mice, for it is they that will keep you alive in the starving time.'
Long and cruel experience had also taught one fundamental lesson: 'When you seek a mate, go always, without exception, to some distant tribe, for if you take one within your own set of huts, fearful things result.' In obedience to this harsh rule, she had herself once supervised the killing of a sister and a brother who had married.
She would grant them no mercy, even though they were the children of her own brother.
'It must be done,' she had cried to members of her family, 'and before any child is born. For if we allow such a one to come among us, they will punish us.'
She never specified who they
were, but she was convinced that they existed and exercised great powers. They established the seasons, they brought the mammoth near, they watched over pregnant women, and for such services they deserved respect. They lived, she believed, beyond the horizon, wherever it chanced to be, and sometimes in duress she would look to the farthest edge of sky, bowing to the unseen ones who alone had the power to make conditions better.
There were among these Chukchis certain moments of transcendent joy, as when the men brought down a really huge mammoth or when a woman trapped in a difficult pregnancy finally produced a strong male child. On wintry nights when food was scarce and comfort almost unattainable, special joy came to them, for then in the northern heavens the mysterious ones hung out great curtains of fire, filling the sky with myriad colors of dancing forms and vast spears of light flashing from one horizon to the next in a dazzling display of power and majesty.
Then men and women would leave the frozen mud of their mean caves to stand in the starry night, their faces to the heavens as those others beyond the horizon moved the lights about, hung the colors, and sent great shafts thundering clear across the firmament. There would be silence, and the chil-55
dren who were summoned to see this miracle would remember it all the days of their lives.
A man like Varnak might expect to see such a heavenly parade twenty times in his life. With luck he might help to bring down the same number of mammoths, no more.
And as he neared the age of thirty, which he was doing now, he could anticipate the swift diminution of his powers and their ultimate disappearance. So he was not surprised one autumn morning when Tevuk said: 'Your mother cannot rise.'
When he ran to where she lay on the ground beneath the birch trees, he saw that she was mortally stricken, and he bent down to give her such comfort as he could, but she required none. In her last moments she wanted to look at the sky she had loved and to discharge her responsibilities to the people she had helped guide and protect for so long. 'When winter comes,' she whispered to her son, 'remind the children to sleep a lot.'
Varnak buried her in the birch grove, and ten days later her grave was covered by the year's first snow. Winds whipped it across the steppe, and as it drifted about the cave-huts, Varnak wondered: Maybe we should winter in the place we left, and he went so far as to consult with other adults, but their counsel was unanimous: 'Better stay where we are,' and with this resolve these eighteen new Alaskans, with enough dried mammoth meat to keep them alive through the worst of the winter, buried themselves in their huts to seek protection from the coming storms.
VARNAK AND HIS VILLAGERS WERE NOT THE FIRST TO cross from Asia into Alaska. Others seem to have preceded them at different spots by thousands of years, moving gradually and arbitrarily eastward in their constant quest for food. Some made the journey out of curiosity, liked what they found, and stayed. Some fought with parents or neighbors and wandered off with no set purpose. Others passively joined a group and never had the energy to return. Some chased animals so fast and so far that after the kill they remained where they were, and some
Long and cruel experience had also taught one fundamental lesson: 'When you seek a mate, go always, without exception, to some distant tribe, for if you take one within your own set of huts, fearful things result.' In obedience to this harsh rule, she had herself once supervised the killing of a sister and a brother who had married.
She would grant them no mercy, even though they were the children of her own brother.
'It must be done,' she had cried to members of her family, 'and before any child is born. For if we allow such a one to come among us, they will punish us.'
She never specified who they
were, but she was convinced that they existed and exercised great powers. They established the seasons, they brought the mammoth near, they watched over pregnant women, and for such services they deserved respect. They lived, she believed, beyond the horizon, wherever it chanced to be, and sometimes in duress she would look to the farthest edge of sky, bowing to the unseen ones who alone had the power to make conditions better.
There were among these Chukchis certain moments of transcendent joy, as when the men brought down a really huge mammoth or when a woman trapped in a difficult pregnancy finally produced a strong male child. On wintry nights when food was scarce and comfort almost unattainable, special joy came to them, for then in the northern heavens the mysterious ones hung out great curtains of fire, filling the sky with myriad colors of dancing forms and vast spears of light flashing from one horizon to the next in a dazzling display of power and majesty.
Then men and women would leave the frozen mud of their mean caves to stand in the starry night, their faces to the heavens as those others beyond the horizon moved the lights about, hung the colors, and sent great shafts thundering clear across the firmament. There would be silence, and the chil-55
dren who were summoned to see this miracle would remember it all the days of their lives.
A man like Varnak might expect to see such a heavenly parade twenty times in his life. With luck he might help to bring down the same number of mammoths, no more.
And as he neared the age of thirty, which he was doing now, he could anticipate the swift diminution of his powers and their ultimate disappearance. So he was not surprised one autumn morning when Tevuk said: 'Your mother cannot rise.'
When he ran to where she lay on the ground beneath the birch trees, he saw that she was mortally stricken, and he bent down to give her such comfort as he could, but she required none. In her last moments she wanted to look at the sky she had loved and to discharge her responsibilities to the people she had helped guide and protect for so long. 'When winter comes,' she whispered to her son, 'remind the children to sleep a lot.'
Varnak buried her in the birch grove, and ten days later her grave was covered by the year's first snow. Winds whipped it across the steppe, and as it drifted about the cave-huts, Varnak wondered: Maybe we should winter in the place we left, and he went so far as to consult with other adults, but their counsel was unanimous: 'Better stay where we are,' and with this resolve these eighteen new Alaskans, with enough dried mammoth meat to keep them alive through the worst of the winter, buried themselves in their huts to seek protection from the coming storms.
VARNAK AND HIS VILLAGERS WERE NOT THE FIRST TO cross from Asia into Alaska. Others seem to have preceded them at different spots by thousands of years, moving gradually and arbitrarily eastward in their constant quest for food. Some made the journey out of curiosity, liked what they found, and stayed. Some fought with parents or neighbors and wandered off with no set purpose. Others passively joined a group and never had the energy to return. Some chased animals so fast and so far that after the kill they remained where they were, and some
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