CLIFF DWELLERS OF THE ARCTIC

expedition through stories of man's quest for the unknown through the steaming jungles across the burning desert to the depths of treacherous seas and to the highest mountains of the world expedition actual films of the great expeditions of our time recorded as they happen your host is the famous deep-sea diver author and Explorer Colonel John Dee Craig and here is Colonel trained tonight are making an important discovery about the Eskimos our expedition gets trapped into a race for life it battles 1,000 miles in a walrus skin boat against the fury of the Arctic winter our film was made by the famous glacier priest father Bernard Hubbard and it is called cliff dwellers of the Arctic but first here's a discovery we'd like you to mate [Music] one of the world's best known explorers his father Bernard Hubbard and justifiably so in his 30 years of exploring the Arctic he's faced every hazard imaginable in order to bring back important scientific knowledge and one of his greatest achievements is documented by the historic film we're going to see tonight were on his 2,000 mile journey through Arctic waters in an open walrus skin boat he proves something that for years had puzzled many students of the Eskimos his discovery about the relationship between isolated settlements was an enormous contribution to science he spent a year living among the Eskimos to gather this material and here he is now to give his own account like the ancestors of the American Indians the Eskimos also had their origin in Asia but 30 years ago no one knew exactly how long ago they came except that it must have been much later than the Indians when all the hunting grounds to the south were already occupied and they were forced to survive along the rim of the Arctic Ocean one such band eventually settled below the Bering Strait on a tiny rock called King Island this settlement was a particular interest to me because it might have been on the direct migration route from Asia and so one summer more than 30 years ago I boarded a Coast Guard Cutter which was to take me to this strange community of cliff dwelling Eskimos at that time no one was sure of all Eskimos had retained the same language I wanted to go to King island to study the Eskimos there and then take a handful of them up the Arctic coast to the other settlements if they could understand each other it would prove something about when they came to North America blue-eyed McGee quiz with me my oldest most faithful dark it also been with me on many of my previous expeditions in the Arctic and as a famous explorer he had to give everybody his autograph [Music] King Island this is how I first thought a barren rock rising a thousand feet straight out of the sea it seemed inconceivable that anyone could be living there King Island had no harbour the cutter had to anchor far along Shore the water is deep and it took almost all the chain life would be very difficult up here without the coastguard time and time again these men have rescued entire villages and starvation and picked shipwreck hunters and fishermen out of the worst seas with total disregard for their own safety it would be at least a year before I'd see them again [Music] even before I met them the King Islanders amazed me imagine braving these gigantic rocks in only their fragile skin canoes even more amazing with the houses they built clinging precariously to the sheer cliffs I'd like so many swallows nests in good weather the women cooked outside on the fuel level spots on the cliff the Eskimo woman has her own type of knife and I was interested to note that it's the same shape as the women in Greenland news 3,400 miles away Makeda obviously approves of eskimo baby's getting baby into the rumble seat is something of an engineering feat the Eskimos know nothing of dr. Spock or child psychology but I've never found happier or better adjusted youngsters anywhere our young mother gathered a kind of wild spinach it's their main vegetable they eat all of it flower stem and root usually mixed with seal oil next to the harpoon the Eskimos most ingenious invention is the kayak his remarkable skin canoe normally there you Singley but for offshore fishing two kayaks are sometimes lashed together to reduce the danger of capsizing in the rough sea around King Island this has saved many a hunters life because of the rigorous climate view Eskimos ever learned to swim and so at their capsized in heavy seas they may drown before they can write their kayaks fishing here is primitive but effective a simple line with a hook at the end is all the Eskimo fisherman needs in no time at all there was an abundance of fish for the dinner table [Music] considering the inhospitable rock on which they live the king Islanders enjoy an amazingly varied diet thanks to their own ingenuity my companion at 11:00 and I have retreated to a hair-raising experience when the king island boys invited us along in a sea hunt for a special delicacy the eggs of the sea parrot now this involved climbing into the most inaccessible crags more than a thousand feet above the sea as a geologist I've climbed many a mountain in Alaska and over the years I have seen some expert Mountaineers in action but the little boys of King Island amazed me with their natural sure-footedness on the most precarious cliffs they're born alpinists completely unafraid it never occurred to them that what they were doing was dangerous they accepted life at sofas naturally full of dangers today they hunted along precipitous cliffs for sea parenting's tomorrow they would brave the sea for walrus if they feared danger they would never survive [Music] not long after the weather began to Jay the first blizzard broken King Island howling out of the north with unexpected fury [Music] all of us fled to the comparative safety of the vets along dignity as men and women crawled indoors through their entryway in the floor the houses shook and shuddered under the onslaught of the arctic storm while the blizzard howled outside the men passed the time carving walrus ivory Eskimo carvings are much in demand and they trade them for candy flour and the white man's tools we found the traditional Eskimo mouth drill still in use but they also have modern saws certainly some of our modern tools have made life easier for them unfortunately the white man has also brought them many diseases such as tuberculosis to which they have almost no resistance in any event they still have their ancient artistic skills when winter came the see around our loony Rock was blanketed by a sheet of ice four feet thick now virtually the entire population men women and even children got busy chopping holes in the ice to fish [Music] [Applause] [Music] the King Islanders use neither a conventional hook nor even bait a long string a sharpened piece of bent wire and a bit of colored cloth seemed to do the trick soon the ice was covered with both crabs and fish I was amazed at both the patience and endurance of my friends it was bitterly cold so cold at the fish froze solid almost as soon as they came out of the water and yet some of these people stood on the ice for hours on end the entire village shares in the catch some of it would go to the old people who could no longer get their own food and some would be saved for our long expedition to Point Barrow the northernmost point of North America [Music] [Music] spring was getting closer you polar bear skins were drying in the Sun soon they would become partners and boots and our friends started building a new oomiak for our journey a new MEAC is a king sized walrus skin boat built in driftwood and whale bone lashed together with tough walrus sinew and thongs cut from wall resigned to me there is a special kind of beauty in watching men doing what they know best with skills acquired over centuries the Eskimos were turning the products of nature into a boat to which we would soon entrust our very lives up in the cliff houses the women were also busy preparing the skins that would cover the skeleton of our oomiak first they removed the blubber and dressed the hides now came the sewing since there are no babysitters on King Island youngsters of all ages were right in the midst of the sewing circle [Music] the Finnish skin was a medicine heavy it took half a dozen men to carry it down the cliffside to the completed frame of the umiak for a moment I wondered if skin and boat would fit together since they've been made separately but I should have known better than to question Eskimo skill working like a perfect team the men pulled the skin over the frame it fit like a glove then came the final steps the stern section was sewed together with walrus cut with all seams tightly sealed the umiak was righted tuck thongs of walrus hide secured the skin to the gunnel food containers were placed aboard lashings were smeared with grease this would prevent damage from friction in the pounding seas whale ribs were used to make every line talked we would leave just as soon as the ice melted and broken we did not have long to wait huge masses of ice bulged and ground and piled up in fantastic shapes everything moved with irresistible force until the whole mass was in motion [Music] as soon as the fog had lifted in the sea and cleared of ice we loaded our new Umi Act to the very gunnels God willing we would cover almost 2,000 miles of Arctic shore before we return to King Island looking back on it now over 30 years later it amazes me that we had the nerve to attempt such a journey and so a handful of men set out across the Arctic seas in a fragile walrus skin boat not knowing that soon they're two-faced of vicious polar Blizzard will join them in a moment first this brief message from our sponsor [Music] mylan for attempting this voyage more than 30 years ago was to see if the Eskimo language could give us a clue as to how long these people had spread across North America from Asia our own King Islanders were the guinea pig from the Bering Strait to Point Barrow we were going to confront them with other Eskimos living along the Bleak shores of the Arctic sea any other time the rugged cliffs would have been fascinating to me but I could only think of the task ahead when did the Eskimo settle in North America the Indians may once have spoken a common language but they had split up into different tribes so long ago that they had time to develop dozens of different languages the Eskimo split up too but when would people living in this bleak outpost understand why King Islanders more important with those even farther north if despite their isolation from each other they still had a common language they must have arrived quite recently from Asia or they would have developed separate languages we discovered they had knocked the point lei youngsters and all the people here understood our King Islanders perfectly although it was doubtful if there had ever been any direct contact between them both Brooks spoke basically the same language with only a slightly different diabetes blanket tossing was evidently just as popular here along the arctic shores as on the southern side of Alaska 1,400 miles away our theory had received some confirmation but I wanted more proof [Music] as we pushed off and headed north the weather turned more chilled with each mile [Music] Point Barrow is the northernmost point on the North American continent nothing could have looked bleaker than Point Barrow did 30 years ago the Eskimo Hut's for igloo like shelters of driftwood and Earth even of the summer the ground thaws only a few inches down and this trap door led to a permanent natural deep freeze once again we found only minor differences between the dialects spoken at Point Barrow and that of our own King Islanders and since that bleak day when we camped here our theories have been confirmed by science the Eskimo did indeed come from Asia less than 3,000 years ago more than 10,000 years after the ancestors of the Indians we barely had time to replenish our supplies when a great deal of ice appeared offshore we decided to leave immediately before we got stuck for the whole winter as we raced for home the air had been unmistakably sharp bite at the fast approaching Arctic winter I felt a terrible responsibility for the men who so willingly and cheerfully left their homes to help me prove the theory for which they could have cared very little [Applause] we all knew the dangers if we fail to outrace the oncoming winter we could be trapped by the ice [Music] [Applause] [Music] but our luck he'll and with the help of the Eskimos at point lay and beyond we managed to reach King island safely literally only hours before the first full fury of the winter hit our rock in the sea [Music] the storm left behind in the quiet frozen Beauty close to shore the sea had become a perfect football field and I organized an historic sporting event the first King Island ice ball game one day the cry went up from the edge of the ice walrus the walrus is the Eskimo staff of life and within minutes the owe me acts were filled with excited hunters speeding toward the herd [Music] as we approach the animals we had to cut our motors and pedal quietly like the Eskimos to avoid scattering the herd with our noise the hunt is tense excitement suppressed Oh me acts moved silently no one speaks the fate of everyone on that Island hangs on the success of the hunters without the walrus there would be starvation the first animals were harpooned in the open water in the time-honored eskimo way in the distance King Island rose above the I stroke water the hunters were circling carefully to approach the main herd against you in walrus are normally inoffensive but when attacked they can use their long tusks with terrible effect many an Eskimo has had his kayak ripped open and even lost his life in the battle for walrus meat not long before these people had only harm but even over thirty years ago when I made these films many King Islanders were already armed with guns [Music] I was glad to see them killed only as many as they needed to feed themselves in their families the rest of the walrus fled to more peaceful waters where they'd have only one enemy to contend with the polar bear meanwhile I'd ask the children to keep an eye out for baby seals and a few days later they did discover a pair abandoned in the snow there was no sign of the mother quite probably she been killed by a prowling polar bear or perhaps by an Eskimo honey food [Music] the children came rushing to me with great excitement to tell me about the discovery I was delighted because soon I would be leaving on the Coast Guard Cutter the brought me here and I wanted to take some wild life back with me to Seattle baby seals would be a perfect gift for the zoo [Music] hey I was glad my geek approved if is such a good old fella [Music] not long after the ice broke up soon the Coast Guard would return and take me back to a world I had have forgotten even existed on my last night on King Island all of the people crowded into the largest of the cliff houses for a farewell party and a ceremonial dance [Music] [Applause] [Music] it began with a masked youngster acting out a hunting story through the staccato rhythms of circular skin drums and ancient chats [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I have long forgotten the true meaning of this dance if indeed I ever knew it but I like to think they understood that like them I too was a hunter even if they could not quite comprehend what I was hunting forward I like to think that they were dancing to wish their fellow hunter good luck and good fortune on his journeys of the future I hope you enjoyed tonight's expedition cliff dwellers of the Arctic as much as I did quite a man father Hubbard don't you think just the other day I learned another remarkable thing about him as a boy he suffered from tuberculosis but he refused to give in to the disease and started living a strenuous outdoor life to try and strengthen his damaged lung he was cured of TB but in the process he caught another incurable disease the love of exploration and as you've seen he's dedicated to that love our next expedition has an exciting climax and an achievement of great importance I hope you'll join us again next week for this unusual film until then this is John Craig saying thank you and good night [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]