Umeealik Goes North

Somewhere on southeastern Hudson Bay fortnight ago solid ice or snow-drifted muskeg echoed back the hammering exhaust of a ski-shod plane flying north. Aboard were an inspector and a corporal of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a doctor, a radioman, a pilot. They were headed for a barren mass of stone low on the surface of the Bay, the Belcher Islands. The reason for their flight was murder.

Into a Hudson's Bay Co. Post where Great Whale River empties into the eastern waters of the Bay had trekked Trapper Ernest Riddell, the only white man on the Belcher Islands. To get there he had walked 60 miles over the ice to the main land.

The first radio message from the lonely post gave only the fact of murder, enough to start the Mounties on their 800-mile flight from Ottawa. But last week's mes sages brought a fuller story.

Murder among the Eskimos is fairly in frequent, always logical. Most usual causes are shortages of wives or food. But the 200 families on the Belcher Islands have a tradition of murder. Their forebears were banished there from the mainland 50 years ago for massacring the white men at Great Whale River. But this murder, according to Trapper Riddell, was a matter of theology.

Since the beginning of winter, two neighboring families had been wrangling over the second coming of Christ. One family firmly believed He would soon return to earth. All through the winter they kept their igloo ready for Him, kept their seal spears sharpened, their fishing nets mended. Their larder was always stocked with meat and skins.

To the neighbors this was nonsense. He would not come for "many-times-many-years." But meanwhile the food and skins were there and might as well be used. All winter long the neighbors did not bother to hunt; instead they cadged food from the believers, remarking: "If He is coming tomorrow, you surely have food for us too."

In the end this was too much even for simple, gracious Eskimo hospitality. There was a fight and two men and a woman of the unbelieving family were killed.

When the Mounties get to the Islands, they will have little detective work to do. Eskimos don't lie, and will probably tell umeealik, the boss man, all about it. If the inspector decides to bring the guilty family down to Moose Factory on James Bay for trial that will be fine, they will get a ride in an airplane and a chance to see a whole street of "igloo-pak," the white men's houses.

They might even be sentenced to be hanged, which would be too bad. But they are much more likely to go to jail, that Eskimo heaven where it is always nice and warm and there is nothing to do but eat and sleep.

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