Natural History

Vilhjalmur Steffansson was interesting man. Born to Icelandic immigrants in Manitoba and raised on the prairies of North Dakota, Stefansson was always looking at things and reading intensively. He developed a strong social conscience that was nurtured in his parents’ progressive Lutheranism, which often conflicted with more the Wisconsin Synod Lutheranism (Michele Bachmann Lutheranism) that was prevalent in the region. He was expelled from the University of Dakota because of his excessive absences and his rebellious streak. He later graduated from the university of Iowa, but by then he’d become a Unitarian. The Unitarians helped him get into Harvard Divinity School, but he soon discovered that he was into ethnography. As a student, he made several trips to the Canadian arctic as a student and as an explorer for the Canadian government. On one expedition, he raised the Union Jack upon Wrangel Island, which was known Russian Territory– causing a small international incident. On another, he discovered a group of Inuit in Canada’s Canada Northwest Territories who used copper tools. These people are called the Copper Inuit or the “Copper Eskimos.”

Stefansson actively promoted arctic exploration and settlement, and he used his discoveries in the region to promote the arctic as a place Western man could settle. We North Americans were very slow to develop any of our arctic resources, but the Soviet Union definitely was– mainly because it had no other option. Stefansson would come to admire some aspects of Soviet society at the time and would align himself with members of the Communist Party of the United States– but never joined the organization. However, he was active in establishing a committee in the United States with the goal of setting up a homeland for the Jews in the Russian Far East— what would have been Stalin’s version of Israel but based upon the Yiddish language rather than Hebrew. There is a small Jewish community in Birobidzhan, most of them are descendants of Russian and Yiddish-speaking Jews who moved there during the 1930’s. Birobidzhan of what the Russians call the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, but only a tiny percentage of the population is actually Jewish.

Despite his connections to the Soviet Union, Stefansson did his best to promote the arctic to North American audiences. His best known book arguing for arctic settlement is The Friendly Arctic, in which he describes his five years of living in the Canadian arctic from 1913 to 1918. From 1913 to 1916, he was leading the Canadian Arctic Expedition, but after 1916, he was leading his own expedition.

It is his account of how the Copper Inuit used their dogs that is of interest to us.  Contrary to what might be assumed about the dogs of the Inuit, they are not necessarily used solely as sled dogs. With the Copper Inuit, they were used primarily to assist in hunting ice seals, which make breathing holes in the sea ice during the winter. These holes are often hard for humans to find, but a dog can scent them fairly easily. The Copper Inuit also used these dogs to hunt bears. Stefansson doesn’t mention which species of bear the dogs were pursuing, but this is a bit too far north for them to be hunting brown bears. It is likely they were hunting polar bears. The dogs were also used to hunt caribou, and although they may not have been used in the active killing of seals. They certainly were used in this fashion to kill the more terrestrial big game species:

In the economy of these Eskimos the dog is used primarily for hunting and only secondarily as a draft animal. The seal holes, which are only an inch or so in diameter and through most of the winter covered with snow, cannot be found by the Eskimos without the help of the sharp-scented dogs. Usually each seal hunter has his own dog which he takes with him in leash but sometimes two or three hunters will use the same dog. They will then leave the house together in the morning, walking back and forth over the ice until the dog has discovered the first seal hole. One of the hunters remains at this hole while the others take the dog farther afield. When he has found the second hole the third man takes him, and so on. When the sealing is not more than a mile or two from the village a seal that is caught early in the day is left lying on the ice while the dog discovers for the hunter a second seal hole. The hunter marks this hole temporarily, then he goes back to where the dead seal lies, hitches the dog to it and sends him home to camp. The dog does this errand with the greatest good will for he knows that he is going to get a feed at the end of it. I have asked Eskimos whether the dog was not likely to stop on the way to eat the seal, but it seems that this rarely or never happens. Before the dog starts he may try to lick the blood off the seal but he will not stop even for this when once on his way. However, if the seal is caught by a snag of ice and the dog gets stuck, he may turn on the seal and eat it. When a dog once learns to eat a seal on the way home it is difficult or impossible to break him of the habit and thereafter such a dog is never entrusted with a seal.

Next to the finding of seal holes the greatest use of the dog is in bear hunting. Commonly two or three Eskimos hunt bears together, although any Eskimo would be ashamed of not tackling a bear alone if no hunting companion happened to be available. It is considered that two or three dogs should be used although some exceptionally good bear dogs are able to hold a bear singly. The bow and arrow are occasionally used, especially if there are several hunters, but more often the bear is killed with the hunting knife converted into a spear, for these Eskimos have no regular spears. An Eskimo always uses a walking stick a little stouter than a broom handle and about four feet long, and when a bear is to be attacked he lashes his hunting knife to this stick, thus converting it into a spear. The knife is double-edged and whether it is of steel or of copper the blade is usually from ten to fourteen inches long….

The largest number of dogs I have ever seen among Eskimos who did not have guns is three to a family. Two is the commonest number and one dog to a family is not rare. Perhaps the main reason why the introduction of firearms brings about such destruction of caribou is that the rifle makes it so easy to provide dogs with food, and the mobility of the caribou herds makes it so desirable to have large teams to follow the herds about, that the situation takes the form of an endless chain. A man has more dogs so he can kill more caribou to feed more dogs to help him to kill more caribou. The Eskimos around the Mackenzie River or Cape Bathurst who used to content themselves with two or three dogs to a family before the introduction of firearms, had fifteen or twenty dogs after rifles came and while the caribou were still plentiful. Later, of course, when the caribou had been nearly exterminated in the vicinity the dog teams had to be cut down (pg. 420-421).

So the Inuit did use their dogs to hunt ice seals.

And it is interesting that the number of dogs increased exponentially when firearms were introduced.  They were able to maintain larger packs of dogs that were fed solely through their hunting expeditions. Stefansson seems to be implying that only when other Inuit had guns could they afford to have large packs of hauling dogs. One cannot have much of a dog team with just three or four dogs.

These were people who actually relied upon their dogs to feed them.  This is a service that virtually no dog in the West today provides, but it wasn’t always this way. Davy Crockett and other “mountain men” lived almost exclusively on what they could kill, and they relied upon really good hunting dogs for their sustenance.

It is easy for modern Westerners to postulate that hunting and gathering people never used their dogs to hunt all that much. It’s easy– because most Westerners are so far removed from that situation that they simply don’t know. But I remember what my grandpa told me about his elkhounds and other squirrel dogs. He told me that by the time winter came, the squirrels would be too wary to make themselves exposed to a hunter’s gun.  And with the leaves off, the squirrels would be particularly wary.

One could go into the woods with a shotgun all day at that time of the year and not shoot any squirrels, but if one went with a well-trained squirrel dog, they dogs would find them almost instantly.

I don’t need studies showing me that the San or Bushmen of the Kalahari have discovered that they can more easily pursue antelope and other game with the assistance of dogs. They didn’t use dogs at all until very recently, but now it is almost impossible to find a Bushmen camp without any hunting dogs.

Dogs are very useful for hunters, but hunting dogs of all types have to be trained. And people have to learn how to use the dogs properly.

The notion that dogs aren’t predatory mammals is one of the silliest ideas that gets promoted these days. People who really should know better tell us that dogs just aren’t hunting animals– they are actually scavengers. It is very similar to what people used to say about spotted hyenas or currently say about the Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s simply not born out by reality. Anyone who has ever seen a dog kill a prey species in the wild will very quickly come to the realization– and it’s a profound realization– that this animal isn’t just the cute animal that we think of as a family member. It’s a predatory mammal. The millennia of domestication haven’t destroyed all the wolf in this creature after all.