people, and so on all of the Eskimoan people…
.
My wife has instructed me to thank you for the copy of M. De Poncin’s book
Eskimos
that caught up with us last month after long wanderings about the arctic pursuing me. The book doesn’t seem to have gained anything in authenticity from its travels, but I am instructed to thank you and, being an obedient husband, do so. But what purpose did you intend for this book? Its pages are far too hard and shiny to have any practical value in our sylvan retreat
.
Cheerio for now. I hope you will bear with me a while longer. Life for those who defy the Big Machine can be damned difficult and the Mowats have had a hard summer
.
Two weeks later I wrote again, this time enclosing a 2,100-word book outline.
I have had second thoughts about the Pommela story. If, instead of using Pommela’s life as the central theme, I expand it to include the
Ihalmiut as a whole, it should make it easier to tie in a number of related subjects. Three of these – biology, anthropology, and geography – have been major interests of mine for many years. Biology led me to study the Barrenland Caribou and the Arctic Wolf together with many other animals of the region. To give you an idea of what I’ve been doing in this connection, let me tell you briefly about the wolf work
.
In May of 1947 I located a wolf den not too far from our camp and for the next six weeks spent much of my time in a small tent near the den spying and prying into the family life of the more or less unsuspecting wolves through a 15x binocular telescope. This resulted in my acquiring much scientific data, and even more illuminating and thought-provoking observations that I think are both amusing and enlightening. This study concluded with a visit to the den, down which I crawled under the mistaken belief there were no wolves at home. But there were. Three of them, in fact
.
My anthropological studies included the folklore, religion, hunting methods, etc. etc. of the Ihalmiut: an archaeological survey of their portion of the central Barrenlands of Keewatin and, most important of all, personal relationships with many of the surviving Ihalmiut. I have been able to build up a fairly good idea of what the aboriginal culture was like and to reconstruct at least some of their history during the last half century and more
.
I also spent some months in the country of the Idthen Eldeli, the most northerly Indian people of the region, and have enough material about them to begin a book but would dearly love to spend more time with them
.
White men also provide a splendid source of material ranging from the story of mad “Eskimo” Charlie, to the 45-year sojourn of a German missionary priest on the boundary between Indian and Eskimo territory, whose summation of his life, as expressed to me, was: “It was an evil day for these people when I came among them.”
The geography of the country is almost as interesting as the people and animals. This was the last retreat of the great, mile-thick glaciers
that relatively recently covered much of north-eastern America. Their titanic imprint remains as visible as if made only yesterday. Examples include the eskers running like monumental deserted railway embankments for hundreds of miles over a broken and shattered landscape of rocks and water; ancient marine beaches ringing hills at heights of several hundred feet and distances of several hundred miles from Hudson Bay – the last remnant of an enormous ocean that once covered the entire region
.
These things are only scraps from the material I have to work with but may serve to illustrate the wealth of information I can draw upon
.
Now down to cases. I appreciate your earlier suggestion that the first book should be primarily a personal narrative told in the first person, but I would like to keep myself out of it as much as possible. I want to let the Eskimos tell most of their own stories. I think this can be done with authenticity since
.
My wife has instructed me to thank you for the copy of M. De Poncin’s book
Eskimos
that caught up with us last month after long wanderings about the arctic pursuing me. The book doesn’t seem to have gained anything in authenticity from its travels, but I am instructed to thank you and, being an obedient husband, do so. But what purpose did you intend for this book? Its pages are far too hard and shiny to have any practical value in our sylvan retreat
.
Cheerio for now. I hope you will bear with me a while longer. Life for those who defy the Big Machine can be damned difficult and the Mowats have had a hard summer
.
Two weeks later I wrote again, this time enclosing a 2,100-word book outline.
I have had second thoughts about the Pommela story. If, instead of using Pommela’s life as the central theme, I expand it to include the
Ihalmiut as a whole, it should make it easier to tie in a number of related subjects. Three of these – biology, anthropology, and geography – have been major interests of mine for many years. Biology led me to study the Barrenland Caribou and the Arctic Wolf together with many other animals of the region. To give you an idea of what I’ve been doing in this connection, let me tell you briefly about the wolf work
.
In May of 1947 I located a wolf den not too far from our camp and for the next six weeks spent much of my time in a small tent near the den spying and prying into the family life of the more or less unsuspecting wolves through a 15x binocular telescope. This resulted in my acquiring much scientific data, and even more illuminating and thought-provoking observations that I think are both amusing and enlightening. This study concluded with a visit to the den, down which I crawled under the mistaken belief there were no wolves at home. But there were. Three of them, in fact
.
My anthropological studies included the folklore, religion, hunting methods, etc. etc. of the Ihalmiut: an archaeological survey of their portion of the central Barrenlands of Keewatin and, most important of all, personal relationships with many of the surviving Ihalmiut. I have been able to build up a fairly good idea of what the aboriginal culture was like and to reconstruct at least some of their history during the last half century and more
.
I also spent some months in the country of the Idthen Eldeli, the most northerly Indian people of the region, and have enough material about them to begin a book but would dearly love to spend more time with them
.
White men also provide a splendid source of material ranging from the story of mad “Eskimo” Charlie, to the 45-year sojourn of a German missionary priest on the boundary between Indian and Eskimo territory, whose summation of his life, as expressed to me, was: “It was an evil day for these people when I came among them.”
The geography of the country is almost as interesting as the people and animals. This was the last retreat of the great, mile-thick glaciers
that relatively recently covered much of north-eastern America. Their titanic imprint remains as visible as if made only yesterday. Examples include the eskers running like monumental deserted railway embankments for hundreds of miles over a broken and shattered landscape of rocks and water; ancient marine beaches ringing hills at heights of several hundred feet and distances of several hundred miles from Hudson Bay – the last remnant of an enormous ocean that once covered the entire region
.
These things are only scraps from the material I have to work with but may serve to illustrate the wealth of information I can draw upon
.
Now down to cases. I appreciate your earlier suggestion that the first book should be primarily a personal narrative told in the first person, but I would like to keep myself out of it as much as possible. I want to let the Eskimos tell most of their own stories. I think this can be done with authenticity since
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