Brother Eskimos

INUK (322 pp.)--Roger Bullard--Far-rar, Straus & Young ($3.50).

As a Roman Catholic schoolboy in Burgundy, Roger Buliard dreamed of an adventurous life in the service of Christ. The dream became a dedication. Roger Buliard entered the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, studied seven years for the priesthood, and at last got a mission station at Coppermine, an Eskimo settlement within the Arctic Circle in the Canadian northwest. For 15 years he roamed the Arctic, forming small congregations, studying Eskimo life and manners, gradually falling in love with the place. Inuk (Eskimo for "I am the man") is the record of his Arctic life, a superb account that blends the impersonal acuteness of an anthropologist with the loving warmth of a truly religious man.

Pretend to Be a Seal. The first thing Father Buliard did in Coppermine was to learn Eskimo--an accomplishment, he remarks happily, that gave him a great advantage over his Anglican rivals. He also learned how to put together a reasonable facsimile of a snowhouse, how to catch a seal (wriggle up to it, crawfish-style, pretending to be a seal yourself), and how to alleviate snow blindness by a few searing drops of kerosene in the eyes. He accustomed himself to the Eskimo menu, even to such delicacies as owl meat, scorpionfish liver, frozen raw fish, warm blood, seal guts braided with blubber. Like any true man of the Arctic, he became devoted to his Huskies, in whom he found a "sympathy and tenderness that many humans might envy." And he learned not to underestimate his native competitors, the shamans or medicine men. It was not inconceivable, he felt, that they might perform "preternatural feats with the help of evil spirits."

This kind of Eskimo know-how contributed to Father Buliard's success as a missionary. One accomplishment: the establishment of the northernmost Catholic mission in the world, for which Pope Pius XI himself sent a chalice.

Was Life So Nice? Roger Buliard found no "noble savages." The Eskimos revealed most of the standard human faults, plus a few special ones of their own, e.g., though Eskimos spoil their children, they sometimes commit infanticide. Buliard found them brave in the face of danger and stoic in the face of. death, but without the softer virtues of pity and compassion. They treat their women, Buliard concluded, as mere objects of comfort, and they occasionally kill rivals to get them. Yet they are capable of a certain philosophical appreciation of the value and transitoriness of life. Buliard is struck by a death song that begins:

Say, tell me now, was life so nice on earth?

Father Buliard wrote Inuk in French, translated it into English himself. He is now in the U.S., awaiting his next assignment. He hopes it will take him back to the Arctic.

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