in the direction of my tent, some distance away. I assented,
surprised at this development but vastly relieved at the thought
that, after all, I should have a home of my own, and yet not be
obliged to live in a windy tent.
When Inuttiaq appeared at my tent entrance three mornings
later to ask if I planned to come and help with the chinking of
“my” qaqmagq, I went with alacrity. The circle that Inuttiaq had
drawn on the gravel was large, and when the walls were up, the
building was, indeed, larger than either Pala’s or Piuvkaq’s.
Inuttiaq asked me if it would be big enough for me, and when
I assented, he sent me back to my tent to stuff my loose belong-
ings into sacks for moving. Curiously, Allaq, over in her tent,
was also packing. I wondered what for, but only when I saw the
goods of Inuttiaq’s household being moved into “my” qaqmaq
did it dawn on me that “my” qaqmagq was, in fact, “our” qaqmaq.
I tried hastily to reconcile myself; this, after all, was the plan to
which I had originally agreed. It was when Inuttiaq informed
me that my tent was to be used as the qaqmaq’s roof, since his
tent was not large enough, that dismay overcame me. I tried to
control it with the thought that I could set up my double-walled
winter tent as a refuge instead; but it was small and dark; it was
not the cosily familiar summer tent in which I had been living,
and I could not prevent myself from demurring at the sudden
loss of the latter. I told Inuttiag that, although I did have another
tent, a warm tent, that I could put up, I would like to use the sum-
mer tent, folded up, as a seat therein. It was a ridiculous notion,
born of an alarm that must have been completely incomprehen-
sible to Inuttiaq, if he was aware of it at all. He must have rec-
ognized the folly of the demand at once, but he handled it with
the indirectness characteristic of his people. Pointing out again
that his own tent was too small to roof the qaqmagq, he offered
to let me use that for a seat instead. Then outdoors, next to the
qaqmaq wall, he stacked all the household goods that were not
to be used immediately, both his things and mine for which there

Kapluna Daughter 239

 was no room in the gqaqmagq, and he covered the cache with his
tent.
What could I do? I was helpless to protest, and the very help-
lessness made me panic. I looked at the square of gravel that
had been my home for more than a month and felt its emptiness
unbearable. I had to have a tent. Inuttiaq and Allaq were busy,
setting a wooden door into the wall of our qaqmaq, mortaring
the frame to the ice block with slush, and chopping away the
ice inside the frame to make an entrance. Everyone else in camp
was indoors, visiting or drinking tea after the day’s work. There
was no one to offer assistance when I took my winter tent from
the household cache where Inuttiaq had laid it and carried it
up to my old gravel patch on the bluff. It was a pyramid tent
with four built-in aluminum corner poles attached together at
the top. In order to erect the tent it was necessary to spread these
poles as far as possible at the base, then weight down the can-
vas between them with stones. It seemed simple, but I had never
tried it before, and a strong breeze, which swelled the canvas,
did not help. I struggled to spread the poles, first on one side,
then on another, while the wind continually undid my work.
“What are you doing?” Inuttiaq stood at my side. I tried to
explain that if I was tired or wanted to type I would use this
tent. “You can write in the qaqmaq,” he said; “the tent will be
cold.” I tried to explain that this was a different sort of tent and
that, heated with a primus stove, it would be warm. “I will
write sometimes in the qaqmaq and sometimes here,” I said,
feebly trying to be pliant. But Inuttiaq, after pulling two of the
poles apart for me in a half-gesture of helping, departed without
further comment to drink tea in the tent of the newly arrived
Qavvik, and left me to struggle by myself. It was the first time
since I had been with the Utku that I had been left to cope with
a difficult activity by myself. People came and went around the
qaqmags at the base of the bluff, but no one else came up to
inquire what I was doing or whether I needed help. And
no
criticism could have made me feel more vividly than
this dis-
regard the antisocial nature of my act.
The tent stood there, empty and unused, for two weeks,
until
we took it down in preparation for moving to the winter
camp in
Amujat. In those two weeks I had never felt the need
of a refuge.

240 Never in Anger

I basked in the warm protectiveness of Inuttiaq’s household.
What solitude I needed I found on the river in the mornings
when I went fishing with Inuttiaq or, to my surprise, in the
qaqmaq itself, in the afternoons when the room was full of
visitors and I retired into myself, lulled and shielded by the
flow of quiet, incomprehensible speech. No one ever mentioned
the folly of my tent, even when they helped to take it down.
In many ways life in Inuttiaq’s household was easier for me
than life in my solitary tent had been. For one thing it was no
longer necessary for me to play hostess. The fact that I could
sit quietly in my corner and let Inuttiag and Allaq entertain our
visitors gave me privacy without the chill of isolation. Then too,
Inuttiaq and Allaq did their utmost to make me feel welcome.
I felt it in the parental responsibility that they assumed for my
welfare, more than ever teaching me how to do things, feeding
me, and protecting me from the dangerous effects of my igno-
rance of the land and climate. I felt it also in the many con-
siderate allowances that they made on my behalf in the ordering
of household life, assuring me from the first that, if I wished,
I might type, or keep my lamp lit later than they at night, or
“sometimes” eat kapluna food without offering it to them, “be-
cause you are a kapluna.” They even said they were lonely when
I spent an evening visiting in another qaqmaq. That was the most
heartwarming of all.
Occasionally, to be sure, I wondered whether my parents’
considerateness was a response to remembered snarls, an at-
tempt to forestall any recurrence of such behavior. When
Allaq, on my first evening, asked whether it would wake me if
she opened and closed the squeaking door or made tea while
I slept in the morning, I had uncomfortable memories of a mom-
ing past, when I had growled, “Help yourself’ and pulled the
sleeping bag over my head. Similarly discomfiting was the
stormy day on which the qaqmagq, full of visitors, was kept
hushed all day because I was asleep. Allaq even refrained from
making tea once during the morning for fear of waking me.
I was sleeping off an attack of indigestion, but she did not
know that. She assumed that I was tired from getting up at dawn
the day before to accompany Inuttiaq on a fishing trip.
It is possible that this assumption that I tired easily accounted

Kapluna Daughter 241

 for a good deal of the leniency and consideration that was shown
me during these weeks. Often, if I walked far, or tried to carry a
full load of twigs, or worked hard at scraping a hide, people
cautioned me that I would be tired; often they silently took my
work on themselves, switching my load for a lighter one when
we stopped to rest, or taking a turn at the scraping. On a number
of occasions, too, people interpreted my withdrawal from com-
pany as a sign of fatigue, whether I had gone to bed early to con-
ceal depression and to ease my cold toes, or whether I merely
walked silently a little behind the others to enjoy the view and
think my own thoughts.
I am not sure whether this interpretation of my behavior was
owing to a perception that I was, indeed, tired, emotionally, if
not physically, or whether it was owing to preconceptions about
the feebleness of white women unaccustomed to Eskimo ways;
both, perhaps. At the time, I did not question the solicitude; I
was grateful, but I took it for granted. Only now am I impressed
by the tolerant view that was taken of my unsocial behavior.
Among the Utku themselves, fatigue is called on to explain
lethargy and weakness that are produced by a variety of causes.
Thus, a person who is mildly ill will describe himself as “not
sick, only tired’; old people are also described as “tired”; and
I suspected that depression might also be expressed as fatigue,
as itis in our own society. But there are less kind ways of describ-
ing lethargic, unsocial behavior, too. If an Utku were lethargic
or withdrawn as frequently and as unpredictably as I was in
those days, his neighbors would have murmured in disapproval:
“He is upset (hujuujaqg, huqu)’; and in later months the Utku
became as intolerant of my variations in mood as they were of
one another’s.
To some extent Inuttiaq’s, and especially Allaq’s, initial con-
sideration of me may have been due to shyness, too. I had the
feeling that Allaq, more than Inuttiag, was afraid (ilira) of me
in the first weeks after I moved into their home, and much later
she admitted that she had been. Her shyness (ilira) was most
noticeable as a reluctance to use my goods unless I expressly
gave permission—and more, unless I volunteered that per-
mission; she rarely brought herself to ask whether she might
use a little of my tea or heat the water on my primus instead

242 Never in Anger

of over the weak tallow flame in the hollow rock that served
her in the autumn as a lamp. Her nearest approach to a request
was a smiling statement: “While you were out fishing I didn’t
make tea, although my hands were too cold to sew.” Sometimes
she said nothing at all; it was Amaaqtuq who told me: “While
you were out fishing this moming my sister made tea on the
lamp instead of on the primus.” Such reports were very effective;
it did not take me long to learn that when I left in the morning
I should leave instructions for Allaq: “Be sure to make tea if
you get cold, and be sure to use the primus.”
Inuttiaq had no such reluctance to use my goods, and this fact
was a source of considerable tension between us in the first
weeks after I joined his household. Already, before moving in
with him, I had worried about the effect the move would have on
the distribution of my property. The anxiety had several conflict-
ing facets. I wanted to conform to Utku ideas of justice, but at
the same time I was pressured by my American prejudice in
favor of equality, and the latter was the stronger because I
was still uncertain what the Utku ideas were. I was afraid that
Inuttiaq might acquire a larger share of my wealth than was
strictly proper, either in terms of his own code or in terms of
mine. Moreover, questions of justice aside, I was also selfishly
concerned about the almost certain increase in the rate of deple-
tion that membership in a larger household would entail.
The one possibility that had not occurred to me was that Inu-
ttiaq would take it upon himself to distribute my goods to the
rest of the camp. In view of my concern for equalization of my
kapluna benefits, I suppose I should have been relieved the first
time I saw Inuttiaq generously hand a can of my tobacco to a
smiling neighbor. I confess that I was not relieved; I was
alarmed. If my goods were to be distributed, I wanted the credit
for generosity; I did not want Inuttiaq to use my goods to in-
crease his own prestige in the community, and noting the fact
that our qaqmaq had suddenly become the social center of the
camp, I was afraid that this was precisely what was happening.
My alarm was the greater because, ludicrous as it seems to me
now, I had the idea then that I ought to do my utmost to avoid
disturbing the social balance of the community, the patterns
of friendship and of interdependence, so that I could study those

Kapluna Daughter 243

 patterns in their natural state. I said nothing to Inuttiaq, but
tried to repair whatever damage was occurring by anticipating
him. I offered supplies to our visitors, myself, before he had a
chance to do so; but then, on occasion, he would instruct me,
in the visitor's presence, to give more than I had done: “If you
want to.” In recording this now, I wonder whether perhaps he
was attempting to teach me Utku generosity, but at the time I
only imagined that he was trying to accumulate credit for him-
self, and though I smiled at the visitor, I do not believe I smiled
at Inuttiaq. On occasion, my response to this situation was even
more hostile. There was one time, for instance, when I had not
been quick enough to offer first. Our visitor was Itqiligq, a young
Netsilingmiutag, who had been to school for four or five years
and spoke some English. Inuttiaq had turned to me: “Itqiliq
wants some tobacco.” I smiled at Itqiliq and filled his pouch.
Itqiliq smiled at Inuttiaq and thanked him. I smiled at Itqiliq
and said in English, “You're welcome.”
Neither Inuttiaq nor I, however, recognized the conflict
overtly, though I am sure he must have been aware of my
displeasure, and antagonism generated on this score may well
have fed the other conflicts that developed during the winter.
In any case, ultimately, without a word being said—really,
without my being aware that it was happening at all—we reached
a modus vivendi. One can of tobacco, one pound of tea, or one
bag of sugar was always open and available on Allaq’s side of
the ikliq, and from that supply my parents offered, or gave on
request, small amounts to our visitors; but the storeroom was
in my charge. When the household supply, the open can or bag,
was gone, I was informed, and I brought out a replacement.
When neighbors wished larger amounts of anything than were
forthcoming from our household supply, they approached me.
During the winter, when Inuttiaq traded foxes, he had supplies
of his own. These were in Allaq’s charge; she dispensed them to
me as she did to the other members of the family, and while
they lasted, neither she nor Inuttiaq ever drew on mine.
The only time that Inuttiaq openly recognized my feelings
concerning the distribution of my supplies was on one occasion
when he had traded with my property, as distinct from giving
it away. A Netsilik trapper who was camping in the neighbor-

244 Never in Anger

hood had asked him for several cans of my powdered milk and
had offered in exchange shells to fit Inuttiaq’s gun. Inuttiaq
had traded as asked, then, scrupulously honest as always, had
told me what he had done. I recall my displeasure, and I am
sure he saw it in my face. He said immediately: “I shouldn't
trade with your property.” I agreed, but added: “This time it’s
all right.” Inuttiaq continued: “I don’t really need those shells.
I'll give them back. I can get some in Gjoa Haven.” And though
I urged him to keep them, he reported several days later that
he had returned them to the trapper.
So the covert struggle for control over my supplies was ul-
timately resolved, at least as far as the larger community’s use of
them was concerned. On one occasion, later, a conflict over
Inuttiaq’s own use of my primus stove broke the peaceful surface
of our relationship, as I shall shortly describe. But apart from any
questions of use, there was still another way in which, without
my being fully aware of it, my wealth strained the relationship
between me and my foster parents: it was heavy. Minimal by
kapluna standards, my gear was mountainous from the point
of view of the man responsible for transporting it. Too heavy
to carry on foot, cumbersome to haul by canoe or dogsled,
impossible to leave behind, my possessions were a nuisance
from start to finish. I do not like to recall Inuttiaq’s expression-
less face as he surveyed the contents of my tent one day in June,
and asked which of my belongings I was planning to leave on the
hilltop when we moved that night to a new campsite, and his
silent acceptance when I said it would be impossible to leave
more than half. I lack the optimism and the seasonal attitude
toward possessions, which are so useful to the nomadic Utku.
The Utku take with them during wandering seasons an ab-
solute minimum of goods and leave the remainder scattered
hither and yon on convenient hilltop boulders or, if perishable,
in one of the large orange oil drums that mark the most fre-
quented campsites. In one series of spring moves we left on the
various hilltops near our camps the following articles, which
the advancing season had rendered temporarily unnecessary
or useless: our qulliq (the flat semilunar blubber, or in the
Utku case, fish-oil, lamp that is a characteristic Eskimo pos-
session), our foxtraps, a kerosene storm lantern, a dogsled, ice

Kapluna Daughter 245

 chisels, winter bedding and fur clothing, an empty fuel drum,
a urine pot, and a primus stove, temporarily out of order. Nobody
would touch any of these possessions until their owners came
for them, which they would do as the season demanded or as
circumstances permitted.'
I found it disturbing to leave a wake of belongings behind me
as I moved. I like to provide for contingencies: to take my rain
clothes in case it rains and my warm clothes in case it turns
cold; and I was very unwilling indeed to leave my precious
fieldnotes and tape recorder under a quilt on the summit of a
little hillock shortly before the river was expected to flood.
Inuttiaq said: “It isn’t going to rain, at least, not much.” And:
“Summer is coming; it will get warm soon.” And: “The flood
isn’t going to reach the top of that knoll.” I was unconvinced.
My caribou clothing was irreplaceable; so were my fieldnotes
and other equipment. And even greater than any practical worth
was the symbolic value that my kapluna possessions, like
kapluna food, had acquired. When I first set out for Utku country,
a country judged by kapluna and Eskimo alike as dangerous
and difficult for a kapluna woman to survive in, I had no means
of assessing, rationally, my ability to cope with that unknown
and, as I have said, my ignorance of the language prevented me
from even questioning the alien judgments of those on whom I
had to depend. I clung to my belongings with the strength of
fear; and, to a degree, I continued to do so until one full cycle
of seasons had passed, and I knew, through having lived them,
what to expect of the seasons, of myself, and of the Utku.
When Allag, under Inuttiaq’s direction, sorted the goods of
_their household into piles to be taken or cached, Inuttiag,
especially in the first months, usually tried to give me instruc-
tions, too. But when I demurred, as I almost always did, he never
complained. Perhaps it was because of this silence that I was
slow to realize how burdensome my dependence on my gear
must have been to him. To be sure, I was aware that when we
1. Rasmussen (1931), who saw the Utku in their spring camps where they
were burning melted tallow in concave rocks, was under the impression that
these Eskimos never used the traditional blubber lamps. I also saw concave
rocks used as makeshift qulliqs in the autumn camp, and I shared Rasmussen’s
misconception until we arrived at the winter campsite and the real qulliqs
were brought down from the hilltop.

246 Never in Anger

moved short distances, Inuttiaq usually made two sled
trips,
one to move his own household goods and one to move
mine.
I noticed, too, that sometimes when we were preparing
for
longer trips, I was instructed to carry some of my things to
Pala’s sled or canoe, rather than to Inuttiaq’s. But it was only
after I had returned to my own country that I saw, in my photo-
graphs of a spring move, the contrast between Inuttiaq’s sled
load and Ipuituq’s, the latter little over knee high, the former
shoulder high. At the time, I was blind.
On one occasion this blindness led me to make a most mis-
guided gesture of generosity. Knowing how fond the Utku were
of the kapluna foods they ordinarily enjoyed only in the winter,
I tried to furnish them to the camp (and to myself) during the
summer, as well. I caused the community, and Inuttiaq in par-
ticular, only consternation. The food arrived by plane in early
June, as we were about to set off on our month-long series of
spring moves downriver, not to return until after the river
flooded. There was no place to store the food, and it was far too
heavy to transport. We stacked it on the summit of a knoll,
erected my winter tent over it, and left. In August and Septem-
ber, when we happened to be camped near that cache, we en-
joyed the food. Nevertheless, Inuttiaq’s expressionless face
when he looked at the boxes being unloaded from the plane in
June, and his immediate decision to abandon them, made an
impression even on my kapluna mind. I began to realize that it
is not just “improvidence” or “poverty,” as some kaplunas
think, that makes the Utku buy “insufficient” flour to carry them
through the summer when they are cut off from Gjoa Haven;
they just do not want the bother of carrying it around with
them. The following January, when I was on my way home,
Inuttiaq said to me: “If you come back again, bring only a cup,
a pan, a teakettle, and food. And if you have lots of money,
bring a few ready-made cigarettes.”
The problems created by my material possessions were not
the only ones that complicated my relationship with my Utku
parents. There was another sense, too, in which I must have
weighed on them. At times I tried, as best I might, to help
with the household tasks that were within my ability. I fetched
water from the river, made tea, brought in fresh snow to spread

Kapluna Daughter 247

 of the ikliq,
on the iglu floor and gravel to fill the concavities
jigged through the ice with Inuttiaq or hauled the day’s take of
whitefish in from the nets with Allaq and cut out the bellies
(often a hundred or more of them) for oil. Nevertheless, I could
by no means assist as a grown daughter should. For one thing,
I was constantly torn between the needs of the household and
the demands of my own work: to observe, preferably without
interfering, and to record. Frequently, when Saarak shrieked
with rage and the rest of the family and visitors were absorbed
in appeasing her, instead of helping, I watched to see what
would happen. After our breakfast tea, when Allaq knelt on her
hands and knees to hack away the grimy surface of the iglu floor,
I lay in bed and wrote, so that I would not forget the events of
the early morning. Allaq never commented or criticized, unless
the amused remark that she and others sometimes made—“al-
ways writing!” —was a criticism. I never knew; the voices were
always cheerful. Still, I wonder whether at times Allaq did not
contrast my sporadic and awkward assistance unfavorably with
the help that Kamik must have given her before she went away
to boarding school. Though Allaq, like the others, explicitly
excused me from helping when I lacked the skill, her judgment
may have been less tolerant on the occasions when I failed to
offer assistance that she knew me capable of rendering. Then
she may have considered me unkind and lazy: “Not wanting to
help”; and such judgments, if she made them, would have
contained a kernel of truth. It was not always my work that
kept me from helping; it was sometimes simple lack of percep-
tion. I was, to my dishonor, by no means as careful to anticipate
her needs as she was to anticipate mine; and, unlike Inuttiaq,
she was loath to ask outright for my assistance, as she would
have asked her own daughter. She usually waited for me to
volunteer my aid.
But worse than my failure to provide Inuttiaq and Allaq with
the services that they should have received from an adult
daughter was the fact that they were forced to serve me. In many
ways I was as unskilled as my small sister Saarak, less skilled
then six-year-old Raigili. Allaq had to make and mend my fur
clothing, chew my boots in the morning to stretch and soften
them after the night’s drying, and even, for the first month or

248 Never in Anger

two, turn my fur mittens right side out when they were dried.
She had to fillet my fish when it was frozen; and she thought
she had to do it when it was thawed, too, but that was owing
to a misunderstanding. True, I was inept at circumventing
the lateral bone, and both my parents knew it, but then, I did
not find it so very dreadful to eat bony fish. It was for other rea-
sons that, when I was left to cope with my own fish, I sometimes
failed to join the others at their frequent meals: either I was
not hungry for a raw fish snack, or I was busy writing and was
reluctant to chill my fingers with the wet fish. Inuttiaq or Allaq
then would ask me if I did not feel like eating, too, and I, in
order to avoid the rudely direct “no,” would say, “in a while,”
a gentle form of refusal that was often used by Utku themselves.
They would wait a while; and Inuttiaq might reassure me:
“Whenever you feel hungry, eat; help yourself.” But if I con-
tinued to work, sooner or later, Allaq would cut a piece of fish
and lay it beside me, saying: “For you, if you come to feel like
eating.” Then, to show my appreciation, I ate, and so, inadver-
tently, perpetuated the service.
I have mentioned the mixture of gratitude and irritation that
characterized my reaction to these services: gratitude that I was
taken care of and irritation that I was thereby placed under
obligation. There was another side to my reaction, too: the ser-
vice was more seductive than I cared to admit. I came, after a
time, to feel it my due and to resent it if, by chance, the usual
courtesies were not forthcoming. At the same time, I was
ashamed of allowing myself to be seduced in this way, ashamed
that I enjoyed the solicitude of my Utku parents and my own
childlike dependence. I did not realize how very natural it is
for a person to feel childish, to enjoy being taken care of, when
he is isolated from everything familiar, and especially when he
lacks the skills requisite for existence in his new environment.
Instead, I carried over the values of independence and reci-
procity that had been appropriate in my own world, and often an
inner voice reminded me that the services I enjoyed were not
in any sense my “due”; that, on the contrary, it was time I
recognized my obligations, behaved as much like a self-sufficient
adult as possible, and showed my parents the same considera-
tion they showed me.

Kapluna Daughter 249

 This moral voice was supported, too, by the part of me that
resented being treated as an incompetent—for that was one
implication of the rendering of service. The Utku considered
me even more incompetent than I considered myself. They
saw most kaplunas in the same light, and though there was a
measure of justice in their view, nevertheless the naive arro-
gance of the image, the extreme to which it was carried, offended
me as much as similar prejudices offend me in my own culture.
None of the adult skills, domestic or scholarly, for which I
was accustomed to receive recognition in my own world had
value in the Utku view—if the Utku were aware of their exis-
tence at all. Inuttiaq, and probably others, even took for granted
that Eskimos learn English much faster than kaplunas learn
Eskimo. There was, as usual, some truth in his perception;
nevertheless, he had little awareness of the effort involved in
learning a foreign language. People more than once asked when
I recorded the same word twice, six months or a year apart: ““Do
all kaplunas forget as easily as you do?”
One result of the low expectations the Utku had of me was that
it became more difficult than ever for me to improve my skills.
Somebody was always at my elbow to do the difficult job for
me. On numerous occasions I tried to subvert the tendency to
treat me as a prima donna or a child by taking it upon myself to
do things that were usually done for me and by refusing the help
that was always quietly proffered. Once in midwinter I wrote
to Ikayuqtuq in Gjoa Haven, describing how very good the Utku
were to me—so good and helpful that I was not learning how to
do anything for myself. The word was duly repeated to Inuttiaq,
when he was in Gjoa Haven on a trading trip, and one day shortly
after his return, he said to me: “Ikayuqtuq says you want to cut
your own fish—that you want to learn.” I agreed that I did, and
for a day or two after that, beyond reminding me that if I were
hungry I should help myself, neither Inuttiaq nor Allaq made a
move to feed me. But when meals came and went, ignored by
me, fillets began appearing again on my plate.
More often than not, I fear, in my efforts to acquire skill I
manifested a petulant stubbornness which, I am sure, my parents
regarded as more childish than the dependence from which I

250 Never in Anger

 was trying to escape. There was the time I tried to improve the
soles of my boots. It had been Ikayuqtuq’s idea. She had noted,
when I was in Gjoa Haven on holiday, that my boots had soles
of caribou, which is warm but wears out easily. She had sug-
gested that an outer sole of horsehide (obtainable at the Hudson
Bay Company store) would make the caribou last much longer;
and she had described to me the stitch appropriate for attaching
the patches.
Allaq looked over at me questioningly when I took out the
horsehide and the boots, then, seeing what I was about, she
came over without a word and cut the patches for me. “After I
smoke a cigarette,” she said, “I’ll sew them for you.” I thanked
her, but, wanting to practice, myself, I took up the second boot
and began to sew it while she was occupied with the first. Under
any circumstances, sewing leather is harder than sewing cloth,
and this was my first experience of it. Moreover, though I did
not yet realize it, I had not understood Ikayuqtuq’s instructions
as well as I had thought. Allaq had finished with her patch before
I had properly begun on mine. “Shall I sew it?” she asked. But
by this time hackles of independence had risen. I smiled, ap-
preciatively, I hoped: “T’ll do it.”
Allaq smiled, too, and silently rolled another cigarette. The
horsehide patch slithered over the smooth caribou sole, boggled,
puckered, and refused to be sewn. Allaq, occupied on her side
of the iklig, seemed to notice nothing, but the second time I
ripped the patch out, she appeared beside me. “I sewed it this
way, she said, quietly, and she showed me a technique that I
immediately recognized as the one Ikayuqtuq had described.
I tried again, and ripped it off again. “Tack it,” said Allaq,
“here and here and here and here,” and she showed me: on the
center of the toe and the center of the heel and in the middle
of each side. I did it again, and this time managed to sew all the
way around the patch. True, the horsehide meandered in a most
inelegant manner onto the upper part of the boot, making it
appear that I was walking on the side of the boot, rather than on
the proper sole. Still, the job was so much better than my past
attempts that I decided to leave it. I showed it to Allaq.
“It’s finished,” she observed.

Kapluna Daughter 251

 ,
“Tt’s not well done,” I admitted.
she
She neither agreed nor disagreed. “Is it good enough?”
asked.
“1 don’t know; is it good enough?”
“T don’t know; are you satisfied with it?”
weeks
I said I was, and nothing further was said. But one day,
did
afterwards, when I put my boots on, I noticed that no longer
one sole meander onto the upper boot; both soles were equally
neatly in place. I wondered: had I disgraced Allaq as a mother
by walking around in a tipsy boot? Was she sorry for my unkempt
state or did it offend her sense of craftsmanship? Allaq never
said a word.
On the whole, my helplessness seemed to be accepted as a
matter of course by everybody, and it was consistently treated
with tactful solicitude (naklik), the same solicitude that char-
acterizes Utku reactions to other helpless creatures, like puppies,
children, and sick people: “Because you don’t know how to do
things, you are one to be taken care of (naklik).” If by chance
I did succeed in acquiring some simple skill I was rewarded, as a
child would have been, by the knowledge that the fact had been
observed. “You are beginning to be less incapable (ayuq),”
someone would say. It was what people said about babies when
they began to smile, to speak, to grasp. Or: “You are becoming
an Eskimo,” a “person”; the word inuk has both meanings. _
Inuttiaq and Allaq said these flattering things to me less
often than others did, or such was my impression. I thought that
nerhaps they were more aware than others exactly how insig-
nificant my growth in capability was, how little I was really
becoming a “person.”” But perhaps there was just less need to
be formally polite to a “daughter.” Inuttiaq did reward me
occasionally. More than once, when we were out fishing or check-
ing the nets, I was happily startled to hear him say to a neighbor,
gesturing in my direction: “She helps a lot, that one.”

III. Recalcitrant Child: Open Conflict and Attempts to Educate

The innocent arrogance that I heard in the derogatory queries
about kaplunas’ memories was usually suppressed in my pres-
ence. Whatever Inuttiaq and Allaq may privately have felt, they

252 Never in Anger

never deliberately made me feel that my helplessness was either
ludicrous or reprehensible. It was my own embarrassment that
convicted me and made me suspect that this was a source of
strain. A more obvious cause of antagonism than my helpless
dependence was the reverse: my mutinous independence. And
perhaps worse than the independence itself was my obvious
irritation when Inuttiaq, asserting his fatherly prerogatives,
ignored my wishes. In these situations, where we clashed as
openly as I ever saw Utku do, Inuttiaq mustered his strongest
weapons. Ultimately, the entire community made me suffer for
my intractability and my temper.
Trouble was forecast already by the rebellious raising of the
pyramid tent that marked my entry into Inuttiaq’s household in
October. From that time on, the atmosphere was never entirely
peaceful, but the conflict between Inuttiaq and myself did not
become acute until midwinter. I am not sure why it was so slow
in developing. Perhaps in the early days there was still too much
formality in our relationship, too much desire on both sides to
create a happy situation. Warmed by the family life that I en-
joyed so much more than my isolated tent and by the willingness
of Inuttiaq and Allaq to take me into their midst, I often obeyed
gratefully when Inuttiaq told me to make tea or bannock. And
if I hesitated from a desire to finish what I was writing, Inuttiaq
met me more than halfway. “Shall Allaq do it?” he would ask,
and sometimes: “Shall I do it?” Had I been a good daughter, I
should not have agreed to these suggestions, but I was innocent
of that fact at the time. I always did agree, grateful that Inuttiaq
was so obliging, and only now do I wonder whether he was
trying, by shaming me, to teach me my daughterly duties. Cer-
tainly Allaq was taken aback when I agreed once to Inuttiaq’s
making bannock. Her laugh had an embarrassed ring to my ear,
and though she was bootless on the ikliq, she hastily offered to
do it herself if Inuttiaq would hand her the ingredients and the
stove. But nobody seemed annoyed with me, and nobody in-
formed me that my behavior was out of order; only the quality
of Allaq’s laugh and the hastiness of her reparation gave me a
clue.
In other ways, too, Inuttiaq was more than considerate of me in
those early days. One day, I recall, we had been caught by a

Kapluna Daughter 253

 ferce snow-driving wind in the midst of our move from the
Rapids to the winter campsite in Amujat, and had taken shelter
for the night in an empty wooden shack built, I think, as a fishing
camp by the Catholic mission in Gjoa Haven. It was warm, and
] was warm for the first time in more than a month, and I seized
so eagerly on the unexpected opportunity to type that for some
time I forgot the rest of the family. Then, in changing my paper,
I happened to look up. It was late in the evening. Inuttiaq’s eye-
lids drooped as he smoked beside me. “Are you sleepy?” I
asked. “No,” he said, “but I will be when you finish typing.”
This time I stopped typing.
Perhaps if Inuttiag had not been so extremely gracious to me
at first, his everyday manner, when he reverted to it, would not
have struck me so unpleasantly. I was disconcerted when he
began to address me in the imperative form of speech sometimes
used to women and young people, instead of continuing to use
the more permissive forms. And I was jolted by the assumption
he seemed to make that I would obey him unquestioningly, even
when he gave me no reason for his order. Though his expecta-
tion was appropriate to my status as daughter, it seemed doubly
arbitrary by contrast with his earlier anticipation of, and compli-
ance with, my wishes. Perhaps it was partly these feelings—of
which I am not proud—that made me susceptible to the remarks
I heard in Gjoa Haven about Inuttiaq’s reputation as a “show-
off.” In any case, the suspicion implanted there that Inuttiaq
was ordering me around for his own enjoyment decidedly height-
ened my perception of his assertiveness and sharpened my re-
sistance to it.
Another factor in the development of our conflict was Inu-
ttiaq’s moodiness, a quality that I saw, I think, only after I had
been living with his family for some time. Although Inuttiaq was
usually the most energetic member of our household, there were
hours, and occasionally whole days, when he lay silently on the
ikliq, so aloof that he seemed insensible of our presence—
working, talking, and playing around him. His very position on
the ikliq expressed aloofness. When properly in bed one lies
with one’s head toward the center of the dwelling and one’s feet
to the wall, and during the day one sits in one’s sleeping place
facing the center of the dwelling, where one can converse with

254 Never in Anger

the visitors who stand or sit around the edges of the floor space
by the entrance. A man sometimes sprawls on the ikliq if he is
relaxing in his own home, his booted feet dangling over the ikliq
edge out of consideration for the bedding; but he lies with his
body curved, so that his torso is still oriented toward the social
center of the dwelling. By contrast, Inuttiaq in an aloof mood
turned his back to society, his head, and sometimes his face,
toward the wall as he smoked or read the Bible.
He was not, in fact, as unconscious of his surroundings as he
appeared; he was simply inert, torpid. He would hear if I asked
him a question, but instead of answering, he would wrinkle his
nose in the Eskimo gesture of refusal. In such moods, his help-
fulness with small domestic problems was minimal, too. Ordi-
narily, if Allaq were not immediately available when Saarak
began to bounce up and down in an agony of impatience for the
urine can, Inuttiaq would reach for the can, which was always
within arm’s length, and place Saarak on it. In a passive mood,
however, he would not move a muscle. Instead, he would shout
for Allaq, who might be gutting fish in the storeroom. “Allaaq!
She’s going to pee!” Allaq always came running, with never a
reproach, wiping her fishy hands as she ran.
It was only in the privacy of his family, or when women and
children visited, that Inuttiaq would maintain a mood like this.
If Mannik or Pala, Qavvik or Nilak came to visit, he sat up at
once and entered into conversation with his usual geniality. At
other times he ended his self-isolation by telling Allaq to brew
tea or make bannock, or by jumping up suddenly and going out to
visit somewhere, with never a word to us as he departed.
Whether Inuttiaq’s moodiness was greater than other people’s
I do not know. He was not the only person who sometimes lay
silently on his ikliq, resting, thinking, or perhaps merely being.
There was often a companionable silence also among people who
sat together, working or visiting. But Inuttiaq’s nose-wrinkling
refusal to communicate, his unhelpfulness in small domestic
crises, and his physical position with his back to his audience
all made his withdrawal seem different from others’. The quality
of it was reminiscent of the passivity into which Allaq sank once
during Inuttiaq’s midwinter absence in Gjoa Haven, but it was
not identical. Though Allaq, like Inuttiaq, was completely in-

Kapluna Daughter 255

 active during her period of hibernation, nevertheless, unlike
him, she remained responsive to her children and to me. More-
over, her passivity was so striking only on that one occasion,
whereas Inuttiaq was frequently moody. Of course, it is possible
that I was simply in a better position to observe Inuttiaq’s with-
drawals, and that when I entered other iglus their inmates roused
themselves to greet me, as Inuttiaq did to greet his guests. But
even when we lived jointly with Pala’s family I never was aware
of withdrawal like Inuttiaq’s on the part of any of the members
of Pala’s household.
I could never guess Allaq’s reaction to these moods as she sat
quietly sewing, or smoking, or playing with Saarak in her corner
of the ikliq. Her surface equanimity was never ruffled. As long as
Inuttiag ignored the rest of us, she ignored him. I found his aloof
moods depressing, the more so because Inuttiaq and his family
provided most of the warmth in my life. When I turned to Inu-
ttiag, expecting a friendly laugh or an answer to a question, and
was met instead by a solid back or a silently wrinkled nose, I
was more unpleasantly startled than if he had always been so
withdrawn. His moods triggered mine; I sulked, and my resent-
ment fed my insurgency.
It was in the middle of the first winter that conflicts between
Inuttiag and myself began to emerge into the open. The first one
I recorded occurred only ten days after I had returned from Gjoa
Haven in December. It was precipitated, as were others, by an
act that must have seemed incredibly insignificant to Inuttiaq
and Allaq, though it was by no means insignificant in its conse-
quences for my work. The morning’s net-checking and fish-
gutting were finished, and Allaq had brewed the usual kettle
of tea to warm us after our work. I planned to spend the rest of
the day typing up some of the notes that had fallen into arrears
during the Gjoa Haven trip, and to that end I was eager to warm
the iglu up to the thirty degrees necessary to make my fingers
flexible and the carbon paper printable. Unfortunately, as the
chill began to dissipate and my project began to seem realizable,
Inuttiag appeared in the doorway. He had come for a cup of tea,
but since he had not yet finished his outdoor work, instead of
shedding his furs, as usual, and ensconcing himself on the ikliq,
he sat down in the open doorway to drink his tea, sociably but

256 Never in Anger

coolly. The subzero draft that cut through the iglu from the
storeroom in which Inuttiaq was sitting threatened to undo in
minutes the work of an hour. I asked him: “May I shut the door?”
Inuttiaq looked at me in silence, his face expressionless; he did
not move. Allaq hastily intervened: “Wait a while.” I tried to
explain the reason behind my apparently rude request: when the
iglu was cold I could not write easily. But irritation devoured my
still feeble vocabulary; I could not find the words. I stood up.
“I want to go out,” I said curtly, and Inuttiaq, moving slowly, as
if to acknowledge my rudeness, moved aside just enough to let
me pass.
I walked until nearly dark on the empty snowfields behind the
camp, thinking kapluna thoughts, and feeling my anger still itself
in the cold silence. The iglus were dim humps on the slope be-
low me when I returned to camp. Raigili and Qijuk ran to meet
me at the top of the hill: “Where have you been?” “Over there,”
I gestured, “walking.” Raigili accompanied me back to the iglu
and immediately reported to Inuttiag, who was now in his place
on the ikliq: “She was over there, walking.” Inuttiaq repeated
his daughter’s question: “Where were you?” I told him. The
wooden box on which I was accustomed to type had been placed
in readiness in front of my place on the ikliq. Neither of us
mentioned it.
That evening, after Inuttiaq had read a short passage aloud
from the Gospels, ostensibly to himself, he gave me a lecture on
Christianity, while Allaq hushed Saarak so that I should not lose
a word. “God is Three,” Inuttiaq said; “Father, Son, and Spirit.
God made the world, and there is just one God for Eskimos and
kaplunas. The Bible says so. God loves (naklik) us and wants us
to belong to him. Satan also wants us. He takes people who get
angry (urulu, ningaq) easily and puts them in a fiery place. If
anyone here gets angry with other people, I will write immedi-
ately to Nakliguhuktugq, and he will come and scold (huaq) that
person. If you get angry with me, or if I get angry with you,
Nakliguhuktug will come and scold the angry person.” Allaq
giggled at these illustrations, and Inuttiag added: “We don’t get
angry here. If Nakliguhuktuq comes and scolds it’s very fright-
ening (kappia).”
Inuttiaq’s lecture left its mark. Though I was not as awed by

Kapluna Daughter 257

 visions of Nakliguhuktuq’s righteous wrath as Inuttiaq un-
doubtedly hoped I would be, nevertheless I was reminded afresh
of the urgent necessity for restraint, not only in my relationship
with Inuttiaq, but in all other relationships, as well. 1 was
acutely aware of the high level of control valued, and to a large
extent achieved, by Utku, and with secret discomfortI contrasted
that control with my own tempery reactions to minor misfortunes.
Though my reactions were well within the bounds set by my
own culture, in an Utku setting they did not seem so harmless.
Innumerable instances of Utku control were filed in my mind as
models to emulate. When Putuguk tripped against our primus
and knocked the kettle of boiling tea to the iglu floor, no one,
including Putuguk, expressed startle; I felt no unusual intensity
even in the general murmur of laughter. “Too bad,” he said
quietly, refilled the kettle, and repaired the floor. When the
sinew fishline that Allaq had spent days in braiding for Inuttiaq
broke under his first experimental pull, Allaq laughed a little,
and Inuttiaq handed the line back to his wife with no sign of
reproach: “Sew it together.’ There were also times when people
failed to control themselves, and so minute did these lapses seem
to me that I was astonished at the criticism they drew. Once
when Inuttiag shot impulsively at a bird, which had flown as he
aimed, Allaq, watching at a distance, had observed in amuse-
ment: “Like a child (nutaraqpaluktuq).’”’ When the old man
Piuvkaq prepared himself to be taken to hospital on the govern-
ment plane, perhaps not to return, a tear had run down the nose
of his fourteen-year-old son, and this incontinence was reported
as amusing (tiphi) by the boy’s older sister on her visits to the
neighbors.
Applying Utku standards to my behavior, I felt each of these
incidents as a personal reproach; but all too often my resolve
to act in a way that Utku would consider exemplary was unequal
to the situation. It was inevitable that it should be so. The con-
trol required was much greater than that to which I was ac-
customed to discipline myself. At the same time, I was under
considerably greater strain than I was used to, and the resulting
tensions pressed for expression. Though I did my best to express
them through laughter, as Utku did, laughter did not come
naturally. Discouragingly often after hours, or even days, of

258 Never in Anger

calm, when I was congratulating myself on having finally
achieved a semblance of the proper equanimity, the sudden-
ness or the intensity of a feeling betrayed me. There was the
coldness in my voice, which concealed a desire to weep with
fatigue or frustration when I had to say for the thousandth time:
“I don’t understand.” There was the time when, hurrying to
leave the iglu, I unthinkingly moved Raigili aside with my hand
instead of quietly telling her to move. There were the critical
remarks I made in murmured English when the narrowed eyes
and malicious whispers of Allaq and her sister, absorbed in a
gossip session, irritated me beyond endurance. There was the
burst of profanity (also in English) that I uttered when a lump
of slush from the overheated dome fell for the third time in
as many days into my typewriter and ended my work for the day.
The silence that met these transgressions seemed pregnant
with disapproval, sensible as I was of my mistake. Conversation
caught its breath for a second before flowing smoothly on again
as if nothing had happened. Other transgressions were met with
even more visible withdrawal. One day, in a fit of pique after
my typewriter had received another bath of slush, I tossed a
knife, too vigorously, into the pile of frozen fish by the door.
It rebounded, knocking onto the floor one of the cups of tea that
was cooling on a box nearby. “Iq!” somebody murmured, and
within a few moments the iglu was empty of visitors.
A similar incident occurred one day when I was alone in the
iglu, trying unsuccessfully to skin and cut up a hard-frozen
whitefish. I had thought a little chowder might allay the mild
depression that afflicted me, and IJ thanked providence that I
was alone for once and could eat the soup by myself without
having to share. Unfortunately, the fish, the first I had ever tried
to skin in a frozen state, proved unexpectedly difficult to handle.
I tugged and fumed while my fingers froze, and my knife refused
even to dent the surface. In the midst of my frustration, the door
burst open and I turned to meet the eyes of two young neighbor
boys, Pamiugq and Ukhuk. The two were constant companions,
drawn together perhaps not only by their common age and sex,
but also by shared experiences in the kapluna boarding school
that they had both attended for several years. The two moved
in a private English-speaking world of their own, their con-

Kapluna Daughter 259

 versation a mystery to all except two or three other half-schooled
of my
boys. Charming as I thought them, they were the bane
existence, because they knew (or professed to know) too little
read
English to help me in my linguistic crises, yet enough to
(upside down as easily as right side up) the notes whose con-
occasio n, the
tents I did not wish to reveal. On this particular
sight of the boys released the guilt that I was trying to stifle
with regard to my selfish activity; and the resulting outrage pro-
voked a vehement outburst in English: “I HATE fish! And I
hope when I go home I never see another fish.” Ukhuk said,
“Hunh?” in a voice of surprise, and I assured him again, with no
less vehemence, that I regarded fish in a most unfriendly light.
He murmured to Pamiuq: “Let’s go out,” and they departed pre-
cipitately, leaving me overcome with chagrin, to wonder which
neighbors would be regaled first with that story.
I thought I had seen the last of them for the day, but in an
hour or two, to my surprise, they reappeared, smiling and
friendly, as if nothing had happened. I welcomed them grate-
fully, with pieces of the Christmas fruitcake that I was hoarding,
and tried to explain that I did not really dislike fish; it was
simply difficult to skin. We had, I thought, a delightful visit,
and when, as the boys left, they told me how kind (quya) I was, I
felt much reassured.
No repercussions from that incident ever came to my attention,
but in general, as I later discovered, I was too easily reassured
concerning the effects of my irritable lapses. When I succeeded
in catching myself up, as I sometimes did after the first. aggres-
sive impulse had spent itself, if I recounted the incident after-
wards with amusement and heard others laugh with me, or if
people seemed to accept the generous gestures with which I
tried to dispel the chill that followed my transgression, then I
was persuaded that no damage had been done. How wrong I
was I learned only a year later when, on my return to Gjoa
Haven, Ikayuqtuq told me of the reports that Utku had made of
me that first winter, the letters they had written to her, and the
things they had told her and Nakliguhuktug when they went to
Gjoa Haven to trade. I had taken pains to conceal from Ikayuqtuq
and Nakliguhuktuq the vexatious aspects of my life, wanting
neither to arouse doubts concerning my adaptation to iglu life

260 Never in Anger

nor to appear dissatisfied with the treatment afforded me by my
beneficent hosts. Nakliguhuktug, however, reading the cheerful
letter that I had sent with Inuttiaq in January when he went to
Gjoa Haven to trade, had marveled aloud at my seeming happi-
ness despite the coldness of the winter, whereupon Inuttiaq had
observed: “She is lying. She is not happy. She gets angry very
easily, and I don’t think she likes us any more.” Amaaqtuq had
written in a similar vein to Ikayuqtuq. Instead of reporting, as
she had in November, that I was kind and fun to be with, she
described how annoyed I became whenever I failed to under-
stand. Ikayuqtuq, concerned lest she make matters worse, did
not let me know how people felt about me. Instead, she wrote a
letter of advice to Amaaqtuq: “Kaplunas, and some Eskimos, too,
get angry at themselves, sometimes, rather than at other people.
If Yiini is angry, leave her alone. If an Eskimo gets angry it’s
something to remember, but a kapluna can get angry in the
morning and be over it by afternoon.” “I tried to make her
think,” Ikayuqtuq explained to me. “I thought maybe if she
thought about it, she would understand.”?
As I listened to Ikayuqtuq’s story, gratitude at her unknown
intervention and surprise at the accuracy of her intuition con-
cerning the nature of my anger mingled with dismay: dismay that
my volatility had so damaged my relationships with the Utku,
and dismay, also, that my own intuition of danger had com-
pletely failed me.
My relationship with Inuttiaq must have suffered more than
most. Though my irritability overflowed in other directions at
times, it was he who bore the brunt of it, because of the fre-
quency with which our wills collided. The time I objected to
Inuttiaq’s sitting in the open door was the first of several occa-
sions when anger was openly recognized between us. The most
memorable of these storms occurred that first January, shortly
after Inuttiaq’s return from Gjoa Haven. The two weeks of his
absence had been an especially trying period for me. Having
looked forward to a long and peaceful interlude in which to
work, free from the interference of Inuttiaq’s demands, I had
2. Note that the very similar comparison between Eskimo and kapluna tem-
pers that was quoted in Chapter 5, section II, was made by a different informant
from a different Eskimo group.

Kapluna Daughter 261

 found myself instead faced with an iglu so frigid and a mother
so passive that I could accomplish nothing at all. Silently, I
fretted and fumed over the swelling pile of penciled scrawls,
which there was no way to type. Obviously, nothing could be
done until Inuttiag returned, but I determined that when he
did come, I would take drastic steps to improve my working
conditions. I debated with myself whether perhaps I might
go to live by myself for a week, or for a few days at a time,
in the government building a few miles from our camp. The
place was an empty wooden shell, built as a nursing station but
never used except by me as a cache for my useless belongings.
It had a kerosene stove, which would make it luxuriously com-
fortable. Or perhaps, I thought, Inuttiaq might build me a tiny
iglu near our own, which I could use as an “office.” It could be
built small enough so that I could heat it with a primus stove.
As a third alternative, perhaps I might set up the winter tent
again; it had lain untouched in the nursing station ever since
we had moved to Amujat in November. Something would have
to be done, that was clear. The decision itself markedly light-
ened my inner gloom.
I broached the subject to Inuttiaq a few days after his return

aw
to camp. He listened attentively to my explanation: I needed a
place to work; it was difficult in the iglu; either my fingers froze
or the dome dripped or people wanted to sleep and I did not
like to bother them. I said I had thought about going to live for a
while in the nursing station, but thatI was a little afraid the stove
might not work well. It might go out, as a similar stove in a simi-
lar nursing station in Gjoa Haven had done once in December
when I slept there. When I woke the following moming the
temperature in the building had been thirty below zero. Inuttiaq
agreed that the stove was unpredictable. Instead, he suggested
that he take me to the nursing station every morning and fetch
me again at night, so that I would not freeze. As so often before,
he reassured me: “Because you are alone here, you are someone
to be taken care of (naklik).”” And as so often before, his solici-
tude warmed me. “Taking me to the nursing station every day
will be a lot of work for you,” I said. The round trip took an hour
and a half by dogsled, not counting the time and effort involved
in harnessing and unharnessing the team. He agreed that it

262 Never in Anger

would be a lot of work. “Could you perhaps build me a small
glu?” I asked, thinking that this would be by far the least
taxing alternative for him. It would take only an hour or two
to build the tiny iglu that I had in mind, and then he need con-
cern himself no further. Lulled by the assurance he had just
given me of his desire to take care of me, and by the knowledge
that the request I made was not time-consuming, I was the more
disagreeably startled when he replied with unusual vigor: “I
build no iglus. I have to check the nets.”
The rage of frustration seized me. He had not given me the
true reason for his refusal. It took only two hours to check the
nets, every second or third day. On the other days, Inuttiaq did
nothing at all except eat, drink, visit, and repair an occasional
tool. He was offended—but why? I could not imagine. Perhaps
he objected to my substituting for his suggestion one of my own,
however considerately intended. Whether Inuttiaq read my
face I do not know, but he softened his refusal immediately:
“Shall Ipuituq or Tutaq”—he named two of the younger men—
“build an iglu for you?” Perhaps it would be demeaning for a
man of Inuttiaq’s status, a mature householder, to build an iglu
for a mere daughter. There was something in Inuttiaq’s reaction
that I did not understand, and a cautioning voice told me to con-
tain my ethnocentric judgment and my anger. I mentioned my
tent: “I hear it is very warm in winter.” Inuttiaq smoked silently.
I struggled for a semblance of calm. After a while, he asked:
“Shall they build you an iglu tomorrow?” My voice shook with
exasperation: ““Who knows?” I turned my head, rummaging—
for nothing—in the knapsack that I kept beside my sleeping
bag, until the internal storm should subside.
Later, when Inuttiaq was smoking his last pipe in bed, I
raised the subject again, my manner, I hoped, a successful
facsimile of cheerfulness and firmness. “I want to try the tent
and see whether it’s warm, as I have heard. We can bring it
here, and then if it’s not warm, I won't freeze; Ill come in-
doors.” Allaq laughed, Inuttiaq accepted my suggestion, and I
relaxed with relief, restored to real cheer by Inuttiaq’s offer
to fetch the tent from the nursing station next day—if it stormed
so that he could not go on the trapping trip he had planned.
My cheer was premature. Next day Inuttiaq did not go trap-

Kapluna Daughter 263

 ping, and he did not fetch the tent; he checked the nets. I helped
without comment. The tent was not mentioned that day or the
next, until in the evening, unable to contain myself longer, I
asked Inuttiaq, in the most gracious voice I could muster, when
he thought he might get my tent. “Tomorrow, he said. “You
and Allaq will do it while I check the nets.”
Morning arrived; the tent was mentioned in the breakfast
conversation between Inuttiaq and Allaq. I could not catch the
gist of the exchange, but when Inuttiaq inquired of a neighbor
child who came in whether any of the young men of the camp
were going near the nursing station that day, and was told they
were not, I realized that once more the tent would not be
brought. As usual, I was not informed of the decision. Had I
been a good daughter I would have trusted Inuttiaq to keep my
interests in mind and to fetch my tent in his own time, when
convenient opportunity arose. Unfortunately, I did not trust
Inuttiaq to do any such thing. The repeated delays had con-
vinced me, whether rightly or wrongly I do not know, that he had
no intention of bringing me my tent. I imagined that he had no
faith in my assertions that it was a warm tent, that he could not
conceive of a tent being warm in winter, and that he did not

ws
believe I would really use it. I had not used it, after all, when I
had set it up as a refuge at the Rapids in October.
My voice taut with exasperated resolve, I asked what the
weather was like outside. I said nothing of my intention; never-
theless, I was surprised when Inuttiaq asked why I wanted to
know. “Why?” was ordinarily a rude question; I was forced to
ask it frequently, myself, in the course of my investigations,
since I had not yet discovered the more polite ways of asking for
reasons; but I did not expect to be asked in turn. “Who knows
why?” I replied. It was a rude evasion, and Inuttiaq said nothing,
but went out to check the nets. When I began to put on my fur
clothing, Allag, too, asked what I planned to do; I never wore
my furs in the vicinity of camp. “I’m going to walk,” I said, more
gently. I thought her inquiry was probably prompted by concern
lest I wander off by myself and come to harm. I was too angry
with Inuttiaq to consider that his inquiry might have been
similarly motivated. I never felt as hostile toward Allaq as I did
toward Inuttiaq.

264 Never in Anger

 Like Inuttiaq, Allaq was silent when I evaded her question,
and silently she set off for the nets, dragging the sled on which
she would haul home the netted fish. Watching her move away,
coughing with the effort, her shoulders set against the harness
rope, I felt a pang of remorse. The sled was not really so very
heavy; it slid easily over the hard surface of the river snow; but
it was my custom to help her pull, and it suddenly seemed un-
duly hostile not to do so now. I ran after her and picked up my
half of the rope. But when we reached the nets, the sight of
Inuttiaq enraged me again, and instead of staying, as usual, to
shovel the drifted snow away from the holes, to help collect the
fish and haul them home again, I set off without a word in the
direction of the nursing station, invisible on the horizon. I had
no intention of fetching the tent myself; it would have been
impossible; but I needed a few hours alone, and vaguely I knew
that the direction of my walk would be to Inuttiaq a sign, how-
ever futile, that I was in earnest about my tent.
I knew it would be a sign, but I did not dream that he would
respond as charitably as he did. I had just arrived at the nursing
station and was searching among my books for a novel to comfort
me in my frustration, when I heard the squeak of sled runners
on the snow outside and a familiar voice speaking to the dogs:
‘“Hooooo (whoa).” Inuttiaq appeared in the doorway. I smiled.
He smiled. “Will you want your tent?”
Gratitude and relief erased my anger as Inuttiaq picked up the
tent and carried it to the sled. “You were walking,” he said, in
answer to my thanks; “I felt protective (naklik) toward you.”
It was a truce we had reached, however, not a peace, though I
did not realize it at once. It was nearly dark when we reached
camp, so Inuttiaq laid the tent on top of the iglu for the night to
keep it from the dogs. Next morning I went with Inuttiaq to jig
for trout upriver, and when we returned I thought that finally
the time was ripe for setting up the tent. Not wanting to push
Inuttiaq’s benevolence too far, and remembering the force of his
response to my query about iglu building, I asked: “Shall I ask
Ipuituq to help me put up my tent?” “Yes,” said Inuttiaq. There
was no warmth in his face; he did not smile, though he did tell
me to keep my fur trousers on for warmth while I put up the tent.
I obeyed, but the wind had risen while we drank our homecom-

Kapluna Daughter 265

 ing tea, so that even in fur trousers tent-raising was not feasible
that day or the next.
When the wind died, two days later, Inuttiaq and I went fish-
ing again, most companionably. Relations seemed so amicable,
in fact, that this time, on our return, I was emboldened to say
directly, without mention of Ipuituq: “I would like to put up
my tent.”
Naively, I thought that Inuttiaq would offer to help. He did
not. His face was again unsmiling as he said: “Put it up.”
My anger was triggered again. “By myself?” I inquired rudely.
“Yes,” said Inuttiaq, also rudely.
“Thank you very much.” I heard the coldness in my voice but
did not try to soften it.
Inuttiaq looked at me for a moment, then summoned two
young men who were nearby and who came, with a cheer that
was in marked contrast to his own manner, to help me set up the
tent.
Inuttiag’s attitude toward the raising of the tent puzzled me.
I failed to understand why he resisted it, unless he thought it
ridiculous to set up a tent in winter. I think now that he did
consider it foolish, not only because of the frigid temperatures
but because of the winds, which can have relentless force in
January. There was a storm the very day after the tent had been
raised, and afterwards, when Mannik dug out our entrance and
came in to visit, Inuttiaq’s first question concerned the tent: “Is
it still standing?” It was; and I thought I heard a note of surprise
in the “mmmm’” of his acknowledgment.
But it seems to me now that more was at stake than the feasi-
bility of the project: Inuttiaq was personally affronted by my
request. One clue to his reaction I find in a question that I hardly
heard at the time. He had wanted to know, after the tent was up,
whether I planned to sleep in it or only to work there, and I think
he may have felt that my demand for a tent was a sign that I was
dissatisfied with him as a father, with his concern for my welfare.
He may also have considered an offense against his dignity the
suggestion that he himself set up the tent. The thought crossed
my mind even at the time, when he substituted younger assis-
tants for himself; but in other seasons, when moving was the
order of the day, Inuttiaq readily helped to raise my tent.

266 Never in Anger

 I cannot know Inuttiaqg’s thought, but in retrospect 1 see so
many reasons why he might have opposed my wish that I am no
longer astonished that he did resist it. | am surprised only by the
extent to which he remained protective (naklik) throughout the
whole episode, while obviously intensely opposed to my wish.
Perhaps, in part, the protective actions were a shield for the
hostile feelings, making it possible for Inuttiaq to convince him-
self that he was conforming to Utku values of helpfulness and
obligingness. Or perhaps, as I believe, he really did feel both
protective (naklik) and hostile toward me, simultaneously. It is
possible that his outrage at my exorbitant demand was owing, in
part, precisely to the fact that he was a good (naklik) father to me
and he knew it. In any case, his behavior was a curious blend of
opposites. He chose the site for my tent with care, correcting my
own choice with a more practiced eye to prowling dogs and the
prevailing wind. He offered advice on heating the tent, and filled
my primus so that it would be ready for me to use when my two
assistants and I had finished setting the tent up. And when I
moved my writing things out, he told me that if I liked I might
write instead of going fishing. “If I catch a fish you will eat,”
he assured me. But he turned his back on the actual raising of the
tent and went home to eat and drink tea. And next day I saw his
displeasure in another form.
It was Sunday morning and storming; our entrance was buried
under drifting snow. Since there could be no church service,
Inuttiag and Allaq had each, separately, in a mumbling under-
tone, read a passage from the Bible. Then Inuttiag began to read
from the prayerbook the story of creation, and he asked if I
would like to learn. I agreed, the more eagerly because I feared
that he had perceived my skepticism and that this was another
hidden source of conflict between us. He lectured me at length.
The story of creation was followed by the story of Adam and Eve
(whose sin was responsible for the division of mankind into
kaplunas and Eskimos), and this story was in turn followed by
an exposition of proper Christian behavior: the keeping of the
Sabbath—and of one’s temper. “God is loving (naklik),” said
Inuttiaq, “but only to believers. Satan is angry. People will
go to heaven only if they do not get angry, or answer back when
they are scolded (huaq).” He said further: “If a kapluna police-

Kapluna Daughter 267

 man kills me, I won't be afraid, because we’ll both go to the sky
and stand before God. I will go to heaven and live forever, but
God will kill him.” He told me that one should not be attached to
earthly belongings, as I was: “One should devote oneself only
to God’s word.” Most striking of all was the way Inuttiag ended
his sermon to me. “Nakliguhuktuq made me king of the Utku,”
he said. “He wrote that to me. He told me that if people, in-
cluding you, don’t want to believe what I tell them, and don’t
want to learn about Christianity, then I should write to him, and
he will come quickly and scold (huaq) them. If people don’t want
to believe Nakliguhuktugq either, then Nakliguhuktuq will write
to Cambridge Bay and a bigger leader, the kapluna king in Cam-
bridge Bay, will come in a plane with a big and well-made whip
and will whip people. It will hurt a lot.”
Much of this I had heard before, but this version was more dra-
matic than previous ones. It renewed my sense of Inuttiaq’s in-
ner fires and made me see, more clearly than I had before, some-
thing of the way he viewed kaplunas, generally. I heard the hos-
tility directed against myself, as well, but again he had softened
the latter by blending it with warmth, in the manner that I found
_so confusing. He knew I believed in God, he said, because I
helped people, I gave things to people—not just to one or
two, which God doesn’t want, but to everybody.
In view of that commendation, it seems particularly un-
fortunate that my next graceless gesture, that very night, was to
refuse a request that Inuttiaq made of me: to borrow one of my
two primus stoves to take on an overnight trip he planned.
“Request” is perhaps the wrong word; his manner was peremp-
tory, and that was partly the trouble. “You can use that one in
your tent,” he said, “and I will borrow this one.” He pointed
to the one that I had contributed to the iglu household. He
had not neglected to make provision for my welfare but, still
raw from recent events, I was in a mood to run my own affairs.
And, most important, I knew that if any accident befell that
second primus, my hard-won tent would be useless to me. In
other words, any systematic work would be impossible for the
rest of the winter. To me, that was reason enough for refusal.
To Inuttiaq, however, my attitude must have been neither com-
prehensible nor justified. I had two primuses; he had none, as

268 Never in Anger

his own was cached in his overnight trapping shelter, a day's
journey distant; and therefore it was right that he should borrow
mine. I said I did not see why he could not share the primus that
Putuguk and Mannik, his two young traveling companions,
planned to take; it was standard practice to share traveling equip-
ment in that way. Worse, instead of mentioning the anxiety that
] felt for the safety of the stove, I phrased my refusal as a concern
for Allaq’s warmth. “She will be cold in the iglu without the
primus, I said, “if I am using the other primus in the tent.” It
was a tactic that I had learned from the Utku, but behind the
charitable words lay the knowledge that I would be troubled
by guilt if I monopolized the only available stove in my tent
while Allaq sat blowing on her hands in the iglu. (I knew by
then how cold iglus could be when men, and stoves, were
absent.)
It is just possible that Inuttiaq wished in some recess of his
mind that the absence of that household stove might make it
difficult for me to use my tent in peace, and that my refusal to
lend the stove foiled that wish. But he had more obvious cause,
as well, to demur at my resistance. After all, he, not I, was Allaq’s
“leader” and, in principle, he was mine, as well. I was inter-
fering with his jurisdiction over both of us. “She won’t be cold,”
he said.
When I remained silent, a sign that I did not acquiesce,
Inuttiaq dropped the subject, and it was not until next morning,
Monday, that I discovered how extremely angry he was with me.
He did not plan to leave on his trip until Tuesday; on Monday
he planned to fish, and I was, as usual, going with him. He had
gone out to ice the sled runners, and I was pulling on my fur
trousers when he reappeared, snow knife in hand, and an-
nounced in a ringing voice: “The tent is ruined!” So tense was
the atmosphere at that moment that I was sure he had hacked the
tent to pieces with his knife. He had not, of course; the dogs
had torn the sleeve entrance off, and after Inuttiaq had left—
alone—to fish, Allaq volunteered to help me sew it on again,
sitting on the snow outside at ten degrees below zero. But as I
sewed, racing against the freezing breeze and singing “Yankee
Doodle” loudly with hastily composed English lyrics concerning
the worthlessness of humanity in general and Eskimos and dogs

Kapluna Daughter 269

 in particular, I still mentally accused Inuttiaq of feeling satis-
faction at the damage to my tent.
His displeasure was, in fact, expressed more overtly that day
than it ever was again, but he did not attack my property. Just
the reverse: he refused to touch it. In lieu of the primus that I
declined to lend, he had decided to take on his trip a feeble kero-
sene heater that he owned: “In case I get separated from the
others in blowing snow,” he said. It was unlike him to prepare
for unpleasant contingencies in this way. Perhaps he did not
wish to depend on the younger men, or perhaps he wished to as-
sert himself against the conditions that my refusal imposed on
him. I do not know his reason for deciding to take the heater,
but when, on his return from fishing, he set about preparing his
equipment for the next day’s trip, I saw how I had alienated
him. He picked up the two-gallon can in which he carried kero-
sene, and bypassing my ten-gallon drum, which stood in the iglu,
open and accessible for household use, he took the can outdoors,
pried his own, still unopened drum out of the snow where it
stood in reserve, waiting for my drum to be emptied, and filled
his can there on the slope, where the wind took toll of the
precious fuel.
Surprised, and not a little remorseful, I followed him out, in-
tending to reassure him that I would be glad to have him use
my oil. But my choice of words was not felicitous. “Why are
you using your drum?” He raised his head sharply from the
drum, whose frozen cap he was trying to disengage with the hat-
chet, and with sharpness in his tone, too, he replied: “It is my
will!”
The rest of the winter, for a wonder, passed more peacefully,
at least on the surface. Partly, I think, this was because I spent
a great deal of time closeted in my tent, typing up the notes
that had accumulated during the months when conditions in
the qaqmaq and in the iglu had prohibited typing. Partly, too,
it was because Inuttiaq almost never again permitted his own
hostility to emerge so overtly against me. In a flash of the eye;
in a silence; in a comment unintelligible to me, at which Allaq
laughed; in a surreptitious glance toward Pala or toward Mannik,
who remained expressionless, I saw, or imagined I saw, irrita-

270 Never in Anger

tion or disapproval; but the explosions, which still occasionally
occurred, were all mine, and Inuttiaq’s restraint in the face of
them was extraordinary. Most often he was silent, sometimes he
offered me something to eat, occasionally he reassured me that I
was cared for (naklik), and occasionally, too, he lectured me.
The most notable of these lectures was delivered one day in
March, when I was disturbed because Inuttiaq had refused to
repeat to me a conversation he had had with the husband of
a woman, Pukiq, who was very ill. I thought the two men had
been discussing whether or not Pukiq should send to Gjoa
Haven for medical help, as she had so far refused to do for fear
of being taken out to hospital. I was alarmed for her life, and
conscience-torn, because at her request I had promised not to
notify the priest in Gjoa Haven of her illness; and I thought,
when I overheard a fragment of the conversation between
Inuttiaq and Uyugqpa, that I could still help by explaining
that Pukiq would not necessarily be sent to hospital if she asked
for help; the priest might be able to contact the nursing station
in Cambridge Bay and get medicine that would help her here
at home.
But Inuttiaq replied to my question that Uyuqpa had said
nothing at all; and he went off to attend to the far end of the
fishnet, which he and I were checking. I began to shovel snow
from my end with more than usual vigor, and when Inuttiaq
was, I fear, not quite out of earshot, I said loudly in Eskimo:
“You’re lying.”
Inuttiaq did not turn around, but later when, temper restored
to resignation, I joined him at his end of the net, he looked up
from his work: “Are you angry (ningaq)P” I blushed and hesi-
tated, gesturing “no” and “yes” simultaneously. Inuttiaq
laughed and said with surprising directness: “You get angry
(ningaq) easily. It’s nothing to get angry about. Uyuqpa was
talking to me alone.”
Inuttiaq was right, of course, which did not lessen my frustra-
tion. I had neither the desire nor the ability, however, to describe
the complexities of my conscience, so I sought an explanation
that would make sense to him and, more important, one that
would reassure him that my temper was harmless. “I’m a little

Kapluna Daughter 271

 bit angry (ningaq) from fear (kappia) that the kapluna leaders
will be angry with me, because I didn’t tell them that Pukiq
was ill.”
Inuttiaq nodded: “I, too, fear the anger (ningaq) of the kapluna
leaders.” But then his tone changed suddenly. “The kapluna
leaders are not frightening (kappia),” he said. “They are not to be
feared. Only God is to be feared. Nakliguhuktuq isn’t afraid of
the kaplunas and neither am I. You, too, should be neither afraid
nor angry. You get angry easily. I don’t get angry. If you keep
on getting angry, I'll write to Nakliguhuktuq.’”’ There was no
anger or disturbance in his tone, though his voice and his words
were strong.
As I was about to reply, Allaq came from the iglu to join us,
and the subject was dropped. Inuttiaq was exceptionally cheerful
and solicitous of my welfare while we three finished checking
the net, more than once asking me whether I were warm enough
and not too tired. And when we returned home, he took special
pains to see that I had a choice piece of fish to eat.
It seems to me now that my controversial tent proved more of
a blessing in preventing the development of conflicts between
Inuttiaq and me than I had any idea it would when I insisted on
setting it up. I was astonished at the relief I felt during those
hours in the tent. I expanded in the warmth that thawed my fin-
gers and the carbon paper, and that on still days even made it pos-
sible to remove my parka, which I otherwise never did except at
night in bed. The solitude, too, was more ofa blessing than I had
anticipated. Though quite aware of the irritations that beset me
daily in the iglu: the murmuring voices, the giggles, the chill
air, Inuttiaq’s presence, nevertheless I had not felt the cumula-
lative weight of these small strains until it was lifted.
I had only two regrets as I sat happily typing. One was that I
was unable to see out of my shelter. I could hear footsteps
coming and going among the iglus and voices calling, but the
sounds gave me few clues to what was happening. I never
knew what anthropologically interesting events I might be miss-
ing. I could not go outside to check, either, without turning off
the primus that warmed the tent, and when the primus was off,
my papers and typewriter all had to be put away, because within
a very few minutes after the primus had stopped, the tent would

272 Never in Anger

return to outdoor temperature, which might be anything from
twenty to sixty below zero, and frost crystals would begin to
fall on all exposed surfaces when the temperature dropped. For
the same reason, I could not go home to eat during the day, and
this was my second regret. However, a week or so after I had
begun to work in the tent, I happened to mention my hunger,
in a casual fashion, to Allaq, and that afternoon the squeaking
footsteps to which I listened approached my tent instead of going
by, and Allaq’s voice said, “Yiini, here is tea for you.” She had
brought me a small kettleful of hot tea, already sugared and
milked, and a lump of caribou stomach fat, as well. From that day
on, either Allaq or Raigili regularly brought me tea and food
when they were eating at home. Sometimes, Allaq said, it was at
Inuttiaq’s suggestion that she did this.
I was touched by this attention; and in the weeks following
the January crisis, Inuttiaq made other gestures, too, that soothed
and warmed me. Only a few days after he returned from the trip
for which I had refused to lend my primus, he sent my kapluna
father a message, the tone of which startled me by contrast with
the events just passed. “Tell him,” said Inuttiaq, “that because
I am very grateful (hatuq) indeed for the help you are giving us
with kerosene, I am feeding you with the caribou meat that I
have fetched.” A month later, when one of Raigili’s two dogs
was about to whelp, Inuttiaq asked me if I would like to “own”
one of the pups for the duration of my stay, and the neighbors
pointed out the significance of his offer: all members of a family,
adopted or otherwise, own dogs belonging to that family’s team.
Such gestures, as well as the more even flow of daily life,
lulled me into believing that the hostile feelings that had in-
fected the air earlier in the winter had been forgotten, and con-
vinced me that the tensions that I continued to spark from time
to time were momentary flashes without lasting effect. I am no
longer sure that my peace of mind was justified. In retrospect, it
seems to me possible that these warm acts were neither rewards
for improved behavior on my part nor evidence of a generous
willingness to accept me in spite of my thomy qualities, but
were, rather, attempts to extract or blunt some of the thorns. I
think my Utku parents may have hoped that the same techniques
of pacification and reassurance that throughout the winter had

Kapluna Daughter 273

 soothed crises away might also serve to prevent difficulties from
arising. If I knew I was cared for (naklik), 1 might not get angry
so easily. I thought I heard similar logic in the admonition Inu-
ttiaq once in a while gave his sulky daughter, Raigili: “Stop cry-
ing, you are loved (naklik).” Another possible motive may have
been a desire to shame me, by virtuous example, into reforming.
Perhaps these kind acts even had the effect of nullifying Inu-
ttiaq’s and Allaq’s own prickly feelings, permitting them to prove
to themselves that, as Inuttiaq had said, they didn’t get angry,
only I did.

IV. The Fishermen: Crisis

Whatever the interpretation of these particular incidents, it is
clear to me now that there remained more of an undercurrent of
tension in my relationship with Inuttiaq and Allaq than I per-
ceived at the time. I had come to accept the everyday vicissitudes
of the relationship as matter-of-course; consciously, I felt the
rewards far greater than the strains. The same was not true, I
think, of Inuttiag and Allaq; but I saw their feelings only at the
end of April, when our iglu melted and Inuttiag ordered a move
into tents. Then he decided (as usual, without telling me) that
I should return to my own tent, rather than joining the rest of the
family in theirs. And during the five months in which I lived in
my tent before moving back into Inuttiaq’s qaqmaq in the fol-
lowing October, Allaq almost never visited me, as she had done
in the first days after my arrival.
To be sure, during the last two months of that period almost no
one else visited me, either. Short of murder, the ultimate sanc-
tion against the display of aggression in Utku society is, as I have
said, ostracism. Niqi, Nilak’s overly volatile wife, lived her life
in its vacuum, and for a period of three months during my second
summer and autumn at Back River, I experienced it, too. It was
precipitated, in my case, by a misunderstanding that occurred in
August, at the start of my second year. I am sure, however, that
the tensions of the preceding winter added their residue of
hostility, as well, to create a situation in which the kapluna mem-
ber of the community ceased to be treated as an educable child
and was instead treated as an incorrigible offender who had,
unfortunately, to be endured but who could not be incorporated

274 Never in Anger

into the social life of the group. The misunderstanding came
about as follows.
At the time I went to live with the Utku, Chantrey Inlet was
becoming increasingly known among sports fishermen in the
provinces of Canada and in the United States. Every year in
July and August small charter airlines in Ontario and Manitoba,
which cater to sportsmen, flew men in, for a price incredible to
me, to spend two or three or five days fishing for arctic char and
salmon trout at the Rapids. Until a year or so before my arrival
only a few had come each summer, perhaps five or six, but then
they had begun to come in numbers. Fifteen or twenty, the
Utku calculated, had come in 1963, and in 1964, when I was
there, forty came, not all at once but in groups ranging in size
from two or three to approximately fifteen. One or more of these
groups was with us constantly from July 26 until August 23. They
camped across the river from us, out of sight behind a point of
land, and their outboard motors sputtered up and down the river
from dawn to dark.
Some of these fishermen and their guide, a Canadian named
Ray, kept to themselves on their side of the river. They traded
generously with the Eskimos when the latter went to offer bone
toys in exchange for tea, tobacco, and fishhooks, but otherwise
they largely ignored the native inhabitants of the Inlet. The
Utku—it was Nilak, Pala, Inuttiaq, and, later, Ipuitug, who were
camped by the rapids that summer—liked Ray. He was a mild-
mannered man, who had been bringing fishing parties to the
Inlet for several years and who treated the Eskimos with dignity.
Individuals in other groups were less innocuous. Hard drink-
ing, cigar smoking, and gruff-voiced, lacking in gentleness and
sensitivity, they were the antithesis of everything Eskimo. They
stared at the Eskimos; visited the Eskimo camp and photo-
graphed people without asking permission; peered into the tents;
and when the Eskimos tried to trade for the coveted tea, tobacco,
and fishhooks, one or two of these kaplunas offered instead
strings of pink beads and other useless items, which the Eski-
mos were too timorous and too polite to refuse. The Eskimo
women were particularly afraid (kappia, iqhi) of one of the plane
pilots who, they said, had “wanted a woman” the previous year
and had made his wishes known distinctly.

Kapluna Daughter 275

 The Utku did not fail to notice differences among the fisher-
men and to judge some of them kinder (quya) than others, but
whatever dislike they felt showed neither in avoidance nor, of
course, in aggressive acts. The Eskimos looked forward with
excitement to the coming of the kaplunas in July. As soon as the
ice left the river, they began to listen for planes and, as they sat
together on the gravel in front of the tents, they filed away at
bits of caribou antler, shaping them into miniature replicas of
fishhooks, pipes, knives, and other objects to trade to the kap-
lunas. Their talk was of tea and tobacco and of other things—
food and clothing—which they had received from the fishermen
in the past in very generous amounts, and which they hoped to
receive again. When a plane was heard they hurried with one
accord to the other side of the river in order to be present when
the kaplunas landed, to help with the unloading of the plane,
and to watch the strangers. Regardless of the quality of the men
who had arrived, regardless of how the Utku felt about them,
they treated all alike with the same obliging acquiescence with
which they had treated me on my arrival. Their courtesy did not
fail even when the kaplunas took advantage of their mildness to
treat them in ways that I considered most humiliating. One
champion wrestler picked up Mannik and held him horizontally,
by shoulder and thigh, over his head: for a television ad, he ex-
plained to me. Mannik, who knew nothing of what was happen-
ing until he found himself in the air, giggled. On another oc-
casion a loud-voiced man staggered off the plane, steeped in
champagne, and wove his way over to Pala, whom he had singled
out as the Eskimo “chief.”’ Hugging Pala warmly, he inquired
what his name was and invited him in incoherent English to be
his friend. Pala, to my astonishment, understood the man to ask
his name and replied ‘“‘Peeterosi’” (Peter, his Christian name).
“Ha ha, Peeterosi!” roared the drunken kapluna. “Ha ha, Peet-
erosi! Le’s be frens, I like Eskimos, nice Eskimos,” and he
stroked Pala’s head, while Pala laughed mildly and resisted not
at all. The other Utku watched, expressionless, in the back-
ground.
When we returned to our camp, later, I discovered that the
Utku did have a way of retaliating against the kaplunas’ conde-

276 Never in Anger

scending behavior; they made fun of it. They taught Saarak to
imitate the drunken fisherman, and for months she ran from per-
son to person, on request, stroking their heads and laughing with
kapluna boisterousness in her piping voice: “Ha ha ha, Peeterosi,
ha ha ha!” But even when I saw this mockery, my feelings were
not relieved. I was ashamed of being a kapluna among such
kaplunas, and I was humiliated on behalf of the Eskimos who
watched, smiled, nodded, and submitted.
Yet I did not identify entirely with the Eskimos, and this fact
made the situation even more painful. In spite of myself, I was
drawn to the men camped across the river. Except for an exasper-
atingly brief conversation with a passing police officer in May,
I had seen no member of my own culture and heard no English
since the previous November. Neither had I tasted any kapluna
food other than the few items: bannock, tea, rice, raisins, and
chocolate, that I stocked in meagre quantities. Most trying of all,
perhaps, I had had no mail since March, except for a few pitiful
items, mostly bills and advertisements for camping equipment,
which the police officer had brought in May. I deplored the
insensitive ways of the men, and yet I was starved for the sights
and sounds of my own world that they represented and for the
familiar food that symbolized that world and that they had
brought in enormous quantities.
But more detrimental to my peace of mind than the sudden
sharp awareness of my deprivations was the fact that, since I
was the only bilingual present, the members of each camp ex-
pected me to mediate with the other on their behalf. I often
tangled the two languages hopelessly in my distress, unable to
muster a coherent sentence in either one. It was not too hard to
help the Utku in their attempts to trade with the kaplunas, since
I almost always felt the Eskimos’ requests reasonable. Difficulty
arose only if a fisherman countered with beads a request for tea.
Then I was tempted to demur on behalf of the unresisting Es-
kimo. Far more awkward were the requests that the kaplunas
made of me. I was supposed to explain to Mannik why he had
been so summarily hoisted skyward; to ask Nilak for his braided
boot laces, though I knew no wool was to be had for replace-
ments; and to negotiate with Allaq and with Niqi for the manu-

Kapluna Daughter 277

 facture of fur mittens, though I knew that hides suitable for mit-
would
tens were scarce and that our own winter mitten material
be used. The Eskimos would never refuse.
ed to
Most painful of all the transactions that I was expect
two Eskimo canoes .
mediate were negotiations for the loan of the
canoe of
Once, each Utku family had owned a kapluna-style
had pro-
wood and painted canvas. The Canadian government
vided them after the famine of 1958, in order to encourage the
Utku to depend more heavily on their rich fish resources than
they had formerly done. One by one the canoes had been dam-
aged and now either lay beached for lack of repair material or had
been burned for firewood. Inuttiaq’s and Pala’s were the only
two usable canoes remaining to our camp. During the spring, the
canoes were used to transport the household goods up and down
the river in the long series of moves, and during the summer and
early autumn the men anchored them in midriver at the foot of
the rapids and fished from them more efficiently than they could
have fished from the shore. The canoes were used also to set
and check the nets in the open river before freeze-up, and to
ferry people back and forth across the river on various errands:
to fetch birch twigs, which grew more plentifully on the far side
of the river, to bring in needed possessions from caches, and to
visit other families camped nearer the mouth of the river. The
canoes had innumerable uses; without them Utku life would
have been greatly constricted. Just how constricted I discovered
when the kaplunas asked to borrow the boats.
All the groups, both the pleasanter ones and the less pleasant
ones, wanted the use of these canoes. The kaplunas had two
aluminum boats of their own, but these were not large enough
to enable all of the men to go fishing at once. The ins and outs
_ of the negotiations that I was forced to conduct are too compli-
cated to record here, but the result was that from July 26, when the
first plane arrived, until August 15, when the last large party of
fishermen left, we seldom had the use of both of our canoes and
sometimes we had the use of neither. The kaplunas suggested
that to compensate us for the loan of the canoes, which prevented
us from fishing as we would have done, they would bring us the
fish that they caught during the day; Ray also offered to feed us
a meal of kapluna food every evening. Of course, it was impos-

278 Never in Anger

sible to know what Inuttiaq and Pala thought of this plan when it
was proposed, but they agreed to it with alacrity. I myself thought
it sounded like a reasonable solution to the conflict of interests,
one that would involve minimal discomfort for the Utku. In
fact, however, the effects of the arrangement were more incon-
yenient than I had foreseen.
It was worst for the Utku, of course, when the kaplunas used
both of our canoes. Then we were stranded on our shore and in
many little ways were made dependent on the kaplunas. The
days were spent not in fishing but in craftwork, as the men made
toy after toy to trade to the kaplunas. Once Mannik went out to
cast a throwline from the boulders along the edge of the rapids,
but the hook, caught by the still swollen midsummer current,
snagged under a stone and could not be retrieved until the kap-
lunas came to fetch us for our evening meal. Then they lent
Mannik his canoe so he could paddle out to disentangle the
hook. Once Inuttiaq shot a gull that was swimming near the
camp. An occasional bird made welcome variety in our diet, but
we could not fetch this one; we had to wait until it drifted to
shore of its own accord. We ran out of sugar one morning, but
the supply was cached on an island, so we had to drink bitter
tea that day until, again, the kaplunas came to fetch us in the
evening; then they took us out to the island in one of their out-
boards. We were deprived of our daily patau because we no
longer had fresh fish to boil. The fish that the kaplunas brought
us faithfully every evening were, inexplicably, fed to the dogs,
and we ourselves ate the fish we had been drying for autumn and
winter use. Not the least of the constrictions was our inability
to visit the kaplunas freely. On the evenings when Ray was in
the Inlet, if the wind had not whipped up the river too much,
he came for us after the kaplunas had finished their supper and
ferried us across to their camp for a meal, and after we had eaten,
he ferried us home again. But often there was no visiting at all.
I do not know how strongly the Utku felt about the absence of
their canoes and their dependence on the foreign visitors. Per-
haps none of the alterations in the daily patterns troubled them
as much as they did me. Characteristically, the Utku kept well
under control whatever negative feelings they may have had.
Gratitude was the feeling they expressed openly. Every week

Kapluna Daughter 279

 they thanked God in their prayers for the help the kaplunas
were giving them with food, clothing, and equipment, and,
indeed, the kaplunas were incredibly generous with their sup-
plies; the leader of one party even brought boxes of discarded
wool clothing to distribute among the Eskimos. I chafed against
our enforced dependence on the kaplunas, against the loss of
our patau, and perhaps most of all against the restrictions im-
posed on our visits to the kapluna camp, starved as I was for the
sound of English and the taste of American food. From my point
of view, it was most painful when we had one canoe. When we
had none at all, no one went to visit except when the kaplunas
fetched us, but when we had one, the men went, frequently and
at length, leaving the women and children at home. When they
returned, after hours of visiting, their pockets were filled with
candy and gum for the children, and they regaled us with de-
tailed accounts of all the good things they had eaten in the kap-
luna camp: canned pears, and steak, and potatoes, and oranges.
Oranges! I would have sold my soul for an orange. Inwardly
frantic with frustration and envy, I tried to conceal my feelings
and to reason with myself: I was being treated the way the Es-
kimo women were treated; but the feelings remained and may
have caused me to read more covert resentment into the Utkus’
own behavior than was actually there.
Nevertheless, a change was clearly evident in the atmosphere
of the Utku camp during the period of the kaplunas’ sojourn, a
change that indicated to me that feelings other than gratitude
toward the kaplunas lay under the surface. Though I have no way
of knowing whether the Utkus’ feelings coincided in detail with
mine, there was evidence that the loan of the canoes was to
them, as it was to me, a source of strain.
The Utku were as fascinated with the kaplunas as I was. As
they sat about on the gravel beach, filing bits of antler and soap-
stone into pipestems and knives for trade, they watched the kap-
lunas trolling up and down the river in their borrowed canoes
and laughed at the odd cant of the boats, weighted down by the
outboard motors that the kaplunas had attached. “It would be
nice to have a kika (an outboard),” Inuttiaq joked; “paddling
is no fun (hujuujaq).” The others laughed. Talk was all of the
strangers, their personal and collective peculiarities: this one

280 Never in Anger

has a big nose; that one is frightening (kappia, ight), he doesn't
smile, just stares; they are all disgustingly furry (that is, hairy);
they drink liquor, and that is frightening (kappia, iqhi), too; they
never eat fish, just catch them and throw them back or give them
away. Most of all, talk centered on the bounties that the kaplunas
would probably leave for the Eskimos when they departed, as
they had done last year. And when the kaplunas disappeared at
noon and in the evening into the cove where they were camped
and their motors were silenced, the Utkus’ thoughts followed
them. “I wonder what they are eating?” someone would muse
with a little laugh.
Given such absorption in the fishermen and their activities, it
would have been strange had the Utku not felt regret at being
unable to visit them at will. The year before, when the Utku
were camped on the other side of the Rapids, when no water
separated them from the kapluna campsite, they had spent many
hours standing in a silent cluster on the slope just above the
kapluna camp, watching the comings and goings below them,
and accepting the food and tobacco they were offered.
There were several signs that something was, indeed, amiss
in the Utku camp. For one thing, people were afflicted with a
most unusual lethargy. They yawned, complaining of sleepiness
in midday, something I had never seen at any other season.
Inuttiaq and Allaq once fell sound asleep at noon. I remembered
that lethargy one autumn day after the kaplunas had gone, when
Amaaqtug was describing to me how one could recognize that
a person was upset (huqu). “He will sleep long hours during the
summertime when people usually stay up late,” she said, ‘‘and
he'll sit idle instead of working.”
Another puzzling phenomenon was the waste of the salmon
trout that the kaplunas gave us. The fish were larger and fatter
and more numerous than those we caught ourselves. In every
obvious way they were desirable, and yet the Utku, who had ac-
cepted with such alacrity when the kaplunas offered us their
catch, let the fish lie until they rotted on the beach where the
kaplunas threw them; then they gave them to the dogs. Before
the arrival of the kaplunas, the women had spent hours every day
filleting the catches of their men and hanging them to dry in the
sun. The dogs had been fed only the bones and heads. The kap-

Kapluna Daughter 281

 r way
lunas, good conservationists all, remarked on the cavalie
in which the Utku treated their gifts of fish, where upon, wantin g
repreh ensibl e behavi or
to justify to the kaplunas the apparently
for
of the Eskimos, I tried to inquire into the latters’ reasons
ed.
neglecting the fish. I was not satisfied with the replies I receiv
“The women feel too lazy to cut them up,” said Inuttia g. ‘‘Not
at all,” replied Allaq, ‘‘the fish are unpleasantly soft from having
lain too long in the sun.” The truth was, however, that even
when the fishermen brought us fish caught only moments be-
fore, as they sometimes did after I had informed them of the
Eskimos’ dislike of sun-softened fish, the Utku still let most of
them lie.
To be sure, neither the Utkus’ lethargy nor their neglect of
the kaplunas’ fish was clearly attributable to the absence of the
canoes. It was, characteristically, Inuttiagq who gave me the
clearest evidence that the thoughts of the Utku did dwell on
their canoes. One morning, two days after the kaplunas had
borrowed both canoes, he asked me: “Are the kaplunas leaving
tomorrow?” When I replied that those who had his canoe would
be gone in two more days, he said with feeling: “That makes
one grateful (hatuq).” The following day, he inquired again
whether the kaplunas who had his boat would be leaving the
next day, and when I assured him that they would, he went so
far as to tell the guide of that party, through me, that “tomor-
row” he would want his boat to fish in.
Curiously, though other Utku men, too, occasionally remarked
as they sat stranded on the beach: “One feels like going fish-
ing,” or “One feels like eating fresh fish,” nevertheless when
the departing kaplunas returned the two canoes, nobody went
fishing. The remaining kaplunas, covetously eyeing the beached
canoes, commented on this inconsistency, too, and again I felt
it incumbent on me to explain the Eskimos to the kaplunas. But
when I tried, cautiously, to sound the Utkus’ reasons for not
fishing, telling them, truthfully, that the kaplunas had inquired,
Pala replied: “When the kaplunas leave, we'll go fishing again”;
and indeed, the day the last plane disappeared, the men sat
and fished from their canoes all day in midriver. Not only that,
they also set the nets for the first time since spring. What they
did use the canoes for, as soon as they became available, was to

282 Never in Anger

cross the river to visit the kapluna camp, frequently and at
length.
The strength of Inuttiaq’s desire to retain his canoe, for what-
ever reason, appeared a few days after the first group had re-
turned it. We were expecting another group of fishermen to
arrive as soon as the clouds lifted. Knowing this, and knowing
that Inuttiag had been restless without his canoe, I tried to assure
him that the kaplunas would not take it amiss if he refused to
lend it again. If he wished, I said, I would tell them; and I
warned him that if they used the boat when they were drunk,
they might break it. Inuttiaq responded strongly. “I don’t want
to lend my canoe,” he said. “I want to fish in it. If those kaplunas
ask to borrow my canoe tell them they can’t. The kapluna leader
gave us those canoes because he cares for ( naklik) us. It’s Es-
kimos he cares for, not kaplunas, because we live under more
difficult conditions (ayuq), and he said that if any harm came to
those canoes, the people who damaged them would be stabbed
with something metal—I forget exactly what—something metal,
yes? It will hurt.”” He made a stabbing gesture in the air and
turned to Allaq for confirmation, which she silently gave. Little
did I suspect how much trouble my literal interpretation of Inu-
ttiaq’s instruction that day was to cause me.
The fishermen arrived in due course, and shortly thereafter
they came for a canoe. Trouble began almost at once, but I was
not aware of it. The Utku did not lend their best canoe, Inu-
ttiaq’s; they lent Pala’s, which was slightly leaky; but even so, I
was annoyed at their compliance. I wished they had refused to
lend either and, in my irritation, when the kapluna guide asked
me for assurance that the Eskimos would really use the fish he
offered as rental payment for the canoe, I replied that the Es-
kimos had not used the kapluna fish before when they were
given, and probably would not do so now. Pala’s fourteen-year-
old son, Ukpik, freshly arrived in camp after a winter at school
in Inuvik, listened, expressionless, to my remarks.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. As usual when they
had the use of a canoe, the men spent a large part of their time
at the kapluna camp, but they returned with less booty than
sometimes; this trip leader did not believe in “spoiling the na-
tives.” Next morning early, I woke to hear the sound of an out-

Kapluna Daughter 283

 board approaching, and kapluna voices down at the shore. Anx-
ious not to lose an opportunity to use my native tongue, I dressed
and joined the men, Eskimo and white, who clustered at the
edge of the beach. Inuttiaq and Pala approached me as I went
toward the group. “The kaplunas are going to borrow the other
canoe,” they told me. “They say they will return it when they
are through with it.”
The kapluna trip leader corroborated what Pala had said.
“That first canoe is no good,” he said; “it has a hole in it, so we
have to borrow this other one.” There was, indeed, a sizeable
rent in the canvas, which had certainly not been there when we
loaned it and which made the canoe unusable. The two men who
had come with the guide were already attaching the outboard to
Inuttiaq’s canoe, as Inuttiaq and the other Utku men watched.
I exploded. Unsmilingly and in a cold voice I told the kap-
luna leader a variety of things that I thought he should know:
that if he borrowed the second canoe we would be without a
fishing boat, that if this boat also was damaged we would be in
a very difficult position, since a previous guide had forgotten to
bring on his return trip the repair materials that Inuttiaq had
traded for, and that we would be unable to buy materials our-
selves until the strait froze in November. I also pointed out the
island where our supplies of tea, sugar, and kerosene were
cached and mentioned our inability to reach it except by canoe.
Then, armed with my memory of Inuttiaq’s earlier instructions,
I told the guide that the owner of that second canoe did not
wish to lend it.
The guide was not unreasonable; he agreed at once that if the
owner did not wish to lend his canoe, that was his option: “It’s
his canoe, after all.’”’ Slightly soothed, I turned to Inuttiaq, who
stood nearby, expressionless like the other Utku. “Do you want
me to tell him you don’t want to lend your canoe?” I asked in
Eskimo. “He will not borrow it if you say no.”
Inuttiaq’s expression dismayed me, but I did not know how to
read it; I knew only that it registered strong feeling, as did his
voice, which was unusually loud: “Let him have his will!”
I hoped my voice was calm when I replied to Inuttiaq: “As
you like,” but I was filled with fury at kapluna and Inuttiaq
alike, as well as at myself for having undertaken the futile role

284 Never in Anger

of mediator, and my tone was icy when I said to the guide: “He
says you can have it.” Turning abruptly, I strode back to my
tent, went to bed, and wept in silence.

VY. Persona Non Grata: Ostracism

That incident, bringing to a head, as it did, months of uneasiness
concerning my volatility, marked the beginning of a new phase
in my relationship with the Utku. Some days passed, however,
before I became aware that I was ostracized. My work seemed
somehow more difficult than usual, I felt tired and depressed;
“bushed,” perhaps, I thought, in need of a vacation. There was
certainly reason enough why I should be tired; the strain of the
summer, the long isolation without mail, and the frustrations
engendered by the presence of unlikeable kapluna men, my
impossible role as mediator—all had taken their toll. Now that
the men were gone, I spent a great deal of time alone in my
tent, typing notes, writing letters, and trying to analyze my lin-
guistic data. I felt little desire for company and was grateful
when the smiling faces that appeared from time to time between
the flaps of my tent entrance withdrew again without entering.
I noticed nothing unusual in the behavior of anyone toward me.
Realization came suddenly and from an unexpected source.
Autumn was upon us. The kaplunas, fearing to be weathered
in for the winter, had departed precipitously in a sudden snow
squall the day after my outburst—an unfortunate coincidence,
I am afraid—and the able-bodied members of our camp, released
from their fascinated vigil around the kapluna camp, had gone
off to hunt caribou, leaving, as usual, only the infirm, the im-
mature, and the school children behind in camp. Pala, his
daughter Amaaqtugq, and I were the only adults who remained.
Knowing that the school plane was expected imminently, I wrote
letter after letter to send out. There might be no opportunity to
send out mail again until November.
Pala also wrote a letter to be sent—to Nakliguhuktuq—and,
smiling warmly, he gave it to me to keep until the plane should
come: “So I won’t forget to send it,” he said. The letter was in
syllabics, of course, and, moved by I know not what amoral spirit,
I decided to read it—to test my skill in reading Eskimo. It had

Kapluna Daughter 285

 been written ten days earlier, the day the kaplunas left. It began,
more or less as I had expected, by describing the bounty of the
kaplunas and how much they had helped the Eskimos. Then it
continued in a vein that I had not anticipated: “Yiini is a liar.
She lied to the kaplunas. She gets angry (ningaq) very easily.
She ought not to be here studying Eskimos. She is very annoying
(urulu), because she scolds (huaq) and one is tempted to scold
her. She gets angry easily. Because she is so annoying, we wish
more and more that she would leave.”
I pored over the crudely formed syllables for some time, un-
willing to believe that I was reading them correctly. Perhaps
I was inserting the wrong consonants at the ends of the syl-
lables; the script does not provide them. But I was not. There
was only one way to read the characters. So there was a reason
why my work was going poorly! And my depression was not all
due to the fatiguing summer. What shocked me most was that,
in thinking back over the ten days since I had spoken to the
kapluna guide, I could recall no change in the habitually warm,
friendly, considerate behavior of the Utku. Though I had had few
visitors, I had attributed that fact to my obvious preoccupation
with typing; I had assumed that it was I who was withdrawing
from the Eskimos, not they from me. Whenever I joined the
group sitting on the beach in front of the tents, I was welcomed
with smiles, as always, and every morning when tea was brewed
for the camp, the kettle was brought to my tent so that I might
share. Indeed, care was always taken to provide me with two
cups, a matter that required special attention, since I drank much
more slowly than other people. Generosity was shown me in
other ways, too. When the kaplunas departed, leaving behind
them a boatload of food for the Eskimos, Inuttiaq had taken it
upon himself to distribute it among the households. There were
tea bags, potatoes, onions, powdered milk ... Pala’s household
acquired a thirty-pound tub of jam. To me, Inuttiaq gave one of
two large roast turkeys and ten boxes (a disproportionate share)
of lard. When I protested at the latter gift, saying that I still had
some lard in my cache on the island, Inuttiaq insisted that I
take it: ““Because you help people so much.”
I think now that Inuttiaq’s gifts were probably telling me that
in addition to my other defects I was considered stingy, but at

286 Never in Anger

 the time that explanation did not occur to me, and I could not
reconcile his generosity and the considerate behavior of the
other Utku with Pala’s letter Perhaps, I thought, the letter had
been written in umbrage, which the passage of time had soothed.
Or perhaps it was only Pala who felt so hostile toward me.
Unfortunately for such consoling hypotheses, a day or two after
I had read Pala’s letter, Amaaqtuq paid one of her rare visits to
my tent. Asking if she might have a piece of paper and a pencil,
she wrote a letter to Ikayuqtugq, and delivered it into my keeping
until the plane should come. With no moral qualms at all this
time, I read it, praying that her sentiments were friendlier than
her father’s; certainly her smile had been of the warmest and her
manner as a visitor had been most appreciative. But her letter
matched Pala’s, word for word, only elaborating somewhat on
my obnoxious characteristics and on the gentle virtue of the
Utku in dealing with me. She told Ikayuqtuq again, as she had
the previous January, that I became angry (qiquq) every time
I failed to understand something, in spite of the fact that lin-
guistic difficulties were unavoidable (ayuq). “Because she is
the only kapluna here and a woman as well, we have tried to be
good (pittiaq) to her, but even though we try to help her she
gets angry (qiquq) very easily without cause. It’s sometimes
very annoying (urulu) and makes one lose patience ... She keeps
doing what she shouldn’t, even when she’s told not to.” As Pala
3. I have suggested elsewhere in this chapter that Utku may sometimes use
obligingness and generosity to shame a person into better behavior, or perhaps
just to express hostility in an inverted way—to say, in effect: “I am a better per-
son than you are.” Strategies of this kind have been noted by other observers of
Eskimos, too; it is not unusual to find a social offender treated with exaggerated
consideration and concern. Freuchen (1961: 155-160) illustrates this in a delight-
ful story about his Greenlandic Eskimo wife, Navarana. Navarana, outraged by
the smallness of a gift of meat she had received, responded with exaggerated
gratitude. She loaded down the unhappy donor with all of the rarest kapluna
foodstuffs in her own larder, and sent her away wailing with shame. Conversa-
tions with Jonathan Jenness (1966) concerning Alaskan Eskimos from the
Bethel area, and with Milton Freeman (1967) concerning the Canadian commun-
ity of Grise Fiord also support the observation. With regard to both Grise Fiord
and James Bay Eskimos, Milton Freeman mentioned the reverse kind of inver-
sion, as well: if A is scolding B, and C feels sympathetic with the victim, B, he
(C) will appear to take A’s side and scold B even harder than A does. This indi-
cates to B and to the rest of the world that C is really on his side. However, I
did not notice this kind of behavior among the Utku, perhaps because scolding
so rarely occurred.

Kapluna Daughter 287

 had done, Amaaqtuq accused me of lying (I assumed this was a4
reference to my telling the kaplunas that the Utku were wasting
the fish the kaplunas gave them, and I found later that I was right)
and she said that people wished increasingly that I would go
home. The letter ended, however, on a more cheering note:
“Now she’s becoming very nice (pittau), thank goodness
(quya). Sometimes she’s pleasant (quvia) and amusing (tiphi),.
She has been kind (quya) tonight during my visit.”
Pala was not alone, then, in his condemnation of my behavior,
and the disapproval was not an ephemeral thing; people still
wanted me to go home. On the other hand, that last sentence
gave me hope. Perhaps if I exerted all my will to maintain a
semblance of the equanimity I could not feel, there was a
possibility that the situation might be repaired. I began to watch
more closely the way Pala and Amaaqtuq treated me, trying to
discover signs, however minute, that would tell me how I was
regarded. And I did see things that had escaped me before. Not
only was I visited very seldom and very briefly (now I put a
new construction on this fact); I was also, in subtle ways, en-
couraged to stay in my tent. By faithfully bringing me tea every
time it was brewed, Pala and Amaaqtuq forestalled my coming
to drink it with them outdoors or in their tent, and they did
not invite me to join them as they used to do. When I did visit
in Pala’s tent, I perceived no difference in the welcoming
warmth of my hosts, but now and then I thought a smile seemed
slightly dimmer than usual; and when I asked questions, as I
often did on various subjects, the answers, though rendered
smilingly, were usually brief or evasive. More often than for-
merly, the answers seemed to be “unknown,” and I later dis-
covered that Pala had lied to me during this period, “because,”
as Inuttiaq told me, “he didn’t want to talk to you.”
I did my utmost to appear unperturbed, to appear not to notice.
And so covert were these small withdrawals that at times I
succeeded in persuading myself that they existed only in my
depressed imagination. The illusion that all was well, how-
ever, never lasted for long. I felt myself in limbo, and I fumbled
for a way to break out. I wanted to confront my punishers with
my knowledge of their feelings toward me, and to explain why
I had acted as I had toward the kaplunas, but I feared I would

288 Never in Anger

only shock them the more by my directness. I considered the
advisability of leaving on the school plane when it came; it
was expected any day. I had not intended to leave for several
more months, but since my work had come to a standstill anyway,
perhaps there was no use in staying on. There were other inner
voices, however, which told me to stay. I feared I had not
gathered adequate data for the dissertation that was supposed
to result from this field trip; and I did not wish to admit defeat
before those who had said at the outset that Chantrey Inlet was
too difficult a place for a white woman to live.
I buoyed myself stubbornly with the last sentence of Amaaq-
tuq’s letter, and I thought I did see signs that disapproval might
evaporate if my behavior warranted it. The isolation in which
I found myself was not wholly consistent. After several days
during which only smiles and tea had passed between me and
the Eskimos, suddenly, for no apparent reason, an overture
would be made: Amaaqtuq would bring her sewing to my tent
and sit with me while I worked; Pala would respond in detail
to one of my questions or would call me to tea in his tent. Relief
and joy would dissolve the oppression and convince me that I
had done right to decide to stay. Unfortunately, however, such
moments of joy were rare. I was unable to maintain the flawless
equanimity that the situation seemed to demand. As Amaaqtuq
quite justly observed, I was upset when I did not understand,
and if I showed so much as a glimmer of discomposure, if I
said, ““Too bad!” with feeling, instead of laughing, when she
confessed to being confused by my speech, it was enough to
drive her away immediately, pleading, with a warm smile, that
she was sleepy or needed to urinate.
Such incidents occurred all too frequently, and each time I
sank back into gloom. As I tried in self-protection to maintain
a clinical distance from my difficulty, it struck me that my gloom
itself aggravated the situation. It seemed to me that at times
Pala and Amaaqtuq withdrew less from my irritability than from
the depression that instantly resulted when I became aware of
my lapse. One such incident occurred when the school plane
came at the end of August without the autumn supplies of food
and fuel that I had expected, and worse, without the mail that
I had hoped for. There was still a possibility that the Catholic

Kapluna Daughter 289

 missionaries in Gjoa Haven would send their fishing boat down
to Chantrey Inlet, as they sometimes did in September, in which
case supplies might yet come; but the chance was remote, and
if the boat did not come, there would be no outside contact
until the end of November. My disappointment was intense, and
my control, I congratulated myself, was herculean; but again
it was not perfect. I joked with the pilot in a tone so aggressive
that, hearing myself, I was sure the listening Eskimos, attuned
to the tone but not to the words, could not help but hear the
anger while the attempt at humor must escape them. Again, I
felt, I had failed, I had alienated people, and before Pala and
Amaaqtuq had a chance to show their displeasure, I walked away
from them. When I withdrew, so did they, and so a vicious circle
was created. I reproached myself for being unable to reassure

“in
people with a show of warmth, but I felt none. Both the Eskimos

Se-
and I became increasingly sensitive to my acts. I grew more and
more discouraged; the others grew more and more intolerant.
Matters did not improve when the caribou hunters and their
families returned to camp. Inuttiaq and Ipuitug and the mem-

=
—
bers of their households seemed to feel just as strongly as did

rs
the members of Pala’s household that my behavior was repre-
hensible. They wrote no letters to Gjoa Haven—they could
not; the plane had come and gone—but in all the same hardly
perceptible ways they isolated me. Indeed, I felt more isolated
than I had been before they returned, since now the group whose
periphery I circled was so much larger.
The only people who treated me with favor at any time during
this period were Nilak, his wife, and his daughter. All summer
while we were camped together at the Rapids they had courted
me more than they had done at any time since my arrival at
Back River a year earlier, but toward the end of the summer
this behavior was intensified. They brought me offerings of tea,
bannock, and fish, and even asked if I would like to come to
their tent to eat, rather than being served in my tent. Niqi in-
vited me to go with her and Tiguag to gather plants for fuel, and
Nilak offered me tidbits of information on the private life of
Qawvik.
My reactions to this attention were mixed. To Tiguaqg, who
continued patiently to help me with my linguistic work, I was

290 Never in Anger

grateful, but I suspected her parents of their usual ulterior
motives: a desire for material gain. They seemed, in my jaun-
diced view, to be pressing the advantage that my social isolation
gave them to ingratiate themselves with me. After the departure
of the kaplunas, who had replenished in some small degree our
supplies of tea, sugar, and bannock ingredients, these goods
dwindled rapidly, until by early September there was almost
nothing left. Nilak’s goods diminished even faster than those
of the other households, because both Inuttiag, as an assertive
trader, and I, as a kapluna, had received more than he had in
the first place. As autumn wore on, therefore, Niqi more and
more frequently came with a cup and a hesitant smile to ask for
a “tiny bit” of my last bag of tea or sugar, or to offer me bone
toys, which I valued less than food, in exchange for one of my
last few boxes of rice. Nilak and Niqi must, justifiably, have
felt they had earned these bits of food by treating me kindly.
Nonetheless, I begrudged them; at this point whatever remnants
of cheer I felt were contained in those grains of sugar, rice, and
tea.
I resisted the kindness of Nilak and his wife for another rea-
son, too. I sensed in it a recognition, perhaps shared by both
Pala’s faction and Nilak’s, that now I was aligned with Nilak’s
family as a pariah among pariahs. Perhaps that feeling was a
figment of my depressed imagination; perhaps not; I do not
know. In any case, I began to notice parallels between the way
in which Pala’s people treated Niqi and the way they treated
me. Her isolation was similar in quality to mine and, para-
doxically, the more akin to her I felt, the more need I felt to
dissociate myself from her.

VI. A Vicious Circle: Depression and Hostility

I am not sure whether the silence that surrounded me grad-
ually increased in intensity as the autumn advanced, or whether
the new manifestations of hostility that developed were simply
a result of qaqmaq living. In any case, it was in October, after
the qaqmags were built, that I became most sensible of my iso-
lation. I was not at all sure that Inuttiaq would invite me to
move into his qaqmaq again, as I had done the year before. I

Kapluna Daughter 29]

 was not even told that the dwellings were under construction
on a point of land out of sight a quarter of a mile from the sum-
mer camp. It was Niqi who informed me, when I asked why the
tent camp was empty that day. So the relief I felt was the more
grateful when, after the dwellings had been built, Allaq came
and told me to pack my belongings so that she could help me
move—into their qaqmaq.
The difference in my situation from that of the previous year,
however, was quickly apparent. Indeed, it was partly the con-
trast with the previous year that made my isolation so striking.
The year before, Inuttiaq’s qaqmaq had been the social center
of the camp, always filled with family and visitors. Enclosed in
protective warmth, I had suffered only when people impinged
on me too much: when Inuttiaq told me to make tea or to give
Itqiliq some tobacco, or when the laughing conversation had
gone on, uninterrupted, for too many hours. This year, Pala’s
qaqmag was the social center. Inuttiaq, Allaq, and the children,
too, spent the better part of every day at Pala’s. Even Nilak and
Niqi stopped courting me and spent their time either at home or
at Pala’s. Too conscious of the meaning of this change to enjoy
visiting, myself, I sat at home most of the time in our empty
qaqmag, took detailed notes on the way my camp fellows and I
handled our hostility, wrote virulent twenty-page letters which
could not be mailed until November, and read Jane Austen. And
when the other members of the camp were served their daily
patau in Pala’s qaqmagq, I brought mine home to eat, because
there never seemed to be a corner for me to sit in, in the other
qaqmagq. On better days, the two little girls Raigili and Akla,
and the two older ones Amaaqtuq and Tiguagq, ate in our gaqmagq,
too, since Pala’s really was crowded, but they sat in a huddle
over their tray in the middle of the ikliq, giggling with each
other, and I was not included in the conversation. On particularly
bad days, they did not come at all but preferred to squeeze into
Pala’s qaqmagq. It was at this season that Niqi, popping in on
one of her flighty visits, remarked that our qaqmaq was even
colder and emptier than theirs.
Even in the early mornings when the family woke and at night
when we were preparing for bed, I was isolated. It was as though
I were not there. If I made a remark to Inuttiaq or Allaq, the

292 Never in Anger

person addressed responded with his usual smile, but I, like
Niqi, had to initiate almost all communication. As a rule, if I
did not speak, no one spoke to me. If I offered to fetch water
or make tea (which I seldom did), my offer was usually accepted,
but no one ever asked me to perform these services. I did not
realize how pointed this avoidance was until one day when we
were cooking something. I do not recall what was being made or
who had initiated the cooking; I think it likely that I had done
so, since the primus stood on the floor in front of me, instead of
in its usual place near Allaq. Nevertheless, when the pressure
began to run down, unnoticed by me, Inuttiaq turned not to me
but to Allaq: “Pump up the primus.” And she had to get up and
come over to my side of the qaqmaq to pump up the primus.
Had he spoken to me, I would only have had to lean over to do it.
Inuttiaq did not consult me when he was hungry for kapluna
food, either, as he had done the previous year. My supplies
were almost gone, but I still had a bag of oatmeal, two or three
boxes of rice, some raisins, and a little powdered chocolate,
which we drank thin and sugarless (a tablespoonful dissolved
in twenty cups of hot water). Instead of asking me, as he had
before, “Shall we make rice?” he said to Allaq, “Make rice!”
And she obeyed with alacrity, as I sat silent in my corner.
Too late I realized the dignity inherent in the Utku pattern of
authority, in which the woman is obedient to the man. I envied
Allaq the satisfaction of knowing that she was appreciated be-
cause she did well and docilely what Inuttiaq told her to do.
And sealed off, as I felt, from the life of the camp, watching it
around me as if through glass, I realized, too, with a force I had
never felt before, how vitally necessary society is to men. If
I could have gained acceptance then by abandoning my own
ways and transforming myself, emotionally, intellectually, and
physically into an Utku, I would have done so. But I still had
objectivity enough to know that the idea of “going native”
was ludicrous, that such a metamorphosis was impossible; after
all, it was my inability to be Utku in important ways that had
created my difficulties in the first place.
Invisible as I felt in the qaqmagq, the other occupants gave
evidence that they found my presence, however walled off by
their silence and mine, extremely irritating. One day about a

Kapluna Daughter 293

 week after we had moved into qaqmagqs, Inuttiaq even suggested
that when we moved into iglus later on I should be physically
walled off, to a degree. Often when Utku build their permanent
winter iglus they attach to one side a small chamber called a
higluaq in which to store the fish they net. The hiqluaq opens
into the interior of the iglu by way of a hole just big enough to
crawl through. Inuttiaq’s idea was to build such a hiqluaq for
me to live in; after I left, he would use it in the orthodox manner,
for fish storage.
To be sure, it was not always my mere presence that was
irritating. No matter how hard I tried to prevent it, every now
and then, small hostile acts slipped past the barriers I set against
them. Such an incident occurred one day when Saarak was cry-
ing for raisins. Instead of handing the box to Inuttiaq, who was
sitting beside me, so that he might pass it to Allaq on his far
side, I tossed it, in an ungracious spirit, directly to Allaq. Allaq
took a cupful of raisins and tossed the box back to my side of the
ikliq. Inuttiaq had given no sign of noticing my gesture, but
when the box landed beside me again, to my immense surprise,
he asked loudly and with distinct annoyance: “Was that tossed?”
Allaq admitted that it had been. “Like a kapluna in the house!”
said Inuttiaq in the same loud tone. I had never heard him raise
his voice to Allaq before, and I never heard him do so again.
I could count on one hand the times I had heard him speak with
such undisguised annoyance to any human being; he had done
so once to me during the midwinter upheavals, and once to
Kamik, after having endured in silence all summer long the
torments she inflicted on her sister Saarak. He must have been
hard pressed to have scolded Allaq then.
Another of the incidents that awakened me to the intensity
of the irritation I aroused also involved raisins. On this occasion
J actually knocked Saarak’s head with the box, which I held in
my hand. I had intended only to call her attention to the raisins
she was screaming for, since she was so absorbed in tearing
Amaaqtuq’s cloth parka with her teeth that she had ignored sev-
eral verbal offers, but, tired and impatient, I hit her too hard,
and she wept. Up to that moment, the day had been an unusually
cheering one. Allaq had offered to mend my boots, and both
Amaaqtuq and Tiguagq, to my astonishment, had stayed to visit

294 Never in Anger

with me, following the afternoon patau. Now, when Saarak burst
into tears at my impulsive gesture, depression washed over me
again. Tiguaq, Amaaqtugq, and Allaq all soothed her tenderly. I
should have soothed her, too, but instead, my voice cold with
discouragement at my impulsiveness, I said: “You're not hurt;
have some raisins.” Allaq silently took some raisins and handed
the box back to me with a smile. Tiguaq very shortly excused
herself and went home, and neither Allaq nor Amaaqtuq looked
at me or spoke to me for the rest of the evening. Instead, they
brought out some religious comic books and pored over them
together, while Amaagqtugq, in pious tones, described the scenes
portrayed and discoursed on moral subjects. “Niqi gets angry
(urulu) easily,” she observed. “She doesn’t listen to what the
missionaries tell us: that we should love ( naklik) others.” And
she coached Saarak in the Lord’s Prayer.
In spite of all these tensions I was still treated with the most
impeccable semblance of solicitude. I was amazed that it should
be so—that although my company was anathema, nevertheless
people still took care to give me plentiful amounts of the foods
I liked best, to warn me away from thin ice, and to caution me
when my nose began to freeze. Allaq one day made explicit
the ethos of concern. Our tea was all gone, and so was our cocoa;
we were drinking infusions of dead weeds, which we scraped
with ulus from under the shallow snow and boiled in the tea-
kettle. Bilberry bushes were my favorite; their essence tasted
a little like an exotic Chinese tea; other plants tasted more
like clean earth, but the brew was hot, and not unenjoyable. I
had asked Allaq whether in the old days, before the Utku had
access to commercial tea, they had brewed teas from these
plants, as they did now. “Very little,” she said; “only once
in a while. The only reason we do it every day now is that you
are here; we do it for you.” That was not strictly true, of course;
the other households also brewed such teas every day for their
own consumption. But the factual falsity of her statement made
its message all the more forceful: the Utku saw themselves, and
wanted me to see them, as virtuously solicitous, no matter what
provocations I might give them to be otherwise.
Nevertheless, the tensions could not help but poison even the
most courteous gestures. I wanted to go ice fishing, as I had done

Kapluna Daughter 295

 the previous year with Inuttiaq. The solitude of the open river
refreshed and soothed me after the very different solitude of the
qaqmagq. Jogging from foot to foot for warmth in rhythm with
the rise and fall of the jig in my hand, I rested my eyes on the
snowy hills and my thoughts on the kapluna world to which I
would be returning soon—as soon as the strait froze, I promised
myself. Last year Inuttiaq had seemed to acquiesce willingly
in my desire to fish. He had located and cut my fishing holes
and adjusted my line with as much care as he did his own, and
when I had caught a fish, as I frequently did, his smile had been
pleased and his words approving: “You fish well.” I had wanted
to learn to cut my own fishing holes, but so willing had Inuttiaq
been to do the job for me that I had been embarrassed to persist
stubbornly and ineptly while he stood silently by, offering now
and then to help; so I had never learned.
This year Inuttiaq was not pleased to have me accompany
him on his fishing trips. Sometimes, if I asked to come, he
would assent, but the gesture was empty. Instead of selecting
a virgin fishing spot for me and cutting a fresh hole through
the whole thickness of the ice, he reopened a hole that some-
body had used the day before. It was easier, there was less ice
to cut through, but it was also, in his view, well-nigh useless.
In Utku belief, fish do not readily come to the same hole twice.
Similarly, instead of supplying me with a fresh sliver of white-
fish tail, such as he himself used for bait, he might, on occasion,
hand me a piece that had been cut the day before and was there-
fore less efficacious. Possibly he knew that I was unlikely to
catch anything, anyway, since the sinew fishline that Allaq had
braided for me at my request was too short for use in many of
the usual fishing spots. When Allaq had handed the half-made
line to Inuttiaq to measure in arm-lengths, as he measured his
own, he had judged it completed, though it measured only five
arm spans, as compared with the seven that he required for his
own line. On the other hand, he may have forgotten the length
of my line. He certainly had forgotten it by midwinter, by which
time the unpleasantness of the autumn was past. Concealing in
a joke his wish to have my line, he suggested that he might steal
it when I left, as I was about to do. Half-jokingly, too, I re-
minded him that it was only five arms long. Inuttiaq looked at

296 Never in Anger

me with surprise, denied it, measured the line to check my as-
sertion, and laughed in acknowledgment.
In any case, that October I was convinced that Inuttiaq had
not the slightest interest in my catching a fish, that he took me
along only because it was difficult to refuse my direct request.
When he planned distant trips he did refuse to take me. ‘I am
going overland today,” he would say; “you will hurt yourself
on the sharp rocks when the sled hits them.” And he arranged
for Niqi, the other pariah, to take me with her when she went
to fish near camp.
One incident I find hard to explain, however. I feel in it a
more genuine solicitude than I felt in many of the other formal
gestures of concern that were my lot that autumn. Yet, since the
incident was never mentioned in my presence and explanations
were never given, I will never know. The morning was unusu-
ally windy, even for October. The ice was black glass, and snow
snaked, hissing, over its surface. Inuttiag, Allaq, and I had been
fishing together at the edge of the rapids, close to camp. The
rapids were never solidly frozen at any season, and this early
in the autumn there was still a large expanse of open water in
the vicinity of our fishing holes. The water was so close to us,
in fact, that had I been alone I should never have trusted the
ice. As it was, I relied on my companions’ judgment and paid
no attention. After an hour or two I was roused from my day-
dream by Inuttiaq’s voice: “Yiini! You’re going to get wet!”
Sure enough, the wind, stronger all the time, was blowing a
rapid stream of water directly toward us. In another minute it
would reach my feet. Inuttiaq and Allaq had already wound up
their fishlines and were picking up their tools in preparation
for moving to another, safer fishing spot, farther from the rapids.
I wound up my own line in haste and started after them; they
were already some distance away, walking with the swift,
shuffling slide with which Utku make their way across the bare
autumn ice. I, too, had learned never to raise my feet from the
ice as I walked, and ordinarily I managed quite well to keep
up with my Utku companions. Today, however, the fates were
against me. Perhaps the wind was unusually strong, or perhaps
I was unusually tired; my depression did consume considerable
energy. In any case, Inuttiaq and Allaq, shuffling along with

Kapluna Daughter 297

 no apparent difficulty, were growing smaller and smaller in the
distance, while I was blown three feet off course for every few
steps I took forward.
I had struggled in this way for perhaps a quarter of a mile,
camp was just opposite me to the right, and Inuttiaq and Allaq
were, I judged, another quarter of a mile ahead of me, still
moving. Suddenly, something in me gave up. I had no will
to struggle further. Dropping to my knees and lowering my head
to the ice, I crawled toward home, seething with humiliation
and rage but totally unable to stand up. Shielded by the parka
hood that fell over my face, I wept at my ignominy. After I had
gone some distance, I looked up to gauge my direction. The
camp was straight ahead, several hundred yards away, and in
front of Pala’s qaqmaq stood every member of the community
who was at home that morning. My face, my whole body, burned,
in spite of the freezing wind. I dropped my head again and
stubbornly pursued my four-legged way toward the watching
group. When I looked up again in a few minutes, not a soul
was visible. Only the dogs lay curled asleep on their chains.
I went straight to our empty qaqmaq and busied myself with
irrelevant domesticities. I was fastening a long-damp washcloth
to the outside of the qaqmaq roof, hoping that the wind would
finally dry it, when the door of Pala’s qaqmaq creaked and
Allaq emerged. But how did she get there! She had been fol-
lowing Inuttiag to a new fishing spot far down the river when
last I had seen her. She looked at me—questioningly, I thought
—as she approached, but did not mention what she had seen. I
laughed, hoping the laugh did not sound as forced as it felt.
“I almost got blown away.” Allaq laughed, too, then, and re-
plied: “The wind makes one feel like blowing away.” I asked
how it was that she was not out fishing with Inuttiaq. ‘““He sent
me home to make bannock,” she said. “Too bad (hujuujaq) I
couldn’t keep on fishing.” I wondered. Had Inuttiaq really been
struck by a sudden craving for bannock? Or was he responding
to my mishap in the way he knew best?
Unfortunately, I forced myself to laugh all too seldom. The
vicious circle that I thought I perceived in September remained
unbroken throughout October and into November. Looking back
at my notes for that period, I am impressed not only by the

298 Never in Anger

careful way in which the Utku preserved the face of our rela-
tionship but also by their occasional tentative attempts to ap-
proach me. Some of these overtures I saw at the time, as I have
said, and they gave me hope. Others I failed to see, and I fear
that my blindness was mistaken for conscious rejection. Inu-
ttiaq, within a few days of our moving into the qaqmaq, gave
me two such opportunities to participate in family life, and I was
oblivious to both of them until too late. In the first instance, he
hummed quietly, as if to himself, a tune that in other days I had
often played on the recorder. Inuttiag had loved to have me play
the recorder, and this tune, “The Tavern in the Town,” had
been one of his favorites. I paid no attention to his invitation.
He never hummed recorder tunes again. On the second occasion
his overture consisted in saying the Lord’s Prayer exceptionally
slowly one evening. The family often repeated it at bedtime,
but usually Inuttiaq led it at top speed, mumbling the words
under his breath so that they were doubly incomprehensible.
This time every word was distinct. It was the first time Inuttiaq
had conducted bedtime prayers since we had moved into the
qaqmaq. Five months had passed since I had last heard him;
consequently the unusual quality of his enunciation failed to
register until he had reached the last sentence. I resolved that
on the next evening I would join in. But next evening, and on all
succeeding evenings, he recited the prayer in his usual rapid
mumble.

VII. Reconciliation

October dragged into November, bringing no change in my

situation. The men were waiting for the strait to freeze so that
they could go to replenish our long-exhausted supplies of tea,
flour, and tobacco. I waited for mail: mail from home, and per-
haps even more important, mail from Gjoa Haven. After reading
the letters written by Pala and Amaaqtuq to Nakliguhuktuq and
Ikayuqtug in August, I had written to Ikayuqtug, myself. Though
I did not confess the source of my information, I told her that
I was afraid she would hear unpleasant reports of me from the
Utku, and that I wanted her to know my version of the story.
I told her, in brief, that my attempts to protect the Utku from

Kapluna Daughter 299

 the inroads of insensitive kaplunas had, I thought, been mis-
interpreted by the Eskimos, and that the latter were unhappy
to have me stay longer with them. I said I hoped that she, know-
ing the ways of kaplunas better than the Utku did, would be
able to explain my irascible behavior to them. There had been
no reply from Ikayuqtuq; the Catholic boat had failed to appear
in Chantrey Inlet in September, just as I had feared. Now,
however, finally, there would be word from Gjoa Haven, and I
had confidence that Ikayuqtug and Nakliguhuktugq, already so
understanding, would help me again.
There was another reason, too, why I waited impatiently for
the strait to freeze. Buoyed as I was by the hope of Ikayuqtuq’s
intervention, I had nevertheless decided that as soon as a plane
could reach us I would leave. I had planned to stay until January
or March, but the exhaustion that had grown in me as a result
of the autumn’s events made me fear for the winter, the more
so as the strain was beginning to take physical toll. And my
resolve to leave had been strengthened by the cheerfulness
of Inuttiaq’s acquiescence. I had therefore written a letter to
send out with the men to the priest in Gjoa Haven, asking him
to arrange by radio for the government plane to come and pick
me up.
For all these reasons, when finally one frozen dawn I stood
outside the qaqmaq and watched Inuttiaq’s and Mannik’s sleds
disappear into the north, my spirits leapt. A physical weight
was lifted; I could breathe freely, knowing that within two weeks
_ (Niqi said six days, but she was foolish) the men would return he
with reassurance and that within a month (two at the most) I
would be on my way back to the kapluna world where a person
could snar] a little without disastrous consequences. I was ebul-
lient. Had I dared, I would have hugged Allag, who stood beside
me. As it was, I channeled the joy into generosity. “Shall I
make some oatmeal? Shall I help you sew Raigili’s new parka?
Do we need some water?” I had not felt such good will for
months. The effect of my new cheer on the others, moreover,
confirmed my suspicion that my depression had created a vicious
circle. Allaq, and others, too, responded, it seemed to me, with
much more warmth than at any time in recent weeks, and I was
Eo a

300 Never in Anger

too euphoric to notice whether or not it continued to be neces-
sary for me to initiate our conversations.
Inuttiaq and Mannik returned ten days later. They had lost
their route in bad weather on the way home and had bypassed
the fifty-pound flour sack full (Inuttiag emphasized “full’”’)
of my mail, which had been left for them to pick up on a certain
promontory two-days’ travel north of our camp. “It can be
fetched later this winter if the foxes don’t destroy it,” said
Inuttiaq reassuringly. But the response the men brought from
Ikayuqtugq and from Nakliguhuktug surpassed my most sanguine
expectations; it made even the missing mail seem, for the mo-
ment, a paltry disappointment. Inuttiag reported: ‘““Nakliguhuk-
tuq says that the kaplunas almost shot us when Yiini was not
there.” He turned to me: “Did you write that to Nakliguhuktuq?”’
I denied it; and later in Gjoa Haven Nakliguhuktuq denied hav-
ing made such a lurid statement to Inuttiag. But I did confirm
the gist of Inuitiaq’s report.
The effect was magical. That night after Inuttiaq and the
children were asleep, Allaq’s voice came out of the dark. “The
kaplunas almost shot us?” Again I denied it, but exulting in the
long-denied opportunity to explain my behavior, I told her what
I had written to Ikayuqtuq and something of the reasons for my
anger at the kaplunas. Allaq’s response was a laugh of surprise:
“So that was it!”
She must have repeated to Inuttiaq what I had told her, be-
cause at midday next day, when I came home from fishing with
the children, Inuttiaq immediately began to interrogate me on
the moral qualities of the various fishing guides who had brought
parties to the Inlet during the summer, and for two days, off and
on, he and other members of the camp continued to ask me for
information about them. The wall of ice that had stood between
me and the community dissolved. People talked to me volun-
tarily, offered me vocabulary, included me in their jokes and in
their anecdotes of the day’s activities—and Inuttiaq informed
me that next day he and I were going fishing together.
With a suddenness and a completeness that astonished me, I
was renewed. I expanded in social approval and regretted only
that it was improper to hug these people who had accepted me

Kapluna Daughter 301

 once more. Still, one fear laid a sobering hand on my joy—the
fear that a misunderstanding might occur again. It cautioned me
not to ask too many of the questions that Utku found so imperti-
nent; it adjured me not to relax such control as I had over my
volatility; and it caused me to tense with trepidation when I
asked Inuttiaq if I might, after all, stay until after Christmas.
Would it make them unhappy (hujuujaq)?
My fear was not eased when I saw Inuttiaq’s odd expression.
Was it only the untoward directness of the question, or did he
have reservations? He hedged: “Why?”
“T think sometimes I’m difficult (ayuqnaq).”
“In what way?”
“Am I inconvenient (ihluit) in the iglu?”
Inuttiaq was hard pressed, I think, but he replied nobly: “You
are not very inconvenient (ihluit). You are not inconvenient.
You may stay because you help people a great deal with kero-
sene.”
That Inuttiaq was not wholly happy to have me stay seemed
clear. Being father to a kapluna was difficult, I knew it, and his
tactful reply could not conceal it. I had other evidence of his
feeling, too. There was the remark he made, suddenly, when we
were both sitting, silently working, on the ikliq: “I think you’re
a leader in your country.” The remark had no obvious context;
it must mean, I thought, that Inuttiaq had never reconciled him-
self to my intractable behavior. There was the slightly wild
look that I caught in his eye when I said I thought that I might
someday return to Back River. The look vanished when Allaq
explained that I meant to return after I had been to my own
country, not merely to Gjoa Haven. “Eeee,” he said then, “we
will adopt you again—or others may want to: Nilak, perhaps”
—he laughed—“or Mannik, if he marries.”
But there were more positive feelings, too. I still remember
with happiness one afternoon in late November, shortly after
we had joined the rest of the Utku at the winter camp in Amujat.
The iglu was filled with visitors, and the hum of the primus,
on which tea was brewing, mingled with the low voices of Inu-
ttiaq and his guests. I knew every detail of the scene even as ]
bent over my writing, and I paid no attention until suddenly
my mind caught on the sound of my name: “I consider Yiini a

302 Never in Anger

member of my family again.” Was that what Inuttiaq had said?
J looked up, inquiring. “I consider you a family member again,”
he repeated. His diction was clear, as it only was when he
wanted to be sure that I understood. And he called me ‘‘daugh-
ter,” as he had not done since August. “Eeeeee.” It was little
enough to reply, but perhaps he heard the gratitude in my tone.
There is another memory, too. Inuttiaq and Allaq and I were
alone in the iglu. Inuttiaq had asked me whether other “learn-
ers,” like me, might someday come to Back River. I asked
whether they would be unhappy if others came. Inuttiag replied:
“We would be happier to have a woman come than a man—
a woman like you, who doesn’t want to be a wife. Maybe you
are the only acceptable kapluna.”
Allaq’s feelings about me as the time of my departure neared
were not so clear. When I repeated to her the question I had
asked Inuttiaq, whether it would be inconvenient if I stayed,
she reassured me: “You're only inconvenient when we move.”
And when Inuttiaq one day heard me inquire the meaning of a
very simple word and asked me whether I had learned the
Eskimo language imperfectly, Allaq salved the discomfiture
that I had tried not to show. “You know other words,” she
said. And next day, when she and I were sitting alone in the
iglu, she repeated to me a complimentary remark that she had
heard the previous winter about my ability to speak Eskimo.
She talked with me on subjects that no one else felt free to
discuss, laughed about her former shyness (ilira) of me, and
shared jokes and reminiscences with me in a way that seemed
quite in accord with my own affection for her. In all ways, she
seemed more at ease with me than were any other members
of the community, except perhaps Inuttiaq and Saarak. Still,
it was a remark of Allaq’s that precipitated my departure.
Since December I had been trying to decide whether to leave
in January or in March. Inuttiaq advised March, because there
would be less danger of my freezing on the long dogsled trip
(I had given up the idea of summoning a plane to take me out).
There was another reason for his preference, too, namely that
my heavy load of gear would be less burdensome in March,
because the lengthened days would shorten the trip, but he did
not stress this thought. “If you prefer to leave in January,”

Kapluna Daughter 303

 he said, “we will take care of you then, as well as in March, and
we will try to keep you from freezing.”
I was torn with indecision, and when neighbors asked me my
plans I always put them off: I was waiting for a letter about
money; I was going to take a long walk in the winter air to test
my resistance to frostbite before I decided; or I simply did not
know. People stopped asking, but they did not stop watching for
the little signs that would indicate the way my thoughts were
tending. They read my mind before I knew it myself. Allaq was
particularly acute. I caused hearty laughter one day in Pala’s
iglu by remarking, as I entered, that the entrance passage stank.
“That's because you're going home soon,” said Allaq. “You
didn’t used to think it stank.” A little disconcerted, I hastily
explained: it was only because one of the pups had had diar-
rhea there. Allaq noted also that my aversion to raw whitefish
seemed greater than the previous winter. Whitefish was a nox-
ious fish in almost everybody’s view, but it was the winter
staple, and the year before I had eaten it as stoically as others
did. This second winter I lacked appetite unless there was sal-
mon trout, caribou, or fox in the larder, and Allaq explained
this phenomenon the same way: “It’s because you’re going home
soon.”
A voice told me that Allaq was right, that I was, indeed,
releasing my hold, little by little, on Eskimo things and drawing
my own ways of life around me again, as the kapluna world
began to seem real and attainable once more. True, in some ways
the arctic world also seemed to have acquired an added vivid-
ness. I savored, even more than I had before, the gentle Eskimo
voices, the peacefulness of the iglus on their moonlit slope,
the wolf-howl of huskies, and the intensity of the winter silence;
but the very poignancy of my perception seemed to confirm
Allaq’s impression that my departure was nearing.
On the other hand, I suspected that Allaq’s vision might be
sharpened by her own wish that I should leave. To this day, I
am not sure which of us made the decision that I would leave in
January. It came about in the following way.
Inuttiaq and Mannik were planning a trading trip to Gjoa
Haven in early January to replenish the kerosene supply. The
fuel was almost gone, and we were eking out the last gallons

304 Never in Anger

by burning papers, stray bits of wood, and expendable clothing
in a stove made from an oil drum sawed in half. The men said
they would leave as soon as we finished eating a caribou that
had been fetched from one of the autumn caches. I had still
not decided whether I would accompany the men, when one
day I noticed that both Allaq and her sister Amaruq were ab-
sorbed in sewing. “Your traveling furs,” they explained. “So
they will be ready for you.”
At this news, the fear that had never quite died—the fear of
another change in the emotional climate—was reawakened. Did
Allaq perceive that I was eager to leave, more eager than I
myself knew, or was it she who wished me to leave? Watching
her with the suspicious alertness of anxiety, I could not be sure.
Once in a while I thought I caught a glimmer of hostility. On one
or two occasions, in pouring tea for the family, Allaq forgot to
fill my cup, and her laughter, when I remarked on the omission,
seemed to my ear as excessively hearty as her laughter on
another occasion when she had caught herself neglecting to offer
Niqi a cigarette. I heard an unaccustomed stridence in her laugh-
ter also on another occasion, when I castigated myself, jokingly,
as a “bad kapluna’”’ for cutting the back instead of the belly out
of a fish I was gutting. On the other hand, her friendliness dis-
armed me, so that I chided myself for letting imagination run
wild. I puzzled, until one day a remark that Allaq made to Niqi
tipped the balance, and I resolved, finally, to leave. Allaq and
I were alone in the iglu when Niqi popped in on one of her brief
visits. Allaq, standing on an oil drum by the door, was scraping
the night’s accumulation of frost feathers off the ice window, a
morning routine, while I sat, writing as usual, on my corner of
the ikliq across the way. Nigi, making conversation with me, re-
marked, as people occasionally did, that Utku would be unhappy
(hujuujaq) after I had gone. Such remarks were delightful to
hear, and though I reminded myself that the words were prob-
ably more gracious than sincere, still I somewhat shamefacedly
allowed myself to be flattered. I was taken aback, therefore,
when Allaq, perched on her oil drum above Niqi, murmured: “I
don’t think we’ll be very unhappy.” After Niqi had gone, I asked
Allaq, in a general way, how people felt when others went away:
ought people to remain happy (quvia)? Allaq laughed. “No,” she

Kapluna Daughter 305

 said. ‘People are usually unhappy (hujuujaq) when others go
away, especially if they know they are not going to see them
again. Of course, they are sadder at first than they are, later.”
I pressed the question, then, indiscreetly focusing it again on
myself. “You just told Niqi that people wouldn’t be unhappy
when I left.”” Allaq covered herself beautifully, as I might have
known she would do. “I was joking. It’s only because you are
eager to leave that we won’t be sad (hujuujaq); because you are
growing unhappy here.” She laughed. “Are you growing un-
happy?” She laughed again, a merry laugh in which I joined,
cooperating with her effort to assure me that she was joking.
Then she continued, seriously: “We will be unhappy when you
leave—more at first than later. I speak truly. And I think Saarak
will be more unhappy than Raigili.”
We left a week later: Inuttiaq, Mannik, Ipuitug, Qawvik, and I;
it took that many to carry my several hundred pounds of gear.
Allaq proffered last tidbits of data even as she helped carry my
things out to the sled. And when Inuttiaq’s team was harnessed
and the other sleds were already sliding out across the river,
she came and silently, in a most unusual gesture of farewell,
clasped my hand. My mind went back to the only other farewell
handshake I had seen. It was the parting of the old man Piuvkaq
with his adopted son when Piuvkaq had mistakenly thought the
government plane was taking him away to the hospital, probably
to die. I, too, might never return, though I had said I would
like to, if I could.
Pala also gave explicit recognition to my departure and,
doing so, sharpened my sense of separation. “So you are going
to Gjoa Haven,” he said. “If you don’t freeze, you should be all
right (naamak).” And Niqi echoed him: “Don’t freeze or be
cold.” The other women who stood on the slope were silent.
Inuttiaq motioned me to the sled and with a tug at the anchor and
a sharp-breathed “ai!’’ released the team. We slid down the slope
in the wake of the other sleds, Inuttiaq running alongside to
steer with pulls and shouts. I looked back. Pala, Allaq, and the
others were black shapes on the dog-stained slope with its domes
of snow—motionless, still watching. “The neighbors,” said
Inuttiaq. He waved, and I waved, too.
The last parting of all was with Inuttiag. He and Ipuituq had

306 Never in Anger

come to visit me on their last evening in Gjoa Haven. I had just
moved into one of the small stone iglus that had been built by
a former priest for the use of his Eskimo parishioners. The
temperature inside was still close to sixty below zero, and my
primuses were both solidly frozen. Inwardly cursing at them, at
my ineptitude, at the temperature, at life in general, 1 was strug-
gling to discover what ailed the stoves when the door creaked
open and Inuttiaq’s head appeared; Ipuituq’s smiling face was
close behind. “Cooooold!” Inuttiaq observed. “Shall I do that?”
Not waiting for my answer, he took the icy primus out of my
hands and showed me how to hold it over a storm lantern until
it thawed. I was astonished at the strength of the love and grati-
tude that I felt for him at that moment—grief, too, that next
morning he was leaving. I would have left Gjoa Haven before
he came back to trade again. “Eat!” I said. “Are you hungry?”
They were, of course, and Inuttiaq offered Ipuituq’s services in
heating up the various cans of kapluna meat that I had bought.
My gratitude overflowed into words, too. “I will be sad (hu-
juujaq), I think, when you two leave, because you have helped
me very much.” The two men ate in silence, but after we had
finished and we were drinking tea, Inuttiaq said: “I, too, will
be sad (hujuujaq), I think, when I first leave here. The iglu is
going to be wide.” “I, too,” said lpuitugq. They recounted the
purchases they had made that day and recalled the homes they
had visited and what they had eaten. The teakettle was empty.
“T have to pee,” said Inuttiaq. “I’m going out. I’m going out,
and in the morning I’m leaving.” Ipuituq followed him out with-
out a word or glance.
I had letters from Back River twice before I left Gjoa Haven in
March. Allaq said: “Saarak asks where you are and mistakenly
thinks you will come soon.” She and Inuttiaq both said: “I didn’t
think I’d care (huqu, naklik) when you left, but I did (naklik).”

Kapluna Daughter 307

Appendixes Glossaries References
 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

The preceding narrative has illustrated some of the ways in

which Utku communicate affection and hostility and the ways
in which they attempt to control the improper expression of
such feelings in themselves and in others. In this appendix
] shall draw together more systematically the kinds of behavior
that are classified under the various emotion terms that have
occurred in the text.
The narrative makes it clear that Utku do not classify emotions
exactly as English speakers do; their words for various feelings
cannot in every case be tidily subsumed under our words:
affection, fear, hostility, and so on. Nevertheless, in order to
make it easier for the kapluna reader to locate the various kinds
of emotion to be discussed, in several cases I have clustered
the Eskimo emotion terms under rubrics that correspond to our
English categories of emotion, at risk of doing violence to the
Eskimo ways of conceptualizing feelings. Nine emotions or
emotional syndromes (“syndromes” at least in the view of an
English speaker) are described: affection; kindness and grati-
tude; happiness; ill temper and jealousy; humor; fear; anxiety;
shyness; and loneliness. In addition to these emotional con-
cepts, several other terms that occur in the text are described.
Three of these are evaluative terms, expressions with a wide
range of meaning, which occur in the narrative. The last term to
be discussed is the concept of reason and its various ramifica-
tions. This is included, because it is of major importance in
understanding the emotional reactions of the Utku. In each case
the relevant Eskimo words or concepts are presented, and in-
sofar as data are available, the discussion of each term includes:
1. a verbal definition of the term, that is, what I was told when
I asked what the term meant;
2. behavioral definitions of the term, that is, the behavioral
contexts in which the term occurs in spontaneous speech;
3. an indication of the classes of people to whom the term ap-
plies—who expresses a particular emotion and toward whom—
where variation was observed;
4. attitudes toward the emotion and its various expressions;
5. some of the ways in which the emotions are conceptually
interrelated.

311
 My aim is to define, in a preliminary way, a situation for future
study, and it should be emphasized that the glossary presented
here is tentative and incomplete. The data were not obtained
systematically, but rather experientially, since my problem was
not clearly formulated until after I returned from the field. No at-
tempt was made to record a complete emotional vocabulary,
and there are gaps in the data regarding the terms I do have, as
well. In a few cases I do not have verbal definitions for the
terms, and where I do have them, in most instances they are
derived from statements of only one or two informants; I did
not systematically sample to find out how much consensus
there was. Moreover, my informants may have tailored their
definitions to my limited vocabulary more than I was aware at the
time. It may be owing in part to these circumstances that the ver-
bal definitions I recorded tend to be narrower than the ranges
of meaning found in spontaneous speech. Although I think
verbal definitions do naturally tend to be narrower than be-
havioral ones, since one is not normally aware simultaneously
of all the situations in which one uses a word, nevertheless it is
quite possible that some of the distinctions I have drawn be-
tween the verbal and behavioral definitions of a term would
not be sustained, given more systematic data.
With regard to the situational contexts in which the terms oc-
curred, the data are also uneven. Since I heard some terms used
far more commonly than others, I had more opportunities to
record behavior associated with these terms than with others.
And it is an open question whether the kinds of behavior as-
sociated with a term vary according to the class of person who
is acting. Do children express unhappiness (hujuujaq), for ex-
ample, or the wish to be with a loved person (unga) differently
from adults? In sum, the complete behavioral and conceptual
meanings of the terms—the distinctions and _interrelation-
ships among them—have yet to be determined.
A word needs to be said, also, about the way in which my point
of view and the Utku point of view are mingled in the presenta-
tion in this appendix, as compared with the narrative. In the
narrative I presented both points of view. When the Utku ex-
plicitly labeled an act with an emotion term, I stated in the text
what that label was; but I sometimes wrote of an act as expressing
“affection,” “‘hostility,” or some other emotion, when [| in-
tuitively understood it as such, even though I did not know how
the Utku would classify the act. Though oversights are unavoid-

312 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

able, I tried throughout to make clear whether a statement was
made from my point of view or that of the Utku.
In this appendix I have limited the discussion to situations
in which an Utku term and a certain behavior were explicitly
associated as, for example, when Saarak hit her mother with a
spoon and Allaq asked her: “Are you angry ( ningaq)?’’ However,
even here, my point of view is mingled with the Utku view not
only in the way I have clustered the terms but also in the way
I have categorized the contexts in which a given term occurs.
For example, when I say below, in the section on Loneliness,
that “unpleasant physical conditions” or “being thwarted in
one’s intentions” make one feel hujuujaq, I am making judg-
ments about the cues to which Utku react in becoming hujuujaq,
and these judgments have not been checked against Utku state-
ments. However, when I say that the absence of a person one
loves makes one hujuujaq, this is based on Utku statements.
Here, as in the narrative, I have tried to state explicitly the
sources of my statements. To find out in every case precisely
what aspects of a situation Utku are reacting to when they label
it with one emotion term or another is a project for the future.
Finally, the picture presented here should be investigated
comparatively. I do not yet know to what extent Utku patterns
of emotional expression are also characteristic of other Eskimo
groups. On the basis of anecdotal accounts to be found in Eskimo
literature, which ranges geographically from Alaska to Green-
land and historically from first contact with European culture
to the present, one gains the impression that, broadly speaking,
considerable consistency is to be found. But pending more sys-
tematic research, the reader must suspend judgment, or measure
what I write against his own knowledge of the behavior of
other Eskimos. Discussion of emotion terms follows.

Affection
The first feelings to be discussed are those comprised, more
or less, by the English concept of affection. I recorded six terms
that bear on what I call “affection.” These can be glossed briefly
as follows:
unga: to wish or to arouse the wish to be with another person;
niviug: to wish or to arouse the wish to kiss or touch another
affectionately;

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 313

 aqaq: to communicate tenderly with another by speech or by
gesture (other than touch);
iva: to Hie next to someone in bed, with connotations of
affectionate cuddling;
huqu: in certain contexts, to heed; to respond, with nurturant
connotations, but see also the section concerning Anx-
iety;
naklik: to feel or to arouse concern for another’s physical or
emotional welfare; to wish or to arouse the wish to be
with another. (Of the terms commonly used to express
positive emotion, this one is used in the widest range of
situations.) !
As indicated by this terminology, the Utku distinguish at
least three different aspects of feeling within what we call
“affection,”2 namely (1) the desire to be with a loved person;
(2) demonstrativeness: the desire to kiss, touch, or express
tenderness verbally; (3) protectiveness: the desire to take care
of the physical and emotional needs of another. For the reader's
convenience, I will cluster the terms to be discussed under
these rubrics. However, it should not be assumed that the terms
fit tidily under these headings. Naklik has connotations of
“wanting to be with” as well as of “protectiveness”; and niviugq
may also connote “wanting to be near another person” as well
as wanting to touch or kiss; and the terms for demonstrative
1. Most of the terms discussed here are not, properly speaking, words; they are
not units that stand alone in speech; they are combining forms, most of which
occur as bases of verbs: niviuqtug: “he/she expresses the desire to kiss or
touch”; niviugnagtuq: “he/she/it arouses the desire to kiss or touch”; and so
on. I have treated these bases as words so that they might be more easily in-
corporated into English sentences; and sometimes I have attached English ele-
ments to them (aqaqs, aqaqing), for the same reason. Three exceptions to the
above statement are: nutaragpaluktuq: “he/she seems a child”; ihuma: “mind,
thought, reason”; and ayuqnaq: “it is difficult or impossible.” These three con-
stitute words in themselves, though they may also appear as elements in other
words.
2. Let me stress here, as in the beginning of this appendix, in referring to
these Utku concepts as “‘aspects” of the overarching concept of “affection” I am
grouping them according to the scheme imposed by English speakers. My data
on the interrelationships that the Utku themselves see among these concepts
are still fragmentary. Moreover, it is possible that more than three “compon-
ents” will emerge when a complete emotional vocabulary has been obtained
from the Utku.

314 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

behavior (aqaq and iva) can express naklik, and perhaps unga,
as well as niviuq feelings.
(a) The desire to be with a loved person (unga)
The verbal definition of the term unga and its spontaneous
usage coincide. When Saarak cried in the absence of her mother
or father; when Ukpik decided to stay at home instead of re-
turning to boarding school; when Raigili, after her baby sister's
birth, refused to sleep by herself—next to her father, as before,
but under separate quilts—they were said to feel unga. And
when Uyuqpa stayed in bed beside his seriously ill wife instead
of going about his ordinary business, he explained his behavior
to me, saying: “A wife makes one feel unga.” But unga is not
necessarily a response to the absence or threat of absence of a
loved person. Inuttiaq’s children were said to unga him, to want
to be with him, because he was never annoyed (urulu) with
them; in this context his absence was not at issue.
It was almost always in the context of relationships within
the extended family, the ilammarigiit, that I heard the term
unga, and most often it referred to feelings between parents
and children.? I do not know whether unga feelings are con-
sidered a natural ingredient in a marital relationship; nor do I
know how many husbands would admit to having such feelings,
as Uyugpa did. Uyuqpa was an unusually expressive man and,
like Niqi, was disliked for this characteristic. In reference to
the parent-child relationship, however, people spoke openly
of unga feelings on the part of both parent and child. And such
feelings may remain extremely strong even when a child is

3. On one occasion I heard a pious adolescent girl say, with feeling, that the
deacon, Nakliguhuktuq, “made one feel unga”; but she added quickly: “One
feels that way only about his teachings.”
David Damas (1963:48-51) has glossed the term unga as “affection” in the
Iglulik dialect; it is one of the two key concepts that he uses in his analysis of
the logic of the Iglulik kinship system, the other being “obedience (nalar).”
According to the Iglulik, relationships among certain categories of kin, such as
siblings and cousins, are characterized primarily by unga feelings, and the re-
lationships between other kinds of kin, especially certain classes of affine, are
characterized by nalar feelings. It is possible that if I had inquired systemati-
cally along these lines, I might have found a similar pattern among the Utku,
although, partly because of different marriage customs, I do not believe that the
distribution of unga and nalar feelings among the specific categories of kin would
be identical with that found in Iglulik.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 315

 grown. Pala, speaking of his half-grown and adult children,
remarked: “They unga’d their mother more than me when she
was alive, but now it’s only me they unga.” After my departure,
when Tiguaq married her betrothed, Mannik, and moved with
him to Gjoa Haven, Nilak planned to follow: “Because he
ungas his adopted daughter.”
(b) Demonstrativeness (niviuq, agaq, iva)
When I asked what niviug meant, I was given the synonym:
“to want to kiss.” As used in spontaneous speech, the con-
cept also seems to include the wish to touch or to be physically
near someone. For example, the day Raigili tried repeatedly to
join her family on the cliffside, Inuttiaq said, “If we send her
on any more errands she’ll think we don’t niviug her.” Raigili
was past the age of being kissed; Inuttiaq meant that she would
imagine her family did not want her to be near them.
In general, it is children under the age of three or four who
inspire niviug feelings: when they first respond with smiles
and gurgles to social overtures, and when they first begin to
imitate adult behavior, walking, talking, and “performing”’ on
demand the other motions that adults teach them. Littleness
seems to be a central characteristic of objects that are con-
sidered niviuqnaqtuq. In addition to babies, a great variety of
small things, both live and inanimate, may produce niviug
feelings; newborn puppies (especially when there are no small
children in the household), baby birds, a doll’s dress, even the
inch-long slips of paper on which I recorded vocabulary—
people used the term niviug in connection with all these things.
Old people, on the other hand, explicitly do not make one feel
niviug. Allaq occasionally used to tease the very charming
(niviug) Saarak by saying to her: “You don’t make me feel
niviug; you're an old lady.”
Infants tend to be niviug’d, to be treated with affectionate
attention, by everyone, regardless of degree of kinship, though
close relatives may be more demonstrative than others. Chil-
dren past infancy tend to receive such attention primarily from
members of their ilammarigiit: parents and grandparents, aunts
and uncles, siblings and cousins. Of my acquaintances only one
old man, Qavvik, was demonstrative to all small children, re-
gardless of how distantly they were related to him. Pretty chil-
dren are said to be more charming (niviuq) than others are, and
people are more demonstrative to them than to others. In the

316 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

absence of prettiness, however, other infant characteristics may
arouse niviug feelings. Thus, Allaq, speaking of a neighbor’s
baby, who had a large nose, large, protruding eyes, and a bad
case of cradle cap, remarked: “He doesn’t make one feel very
niviug; only his little voice makes one feel niviug.”’ The tape-
recorded sounds of my newborn kapluna nephew, drinking a
bottle, were also described as niviug by the listening Utku.
Utku consider that it is in the nature of a child to wish to
elicit demonstrative attention, to be niviug’d. When a small
child behaves self-consciously, bouncing coquettishly, making
“cute” faces, or “showing off” (as we would call it) in other
ways, people remark: “He is being a child; he wants us to show
him affection (niviuq).” Adults sympathize with this wish,
encourage and indulge it for the first few years of a child’s life.
The rationale is that the child lacks reason (ihuma). But as a
child grows older and loses its baby ways, it stops making other
people feel niviug. And ultimately it stops wanting to be
niviug'd, a development that I think the Utku view as con-
comitant with the growth of ihuma, but my data on this last
point are scanty.
An interesting point concerning the demonstrativeness shown
to children who are at the niviug age is that in spite of its un-
restrained quality it is highly patterned. I have mentioned that
children at this age are kissed, cuddled, and cooed at by every-
one. The Utku word for this cooing is aqgaq; and aqaqing takes
several characteristic forms. Two of these are common to all
Utku; any Utku aqaqing a baby may nod repeatedly at it or may
say tenderly: “Ee eee!” or “Vaaaa!” People are quite conscious
of these aqaging patterns, and I was once asked: “What do
kaplunas do when they aqaq a child?” a question to which I
could not give a satisfactory general answer. There are also other
forms of aqgaqing which are strictly dyadic. These consist of
phrases, each of which is characteristic exclusively of the re-
lationship between two people, the person aqaqing and the per-
son aqaqd and expresses the affectionate bond between them.
Mannik, for example, when aqaqing Saarak, repeats one endear-
ing phrase again and again: “Niviuqnaqtujuuuulli (you are
kissable)”; the vowel is drawn out tenderly. But when he
aqaq'd Raigili as a baby, he used a different phrase: “Oooo
Raigili oo Raigili oo Raigili,” sung to the tune of “The Farmer
in the Dell.” Other aunts and uncles use different endearments
when addressing the same children, but each always uses the

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 317

 same endearment to the same child. And the individual nature
of each endearment is enhanced by the fact that it is always
said in the same tone of voice. If one heard only the tone re-
produced, say, on a tape, deleting the syllables themselves, one
could tell which phrase was being “said.”
Utku are as consciously sensitive to these dyadic aqaqs as
they are to the more general ones: the nods and the “ee eee’’s.
Allaq showed me this when she taught Saarak to repeat, with
proper words and tones, the endearments by which the latter
was addressed, just as she taught her to recognize the kinship
terms appropriate to the various people around her. Occasion-
ally, such endearments may even replace a kinship term as a way
of addressing or referring to a person. Thus Raigili refers to
Qawvik as “my nonni-nonni,’ because his endearing phrase
for her is: ‘““Nonni nonni; nonni nonni.” And the phrases that
have been used as aqaqgs are remembered for years after the
children concerned have outgrown aqaqing. Allaq told me what
her brother Mannik’s agaqing phrases had been for each of
their younger siblings, ten to fifteen years earlier.
Often aqaqing is, as I have said, an expression of niviuq feel-
ings. In fact, aqaqtuq (he/she aqaqs) was given me as a syno-
nym for niviugtug (he/she niviuqs). And it is the children who
are most charming (niviuq), as described above, who are most
aqaq’d. Everything I have said above about who niviugs whom
applies to aqaqing. However, small children are aqaq’d not
only when they are behaving in the self-conscious ways that I
have described as wanting to be niviuqg’d, but also in other
circumstances. Saarak was sometimes agaq’d when she had
=
screamed herself into a frenzy; when she first showed signs of EE

developing sulky behavior; and when she was lying in bed,

fast asleep. Moreover, the term aqgaqing is also applied some-
times to the matter-of-fact-sounding expressions of approval
that are addressed to older children. Allaq, for example, re-
marked one day to Raigili, who was chattering away on the
ikliq: “Raigili talks a lot; it’s nice (ihluaq)”’; and when I asked
Allaq what she had said, she replied: “I aqaq’d her.” But
whether all expressions of approval and liking are labeled aqaq-
ing I do not know.
In the last cases described, I am not sure what Utku term
would be used for the feelings expressed by the agaqing be-
havior. There are still other cases in which I think that aqaqing
is an expression of naklik feelings, but my evidence for this

318 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

is ambiguous. It consists partly in the fact that the word
“naaaaaklingnaqtuq” (naklik) was often said in a voice that
sounded to my ear like an aqaqing voice, an affectionate, cooing
voice. Twice, people associated agaqing behavior with the word
naklik, but both instances admit of other interpretations. One
was the occasion on which Nilak nodded aqaqingly at his ado-
lescent daughter, Tiguaq, in the distance. His wife, Niqi,
watching him, said to me, “He feels naklik.” But the simple-
minded Niqi was often “confused” or “mistaken,” as others
told me; she tended to make causal connections that were
laughable to her neighbors. In the other instance, I had been
trying to explain to Inuttiaq the meaning of the word “comfort”
in the Bible. I said, “If you help up a child that has fallen and
aqaq it, that is ‘comforting’ him.” “Oh,” said Inuttiagq, “it must
mean “feeling naklik’.” But he may have been responding to the
“helping up,” rather than to the “agagqing,” when he defined
the situation as naklik.
The last term to be discussed under the heading of demon-
strativeness is iva. I do not have a verbal definition for this
term. As used in spontaneous speech, iva means to lie next to
someone in bed under the same covers, and it almost always
connotes a gesture of affection (naklik, niviug, unga). Small
children are iva’d (cuddled) by their parents and usually by
most other close relatives, as well, being carried from iglu to
iglu or from tent to tent in the mornings, to be tucked into bed
with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Sometimes when
a child is displaced from its mother’s side by a younger brother
or sister the father may continue to iva the child, as Inuttiaq
did for Saarak on the birth of Qayaq. Often, however, some
other older member of the household: an older sibling, an uncle,
or an aunt, may take over the role of cuddler. In some cases, it
is said that the person who ivas a child as a substitute parent
“adopts” him, that is, the iva relationship itself constitutes a
sort of “adoption,” developing into an especially close bond,
which persists into adulthood, beyond the period when the
actual ivaing occurs. Ordinarily, the cuddling itself gradually
comes to an end as the child loses its niviuqg (kissable) quali-
ties. The youngest child in the family may lie under the same
covers with its elders for a much longer period than other
children. Pala’s ten-year-old daughter, Akla, as I have said,
still slept under her father’s quilt. Whether this was defined
as ivaing, however, I do not know.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 319

 As might be anticipated, a small child’s desire to be iva’d
is treated warmly and indulgently, and I think to iva a child is
considered good, naklik (protective) behavior. Even quite small
children may cry to iva their baby brothers and sisters. When
Saarak cried to iva Qayaq, Allaq, though reluctant to comply
from fear for Qayaq’s safety, nevertheless remarked with ap-
parent pleasure that Saarak was behaving “like an older sister,”
that is, feeling naklik toward her baby sister.
Most of the talk about ivaing concerns children. However,
when husbands and wives lie together under one cover, as they
usually do, that is also called ivaing.

(c) Protectiveness (naklik, huqu)

The most important of all the aspects of affection is that of
protective concern. I recorded two terms that denote such con-
cem: huqu and naklik.4 Huqu will be discussed in the section
on Anxiety.
The term naklik, as I have said, seems to have the widest
ramifications of any of the terms used for positive emotions. The
central meaning of naklik appears to be “protectiveness.” I
judge this partly because when I asked people what the term
meant, I was always told that it referred to the desire to feed
someone who was hungry, warm someone who was cold, and
protect someone who was in danger of physical injury. I judge
it also on the basis of the fact that the term seems to occur
spontaneously in protective contexts more frequently than it
occurs in other contexts. Often the protectiveness referred to
is of the physical sort elicited in the verbal definitions of the
term. Sometimes one hears the term used in reference to an ear
or a hand—a part of a person—that is in danger of freezing.
More often, however, it is an individual as such who arouses
naklik feelings. During my first winter, people responding to
my annoyances or explaining why they performed services for
me often said: “Because you are alone here and a woman, you
4. I had originally included also a third term, kama, under the rubric of pro-
tectiveness. In the intransitive form, kamahuktuq, the word means to respond
physically: to hear, to be alert. When a dog pricks up its ears to listen, it is said
to kama(huktuq). In the transitive form, kamagijaa, the word, like huqu, can be
glossed as: to heed, to respond, with nurturant connotations. However, since
I heard this transitive form only in a religious context, and therefore only in the
Baffin Island dialect that is used for religious speech, I have decided to omit it
until I find out whether it has been incorporated into the Utku dialect, or whether,
like some other religious words, it is used with little knowledge of its meaning.

320 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

are someone to be naklik’d”’; or: “Because you lack skill (ayuq),
you are someone to be naklik’d.”’ Allaq, watching from a distance
while Saarak struggled to put on her sock, or while Raigili tried
to carry a heavy kettle of water up the beach, said: ‘““She makes
one feel naklik.” Naklik feelings are given as reasons for taking
care of the ill, for adopting orphans, and for marrying widows,
all categories of people who are in need of physical assistance.
And the term was chosen by missionaries to translate the Biblical
“love,” a protective concept. As the Utku say: “Because God
nakliks us, if we do what he wishes, he will save us from Satan
and from burning in hell.”
The verbal definition of the term is limited to physical pro-
tectiveness. Imaginary and social dangers, for example, a child’s
fear of strangers who, in the parents’ judgment, have no intention
of attacking, are explicitly excluded. But in spontaneous speech
protectiveness in a broader sense may be referred to, too. If a
child who is perceived as being still small enough to lack rea-
son (ihuma) cries or mopes in the absence of someone he loves
(unga); if he screams or swats at people when his wishes are
interfered with; or if he is distressed for any reason whatsoever,
people say: “Naklingnaqtugq (he makes one feel naklik).” And
Pala used the word in this larger sense when he said of his
daughter Akla: “She makes one feel naklik; she ungas me very
much.” Here the naklik response seems to be a reaction to
emotional rather than physical need.
In the contexts so far described, both physical and emotional,
it may be that “pity” is the appropriate gloss for naklik. Indeed,
when I told Ikayuqtuq about the incident I have just recounted,
she translated as “poor little thing’ the word naklingnaqtuq,
which I have translated as: “She makes one feel naklik (pro-
tective).””
The term also occurs in situations in which protective con-
notations of any sort are obscure, as, for example, where naklik
feelings are adduced in explanation of name-avoidance prac-
tices.5 In still other cases, protectiveness may be a part of the

5. Name avoidance refers to the practice of habitually avoiding the names of

certain individuals, instead addressing or referring to the latter by kinship
terms or by circumlocutions: “the old man,” “my cousin,” “that one.” In the
Utku case, as the text makes clear, the motive is said to be a feeling of affection
(naklik) or shyness (kanngu) toward the person whose name one avoids. In Utku
ideology there are no particular kin relationships in which this behavior occurs
more regularly than in others; people do it toward “anyone, if they feel like

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 321

 feeling that is expressed but, it seems to me, by no means the
whole of it. Inuttiaq, for example, listening to a tape-recorded
story told by his absent daughter, Kamik, said, “She makes
one feel naklik.” Allaq named her baby for one of her younger
brothers who had drowned, “Because I naklik’d him very
much.” She had “adopted” this brother, had cuddled (iva)
him in bed after the birth of his younger sibling, and this fact
was associated with naklik feelings toward him, which lasted
throughout his life and beyond. In these situations it seems to
me that naklik, in addition to the protective connotation, also
has connotations of “wanting to be with.” The latter aspect of
the naklik concept is most clearly seen in the idea of “loving
(naklik) too much (-pallaagq-),” which was described in the nar-
rative (Chapter 1, section V). As Inuttiaq put it: “I love (naklik)
Saarak and Kamik a little bit more than I love Raigili and Qayaq.
I love them too much. When I am away on trips, hunting or
trading, I want to see them. I sleep badly. When Kamik is
away at school I miss her; it makes me feel uncomfortable
(ihluit, naamangngit) ... People don’t like to feel uncomfortable.
If one doesn’t love (naklik) too much it is good.”
The ramifications of the naklik concept become more evident
when naklik is seen in relation to other emotion terms, as in
the last example and in those that follow. Naklik occurs in some
of the same contexts as niviuq: “to want to kiss.”’ I have men-
tioned, for example, that the endearments (aqaq) that are cooed
at small children who arouse niviug feelings sometimes contain
references to the naklik, as well as to the niviuq, qualities of
the children. And once when Amaaqtugq and I were walking the
dogs of our respective households to a new camp, and one of
her dogs persisted in running close beside her, now and then
rubbing against her and looking up at her, she kicked him away
and laughed: “He thinks, mistakenly, that he arouses naklik
feelings.” This situation, too, seems to me similar to a situation
in which niviuq was the term used: when mosquitoes lit on
Allaq’s arm, and she laughed, “They feel niviug toward me.”
I do not know yet, however, whether Utku consider these situa-
tions parallel, or whether they make distinctions among them
that are invisible to me. Niviuq and naklik are sometimes clearly
distinguished. Small children, Allaq told me, are both niviug

it.” I do not rule out the possibility that there are regularities, indeed, it seems to
me probable that there are such, but in my small sample I could observe none.

322 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

(kissable) and naklik (one wants to nurture them), but. in general.
puppies are only naklik, not niviug. Only in households where
there are no small children are puppies sometimes niviugd
(kissed and cuddled).
Naklik often occurs in opposition to terms expressing anti-
social feelings and behavior. In fact, almost any antisocial be-
havior or any offender may be described as naklingnangngittuq
(not naklik), or, with characteristic euphemism, naklingnaq-
luangngittuq (not very naklik).¢ Acts that are particularly liable
to be so labeled are those of stinginess, greed, a reluctance to
help or to share with others, and expressions of bad temper,
ranging from silent sulkiness to violent outbursts, as we shall
see in the discussion of ill temper and jealousy, below. In other
words, naklik behavior is a major criterion of human goodness,
and in this sense it is a central value of Utku culture.
Ideally, in the Utku view, a good person, that is, a person
whose behavior is characterized by protectiveness, who is
helpful, generous, and even-tempered, will demonstrate these
qualities to all people, even to strangers, kaplunas, and so on,
not just to his close kin. In this sense protectiveness is a uni-
versal value. It is universal also in that everybody—not Utku
alone, but any human being except the youngest of children—
is judged by the extent to which his behavior measures up to
this ideal. Small children are thought to feel unga, to want to
be with people they love, but they only gradually begin to love
in a nurturant (naklik) way, a development that I think the
Utku associate with the growth of ihuma (reason).
In the universality of its applicability, protectiveness (naklik)
differs from the other aspects of affection: wanting to be with a
person (which, as we have seen, may also be expressed by
naklik or by unga), and wanting to kiss or cuddle a person
(niviuq). These latter aspects of affection are expressed and, I
think, felt primarily within the ilammarigiit. To be sure, in the
details of its expression there are differences between the way
the protective ideal is applied to people in general and the
6. It is possible that such condemnations on occasion refer to the feelings of
the observer, rather than to the undesirable behavior or its perpetrator. In other
words, the meaning of naklingnangngittuq may sometimes be not “that behavior
is unprotective,” but rather “that behavior doesn’t make me feel protective.”
Often, however, the meaning is unambiguous, as, for instance, when a person
says: “The missionary says we should behave protectively, should love (naklik)
one another, but ‘those people’ (for example, the neighbors) don’t do that (nak-
lingnangngittut).”

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 323

 way it is applied to one’s own ilammarigiit. I have described
some of these differences in Chapter 4. The only naklik quality
that one must express with rigorous universality in order to
avoid criticism is even temper. One should be mild and sociable
with everyone, and never under any circumstances angry or
resentful. With regard to sharing with and helping others, the
ideal, stated in its broadest form, is also universalistic. No
distinction is made between ilammarigiit and others; one should
help everyone. As Inuttiaq once said to me: “I know you believe
in God, because you help everybody, not just a few people, but
everybody.” However, a person is not expected to help or share
with everyone equally. All that seems to be required in rela-
tions with people outside one’s ilammarigiit is that one never
refuse a request (requests made of people outside one’s ila-
mmarigiit are always modest in the extreme) and that one volun-
teer a little help, as needed, or a small share of whatever one
has that others have not. In reality, the universality of the
sharing-and-helping ideal is diluted still further by the ten-
dency for relations between ilammarigiit to be unfriendly. By
and large, the ideal of even temper is not strictly achieved in
reality, either. Though, as the narrative has shown, Utku tend
to be far more restrained than kaplunas in their expressions of
hostility, they do gossip a good deal about members of ilammari-
giit other than their own. The gossip mostly focuses on the
un-naklik qualities of those families: their jealousy, greed,
stinginess, unhelpfulness, or bad temper, while confidently
asserting the naklik virtues of one’s own kin.
The high value that is placed on loving (nakliking) and being
loved (naklik’d) makes the ambivalence toward these situations,
to which I referred earlier, particularly interesting. I have
mentioned the feelings of loneliness experienced by the person
who loves “too much.” The discomfort of the person who is
loved may be more closely related to the protective aspect of
the naklik concept, more precisely, to the conflict between
nurturant (naklik) feelings and behavior on the one hand and
the value placed on self-sufficiency and independence on the
other hand. In theory, as I have said, the people who are most
to be protected are the helpless (ayuqtut): small children, sick
people, the elderly, and others who are unable to cope by them-
selves, either through lack of material means or through lack
of knowledge of the environment (like lone female anthro-
pologists). Small children, and even infants too young to under-

324 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

stand, may be soothed when they cry or sulk by being assured
that they are “someone to be taken care of (naklingnaqtut).”
But as a child grows he becomes, in theory, “a little less someone
to be naklik’d.” And Utku adults are not, I think, as often re-
assured explicitly that they are naklik’d, perhaps for fear of
embarrassing them. Utku do seem to recognize that adults, too,
have a wish to be naklik’d. Inuttiaq, away from camp on a
two-week trading trip, expressed this in the note that he sent
back to his family: “You who remain behind (pai) are people
to be naklik’d.” On the whole, however, it is discomfort about
being naklik’d that is uppermost in discussions on the subject
with adult Utku. Various Utku agreed explicitly and strongly
that an adult does not wish to be an object of concern to others,
does not wish to be naklik’d. Allaq blushed when I asked
whether wives were naklik’d by their husbands. “A little bit,”
she said, and then added quickly, “but mostly it’s the children
who are naklik’d.”” She blushed also when she told me that her
father had naklik’d her very much even after she had grown up,
and again she added quickly, “But it’s all right now; he has
stopped nakliking me so much.”
Such feelings about being naklik’d may partially explain why
Utku often deny or minimize physical and emotional pain, with
a smile and an assurance that they are “all right.” 7 It was Ikayuq-
tuq who gave me some insight into the dynamics of this stoi-
cism, but I think her reasoning may be similar to that of Utku.
She told me that one of several reasons why Eskimos in hospital
do not like to tell the medical staff that they are in pain is that
“they are grateful to the staff who are helping them to get over
their sickness. They know the staff are worried enough about it;
why let them know they are unhappy and have a pain, and make
them still more worried.” And on another occasion, explaining
why she had not talked to me about the death of her baby son,
she said: “I used to get lonesome when I was a little girl and
used to cry when I went to bed without letting my grandparents
[with whom she lived] know, because I loved them so much...
If they found out I was unhappy they might get sad and... pity
me, and lots of Eskimos don’t like to be pitied ... If I knew I
made you sad...I was going to be sadder still and sorry for
myself...” Here it appears that a person who does not wish
7. See also the section on Reason, below.
8. These quotations are taken from letters written in English; the Eskimo
terms are not available. The relationship between the concepts of “pity” and

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 325

 to be naklik’d, with all that this implies of dependence and
pity, may switch the situation around so that he becomes the
nurturant (nakliking) person, protecting others from the sadness
that they would feel if he allowed them to feel nurturant (naklik)
toward him. The same kind of reasoning, I think, explains, in
part, the remarks my Utku friends made when talking about my
departure: “We will miss (hujuujaq) you when you first leave,
but it will be all right (naamak); only Saarak will be unhappy
(naamangngit), poor dear (naklingnaqtuq).” I think people
may have been reassuring me that I need not feel protectively
concerned (naklik) for them when I left, thereby transforming
into concern (naklik) for the three-year-old Saarak and for me
their own wish not to be an object of concern.

Kindness and Gratitude

The concepts of kindness and gratitude are related to the con-
cept of nurturance or protectiveness (naklik), which we have
been discussing, in that one of the qualities of a person who
is nurturant (naklik) is kindness. Put in other words: he inspires
gratitude. The Utku express both of our English concepts of
gratitude and kindness by one term: hatuq,® which in the form
hatuqnag can be rendered by the one gloss: “inspires gratitude.”
I do not have a verbal definition for the term hatuqnagq, but
the word occurs frequently in everyday speech, referring some-
times to a quality of a situation and sometimes to a quality of a
person. Many different kinds of situation make one feel grateful
(hatuq). One is grateful (hatuq) when one is materially helped,
or when a difficult interpersonal or physical situation in which
one is involved is eased. When one has good luck in hunting,
when one is given food, fuel, clothing, tool materials, or any
other object that is desirable or necessary; when sleds run easily
over smooth snow or ice, instead of having to be tugged and
naklik in Ikayuqtuq’s thinking, however, is indicated by her translation of the
word naklingnaytuq as “poor little thing” (page 321 above).
9. Another term, guya, is also in frequent use, but the Utku consider this a
Netsilik term. In my data, the Utku use quya in all the same contexts as hatugq,
and the two terms appear to be close, if not complete, synonyms. One datum
seems to indicate that the Netsilik, who also use both terms, consider hutug a
stronger expression than quya. When the weather is good, or when one catches
a fish, one says in Netsilik, ““Quyanaq (it makes one grateful),” whereas ifa loved
relative comes home safely from the hospital, one says, ‘““Hatuqnaq (it makes one
grateful).” But the Utku do not appear to make this distinction.

326 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

hauled through soft snow or jagged ice; when people whose
presence is undesirable leave, or when a loved person returns;
when people who have behaved badly mend their ways or make
amends, one feels grateful ( hatuq).
The connection between nurturance (naklik) and gratitude
(hatuq), which was mentioned above, lies in the nature of the
personal qualities that “inspire gratitude.” In order to be con-
sidered kind or as “‘one who inspires gratitude” a person must
not only respond freely to requests, but must also offer help
spontaneously, on occasion, in the form of goods or services.
And in addition it is important that he be even-tempered,
thereby demonstrating that he is not frightening (kappia, iqhi,
ilira), so that one need not hesitate to ask help from him. It is
apparent that the Utku concept of “kindness” is considerably
broader than our own, and that the label is more difficult to earn.
Often the feeling of gratitude will be expressed verbally.
“Hatuqnagq (it makes one feel grateful)!’ one will exclaim. But
the Utku, like other Eskimos, place a high value on reciprocity,
so when it is a person who has inspired gratitude, the latter
feeling is very often given material as well as verbal expression.
The person who is grateful (hatuqtuq) will give a gift to the
person who has helped him or will offer to perform some service
for him.

Happiness
The last emotion to be considered in this complex of highly
valued feelings is happiness (quvia). Happy feelings are not
only pleasanter to entertain than are unhappy ones, they are
also a moral good in a sense that, I think, is not true for us. I
shall elaborate on this point below.
I did not obtain a verbal definition for the term quvia but
have glossed it as “happiness”; it occurs as a translation for
this word in the Eskimo religious literature. The term occurs
frequently in spontaneous speech, both as an expression of a
person’s own feeling and as a judgment on other people’s be-
havior. People who laugh, smile, joke, and enjoy telling stories
are judged to feel guvia, and they are said to rouse quvia feelings
in others. Enjoyable experiences as diverse as listening to music,
dancing, playing, fishing, chasing lemmings or stoning ptar-
migans, traveling (under good conditions), visiting with pleasant
company or being with a loved person, being physically warm,

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 327

 and eating are all described as “making one feel happy (quvia-
naqtuq).” It is interesting that in one instance happy (quvia)
feelings were expressed, smilingly, as a ‘‘wish to cry.” The
reference was to a tape of opera music that I sometimes played.
Inuttiaq and Amaaqtuq enjoyed the tape very much and re-
quested it often: “Play the music that makes one want to cry.”
Ordinarily, crying is defined as angry (qiquq) behavior.
Happy (quvia) feelings contrast with the unpleasant feeling
of loneliness (hujuujaq) and with disapproved feelings such as
hostility (ningaq, urulu, huaq, qiquq). Happy (quvia) behavior:
smiling, joking, a liking for sociable conversation and story-
telling, is a sign to others that a person is not angry. It is in this
sense that happiness is a moral good.’ I was told that if a person
feels happy (quvia) all the time he lacks reason (ihuma), but in
general a person who feels quvia is a good person; he is safe,
not frightening; one need not feel kappia, iqhi, or ilira with
him. By the same token, the person is probably kind (quya);
the two terms, quvia and quya—together with two others:
tiphi (amusing) and pittau (good)—very often occur in con-
junction in descriptions of liked people. On the other hand, a
person who is kind (quya), who makes one grateful, is not
necessarily one who makes one happy (quvia). This distinction
was made in the case of the kapluna fishermen who visited us.
They were said to be kind (quya) because they gave us clothes,
food, and trade goods, but they did not make the Utku feel
very quvia, because their company was not very agreeable.

Ill Temper and Jealousy

Having discussed some of the highly valued emotions in Utku
culture, I now turn to one of the most disapproved feelings:
hostility. As a warm, protective, nurturant, even-tempered
person represents the essence of goodness, so an unkind, bad-
tempered person represents the opposite. Expressions of ill
temper toward human beings (as distinct from dogs) are never
considered justified in anyone over the age of three or four;
and even when one expresses hostility toward dogs one must
defend it as a disciplinary action. The Utku, moreover, define
unkindness and bad temper more broadly than we do, and
condemn it far more stringently, with the result that bad temper
10. “He is a happy person” is an expression of approval among the Alaskan
Eskimos of my acquaintance, too.

328 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

and aggressiveness are two of the first qualities that they notice
about us, as indicated, for example, by the stories that children
bring back from boarding school. In the Utku view, kaplunas
are about as bad-tempered as the dogs from which they con-
sider we are descended.!!
I recorded five terms that refer to aspects of bad temper’?
and one term that has hostile meanings among a wide variety
of others. These terms I have glossed as follows:

huaq: to aggress verbally against another; to scold;

ningaq: to aggress physically against another; to feel or
express hostility; 8
qiquq: literally, to be clogged up with foreign matter;
metaphorically, to be on the point of tears; to feel
hostile;
urulu: to feel, express, or arouse hostility or annoyance.
The term may also be used as an expression of sym-
pathy at the misfortunes of others;
piyuma: to want something, often with connotations of
jealousy, envy, or greed; |
tuhuu: to want for oneself a possession or a skill belonging
to someone else; to want to participate in another's
activities or life situation; or to rouse such wishes;
hujuujag: to be unhappy because of the absence of other peo-
ple, or to rouse such unhappiness; to feel or provoke
other unpleasant feelings, including hostility. This
term will be discussed in the section on Loneliness.
11. In this connection it is interesting to compare the opinion obtained by
Rasmussen (1931:128) from an old Netsilik Eskimo: “It is generally believed
that white men have quite the same minds as small children. Therefore one
should always give way to them. They are easily angered, and when they cannot
get their will they are moody and, like children, have the strangest ideas and
fancies.”
12. Again I am creating an overarching category, “bad temper,” which may
be foreign to the Utku; I have not recorded an Eskimo term that subsumes the
others recorded here.
13. As indicated earlier in the footnote to Chapter 1, I discovered on my
second visit to the Utku that ningaq really means only: to aggress physically
against another. There is another base, ningngak, which means: to feel or ex-
press hostility. At the time this book was written, I did not realize that there
were two words. Consequently, the reader should bear in mind that wherever
the base ningaq occurs in the text it may represent either the word ningaqtuq
(he fights) or the word ningngaktug (he is angry). In no instance do I know which
word was actually used by the Utku speaker.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 329

 As the terms indicate, the condemnation of bad temper applies
to a variety of behaviors, ranging from physical aggression
(ningaq) to silent withdrawal (qiquq). I will discuss the be-
haviors associated with each term in turn.
(a) Verbal abuse (huaq)
The term huaq refers to verbal abuse, which may be directed
either against people or against dogs. I lack a verbal definition
for the term, but in practice it is used quite broadly; almost any
sort of criticism, other than that which is expressed explicitly
as a joke, is labeled ‘“‘verbal abuse (huaq).’’ Rasmussen (1931:
461) gives “scolds” as the intransitive meaning of the verb
huaq-(suak- in his orthography) and “shouts commandingly to
him to do this or that” as the transitive meaning. My experience
agrees with Rasmussen’s intransitive meaning, but I found no
difference between the transitive and intransitive senses of the
term. The term can be used transitively, as well as intransitively,
to refer to criticism rather than to commands. And the voice is by
no means always raised. Sometimes it is, and a raised voice is
almost always taken as an indication that the speaker is huaqing,
but on the other hand, criticism expressed in a conversational
tone of voice will also be considered huagqing, if it is addressed
to the person who is being criticized and if annoyance is assumed
to motivate the criticism.
Huagqing behavior is, on the whole, frowned on; it makes other
people feel unhappy (hujuujaq), annoyed (urulu), and sometimes
frightened (kappia, iqhi), because the huaqing is considered
to express feelings of annoyance (urulu). Occasionally, however,
the word is used in a positive, disciplinary context. It is all
right to huaq dogs. “Everybody does it,” people said, “it makes
them behave.” And Inuttiaq warned me in one or more of his
lectures that if people did bad things, like losing their tempers
or not obeying him, then Nakliguhuktuq would come and huag:
“It will be frightening.” In the same context, he told me that
people who answer back when they are huaq’d don’t go to
heaven. But I was not actually given a scolding. No reference
to my own behavior was made in the lecture; I was free to
make my own inferences. The wish to “scold,” that is, to criticize
directly, was attributed to a third person who was 150 miles away
in Gjoa Haven and who was not really very likely to appear.
Positive attitudes toward scolding (huaq) appear rather in-
frequently. Even in a disciplinary context, people tend to feel

330 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

negatively toward the idea of scolding. Thus, for example, when
Nakliguhuktuq baptizes an Utku child he tells the parents that
they should “teach (ilihaq) the child; don’t scold (huagq) him.”
To be sure, Nakliguhuktug is not an Utku, but Inuttiaq and Allaq
repeated his words with approval. And the Utku very rarely do
seem to huaq children. I make this statement tentatively, be-
cause I do not know whether the annoyed tone of voice that I
have called a “moo,” which is often addressed to children, is
considered huaqing. I do not know, either, whether remarks
intended to shame children into self-control are defined as
huaqing. In any case, only a few disciplinary incidents that I
knew to be labeled huagqing occurred. In Inuttiaq’s household I
heard only two scoldings that I knew to be so labeled. One
was delivered by Inuttiaq to his daughter Kamik during the sum-
mer after her return from Inuvik. As I have said, she appeared
to be intensely unhappy at home on her return in the spring,
and she showed it in a number of antisocial ways: '* she consist-
ently pretended to be deaf, so that she could not hear the re-
quests her parents made of her; she was as sulky and demanding
of her mother as a small child; and worst of all, she tormented
her sister Saarak by grabbing her toys, stepping on her foot
till she screamed, and so on: unheard-of behavior toward a
small child. Her parents had overtly ignored much of this,
only occasionally teasing Kamik about her deafness or mooing
at her when she made Saarak cry. But finally, one day toward the
end of the summer, when she had made her sister scream with
rage, her father huaq’d her, telling her that she was unfem-
inine and out of her mind.
The only other instance of scolding (huaq) that I observed in
Inuttiaq’s household was administered to Raigili. She too had
offended by being annoyed with Saarak, whereupon Inuttiaq
told her, in a firm but not loud voice, that she should not con-
tinually get annoyed (urulu) at her little sister. The family’s
discomfort about this incident was evidenced later when I tried
to find out the exact words used in the scolding, some of which I
had missed. Allaq (with whom I was alone) refused, with ap-
parent embarrassment, to tell me exactly what Inuttiaq had said
to Raigili. I noted embarrassment about huaqing also one day
when I was being given a lecture on the Bible. The story was
that of the money changers who were driven out of the temple.

14. This case is described in more detail in my appendix to Hobart (1965).

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 331

 “Jesus huaq’d them,” said Inuttiaq; then he added immediately:
“But he only did that once. The money changers were being
very bad, very bad, and refusing to listen to him.” One of Jesus’s
godly virtues is that he never scolds (huaq), never gets angry
(ningaq, urulu). Huaqing is antithetical to the protective (naklik)
behavior that is so highly valued—and that is also one of Jesus’s
central virtues, as seen by the Utku. Ordinarily, the only people
who huaq’d other people (as opposed to dogs) were the ones
who were known and disliked for their bad tempers: Nilak, Niqi,
Uyugqpa, and myself. My impression is that even when people
shout at dogs “to make them behave” some discomfort is felt.
I judge this from the defensive way in which such behavior is
explained: “Everybody does it. Everybody.”
(b) Physical aggression (ningaq)
As the term huaq expresses the idea of verbal aggression, so
ningaq expresses the idea of physical aggression, fighting. The
term is applied to a variety of such behaviors: angry flailing on
the part of a small child; a physical fight observed between two
kaplunas; Jesus whipping the money changers; and, in the most
violent of all contexts: “If God ever ningagqs, he will destroy the
world.”
The term occurs also in situations in which no actual physical
aggression has taken place, but in which it is clear that anger is
felt. For example, when Rosi screeched in response to her grand-
mother’s teasing pokes, the latter asked her, “Are you ningaq?”
When I angrily accused Inuttiaq of lying one day during our mid-
winter upheavals, he asked me whether I was ningaq. And one
of the complaints that Pala and Amaaqtuq made of me the next
summer in their letters to Gjoa Haven was that I ningaq’d
easily [though I had never attacked anyone physically]. On one
occasion, Allaq used the term ningaq to denote a feeling, rather
than a form of behavior, a feeling whose presence explained
giquq (“clogged”’) behavior: “Whenever people are ningaq, they
qiquq.” Possibly the implicit assumption is that a person who
feels ningaq will sooner or later show it in aggressive acts—a
likely assumption considering the Utku belief that angry thoughts
can kill, simply of their own force. The wish to harm, in other
words, is as real, as potentially lethal, an attack as a physical
assault.
It is no wonder that Utku heartily fear and condemn angry
(ningaq) feelings and behavior. Anger is not only incompatible

332 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

with affection and nurturance, the highest values; it can also
kill. As I have said, among adults there are no situations that
justify ningaq feelings or behavior, no people, Utku or other,
toward whom it is permissible to express them. The Utku dis-
tinguish, however, between two kinds of anger (ningaq) in terms
of their causes. If a person is frequently angry (ningaq) but gets
over it easily, this is a sign that he has very little reason (ihuma);
he is like a child. A child’s frequent tempers are a sign that his
ihuma is still not developed. In the smallest children, ningaq
may be greeted with amusement, or even, on occasion, jokingly
encouraged, as in the case of the mock “hitting” game that Rosi
and her grandmother played. On the other hand, if a person is
angry (ningaq) for long periods of time, if he nurses ningaq
thoughts “every day, every day,” as Allaq said, this is owing to
his having too much ihuma. My impression is that this latter
type of ningaq is more frightening, and that it is primarily the
latter that is thought to cause death."
(c) Being clogged up (qiquq)
The terms gigug (to be clogged up) and urulu (to feel annoyed)
dis-
seem somewhat vaguer in their scope than the two so far
only a sign of in-
cussed, though perhaps this vagueness is
is applied to objects
sufficient data. Qiquq in its physical sense
which
such as iglu ventilators, fishing holes, and primus nipples,
have to be cleaned out. In
get, quite literally, clogged up and
most often labeled giquq in
its emotional sense, the behavior
withdra wal: sitting with head
my experience was sulky, silent
g or rejecting
lowered or turned away from company; ignorin
g to answer questio ns; leaving a
friendly overtures; refusin
are also labeled
gathering precipitately. Signs of imminent tears
aggress ive behavio r may also be defined
qiquq. Whether openly
definitions that I ob-
as giquq I do not yet know. The verbal
term in its emotional sense were “very urulu”
tained for the
and “ningaq.”
to be motivated by
As I have said, giquq behavior is thought
is that it is associated
angry (ningaq) feelings, but my hunch
with anger caused by
very largely with childish anger, that is,
that have to do with ill temper:
15. My impression is that the other concepts
all associated with too little ihuma, rather than with
huaq, giqua, urulu, are
this point. For further discussion of
too much; but my data are not adequate on
associ ated with various states of ihuma, see the section
attitudes toward anger
on Reason, below.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 333

 having too little, rather than too much, reason (ihuma), and that
it is therefore less feared than some other kinds of behavior as-
sociated with anger. The word was applied frequently to the be- é
havior of children and of Niqi, who was like a child. It was also
applied to my behavior, as I learned when I read the letters Pala
and Amaaqtuq wrote at the time I was ostracized. People refer to
qiquq behavior as urulu (annoying, or too bad), tiphi (funny),
hujuujaq (unpleasant), and not-quvia (also, unpleasant); I never
heard it called kappia or ighi (frightening).
(d) Annoyance (urulu)
Urulu is the hardest to define of all the terms I recorded for ill
temper. Whenever I tried to elicit a definition I was consistently
told: “It means ‘unsmiling’.” The exclamation “Urulunag (it’s
annoying; it’s too bad)!” is very frequently heard and can be a
response to a great variety of situations, including unpleasant
physical conditions (bad weather, tiring work), and being
thwarted in one’s wishes or activities (losing a knife, spilling
one’s tea). The tone of the exclamation belies any hostility or
irritation implicit in the verbal content. If the reference is to
an untoward event in one’s own life the tone will probably be
cheerfully matter-of-fact; if the reference is to events in another's
life it will be sympathetic or, again, matter-of-fact. Even when it
is a third person’s misbehavior that draws the comment, the
person commenting—always behind the offender’s back—
usually appears to express regret, rather than genuine annoy-
ance, when he says, “Urulunaq!” He may in fact be annoyed, but
annoyance does not show in the conversational manner with
which he says, “Urulunaq!” and I am intuitively convinced
that the exclamation is viewed neither by the speaker nor by his
audience as an admission of ill temper. My reason for this as-
sumption will be clearer in a moment.
The base urulu- occurs also in another word: urulujug, which
I translate as “he/she is annoyed,” as distinct from the more
impersonal urulunaq: “it is annoying.” “ Urulujuq,” in contrast
to the exclamation “Urulunaq!” is an accusation, a description of
another's behavior, rather than a comment on the speaker's
feelings about the situation; it may be uttered in a disapproving
tone, with eyes narrowed in a gesture of criticism, always, of
course, in the absence of the offender. The accusation seems
to
be sparked by behavior that is classified under all three of the
terms for ill temper so far discussed, that is, by both verbal
and

334 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

physical aggression and by withdrawal. When Nilak scolded his
wife; when Raigili sulked or when she surreptitiously pinched
Saarak and made her cry; when Niqi made a separate kettle of
tea for herself instead of joining her neighbors when they
drank theirs; or when she gave Amaaqtuq (of whom she was
jealous) an inferior portion of the boiled fish she was distributing,
people whispered behind the offender’s back: “He/she is an-
noyed (urulujuq).”
The exact nature of the conceptual difference between the
term urulu on the one hand and the terms huagq, ningagq, qiquq,
and hujuujaq on the other is still unclear to me. Next to hujuujaq
(which will be described in the section on Loneliness) urulu
seems to be the broadest of the terms I recorded for negative
emotions. It is possible that urulu refers to an emotion, which is
thought to underlie the behavior described as “scolding (huaq)”
and “clogging (qiquq).” And in contrast to ningaq, which may
refer either to a feeling or to behavior, my intuitive impression
is that urulu is a milder word. But all of these possibilities
need to be explored further.
One fact that is clear is that Utku tend to deny to others and,
I think, often to themselves the existence of their ill-tempered
feelings. And we will see in the section on Humor that denial
of urulu feelings is explicitly taught to children. Urulu feelings
and behavior, like the other manifestations of ill temper that have
been discussed, are opposed to affectionate feelings (naklik,
unga, and niviuq). Allaq once in a while used to tease Saarak,
saying: “You don’t make one feel niviug, you make one feel
urulu.” Inuttiaq’s children were said to unga him because he
felt naklik toward them and never urulu. Niqi, on the other
hand, “gets urulu easily; she doesn’t listen to what the mission-
aries tell us, that we should naklik others.” It is significant that
among adults I recorded the expressions urulu(juq) and qiquq-
(tug) only in the third person: he/she is annoyed/clogged. I
never heard it in the first person, and never in the second
person either, except when an adult was lecturing a child who
was out of sorts. Ningaq(tuq) (he/she is angry) was also recorded
almost entirely in the third person. The one exception was the
midwinter crisis mentioned earlier, when Inuttiaq asked me
whether I was ningag. The question, normal enough in my own
culture, struck me as extraordinarily bald after months of living
with Utku indirection, and I read it as a sign of Inuttiaq’s des-
peration in the difficult situation I had created.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 335

 It is the contrast between this unwillingness to admit genuine
annoyance and the apparent ease with which people exclaim,
“Urulunag (too bad; it is annoying)!” that makes me think the
exclamation is not viewed as a real expression of annoyance. The
same form, urulunag(tuq), may, however, occur without being an
exclamation, in which case it does refer to real annoyance, and
the discomfort about expressing such feelings is again in evi-
dence. I quote again, more fully this time, the statement that
Allaq once made when I asked her which of her children she
loved more, Saarak or Raigili: “Sometimes they’re both lovable
(naklingnaqtuk) and sometimes they’re both annoying (urul-
unaqtuk): Everybody gets annoyed at children sometimes,
and everybody: Maata, and I, and everybody—except Inuttiaq.”’
Her defensiveness was notable.

(e) Jealousy and greed (piyuma, tuhuu)

I have included a discussion of jealousy, envy, or greed
(piyuma, tuhuu) with my discussion of terms denoting bad
temper, because greed and envy are forms of aggression, and in
the Utku scheme of things jealousy, like bad temper, is antitheti-
cal to the protective, nurturant (naklik) behavior that is so highly
valued, and like bad temper its presence is denied in oneself
and in one’s close kin. One hears remarks like the following,
always referring to members of ilammarigiit other than one’s
own: “He feels tuhuu; he doesn’t listen to the missionary; the
missionary says we should feel naklik. We don’t feel tuhuu;
we're all right.”
Piyuma means, literally, to want a thing or an act. The expres-
sion occurs sometimes in a neutral sense: “Do you want to
trade?” “Would you like some tea?” and sometimes in a positive
moral context: “God doesn’t want us to do that.” Sometimes,
however, it appears in the sense of greed or jealousy: “Nilak
is always wanting, wanting, wanting, because he’s jealous
(tuhuu) of what we have.”
I do not have a verbal definition of tuhuu. The term occurs in
a variety of situations in which a person wants something that
belongs to somebody else: his skill (for instance, his knowledge
of English), or his possessions (his fishhooks, his food, or his
wife). It refers also to the wish to participate in another’s ac-
tivities: a hunting trip or a game. It is mostly adults outside
one’s own ilammarigiit who are accused (as always, behind
their backs) of feeling tuhuu. I am not sure whether children

336 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

are thought to feel tuhuu sometimes, too; my data on this are
contradictory. In any case, among adults two kinds of behavior
are especially likely to evoke tuhuu accusations. If a person asks
too often to trade or to be given small gifts, others outside his
family will gossip that the demanding person feels tuhuu.
Or if a person derogates the possessions of another, the same
accusation may be made. Actually, it rarely happens that a
person makes derogatory remarks except when gossiping
within the shelter of the ilammarigiit, whose members will
not accuse him of feeling tuhuu toward the person he gossips
about.
Tuhuu feelings are a major source of tension among the Utku;
or at least the tensions that exist are very often expressed as
accusations of tuhuu feelings. As I have said, to feel tuhuu:
envious, jealous, and greedy, is considered very bad indeed,
and people are at pains to deny that they do have such feelings.
Nevertheless, I judge that tuhuu feelings are quite widespread.
Sermons denouncing them in general terms are frequent, and
more specific accusations are rife in gossip. Jokes on the subject
are also very common. There was the game that Pala and others
played of pretending to steal food or other goods from the
watching owner. And “I’m envious, no joke (tuhuu, takhaa)!”
was a standard response when a visitor or family member re-
ported a pleasant event, a new acquisition, or a good meal.
Such preoccupation with the subject of tuhuu feelings certainly
is evidence for their prevalence, it seems to me. So is the fact
that people occasionally accuse others not of feeling tuhuu but
of wanting to be tuhuu’d, that is, envied. I interpret this to
mean either that the accuser feels tuhuu and is projecting his
feelings onto the other person, or that people want to be tuhuu’d
and, again, are projecting their feelings onto the other.

Humor
Humor in any culture probably serves a variety of uses,'® and
the Utku culture is no exception. In fact, in certain respects

16. There is a very sizeable body of literature on the nature and functions of
numor in western society. Two classic contributions to the subject are those
of Freud (1922) and Bergson (1911), but many other philosophers, beginning
with Plato and Aristotle, have also dealt with the subject. Recently sociologists
and social psychologists have discussed the social functions of humor, its use
in maintaining and restructuring social situations (e.g., Coser 1959, 1960; Duncan

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 337

 humor may be a more important expressive device for them than
it is for us, a point on which I shall elaborate below. I have
chosen to discuss humor at this point in my exposition because
of its importance in the expression of the hostile feelings we have
just been considering.
The most common of the Utku terms that refer to humor is
tiphi. It can be glossed as “to provoke laughter” (in the form
tiphinaq) or “to feel like laughing” (in the form tiphihuk-),
These are the verbal definitions I was given. The behaviors that
are conducive to laughter are very diverse; indeed, at firstI had
the impression that people laughed all the time at everything.
Easy laughter is a trait that has been noted by most other ob-
servers of Eskimos, too, and it is one that I think has been
subject to a good deal of misinterpretation, or at least over-
simplification, on the part of kaplunas. In the following pages
I shall roughly categorize the commonest circumstances in
which people tend to laugh, but I must emphasize that these
categories are my own; I do not always know whether I have
classed a bit of behavior according to the aspects that are salient
to the Utku themselves. The categories shade into one another,
and any one humorous event may fall into more than one cate-
gory.
1. When behavior, either one’s own or other people’s, is
unexpected, unusual, or incongruous, though not necessarily
either socially inappropriate or morally disapproved, people
refer to it as tiphi and laugh. Allaq sitting ding-toed; my writing
every day (and even before I was out of bed in the moming);
the fact that Niqi is shorter than her adolescent adopted daugh-
ter; the sound of foreign Eskimo dialects, not to mention foreign
languages; unusual tones of voice, facial expressions, and
physical antics, all are cause for laughter. Amaruq laughed when
she heard some of her father’s genealogy for the first time,
“because she'd never heard it before,” Allaq explained to me.
2. People also laugh at behavior that is socially inappropriate
or morally disapproved. I am not sure that all such behavior
is seen as tiphi, but much of it is. Excessive expression of
emotion is a form of inappropriate behavior that is often laughed
1962; Olesen and Whittaker 1966; Pitchford 1961; Victoroff 1953). A good sum-
mary of some of the major theories of laughter is found in Monro (1951). In most
respects the classification of Utku humor that I give here and the functions that
I suggest it serves are similar to those outlined by Monro (1951:34, 40) and
by the sociological authors cited.

338 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

at, whether the emotion concem
ed is grief, amus or ill
temper of a “ ae ement,
fourtocn-yearald be (nutaragpaluktug)” Sort. Thus when the
thought that his ; ado cried was(hardl
miuq father
adoptive y perceptibly) at the
going away and might not
return; when Nigi giggled excessively or was “clogged (qgiquq)’’;
when Saarak hit her mother with a spoon; or when Raigili
shrieked in anger, people laughed. And excessive emotionality
is not the only form of inappropriate behavior that is considered
amusing. People laughed at the fear of famine (exaggerated,
in their view) that made Nilak cache all of the fish he caught
during the summer instead of eating some of it as others did
theirs. And they laughed when Kanayuq defecated near the
waterhole, though at the same time they called it “disgusting.’”’”
3. People very often express amusement at errors, stupidi-
ties, misfortunes, and minor pains, both their own and those of
others. When I picked up the wrong pot lid by mistake, mis-
pronounced a word, or accidentally cut the back instead of the
belly out of a fish I was gutting; when one day Allaq, having set
out to check the nets, turned around in midstream and went
trapping, because her “feet were too cold to check the nets”;
when Maata tripped on a hummock with her three-year-old
daughter on her back and sent herself and the child flying into
a puddle of muddy water; when one of the children accidentally
knocked her tooth out while playing in a ball game; when a
puppy fell off Mannik’s sled unnoticed during a long move and
Mannik had to turn back after several arduous miles to find him;
and when Allag unwittingly rubbed caustic insect repellent over
her raw mosquito bites, both the victim and their audiences
laughed and called the incidents tiphi. Indeed, the incidents
became comical anecdotes, which were retold again and again
for several days, and sometimes longer.
4. Similarly, when the actions of other people interfere with
one, it is, or should be, considered tiphi, not hujuujaq (un-
pleasant) or urulu (annoying). This opposition of emotions
was explicitly phrased both by Ikayuqtuq and by Amaagqtuq.

17. The term glossed here as “disgusting” is quinak; I have not included it
in this discussion of emotional terms, since it only occurs once in the book. The
relationship between tiphi and such other emotions as displeasure (hujuujaq),
annoyance (urulu), fear (kappia, iqhi), and disgust (quinak) is not vet clear to
me. Sometimes they appear explicitly in opposition, but sometimes they appear
together, in reference to the same unpleasant person or event. More systematic
data are needed here, as elsewhere.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 339

 Ikayuqtuq had been telling me a story (in English) about a
kapluna who had prevented Nakliguhuktuq from getting some-
thing he, apparently, had very much wanted. Since I thought
I sensed indignation or irritation in Ikayuqtuq’s voice, I sym-
pathized, saying that she must have felt very annoyed. “Oh no,”
she corrected me, quickly, “it wasn’t annoying, it was funny.”
The other incident is particularly interesting, because it il-
lustrates how children are explicitly taught to substitute feelings
of amusement for the feelings of annoyance that are so con-
demned. Raigili was annoyed at Saarak. Amaaqtuq asked her:
“Is your little sister annoying (urulu)P’ Raigili agreed that
she was. “She’s not annoying (urulu),” said Amaaqtugq, “she’s
funny (tiphi).”
5. Feelings of amusement (tiphi) can also be a reaction to
fear (kappia, iqhi), or to being startled (tupak). In some instances
it may be that the amusement serves to convert the unwelcome
feeling of fear into a more acceptable one. We have just dis-
cussed a similar mechanism with regard to annoyance. In the
case of startle the amusement is, at least sometimes, a reaction
to the prior fear reaction. A person who is startled will jump,
laugh, and later describe as funny (tiphi) the way he (she)
jumped (tupak). At other times, however, the two feelings of
fear and amusement are described as coexisting. Once, for
example, one of the kapluna fishermen who had had a little too
much to drink went around to all the “pretty girls,”’ as he called
them, offering them gifts of towels and soap. This incident was
afterwards spoken of as both frightening (ighi) and funny (tiphi).
In this case the amusement seemed to be directed at the fisher-
man’s behavior itself, rather than at the Eskimos’ fear; and if
conversion from the one feeling into the other was attempted, it
didn’t quite succeed.
6. Finally, amusement (tiphi) can be a reaction to experi-
ences defined as happy or pleasant (quvia). Once Amaaqtuq
laughed as she listened to her favorite opera tape (the one
that “made one feel like crying”). She explained: “I feel tiphi
because the music makes me happy (quvia).” On another
occasion, Inuttiaq had just returned from Gjoa Haven, where
he had bought bannock ingredients, milk, gum, and the other
foods that delighted the children. Allaq, listening to Raigili
giggle at her games, said to her: “You won’t feel so tiphi when
the kapluna food is all gone.” One of the giddiest of the women’s
and children’s pastimes is chasing lemming and ermine to stone

340 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

them. Here, too, quvia and tiphi feelings are associated. “Quvia
-
naq; tiphinaq (pleasant and amusing)!” say the women with
satisfaction as they come back, panting, from the chase. “Happy,
kind, and amusing (quvia, quya, and tiphi)”” is an often-heard
trilogy of praise for a person, too.

It would be hard to overstate the pervasiveness of tiphi

reactions in the daily life of the Utku. “Tiiiiiphinaq (funny)!”
was one of the first words that Saarak was taught-when she
began to learn to talk, and the word punctuated the remarks of
her elders, as well. Most of the anecdotes that interlard Utku
conversations seem to be told for their tiphi quality. Even when
the events reported in the anecdotes—bad weather, bad luck
in hunting, a ranaway dog—are “unpleasant (hujuujaq),” ‘‘an-
noying (urulu),” or “tiring” the raconteur often ends by saying,

response of the audience is laughter.

Though too great ebullience in the expression of tiphi feel-
ings is discouraged as childish (nutaraqpaluktuq), unpleasant
to see (hujuujaq), and conducive to nightmares on the part of
the volatile person, nevertheless most Utku do laugh easily.
Laughter and joking, tiphi feelings and behavior, are important
to the Utku in several ways, I think. First, they indicate that a
person is happy (quvia) and, as we have seen, happiness is a
moral good. “We Utku joke a lot,” said Inuttiaq. ‘““People who
joke a lot are not frightening (kappia, iqhi).’”’ Secondly, tiphi
feelings and expressions can be cathartic. The embodiment of
misfortunes and fears in humorous anecdotes, to be told and
retold to appreciative audiences, probably constitutes a cathartic
use of amusement. Thirdly, tiphi reactions serve as a way of
expressing, and simultaneously denying, hostility. We have seen
this mechanism at work in the Utku habit of viewing inappro-
priate (annoying or frightening) behavior as “funny.”
My impression, based on my own surprise at the situations
in which Utku laugh, is that Utku tend to rely more heavily
on laughter than we do in all three of these contexts: to relieve
the strain that results from misfortune; to convey reassurance
that a person is unfrightening, that is, not hostile; and to express
subtly one’s own hostility.
Analysis of the situations in which people use the word
takhaungngittuq or, more briefly, takhaa, may provide clues to
several of the functions of humor among the Utku. Takhaa in-

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 341

 dicates that the speaker is joking, though I am not sure that
in all cases the statements to which takhaa is attached are
defined as tiphi. Takhaa follows any comment that might pos-
sibly be construed as critical, hostile, plaintive (hujuujaq),
or jealous (tuhuu): “The girls aren't rowing very hard—takhaa.”
“As soon as Yiini goes home we'll make tea—takhaungngittuq.”
“Terrible weather today—hujuuuuujaq, takhaa.” “I wish that
fish you caught were my fish—takhaa.” The takhaa form is
often used even when a speaker is gossiping, making hostile
remarks behind someone’s back. Possibly to whiten the sin of
gossiping? I often made the mistake of omitting “takhaa”
when I was joking with Utku. I thought that my smile and laugh
would be sufficient signs of my benevolent intent, but they
were not. It occurred to me, then, that perhaps it was necessary
to express reassurance so explicitly, because when almost
every statement is made in the same even, cheerful voice, it is
difficult to distinguish serious from joking remarks on the basis
of tone of voice or facial expression."
To tell a person that he makes one feel tiphi is a compliment.
But since amusement has so many meanings for the Utku, it
follows that a person who makes one feel tiphi is not always a
good or likeable person. In the latter case, one does not tell
the person he is tiphi; one says it behind his back. Ideally, none
of the hostile expressions of tiphi ever come to the notice of
their victims. Children may be laughed at as a form of disci-
pline, but adults are nowadays never laughed at directly, except
in good spirits."
18. Takhaa also occurs sometimes with statements that refer to the future:
“I’m going fishing tomorrow,” “Soon the ice will come,” and I think here
the intent is to protect oneself from being shown a fool when events do not turn
out as anticipated. Utku, like the North Alaskan Eskimos of my acquaintance,
tend to be reluctant to predict the course of events. Children are laughed at
when they ask questions about future events or make statements about the
future that are too flat and unqualified. This cautious attitude toward the future
finds linguistic expression also in the use of a conditional form, “if,” in future
statements: “If the ice comes,” not “When the ice comes.” English-speaking
Eskimos often express this respect for unknown contingencies by the very
frequent use of “maybe.” This attitude is further discussed in the section on
Reason.
19. Eskimo groups in Alaska and Greenland (see, e¢.g., Birket-Smith 1953
and Holm 1914) as well as in the Central regions (Rasmussen 1929, 1931, 1932)
used to settle disputes and punish social offenders by a form of public ridicule
in which caustic lampoons were sung in the presence of the offender. Such
ridicule often took the form of “song duels” in which the object was to outdo

342 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

 Considering the disciplinary use of humor in dealing with
children and the sensitivity to criticism, which seems to be
expressed in the reassuring use of takhaa, one wonders to what
extent people are sensitive to being laughed at, even in good
spirits. Perhaps they are not sensitive. Being the butt of a joke
may make a person feel as though he “belongs” and is accepted
by the group; it had that effect on me, very often, when I was
openly laughed at, especially after the difficult period when I
was excluded from the circle of laughter. The cathartic effect
of laughter, too, may obtain even when one is, oneself, the object
of amusement, especially if one laughs at oneself first, as Utku
often do. Then one can persuade oneself that others are sharing
one’s own amusement, rather than laughing at one’s downfall
and humiliation. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that children
and even adolescents had to learn to appreciate humor that
was directed at them. Small children, aged four to seven or
thereabouts, were likely to shriek if teased, and older children
would listen with an expressionless face, then leave the scene
precipitately, followed by the giggles of their elders. Inuttiaq
still showed some of this lack of appreciation when laughed at.
If he had initiated the joke deliberately, he loved being laughed
at, but not otherwise. When his dogs ran away with his sled and
dragged him along on the ground behind in sitting position he
was not amused, nor was he amused when I laughed at the odd
appearance of his newly cut hair, though on the occasion of an
earlier haircut he himself had observed jokingly that his hair
looked like birch shrubbery. Other adults, however, appeared
to share fully, if sometimes a trifle sheepishly at first, in humor
that was directed at them.

Fear

The kinds of things that Utku fear and their manner of expres-
sing fear is quite in keeping with the patterns we have seen
emerging in the discussions of other emotional concepts. I
recorded four terms for fear:

one’s opponent in mocking verse while the community applauded. The man who
received the most applause won the dispute; his opponent’s reputation was
destroyed. The Utku, whose culture is in many ways very close to that of the
Netsilik Eskimos, seem to have had a similar practice in the past. One of the
song duels recorded by Rasmussen is between an Utku and a Netsilik Eskimo
(1931:345-349 and 515-516).

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 343

 kappia: to fear or to rouse the fear of physical injury;
ight: the same as kappia;
ilira: to fear or to rouse the fear of being unkindly treated;
tupak: to wake from sleep; to startle or to be startled.

I shall deal with the last of these terms first, because I have
least to say about it. Tupak is commonly heard in two contexts,
and both of these were elicited when I asked for a verbal defini-
tion of the term. First, it describes a person waking from sleep,
and secondly, it describes a person who is startled by a noise
or by a sudden unexpected event: a sneeze; the sudden entrance
of a visitor; the teakettle boiling over. In the case of dreams that
make one tupak, the two contexts merge: the dreamer is startled
into wakefulness.
A person who is startled (tupak) may jump slightly, look
around quickly toward the disturbance, or utter half under his
breath an exclamation: “Iq (no)!” or “Ee heee!’’ or ‘“Kahla!”
(an expression of caution or warning). Then he will probably
laugh and remark, “Tupangnag (startling)!”” I never heard any-
one utter a loud exclamation when startled; when I did so on
occasion, I felt very conspicuous and, I think, startled others
more than I had been startled. Their response was to laugh at me.
The other three terms recorded refer to fears that I think,
on the whole, the Utku consider more serious than momentary
startles. At least they tend to be longer lasting. Kappia and
iqhi appear in almost all the same contexts in my data, and Utku,
in defining the terms for me, specified that they are “genuinely
the same (atauhimmarik),”’ and that both alike apply to fear of
dangerous animals, evil spirits (tunngait), natural hazards such
as thin ice or a rough sea, angry (urulu, ningaq) people, and an
angry God.” I was told that the term ilira, on the other hand,
refers only to fear of people, not to animals (except dogs, ac-
cording to one informant), and not to evil spirits, or other hazards.
I was not given explicit information on the specific nature of
these two kinds of fear: kappia and iqhi on the one hand and
ilira on the other. The qualitative difference that I have incor-
porated in the glosses above (physical fear vs. fear of unkind-

20. Information obtained on my second field trip indicates that kappia and
ighi are not quite the same, though my informants had difficulty in defining
the difference. My impression to date is that iqghi refers to real and immediate
dangers, whereas kappia refers to imaginary and future dangers, but my data
are not yet fully analyzed.

344 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

ness) was derived not from Utku statements but from observation
of the contexts in which the terms occurred. A comparison of
situations in which it is human beings who are frightening is
especially illuminating. For instance, when Inuttiaq described
a fight he had once watched between two kapluna workmen. he
said it had made him ighi, not ilira; and when the women
talked about drunken kapluna sportsmen who made sexual
advances to Utku women, they said the men made them feel
ighi, kappia; they did not use the term ilira. The latter term.
on the other hand, is used in situations in which a person fears
that his request will be refused, or that he will be scolded or
criticized (huaq).!
Ilira feelings appear to be very widespread among the Utku.
Everybody has such feelings, and quite often, judging from the
frequency with which the term occurs in daily speech. Children
are said to feel ilira toward their parents, that is, their “leaders
(ataniq).’’ Whether wives are said to ilira their “leaders,” that is,
their husbands, I do not know. Strangers, especially, both
Eskimo and kapluna, are ilira’d by everyone, and people of
uncertain temper are also ilira’d, I think, whether or not they
are strangers. Thus, Inuttiaq told me: “People who joke fre-
quently are not frightening (iliranaittut),”’ implying that people
who do not appear happy are frightening.
I have the impression that references to fear of physical
danger (kappia, iqhi) occur less frequently in everyday speech,
whether because incidents provoking such fear occur less
frequently, or because these fears are less readily acknowledged,
I do not know. Children and other people of little sense (ihuma}
are thought to frighten (kappia, iqhi) easily under circum-
stances that would not seem dangerous or frightening to a more
sensible person. Children more than adults, for example, are
said to fear harm from people (kappia, iqhi), as distinct from
feeling ilira toward them. I would expect that the reverse might
21. In the main, the occurrence of these “fear” words in Rasmussen's Netsilik
texts (1931 passim) bears out the distinctions I have tentatively made here.
but not entirely. Instances of kappia and ighi (Ersi, in Rasmussen’s orthography
support my glosses, but the case of ilira (ilEra) is a little more complicated.
Rasmussen defines the term as: “‘is afraid of him, takes heed of him” (1931-455).
And four out of five occurrences of the term in his texts refer to fear
of people.
which supports my data. The nature of the fear, however, is not clear. And in
the fifth case (1931:278-279) the fear is one of not knowing how to hunt in a
strange ; country, and here Rasmussen glosses the term as “anxious and per-
plexed. Ps

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 345

 be true of ilira feelings: that is, they might be associated with
the presence of ihuma and therefore might be thought more
characteristic of adults than of children. But the relationship
between ilira and ihuma is a still uninvestigated question.
The following kinds of behavior are all noted on occasion as
signs that a person feels ilira: silence and constraint; a loss of
appetite (or at least an unwillingness to eat) in the presence of
the ilira’d person; a tendency to smile and agree, if the latter
speaks, and a reluctance to disagree or to admit that one does
not understand what the feared person says. If a person who feels
ilira has done something that he thinks will annoy the person
he fears—if, for example, he has damaged or lost an object
belonging to that person—he may not tell him, even though
such secrecy is defined as “lying” and contravenes the strong
Utku value of honesty. On the other hand, when a person is
very careful to ask permission before acting, such behavior is
also sometimes explained as due to ilira feelings. In Pala’s
family, for example, the children always asked their father before
helping themselves to the scarce kapluna foods (though not to
the commoner Eskimo foods) in the household larder, because
they ilira’d him: they feared he might not want them to take
the food. In this context, the ilira feeling was conducive to a
socially approved obedience: “Because they feel ilira they
want to obey.” Pala was obviously pleased that his children
- behaved in this way, and for his part, he never failed to comply
with the children’s requests—behavior that is recognized as
conducive to reassuring a person who feels ilira.
Feelings of ilira may make a person unwilling to ask favors.
Allaq said that her early ilira feelings about me had made her
reluctant to use my primus without express permission, and
reluctant also to ask for food from my supplies. And throughout
my stay, whenever I hesitated to ask a favor of someone, for
example, when I was uncertain whether to ask a man to bring
back flour or oil for me from Gjoa Haven along with his own
goods, I was always reassured in the same words: “Don’t be
afraid (ilira) to ask; we are kind (quya); we won't refuse.” It
may be worth noting that the phrasing of this reassurance is
exactly opposite to the phrasing a kapluna might use to a person
who hesitates to ask a favor: “Don’t be afraid to ask; if it’s in-
convenient, I'll tell you.” Both the Eskimo and the kapluna
are afraid that the person of whom the favor is requested will
find the request an imposition, but the Eskimo is more afraid

346 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

than the kapluna of a refusal per se, which he views, more
consistently, I think, than the kapluna, as a form of “unkindness
(quyanaittug).”
Another way of reassuring others that one is not a person to
be ilira’d is, as I have said, to smile, laugh, and joke a lot, that
is, to convey the impression that one is a happy (quvia) person.
The desire to communicate such reassurance is, I think, an im-
portant reason for the warm and obliging public face that the
Utku present.”
Since fear of physical injury (kappia, iqhi) was less frequently
referred to in ordinary conversation, and since I did not make a
point of discussing the expression of these feelings with Utku,
I have fewer data on the forms that such expression takes. Chil-
dren who feel ighi or kappia sometimes cry and sometimes
become silent and motionless or fall asleep. All these signs are
recognized by adults. One of the few cases I observed personally
in which I knew through their own admission that the Utku
adults involved had felt iqghi or kappia was the meeting between
the Eskimo women and the drunken kapluna fishermen to which
I have referred. In this case, the women were silent and stood
apart, as they always did in the presence of strangers, whether
the latter were perceived as people to be ilira’d or iqhi d. Per-
haps these two kinds of fear are mingled in Utku perceptions
of strangers. In any event, I would guess that iqghi behavior is
quite similar to ilira behavior, that both kinds of fear are ex-
pressed in withdrawal and, if extreme enough, even in dis-
appearance from the scene.

Anxiety
I recorded two other terms, huqu and ujjiq, that seem related
to the English concept of “fear,” but my data on the ranges of
meaning of these terms are more than usually scanty. Though I
discuss them both here under the rubric of “anxiety,” this clas-
sification is only a temporary expedient and, moreover, is only
partly accurate. The second term, ujjiq, was recorded only once
in spontaneous speech, and I neglected to ask Utku informants
about it, afterwards. The other term, huqu, occurred more
frequently in ordinary speech, but was exceptionally difficult
to elicit by questioning, possibly because of some error in the

22. See the section on Affection concerning other aspects of this obligingness.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 347

 phrasing, or unacceptability in the context, of my questions.
I include the terms here, nevertheless, because I think they
may prove to be important concepts to watch for in future re-
search.
Huqu has both a good and a bad sense. It was the latter that
I had difficulty in eliciting. In both senses the term can be
glossed broadly as “‘to respond” or “to pay attention,” but the
acceptability of the response seems to depend on whether the
person one responds to is oneself or someone else. In the latter
case, to huqu is good. Thus, I was told: “If you ask me to pass
you the sugar, and I hear and obey you, I huqu you.” And
again: “If we vray to God to save us from famine and he sends
us caribou, he huqus us.” Conversely: “If you ask for the sugar
and I sit here and ignore you, I don’t huqu you,” and “If God
sends us no caribou he doesn’t huqu us.” In this good sense,
the responsiveness, the huqu behavior, results from the pro-
tective, nurturant (naklik) feelings that are so highly valued.
For example, Allaq once, reminiscing about how frightened
Saarak had been of me when I first arrived in Chantrey Inlet,
said to me: “Did you mistakenly think I naklik’d her because
of her fear? When she cries from fear [of people] I don’t huqu
it, because there’s no real danger.” And a letter that I had from
Allaq after I left Back River said: “I didn’t think I would huqu
you when you left, but when you set out for Gjoa Haven I did
naklik you.”
But the term also occurs in reference to unpleasant events
in one’s own life, and in this context to huqu, to respond, is
unacceptable. This sense of the term I have glossed as “‘to be
upset”; and in this sense it occurs mainly in the negative forms,
huqutikhalaittug and huqutigilaitara (not to be upset). The
unacceptable meaning of the positive forms, huqutikhaqtuq and
huqutigijara (to be upset) was, in fact, so difficult to elicit on
questioning that I am not sure the words are really used in this
sense, even though I thought I heard them so used, now and
then, in spontaneous speech. A description of the first occasion
on which I heard a positive form of the word will serve as an
example of my difficulties and also, I think, as an example of
attitudes toward “being upset.” Inuttiag, talking to Allaq about
some chronic pains he suffered, and not realizing that I was
listening, said: “I huqu them.” I asked him to repeat what he
had said, so that I could learn the word, but while I was speaking,
Pala came in, and Inuttiaq said firmly: “I don’t hugqu them.”

348 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

And when I tried to elicit the word in a more neutral context,
independent of Inuttiaq and his pains, he insisted that there
was no such word as the one I thought I had heard him use.
On most occasions when I asked about the term huqu, I was
given the beneficent meaning: “God hears us when we pray”
or “I pass you the knife when you ask for it.” Just once when
I was struggling to find some way to elicit the unacceptable
meaning, Inuttiaq obliged me by giving me two of the ‘fear’
terms (ilira and ighi) as synonyms for huqu, and he said: “A
person who huqus does not make one feel grateful (hatug;
that is, he is unpleasant). Children hugu often because they
have no reason (ihuma).” At the time, I suspected that he might
be obliging me to the point of inventing the meaning that he
knew I wanted to hear, since Allaq demurred, saying, “That’s
not a very correct word.” However, once later when I used the
word in this undesirable sense in conversation with Amaaqtugq,
I was understood. We were waiting for the plane that was to
take the school children away to Inuvik for the winter. I knew
that Mitqut, a thirteen-year-old girl who was going for the first
time, had had a chronic stomach ache during the last week or so
of waiting, so I asked Amaaqtuq whether Mitqut was upset
(huqu) about going away to school. “I don’t think she is very
upset (huqu),” said Amaaqtuq; “she minds (huqus) less than
Kamik did when she went for the first time.” And when I then
asked Amaaqtuq how people who were upset (huqu) could be
recognized, she had no hesitation in telling me the symptom:
lethargy. “People who huqu sleep longer hours than others,
don’t work, and don’t play.”
The anxiety denoted by the term ujjiq is associated with
disturbances in nurturant situations, or was so on the occasion
in which I heard the word. It was at the time of Qayaq’s birth.
Saarak had just seen Qayaq nursed for the first time and had
cried herself to sleep. Inuttiaq, looking at Saarak’s tear-stained
face, remarked: “Ujjiqtuq.” And when I asked the meaning of
the word, he gave as a synonym tumak(tuq),. which can be
glossed as depression, sometimes associated with loneliness.
Later I asked Ikayuqtuq about the word, and she explained:
“Saarak realized that she was not the only baby any more and
she started to worry: ‘What will become of me if they start to
look after the baby alone? Maybe they won’t have any more
time to look after me, now.’ Ujjiqtuq means something like
that: to worry over something and wonder about it, when you

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 349

 have never thought about or realized it before.” From this
description I judge that, in this instance at least, the “worry”
was a fear of no longer being nurtured (naklik’d). However,
Ikayuqtuq’s explanation was in English, so I cannot be sure
that the term naklik would have been used in this context. Much
more remains to be investigated, also, concerning other contexts
in which the anxiety denoted by the term ujjig may occur.

Shyness
To a kapluna observer one of the most striking characteristics
of Utku and, I think, of other Eskimos, is an absence of self-
assertiveness. In contrast to many kaplunas, most Utku adults
and children over the age of three or so (except for those who
have been exposed to kapluna schooling) seem to blend un-
obtrusively into the social background. This quietness may be
partly due to a dislike of volatility and noise; children are told
to go out when they play too noisily in the vicinity of adults;
or they are warned that their exuberance may give them night-
mares. It may be due partly to the sanctions on aggressiveness,
and to the habit of withdrawal in the face of fear (ilira), which
have been discussed above. But there is another factor involved,
too, a wish to avoid displaying or exposing oneself before
others, which the Utku call kanngu. When I asked what kanngu
meant, I was told of several contexts in which the feeling may
occur: one may wish to prevent others from seeing one’s flesh,
one’s person, or one’s accomplishments (or lack of accomplish-
ments). The term occurred in all of these contexts in spontaneous
speech, as well. If Saarak stayed quietly on the ikliq near
Allaq and refused to run around conspicuously on the floor when
there were many people present she was said to feel kanngu.
When Nilak refused to join the other men in acrobatic games
during the Christmas festivities, he was said to feel kanngu.
“He knows how to somersault,” I was told; “he just doesn’t
want people to see him.” When Pamiugq refused to speak English
with me, though he knew the words, people said it was because
he felt kanngu. And when Allaq took a dislike (hujuujaq) to
the boot trim she was embroidering, she said: “I feel kanngu
about it; I’m not going to work on it any more until there is no
one around to see.” In addition, I once heard kanngu feelings,
like naklik feelings, cited as a motive for avoiding the use of
a person’s name.

350 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

 Nilak one day surprised me by asking me, without any con-
text that I could discover, how kanngu feelings are expressed
in my country. I told him that people who feel kanngu are some-
times silent and refuse to talk, they blush, avoid others’ eyes,
and do not like to be seen. “It’s the same here,” he said.
The development of reason (ihuma) is, 1 think, considered
to be a prerequisite for the growth of kanngu feelings, and in
Chapter 3 I have suggested some of the means by which chil-
dren may learn to feel kanngu. The first signs of the feeling
in children are noted with interest. One day when Saarak was
wrestling with me in fun, she slipped on the iglu floor and fell.
Picking herself up, she ran into Pala’s iglu (it was the second
winter, when our iglus opened into each other), and then
after a moment, she ran back again into her own iglu and re-
sumed wrestling with one person and another, making “cute,”
self-conscious grimaces the while. Her mother watched her.
“She’s beginning to feel kanngu,” she said. “If she hadn't
felt kanngu, she would have stayed in her grandfather's iglu
and visited, instead of coming back here and making faces.
She wouldn't have minded falling.”
I am not sure what people’s attitudes toward kanngu feelings
are. If my impression is correct that such feelings are con-
sidered a concomitant of ihuma, which is valued, this might
indicate that they are favorably regarded, but whether the
absence of kanngu feelings is unfavorably regarded, I do not
know. The feelings may simply be considered natural, without
moral connotations. The absence of kanngu is occasionally
remarked on. When one of the kapluna fishermen showed Pala
a magazine picture of a scantily clad lady, Pala said: “She
doesn’t feel very kanngu.”’ But I could not tell whether the
remark was critical or neutral.

Loneliness
I recorded three terms associated with the idea of loneliness
and have tentatively glossed these as follows:

hujuujaq: to be unhappy because of the absence of other

people, or to rouse such unhappiness; to feel or
provoke a variety of other unpleasant feelings, in-
cluding hostility;

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 351

 pai: to be or feel left behind; to miss a person who has
gone;
tumak: to be silent and withdrawn in unhappiness, es-
pecially because of the absence of other people.

Of these three, the term hujuujaq is the most complex. The

“central” meaning of the term, that is, the meaning one is
given when one asks for a definition, is loneliness. Utku say
that hujuujaqg is the way one feels in the absence of people
whose company one desires. One feels hujuujag when someone
one loves (naklik, unga) leaves, or when one is left behind or
is all alone.
In spontaneous usage, however, hujuujaq has a range of
meaning much broader than the English “loneliness,” so that
it is difficult to find an appropriate gloss. One alternative might
be to use an inclusive term like “unhappiness,” “depression,”
or “distress.” But because of the incompleteness of my present
data, I have preferred not to assign an Eskimo gloss correspond-
ing to a single English concept, but have simply classified the
contexts in which the term occurs in spontaneous speech and
drawn no firm conclusions regarding the nature of the emotional
common denominator. Even the classification that I present
here must be provisional, however, as was my classification of
the functions of humor, above. Like the latter, this classification
is based on the understanding of the ethnographer, an outsider,
rather than on the understanding of the Utku themselves, and
the two views may not coincide. That is, if an Utku were asked
to state exactly what it is that makes him feel hujuujaq in the
situations in which he uses that term, I do not know whether
he would select the same defining characteristics that I have
selected.
1. First and most important of the contexts in which the term
hujuujaq appears is, of course, the one described above: the
absence of loved people. The salience of loneliness as an
experience not only for Utku but for other Eskimos will be
discussed further, below.
2. Shifting to the hostile contexts, the term occurs as a re-
jecting comment on disapproved behavior or on people who
engage in such behavior, for example, lying, stealing, getting
angry, engaging in un-Christian sexual activity.
3. It occurs also as a rejecting comment on the physical ap-
pearance, behavior (however intrinsically neutral), or mere

352 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

presence of people one dislikes. Thus in our camp hujuujaq
comments tended to focus on the unpleasantly volatile Niqi.
It seemed to make no difference whether she laughed and
smiled, or was silent and still, whether she visited or sat at
home, people said her behavior made them hujuujaq. If she
made flabby oatmeal or let the lamp flare so that it sooted up
the iglu, it made people hujuujaq. Just having to pass her where
she fished on the way to one’s own fishing hole made one feel
hujuujaq.
4. Hujuujaq feelings may also arise when a person feels
himself inappropriately placed in a social situation, even
though he may like and approve of the other people present.
Thus, a single man alone in a group of women, or a woman
alone among men will feel hujuujaq: “Not shy (kanngu) but
hujuujaq,’ I was told.
5. Unpleasant physical conditions and tasks are also often
described as conducive to hujuujaq feelings. Cold, wet, or
windy weather; the approach of autumn darkness; the presence
of mosquitoes; hunger; the recession of the water in the rapids
after the exciting spring torrents all make one hujuujaq. Inuttiaq,
watching the kaplunas skim around with their outboards, re-
marked that paddling a canoe made one hujuujaq; and Allaq
said the same of having to scrape the iglu floor when she was
tired.
6. Being thwarted in one’s intentions or one’s wishes, or
being unable to make a decision can also make one hujuujaq.
When a man had bad luck in hunting; when Inuttiaq told Allaq
to go home from fishing, which she enjoyed, to make bread;
and when Saarak, by refusing to get dressed, prevented her
mother from going to check the fishnets: hujuujaq. The frus-
trating agent can be located within the person, too. Allaq one
day described as hujuujaq her uncertainty as to whether she
wanted to sew or fish; and on another occasion she called a boot
she was embroidering hujuujag, before she discarded it in
dissatisfaction with the design she was creating.

Hujuujaq feelings in all of the above contexts are frequently

expressed,23 but very often only in the form of matter-of-fact
23. It is interesting, and somewhat curious, considering the frequency with
which hujuujaq feelings are expressed in everyday conversation, that the
word does not occur even once in Rasmussen’s Netsilik texts (1931 passim),
unless it has escaped me, owing to his orthography.

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 353

 comment. People do not complain; they remark, often with a
little laugh that seems to deny the seriousness of the condition:
“One is made to feel hujuujaq (hujuujaqnaqtuq)!” In tone,
and in the ease with which it is expressed, the exclamation
“Hujuujaqnaqtuq!” is similar to the exclamation “Urulunaq!”
which was discussed above.
People say that when they feel hujuujaq they do not feel
very much like laughing and joking, and they recognize hujuujaq
feelings, like huqu feelings, in lethargy and droopiness. Once
when I yawned in the presence of a visitor, the visitor joked
that I must be feeling hujuujaq (as I was). And once a sagging
pole that was supposed to be supporting the dome of our thawing
iglu was jokingly called both hujuujaq and “sleepy.” Children
are more likely than adults to express hujuujaq feelings in
visible lethargy, and I think therefore that such unsocial be-
havior is less acceptable than mere neutral comment. But leth-
argy may sometimes be felt by adults, too, even though it was
not perceptible to me. I judge this because adults occasion-
ally say they are not hungry when they are alone and feeling
hujuujaq, when traveling by themselves, for instance, and
because one cure for hujuujaq feelings is activity. Allaq told me
that children, when they feel hujuujaqg, are sent outdoors to
play, and that adults usually occupy themselves with work.
Once, jokingly perhaps, she referred to her sewing as her
“activity for making me stop feeling hujuujaq.” Sometimes,
too, an adult counters hujuujaq feelings by indulging himself
with a special food: making bannock or putting milk in his tea
during a season when it is scarce and therefore usually re-
served for children. But the commonest cure that I observed for
hujuujaq feelings was to seek out company. Children, too, are
sent out to visit even more often than to play when they feel
hujuujaq. Occasionally, a man moves camp in order to be with
a person he misses, and once in a while, too, when real company
is not available, people build cairns that “look like people”
to keep them company.
Both my own experience in Alaska and the reports of anthro-
pologists working with other Eskimo groups™ indicate that
loneliness (I am speaking for the moment of the English concept,
not of the hujuujaq concept which includes loneliness) is a
salient experience for Eskimos generally. Both North Alaskan
24. E.g., Derek Smith, conversation re: Aklavik, 1965; Norman Chance (1966:
78-79); and my own field experience in North Alaska, 1961 and 1962.

354 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

and Aklavik Eskimos talk frequently about loneliness. They
are solicitous to prevent others from feeling lonely, and often
give their own or others’ loneliness as a reason for going visiting.
In general, the frequency and openness with which loneliness
is mentioned by English-speaking Eskimos contrasts strikingly
with the absence of reference to other emotions in their English
speech. It is clear from what has been said that the salience
of hujuujaq feelings among the Utku and the ways in which
these feelings are expressed are similar to the Eskimo pattern
observed elsewhere. Utku, like other Eskimos, are often solic-
itous to prevent or to counter hujuujaq feelings in a person
who is temporarily left alone. Thus a woman whose menfolk
are away on a trip will tend to have many more visitors than
usual, because “‘she must be lonely (hujuujaq).” I observed
occasions, however, when a person’s expression of hujuujaq
feelings aroused covert amusement (tiphi), rather than solic-
itude, and I think this may have been because the hujuujaq
feeling was overexpressed in these cases. This is only a guess,
however, as I do not know what specific aspects of the situation
inspired the amusement. I know only that the amusement was
directed at Niqi and at children, who shared a tendency to
withdraw visibly into lethargy when they felt hujuujaq, re-
gardless of the cause.
I am not sure that hujuujaq feelings are all of a piece: that
lethargy, for example, results from the hujuujaq aroused by a
person’s lying or stealing, as it does from the hujuujaq aroused
by the absence of a loved person. As I have mentioned, I see
two dimensions in the concept: hostility or rejection, on the
one hand, and loneliness (possibly a feeling of being rejected?),
on the other; and I think that lethargy and its cures: working,
eating, visiting, are associated primarily with the feeling of
loneliness. I suggest also that the latter meaning of the word
may explain why the hostile feelings that are labeled hujuujaq
are more readily acknowledged than are those that are labeled
ningaq, qiquq, and urulu. Since hujuujaq feelings, when they
refer to loneliness, are pro, rather than antisocial, and are
curable by prosocial actions, one need not be reluctant to ex-
press these feelings; and this socially acceptable sense of the
word may mask its more hostile meanings. It is possible, how-
ever, that these “two dimensions” that I see do not exist for the
Utku.
The other two terms that I have included in this section,

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 355

 pai and tumak, seem to be partial synonyms of hujuujaq.
Unfortunately, my data on both are sparse, as they occurred
far less frequently than hujuujag in everyday speech.
The term pai occurs in two senses, both of which I obtained
in verbal definitions. In the form paijuq, pai has a purely factual
sense; it refers to the state of being left behind when other
people leave the iglu, the camp, the resting place on the trail,
or any other place where one happens to be. In the form
painngujuq, on the other hand, pai has an emotive meaning;
it refers to the feeling engendered by being left behind. Like
most other negative feelings the pai feeling is most commonly
expressed in a matter-of-fact comment: “One feels left be-
hind.” It was difficult for me to recognize other kinds of behavior
indicative of the feeling, but I suspect that, as in the case of
hujuujaq, depression invisible to me was sometimes there. One
day, for instance, I had come back from a visit to a neighbor
woman, Pukig, whose husband was away on a trip to Gjoa Ha-
ven. Allaq asked me: “Does Pukiq feel left behind?’’ When I
said I did not know, Allaq asked what Pukiq was doing. I said
she was sitting alone in her iglu, drinking tea, whereupon Allaq
said: “Yes, she feels left behind.”
I have suggested that pai in this emotive sense seems similar
to hujuujaqg, and we shall see that it also resembles tumak. I
was, in fact, given both of the latter terms in explanation of pai.
A third synonym I was given is unga, which I have glossed as
“the wish to be with someone one loves.” I lack data regarding
the people in whose absence one is most likely to feel pai, but
such data as I do have support my impression that it is primarily
members of one’s ilammarigiit that one misses: mothers miss
children, wives miss husbands, one branch of the family misses
another with which it usually camps, and so on.
The term tumak I first noted in October, two months after my
arrival at Back River, when Inuttiaq was speaking to me about
the vacation trip I proposed making to Gjoa Haven. The plan
was that I would travel to Gjoa Haven with two of the younger
men when they went in to trade in early November and that
Inuttiaq would pick me up there when he came to trade, later in
the month or perhaps in December. Since he had changed his
mind several times about the date of his trip, I began to fear that
he might not go at all but would leave me in Gjoa Haven for the
rest of the winter. I do not remember how I conveyed my appre-
hension to him, but he saw it. He said, “I'll come for you, as soon

356 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

as we run out of tea and tobacco.” And then, after a pause:
“We'll miss ( tumak) you.” When I asked the meaning of the
word, he dropped his head onto his chest and sagged his body
as he sat on the ikliq.
On later occasions, I almost always recorded the term in the
same context, that is, in response to a person’s absence. The one
exception was the occasion described in the section on Anxiety,
when Saarak “worried (ujjiq)” about being supplanted at her
mother’s breast. Then, as I have said, Inuttiaq gave me tumak
as a synonym for ujjig, in explanation of the latter term. Here,
perhaps, tumak refers to the loss of an established relationship,
rather than to the physical absence of a loved person. .
The behavior symptomatic of tumak feelings, which Inuttiaq
demonstrated so graphically, seems very similar to the behavior
characteristic of hujuujaq and, I think, also of pat, though, as
have said, my data on the latter emotion are sparse. The terms
pai and tumak, however, differ in one important respect om
the
hujuujaq: they do not seem to be used in situations where
feeling is hostile.
This concludes the discussion of terms that denote emotions
and emotional behavior. It remains only to define three evalua-
tive words that occur in the narrative and to discuss the concept
of reason, which also has evaluative connotations and is or ne
jor importance in understanding the emotional reactions of the
Utku.

Evaluative Words
The words to be defined here are: ihluag and ihluit; naamak;
and pittau or pittiag. ;
The terms ihluag and ihluit are used in a wide variety of on
texts. I have glossed ihluag as: “to be correct or convenjent °
be or feel all right, good, proper, comfortable, or safe. “ ui :
is the negative form of the base. If I perform a task correc ys
is thluaq; if I make a mistake, it is ihluit. If I am typing busily
when a would-be visitor looks in, or if I am obviously prepar-
ing to go out, the visitor may ask before entering: “Ihluittunga?
Am I inconveniencing you?” If my host wants to make sure that
I am comfortably seated, or if the weather is cold, windy, and
wet, he may ask: “Ihluitpit? Are you uncomfortable?” If I love
(naklik) someone so much that I cannot sleep well in his ab-
sense, I feel ihluit. If I love a bit less intensely, it is (or, I feel)

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 357

 thluaq. If I refrain from stealing, losing my temper, and other
immoral acts, I am ihluag. If I have been ill and recover, I be-
come ihluaq (well) again. If I am given what I ask for in trade,
it is thluagq.
These terms are very similar, perhaps identical, to naamak
and its negative form, naamangngit. I am unable to say at this
point whether there are any differences in their ranges of mean-
ing.
Pittiaq and pittau are not word bases like most of the other
terms that have been discussed. They are compound forms, con-
sisting of a base, pi-, which can mean either “object” or “act,”
depending on whether the elements that follow convert the
word into a noun or a verb, and a modifying postbase, -ttiag- or
-ttau-, which is used in a great variety of contexts to express lik-
ing or moral approval. So pittiag and pittau can be glossed as
references to a good or likeable object, person, or act. In the
narrative, the terms appear in three contexts. In Chapter 3,
section III, Allaq explains the fact that Raigili has brought in
my urine can, unasked, by saying: “She likes (pittiaq) you, be-
cause you give her kapluna food to eat.” In section VI of the
same chapter, she asks me which of the two children, Raigili or
Saarak, I like (pittiaq) better, and she describes which one her
sister Amaruq likes better by illustrating how the latter used
to kiss the one child more intensely than she now kisses the
other. Finally, in Chapter 6, when Pala and Amaaqtuq write
to Nakliguhuktuq about my poor behavior, they defend their
own treatment of me by saying: “We have tried to be good (pit-
tiaq) to her here.”” And when one evening Amaaqtuq finds me
pleasant (quvia), amusing (tiphi), and kind (quya), she notes
in the letter she is writing: “Now she’s becoming very nice (pit-
tau).””

Reason
Reason (ihuma), like nurturance (naklik), holds a central
place in the Utku system of values. The concept is central in
two senses. First, it is invoked to explain many kinds of be-
havior and secondly, it is an important measure of the quality
of a person. As nurturance (naklik) defines the goodness of a hu-
man being, so reason (ihuma) defines adultness. The sense in
which this is so will, I hope, become clear below.
There are three terms to be discussed in this section on Rea-
son:

358 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

ihuma: refers to all functions that we think of as
cerebral: mind, thought, memory, reason,
sense, ideas, will;
nutaraqpaluktuq: literally “resembles a child,” a derogatory
epithet applied to persons who evince a
lack of ihuma;
ayuq: to be difficult, unable, or impossible. In the
form ayuqnaq this term means approxi-
mately “it cannot be helped” and is the
classic expression of Eskimo “fatalism,” a
concept that I shall discuss further below.
(a) Mental functions (ihuma)
Thuma, as the gloss indicates, is a broad term referring to abili-
ties that we consider mental or intellectual. I do not know ex-
actly how the Utku conceptualize ihuma, whether they think of
it as a physical entity, locate it in the head, or associate it with
the brain, as we do, but their view of the functions of this mental
force are in many ways very similar to our views. It is the pos-
session of ihuma that makes it possible for a person to respond
to his surroundings, physical and social, and to conform to so-
cial expectations. Ihuma is, or should be, a governing force in
an adult’s life. Children are thought to be born without thuma,
and accordingly, as I have said, adults who show little evidence
of possessing ihuma are spoken of as “childish (nutaraqpaluk-
tuq).”’ The Utku believe that normally children acquire ihuma
gradually as they grow. Child training consists very largely in
providing the child with experience in the form of verbal in-
structions and models to imitate, which, as his ihuma grows,
the child will remember, reflect on, and use. In the absence of
ihuma no instruction is possible, and this is a major reason why
parents do not discipline small children. Why bother? They
will not remember.”®
The growth of ihuma can be recognized in various kinds of
behavior. When a child becomes conscious or aware (qauji),
when he begins to recognize people and to remember, to un-
derstand speech and to talk, people remark that he is beginning
to acquire ihuma. Later signs that ihuma is developing are the
beginnings of self-consciousness (kanngu), the first spontane-
25. The beliefs of the North Alaskan Nunamiut concerning the nature and
functions of ihuma (ishuma) are parallel in many respects to those of the Utku
(Gubser 1965: 211-212, 221-222).

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 359

 ous attempts to help with household tasks, the acquisition of
skills, obedience to the directions of one’s elders, voluntary
conformity to religious proscriptions, such as not fishing or
working on Sunday, and above all, the growth of emotional re-
straint. A person who has (or uses) ihuma is cheerful but not
giddy. He is patient in the face of difficulties and accepts un-
pleasant but uncontrollable events with calmness; and he does
not sulk (giquq), scold (huaq), get annoyed (urulu), or attack
others physically (ningaq). A person who lacks ihuma, on the
other hand, whether adult or child, will be immoderately happy
(quvia) and playful and will laugh too easily. He will be easily
upset (hugu) and frightened (kappia, iqhi), unable to distin-
guish between real physical danger and imaginary danger; and
he will be easily angered or annoyed. He will cry, scold, and hit
on slight provocation, but on the other hand, he will also forget
his distresses quickly. His perception of his environment and
his judgments concerning the future will be confused and un-
realistic. When a child cries for a favorite food and fails to stop
crying when told the food is gone, that is because he lacks ihuma.
If a person grossly misjudges the length of a familiar trip, re-
peatedly sees imaginary caribou in the distance or hears non-
existent airplanes, as Niqi did, such errors are attributed to lack
of ihuma. A baby’s wish to be the center of affectionate atten-
tion is also attributed to a lack of ihuma, and I think that an
adult who showed a similar wish would be defined as lacking
ithuma, but this supposition needs to be checked.
(b) Childishness (nutaraqpaluktuq)
Most if not all of the kinds of behavior attributed to lack of
thuma are labeled “childish (nutaraqpaluktuq),”’ since in the
Utku view, as we have seen, child nature is characterized by a
lack of ihuma. Thus, for example, impulsiveness and excessive
display of feeling often draw the epithet “childish.” If a person
is too ebullient, smiling too broadly, laughing too easily; if he
gets “clogged up (qiquq),” or scolds (huaq), he is said to be
“childish.” When Niqi moved with the quick, jerky motions
that were characteristic of her, or when once Inuttiaq shot at a
bird that had already flown as he aimed, people whispered,
“Nutaraqpaluktuq (he/she is childish).”
Other kinds of devalued behavior are also defined as child-
ish, and it is worth noting that in at least one such case the Utku
point of view is the exact opposite of the kapluna viewpoint.

360 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

Kaplunas tend to consider Eskimos “childish” because the Iat-
ter do not plan for the future with the elaborate caution charac-
teristic of kaplunas. The Utku, on the other hand, labeled as
childish the one man among them, Nilak, who was more provi-
dent than the others. When he and his family cached all the fish
they caught during the summer instead of using some of them
for patau, Allaq gossiped: “They are like children (nutaraqpa-
luktut); they are afraid (kappia) of a food shortage.”” And when
Niqi’s perceptions were confused, Allaq defined her, too, as
childish. Thus, after I returned from my Gjoa Haven holiday,
when I reported to Allaq that Niqi had said I seemed thinner
than when I went away, Allaq said: “She’s confused; she was
lying; she is just like a child.”
It is evident from the above that childishness (nutaraqpaluk-
tuq) and simplemindedness (ihumakittuq) are in general con-
sidered unattractive traits. In a very small child, to be sure, the
absence of ihuma arouses protective (naklik) feelings in older
people. As we have seen, parents explain their reassurance and
indulgence of a small child in terms of the latter’s lack of ihuma,
his inability to understand reality. But such tolerance lessens
as the child grows older. After he has given evidence of pos-
sessing ihuma, he is expected to use (atuq) it, and if he does not,
his parents may shame him by remarking that it seems as though
he has no ihuma.
Adults who behave childishly or in a manner that shows lack
of sense (ihuma) are also condemned, as we have seen, in gos-
sip sessions. In spontaneous speech, childish (nutaraqpaluktuq)
traits may be referred to as tiphi (funny), but twice when I asked
whether a person who was nutaraqpaluktuq was tiphi, Allaq
said, “No, not tiphi; hujuujaq.” The circumstances determin-
ing the choice of tiphi or hujuujaq are not yet clear to me. It is
apparent, however, that all childish or simpleminded behavior
is not condemned with equal vehemence. Allaq and I once
talked about the way the Utku reacted to Niqi’s brother and to
another adult in the previous generation, who, according to
Allaq, had been more defective than Niqi; they had been un-
able to talk correctly and had lacked adult skills. Since Allaq
had characterized Niqi’s “lack of sense (ihuma)” as hujuujaq
(unpleasant), I asked her whether these other individuals had
also made people feel hujuujaq. “No,” said Allaq, “they were
pleasant (made one feel quvia); it’s only when people get angry
(qiquq) or annoyed (urulu) easily that they make one feel hu-

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 361

 juujaq.” Since one of the individuals under discussion
had died
and the other had moved away, I was unable to compa
re Allaq’s
statement with actual behavior, but it appears that in theory, at
least, bad temper is more to be condemned than lack of
skill
(ayuq). Attitudes toward the latter will be discussed further
,
below.

(c) Other undesirable states of ihuma ( ihumaqaruiqtuq and

ihumaquqtuuq)
In addition to simplemindedness ( ihumakittuq, literally: “in-
sufficiency of ihuma’”), there are in the Utku view two other un-
desirable states that are related to the concept of ihuma. One of
these is the complete disappearance of ihuma (thumaqaruiq-
tuq); the other, a superabundance of ihuma (thumaquqtuuq).
In the category of people in whom ihuma has “disappeared,”
we find sick people who are unconscious or delirious, unaware
of their surroundings, and insane people during psychotic epi-
sodes. Such loss of consciousness is thought to be caused by the
intervention or intrusion of evil spirits and is, naturally, feared
(kappia, ighi).
Having “too much ihuma” also has unpleasant and sometimes
dangerous implications, as Utku explained to me. Although it
is obvious that one must have ihuma in order to be considered
a fully competent member of society—the word ihumataag,
“wise person,” denotes a leader in a community—nevertheless
moderation is essential in this as in other matters; too much
ithuma is as bad as too little. A person who has too much ihuma
concentrates too much on one idea, one thought. In its most
harmless form such concentration is viewed as “inconsider-
ate.” 26 More than one anthropologist who has worked with
Eskimos, very possibly including myself, has been character-
ized by his hosts as ihumaquqtuuq, because he put such pres-
sure on them with his continual visits, questions, more visits,
and more questions, when the Eskimos would have preferred
to work, talk, eat, or sleep, unbothered by the anthropologist.
In one case, the anthropologist was ultimately defined as “a lit-
tle crazy,” because he was too consistently interested in a single
subject, but unfortunately, since my informant spoke in English,
I do not know what Eskimo term was applied to the man.
26. This statement and those that follow in this paragraph were made not by
an Utku but by a Netsilik informant, in English.

362 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

 The more frightening (kappia, iqghi) implications of having
“too much ihuma” have to do with the nature of such a person$
anger. These implications have been mentioned already in the
discussion of ill temper. When a person who has “‘too muc
ihuma” gets angry (ningaq, urulu) he gets very angry, and he
stays angry. He does not recover easily, as does a person with
“little ihuma”; he broods, and the angry thoughts can make the
person who is brooded about fall ill or die. For this reason, peo-
ple say they are careful not to arouse resentment in a person who
has “too much ihuma.” Old people, in particular, are thought to
be ihumaquqtuugq, so when an old person is ill or housebound,
people will take care to visit him and be kind to him, so that he
will not begin to “think (ihumagi-).” It is quite possible that in
some cases physical violence, as distinct from murderous brood-
ing, may also be feared from a person who is ihumaquqtuugq,
but I have no evidence of this.
An interesting question for future research concerns the na-
ture of attitudes toward the various states of anger or violence
that are attributed to different conditions of ihuma. The few data
I have give me the impression that attitudes may vary in some
respects, depending on whether the anger or the violence is
attributed to too little ihuma, to its disappearance, or to too much
of it. In the section on II] Temper I mentioned the possibility
that anger due to too much ihuma (ihumaquqtuuq) was more
to be feared than anger due to too little (thumakittuq). And ear-
lier,I said that I thought attitudes toward ordinary ( ithumakittuq)
ill temper in adults seemed different from attitudes toward the
violence (ihumagaruiqtuq) of insanity. I said that the murder-
ously insane woman, Ukalik, was feared (kappia, iqhi) when
her ihuma disappeared, but that the tenor of remarks about her
seemed to indicate that during her normal interludes she was
as well regarded as anyone else, whereas the adults of “little
sense (ihumakittuq)” who displayed bad temper might or might
not be feared but were consistently disliked (aroused hujuujaq
feelings). However, I do not know whether I would find these
distinctions maintained in behavior if I had an opportunity to
observe the insane Ukalik in the same camp with Nigqi, Nilak,
and Uyugpa, the three people who were guilty of ordinary bad
temper.
To sum up the discussion of ihuma so far: As I understand it,
the Utku (and, I think, other Eskimos) consider intellectual facul-
ties (ihuma) to be the sine qua non of socialization and of adult

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 363

 competence.” To its presence and use in moderation they at-
tribute much if not all social behavior: the acquisition of practi-
cal skills and experience, the learning of values and precepts,
and appropriate patterns of social and emotional responsiveness,
And conversely, most inappropriate behavior is thought to be
due either to an absence of ihuma or to too much ihuma. This
view bears a marked resemblance to our own, though in the em-
phasis on moderation and in the concept of “too much thuma,”
one does find some difference between the Eskimo and kapluna
points of view. Both cultures believe that “brooding” and “wor-
rying” are harmful,” but we tend to consider the physical ef-
fects of unhappy thoughts limited to the thinker himself, in the
form of psychosomatic symptoms, whereas the Eskimos believe
that such thoughts can do physical harm to the person brooded
about as well as to the brooder himself.
(d) Fatalism (ayuqnaq)
One other attitude associated with ihuma deserves mention,
because it is essential to an understanding of Utku responses to
feelings. I refer to an attitude of resignation to the inevitable,
which is expressed by the word ayuqnag. The base of this word,
ayuq-, refers to difficulty or impossibility inherent in situations
and to inability in people. The form ayuqnaq means approxi-
mately “it cannot be helped” or, more precisely, “forces outside
me make it impossible.” The concept is often interpreted as
expressive of a fatalistic inclination to give up in the face of ad-
versity (see, for example, de Coccola and King 1955:9 and pas-
sim). It is the bane of many kaplunas who have dealt with Eski-
mos, because some of the actions it explains are so strikingly
in contrast with kapluna ways. To the kapluna way of thinking,
an Eskimo finds more difficulties “inevitable” than strictly nec-
essary. Examples are cited in which an Eskimo lost in a snow-
storm sits down and waits to die, instead of struggling to regain
his bearings, or in which he fails to make the “all-out effort”
that a kapluna would make to cache meat for a lean period, pre-

27. See, for example, Gubser (1965:211). And it is also significant, I think,
that Damas (1963:54) says his Igluligmiut informants who disapproved of mar-
riage between foster siblings applied the label “simpleminded (ihumakittuq)”
to people who practiced this form of marriage.
28. Here, too, there seem to be parallels between Utku belief and the beliefs
of other Eskimos. Gubser (1965:212 and 220), writing of modern Alaskan Eski-
mos, quotes Eskimo statements concerning the evils of “thinking too much.”

364 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

ferring to live for the moment and let the future take care of it-
self. In the first case it is a feeling of hopelessness that is implied:
the goal is valued but striving for it is in vain. In the second case
the feeling is one of insouciance: the value of the goal is denied;
it is not worth striving for.
Both of these feelings can indeed be components of a fatalistic
attitude and probably are characteristic of Eskimos under cer-
tain circumstances. But in my own experience with the Utku it
was a third sort of emotional overtone that seemed to me to be
central to the ayuqnaq concept, namely a rational, pragmatic
recognition of a situation that is seen as unpleasant but unavoid-
able: the lost goal does matter but since wailing will not help, it
is childish to fret. The person who says calmly, “Ayuqnagq,”
instead of flying into a dither is using his ihuma; he is behaving
like an adult. Rasmussen (1931:190), speaking of the Netsiling-
miut, puts it very well: “(I)t is a point of honour with them to
preserve their equanimity... One might almost say that they
have the happy gift of being able to rest content with the knowl-
edge of sorrow; they know that they have suffered but do not
become emotional, merely making some quiet utterance such
as that it could not be otherwise.”
One hears the word ayuqnaq all the time, in all sorts of situ-
ations in which uncontrollable circumstances, including the
will of others, interfere with one’s own wishes or activities, and
always it is said in a perfectly calm or mildly amused tone: when
one spills one’s only cup of tea or loses one’s knife; when a sud-
den thaw brings the iglu dome heavily down on one’s head dur-
ing a sound sleep; or when one’s neighbor evades a request for
assistance.
The word occurs also in contexts in which the source of dif-
ficulty is one’s own lack of skill or knowledge. People said it
when they tried and failed to repeat English words that I pro-
nounced for them; and the fourteen-year-old Ukpik said it when
he failed to perform successfully in the men’s acrobatic games
at Christmas time.
The moral code, too, makes allowance for situations that are
ayuqnag, that “can’t be helped.” The rule says that a person who
has food or fuel of his own should not take the supplies of another,
but if one has none, that is, if food or fuel is ayuqnaq, unavail-
able, then it is all right to take a little from another's cache, pro-
vided one tells the owner one has done so. Similarly, although
it is ordinarily forbidden to work, travel, hunt, or fish on Sunday

Appendix I. Emotion Concepts 365

 under pain of hell fire, nevertheless, if someone is very ill,
acutely hungry, or otherwise in extraordinary need, then the
rule may be broken with impunity, because “it can’t be helped
(ayuqnaq).”
The excuse of ayuqnagq is rather extensively used in this moral
context; people readily define situations as ayuqnaq when dis-
comfort or inconvenience would result from scrupulous adher-
ence to the rule. When the river froze on Sunday to the right
depth for building qaqmagqs, qaqmags were built, “because it
can't be helped.” A woman who had been too tired to clean a
fox on Saturday might do it on Sunday, in order not to delay the
start of a trading trip that had been planned for Monday, “be-
cause it can’t be helped.” And one June Sunday when our ker-
asene supply was running low, Inuttiaq, thirsty for a cup of tea,
gave me permission to go and collect lichen with which to make
a fire, “because it can’t be helped.”
The base ayuq- does not occur only in the form ayuqnaaq,
which refers to difficulties inherent in situations. It also occurs
in forms that refer to inability in persons. People who failed to
pronounce English words, and Ukpik when he failed at somer-
saulting, instead of saying, “Ayuqnaq (it can’t be helped),”
might have said, ““Ayuqhaktunga (I can’t do it, or: I don’t know
how).” The most “unable (ayuq)’ creature of all is, of course, a
baby. Kaplunas in an Eskimo environment are also “unable
(ayuq)” in many ways. A state of inability or ignorance (ayuq)
is one of the qualities in a person that arouses feelings of pro-
tective concern (naklik) in others. I was several times assured:
“You are someone to be taken care of (naklik’d), because you
ayuq.” And when Inuttiaq was explaining to me why the kap-
luna fishermen should not borrow his canoe, he said: “The kap-
luna leader gave us those canoes because he feels protective
(naklik) toward us. He feels naklik toward us, and not toward
kaplunas, because we are more ayuq.” I think he meant that it
is more difficult for the Utku than for the kaplunas to acquire
the material goods necessary for survival.

366 Appendix I. Emotion Concepts

 Appendix II. Table of Seasonal Activities
November
Temperatures below freezing; hard snow. Al] move to winter
campsite, Amujat; build iglus; net whitefish and jig a few salmon
trout; trap fox; make first trading trips to Gjoa Haven.

December-January
Net whitefish; trap fox; make trips to Gjoa Haven.

February
Same as December; in addition, jigging for salmon trout begins
again.

March
Families begin to move to spring campsites; take up whitefish
nets; jig for salmon trout; trap fox; make trips to Gjoa Haven.

April
Warmer weather; softening snow. Remaining families move to
spring campsites; some jig for salmon trout; others hunt seal;
still others live on previous autumn’s fish caches; fox trapping
ends; make last trips to Gjoa Haven before break-up.

May
Snow melts. All move into tents; seal hunters live on seal; others
continue to use previous autumn’s fish caches; shoot birds; hunt
birds’ eggs.

June
River ice breaks up. Fish with reel or throwline for salmon trout
and char; shoot birds; perhaps net a few whitefish.

July
Move to summer campsites; spear migrating salmon trout and
char; dry much of the fish catch for late summer, autumn, winter
use.

August
Jig or fish with reel and line for salmon trout and char; make
toys to trade to kapluna fishermen.
 September
Snow begins to stay on the ground. The able-bodied hunt cari-
bou for one to three weeks;! others net whitefish to cache for
winter and spring; fish with reel and throwline for salmon trout
and char; women begin to sew caribou winter clothes and braid
winter fishlines of caribou sinew.

October
River freezes. Build qaqmags; jig for salmon trout; net whitefish
to cache; women sew and braid as in September.

1. Caribou are hunted sporadically at all other seasons, too, whenever their
tracks are seen near camp, but autumn is the only season in which caribou are
actively and vigorously sought.

368 Appendix II. Seasonal Activities

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 Glossary I. Eskimo Terms Other
than Emotion Terms
hiqluag: a fish storage chamber attached to an iglu or qaqmaq.
It is built of snow blocks like a tiny iglu and opens into the
_living iglu by way of a hole just big enough to craw] through.
ikliq: the sleeping-and-living area of a dwelling. Every dwelling,
whether iglu, qaqmagq, or tent, is divided into two sections:
the natiq or floor (see below) and the iklig. The ikliq is the
rear half of the dwelling, that is, the half farthest from the
entrance. It is where the family sit, eat, work, and sleep. In
an iglu, the ikliq is a platform about two feet above floor
level; in the other dwellings the ikliq is at ground level.
iglu (phonemically iklu): a dome-shaped snow house, the winter
dwelling.
ila or ilagiit: family; associates. These terms refer to a cate-
gory of people that has no precise limits. The base ila
also occurs in the text in the forms ilammarigiit (real
family), ilammarilluangngittut (less-real family), and
ilammaringngittut (not-real family). The ilammarigiit is
an extended family consisting of genealogical or adoptive
siblings (nukariit) and the children of those siblings. These
to
terms are discussed in section VI of the Introduction
the book.
The
kapluna: the Canadian Eskimo word for a white person.
gaplunaagq. It is often angli-
Eskimo word is phonemically
cized in arctic literature as kabloona.
This is the
natiq: the floor space of an iglu, qaqmagq, or tent.
area by the doorway, where
front half of the dwelling, the
stand.
food is kept ready to cook or eat, and where visitors
level of the en-
Unlike the ikliq, the natiq is always at the
trance.
patau: boiled fish steaks and heads.
of ice or snow
qaqmaq: a circular dwelling, which has walls
blocks (occasionally stone in the old days) and is roofed with
in spring when
a tent. It is used in autumn and occasionally
iglu building but is too
the weather is not cold enough for
cold for tent living.
which
qulliq: a shallow, flat-bottomed, semi-circular lamp in
fish oil is burned
blubber or tallow or (in Chantrey Inlet)
for light and heat. The term is also applied sometimes to

373
 other oil-buming lamps and to the concave rocks that
occasionally substitute for real qulliqs.
ulu: a semilunar all-purpose woman’s knife.
uyautaut: a rope stretched taut between two points, for example,
passed between the walls of an iglu, about six feet above the
ground and used for acrobatics.

374 Glossary I. Other than Emotion Terms

 Glossary II. Emotion Terms
The following glosses are not to be understood as accurate
and complete definitions. They are given only for quick refer-
ence, as an aid to memory. The terms are discussed more fully
in Appendix I.
Where two or more terms are identically glossed this means
that they are used in many of the same contexts and that I am
ignorant of any contrast that may exist between them.
Two of the terms given here, ayug and ihuma, do not denote
emotions or behaviors associated with emotions, but an under-
standing of these concepts is essential to an understanding
of Utku responses to feeling.
ayuq: to be difficult, unable, or impossible. In the form ayuqnaq
it means approximately “it cannot be helped.”
aqaq: to communicate tenderly with another by speech or by
gesture (other than touch).
hatuq: to be grateful or to arouse gratitude; to be kind, un-
frightening, helpful.
huaq: to aggress verbally against another; to scold.
huqu: to respond, to pay attention, either to the needs of others
or to disturbing events in one’s own life.
hujuujaq: to be unhappy because of the absence of other people,
or to rouse such unhappiness. This term is also used in a
wide variety of other situations that provoke unpleasant
feelings, including hostility.
ihluaq: to be correct or convenient; to be or to feel all right,
good, proper, comfortable, or safe.
ihluit: is the negative form of ihluaq (above).
ihuma: refers to all functions that we think of as cerebral:
mind, thought, memory, reason, sense, ideas, will.
ilira: to fear or to rouse the fear of being unkindly treated; to
respect, with overtones of fear.
ighi: to fear or to rouse the fear of physical injury.
iva: to lie next to someone else in bed, with connotations of
affectionate cuddling.
kanngu: to wish to avoid displaying or exposing oneself before
others.
kappia: to fear or to rouse the fear of physical injury.
naamak: to be correct or convenient; to be or to feel all right,
good, proper, comfortable, or safe.

375
 naamangngit: is the negative form of naamak.
naklik: to feel or to arouse concern for another’s physical or
emotional welfare; to wish or to arouse the wish to be with
another. Of the terms commonly used to express positive
emotion, this one is used in the widest range of situations.
ningaq: to aggress physically against another; to feel or to
express hostility.
niviuqg: to wish or to arouse the wish to kiss or touch another
affectionately.
nutaraqpaluktuq: to resemble a child. This is a derogatory term
applied to individuals who evince a lack of reason (thuma—
see above).
pai: to be or to feel left behind; to miss a person who has gone.
piyuma: to want something, often with connotations of greed,
jealousy, or envy.
pittiaq/pittau: to be good, likeable, or worthy. The term may
refer to an object, a person, or an act.
qiquq: literally, to be clogged up with foreign matter; meta-
phorically, to be on the point of tears; to feel hostile.
quya: to be grateful or to arouse gratitude; to be kind, unfrighten-
ing, helpful.
quvia: to feel or to arouse happiness, pleasant emotions.
tiphi: to provoke laughter or to feel like laughing.
tuhuu: to want for oneself a possession or a skill belonging to
someone else; to want to participate in another’s activities
or life situation; or to rouse such wishes.
tumak: to be silent and withdrawn in unhappiness, especially
because of the absence of other people.
tupak: to wake from sleep; to startle or to be startled.
unga: to wish or to rouse the wish to be with another person.
ujjiq: to realize, fearfully; to worry.
urulu: to feel, express, or arouse hostility, annoyance; also
used as an expression of sympathy at the misfortunes of
others.

376 Glossary II. Emotion Terms

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 pology)
— see ee

] aa

PORTRAIT OF AN ESKIMO FAMILY

JEAN L. BRIGGS

Anthropologist
Jean Briggs spent seventeen
months living on a remote Arctic shore as the
“adopted daughter” of an Eskimo family.
BU iteutramatavcecomo mrp ee ca
a warm and perceptive tale of the behavioral
patterns of the Utku, their way of training
children; and their handling of deviations
from desired behavior.

“Absorbingly and affectingly written. A

remarkable book...one that bids to become an
anthropological classic.”
— Publishers’ Weekly

Jean L. Briggs is a professor of anthropology

at the Memorial University of Newfoundland
in St. John’s.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England

ISBN O-b ?4-b08c6-3

Cover design by Linda Koegel

Cover art: Courtesy of Inuit