. Hunters of the great north . great consideration, and his opin-ion was that a good dog would pull about as long as hehad any strength without being whipped. Whipping, hesaid, would not help our speed much, if any, but wouldhurt his reputation and lower his standing in the com-munity. He told me that the only approved Eskimomethod of inducing dogs to work is either by shouting tothem and trying to cheer them up by the voice, or else byhaving some person walk ahead of the team of whom thedogs are fond so that they will pull hard to try to keep up. I regret to say that during the twelve years f
. Hunters of the great north . great consideration, and his opin-ion was that a good dog would pull about as long as hehad any strength without being whipped. Whipping, hesaid, would not help our speed much, if any, but wouldhurt his reputation and lower his standing in the com-munity. He told me that the only approved Eskimomethod of inducing dogs to work is either by shouting tothem and trying to cheer them up by the voice, or else byhaving some person walk ahead of the team of whom thedogs are fond so that they will pull hard to try to keep up. I regret to say that during the twelve years following1906 the Mackenzie River Eskimos adopted the customof whipping dogs, so that when I was among them last(1918) it was only a few of the old men who did notdo so. Something like forty miles from Tuktuyaktok we be-gan to look for people at well-known camp sites, but allthe camps turned out to be deserted. We were thirtymiles away when our dogs had become so weak that itwas necessary to leave behind most of our U 2 LOST IN THE MACKENZIE DELTA 119 For several days all of us had been taking turns pullingon the sleds. After stopping feeding the dogs, we stillhad fish enough for three or four days for ourselves at alittle more than half rations. Some fifteen miles from Tuktuyaktok we came upona new sled trail. When the dogs got the strong smellfrom the fresh tracks of the men and dogs, they inter-preted it to mean food and began to pull with such energythat we were able to let go our hauling straps. When atlast the houses came in sight the people there soon saw usand began to shout, and upon hearing this the dogsspeeded up so that we had to run to keep up with them. When we got within about half a mile of the house tenor fifteen people came running out to meet us. At theirhead was Ovayuak who welcomed all of us cordially andme even more effusively than the others. He was espe-cially cordial when Roxy told him that I had come tospend the rest of the winter with him
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecthunting, bookyear1922
