[Granville-Hough] 28 Nov 2009 - The Old Eskimo Village

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:19:17 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: The Old Eskimo Village - 28 Nov 2009

    As I thought about the Eskimos and the polar bears, I was reminded
of the old Eskimo village of Thule.  It was near us out on the open land
near the beach (in summer).  They were really one-room shacks made of
driftwood and sod/moss, which had been collected from the few places
where it grew.  When the historic explorers were trying to reach the
North Pole over the ice, they were based there.  The Eskimos collected
the driftwood over a long time and hauled it by dog team back to the
site for building the dwellings.  Each one had a seal storage platform
about six feet high  near the dwelling where their catches were stored
so the dogs could not get to them.  These  platforms had inches of
frozen and dried meat, fur, skin, and debris on its top.  It must have
taken dozens of years for it to disintegrate and blow away.
    Each dwelling was similar, with an indoor privy at the back corner,
some still containing frozen debris.  The basic frame of the house was
made of driftwood of strange shapes, some from old wrecks, some seemed
to be logs or poles from a thousand miles away, and some were bones of
whales and other big prey.  This framework was covered on the outside
with the sod/moss in block form, as it might look from an Irish peat
bog.  This gave an insulation of a type.  I never did find a peat/moss
bog in Thule, but they must have existed somewhere.  On the inside was
another insulation of old newspapers, some from 1910 through 1930 during
the exploration days.  As the Eskimos did not read, some were sideways,
some upside down, some accidentally upright.  But this was their inside
insulation.
    A whole family would live inside a dwelling.  They had seal oil
lamps and used seal oil and other animal oils for cooking.  Of course,
any driftwood not suitable for building was immediately used as firewood.
    When I had visitors we would go over to the old village and I would
try to explain how the villagers lived.  Most people could not believe
what they saw.  I do have some pictures I took during the summer months.
    When the Danish government and the USA agreed on the BMEWS site at
Thule, the villagers had to be relocated.  Otherwise, they would die
from imported diseases.  The Eskimos had a summer camp far to the north,
I think about 100 miles almost at the north end of Greenland, where seal
were plentiful.  The two governments built a new village there.  I do
not know what it was called, but we simply named it New Thule.  We were
not allowed to go there.  When we needed the Eskimos for missions, it
was a dog sled trip of several days on the sea ice.  In the summer, they
must have come by helicopter.  I remember them as winter visitors.