stefansson-wrangel-09-34-011

didn't hold fox and this morning about eleven
oclock I saw a polar boar on the ice, and I
saw three foxes one with trap on her foot and
I haul one load of sled and saw four cuts of
logs and chop wood, and we look at Knight's
legs my! they are skiny and they has no more
blue spots like they used to be. and I pretty
near finish my bead belt."

Knight, for one, would have scoffed at her dark
foreboding that first day, probably calling it a throwback to
her superstition-ridden forebears. So she had said nothing,
being ashamed, because dread of the Unknown had no place in
the white man's world and she, too, tried to scoff at the old
beliefs of her people. Thanks to the mission school she knew,
for instance, that it was nonsense to suppose that because
wood cannot feel pain therefor an amulet of wood could bring
good health, or that tying a raven's foot around an infant's
neck could give the child the tenacious qualities of the bird,
or that having an angakok exorcise a newborn baby’s soul to
hide it under its mother's blubber lamp could keep it safe
forever. All that was ancient nonsense, and she knew better
than to believe any of it. At least, she wanted to know better.

But for her, coming to the island was literally
a step backward in time. Behind was a world, the white man's
world, which she had learned to know and where she had made
her living. Ahead was a world to which she may have responded
by instinct, but which in fact she did not comprehend at all.

“27th.

I was over to the traps and caught one and
another fox that has trap in her foot has been
at the kold oil can oh my I feel very weak now
and I can feel it yesterday and today.