Ilatsiak - 53 - The Girls’ Tale

Qayaq listened to the two little girls rattle on and on with their story. They would giggle, then quickly go serious and wide eyed as it came rushing out of them. It reminded Qayaq of when she was little and would go exploring the tundra while her paretns were busy. She too had been used to wandering about and knew that almost her earliest memories were of walking along the raised beaches behind her parents spring camp when they were camping on the Matty islands. She happily recalled the hours being with her older sister who would usually be carried their younger brother in the pouch of their mother’s amautiq. They would hop from one beach level to the next trying to catch lemmings and sik-sik, the ubiquitous ground squirrels that lived in holes in the rocky ground. Their walks would be their only play. As they walked they both chewed leather to soften for boot soles for their mother. It seemed she never had enough soles for everyone’s boots, especially in the summer. The rough ground and sharp rocks along the beaches were very hard on the soles during the those months. Their mother was constantly at them, telling them to remember to switch boots each day to prevent holes from developing too quickly.
The girls were telling a story which happened just after the family had made the crossing from their winter camp in Boothia in order to be at the inland fishing camp during the summer. It had been several years since they had joined the fun and visiting that always occurred at the lakes. It was a feature of their annual cycle that everyone looked forward to. Qayaq smiled, thinking she too had loved the lakes. That was where she had met David.
She focused back on the girls’ story. They were talking about not being familiar with every part of this coast, but that they were certain that whatever it was they could see had to be something new. It took them about half and hour to walk close enough to get a better view. All the time her sister held back. She was much more timid and felt they should not be going closer to the unknown thing by themselves. They really should be asking the elders instead. They would take care of whatever it was. Whatever was there was very new and strange and certainly was not put there by Inuit. They decided to be safe turned for home.
Qayak listened more attentively as the two girls told their story. From their description it reminded her of David’s stories of the boxes he had been told to guard, boxes which had come from ships. She wondered if she should get him so he could listen to the girls too, but then some puppies crawled out from under the caribou skins and the girls stopped talking and ran to pick them up. Next they were outside, holding the puppies in the air, making their legs more so they would learn to run fast when they grew up.
When David returned she repeated the girls story to him. They then asked the girls’ father for more details. He informed them the girls had seen the old pile of boxes left on the beach several years previously by the white sailors. There wasn’t much left there now because the sailors had taken it away. He then told how David’s father, Agayuq had discovered the boxes and wondered about them. There were stories from other places years ago about boxes piled on the beach so Agayuq returned to the camp and reported his find, no one was too surprised. They had already heard the girls’ story as well about these new boxes. Several days later, acting on the advice of the older men in the camp, he and several other men began walking down the beach in the direction of the boxes the he had seen. The elders had been quite excited on hearing the news and hoped the boxes would be as rich as the others had proven to be years ago. Four men had been chosen to go and look at the boxes and for the qallunait who had probably put them on the point. They quickly covered the ground and found hundreds of boxes of different sizes laying neatly piled on the beach above the high tide line. Piles of other materials, rope, cans and other strange things lay heaped around the boxes. There was a sense of haste about the place as though the spot was quickly chosen, the work done in a rush and then those involved had made a quick retreat. This was not noticed however by the Inuit as they picked their way through the various items they saw.
There was no sign of any white men if it had been they who placed the boxes on the beach. As well, the beach stones born no tracks that were clear enough to provide clues. They could see the marks in places which boat keels had made, but not being familiar with such heavy boats, they didn’t understand what they were. The elders had been strict in telling the men not to open any of the boxes, nor to take anything. While little was known about the white men who left the boxes, what little was known was that they had very different ideas about sharing than did the Inuit. It was thought that they were not fully human yet in that regard.
One day, later in the summer, he man continued, when Agayuq began cutting up the remains of a seal he had just caught, the two dogs he had out hunting with him picked up a strange scent and stood pulling at their traces, yelping at the distant point to the west of them. Agayuq, alerted, began to smell the same odor as well. It was coming from the point where the boxes had been found. Finishing quickly by caching the three seals he had caught that day under some snow, together with the cut portions intended for the dogs, placed onto the large seal skin he had been using as an improvised sled, he set out walking towards the point. He hadn’t gone far before his eyes, trained by years of hunting to pick out the slightest movement in the landscape, were able to pick out at least four and possibly five people at the boxes. They were dressed in strange clothes and while they looked like men, they certainly did not look like anyone he had seen before. They must be the qallunait the elders talked about having seen years ago to the east. They also had left boxes on the beach in several places.
“Agayuq stole one of those white men and rasied him as his own...” the father of the girls stated. “Now that boy lives far away with the Fish River people so he won’t go back to the qallunat.” David and Qayaq smiled to each other, keeping their secret to themselves.
“And where is Agayuq now?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” the man answered. “Maybe gone looking for his son. He misses him a lot!”