I am the Walrus, Literacy and Domestication Among the Thule, Part Two
"The Walrus have departed from our land for a generation, tell me of these creatures and their nature, that I may persuade the spirits to return them to us," was the starting query.
The story of the Walrus is intimately bound up with the story of literacy among the Thule. Pioneered by the Shaman known as Grandfather in 1433 it had spread rapidly. By 1441 examples of writing and writers were found as far east as the McKenzie basin, and by 1451 it had reached the Siberian coast.
Grandfather devised a crude syllabic script, one which could be learned easily. The ability to send clear messages without having to travel oneself, or to maintain reliable records, had obvious advantages. Shamans or others could communicate requests or information across great distances, could coordinate activities and trade, or seek or offer information. Literacy not only spread widely, but put down deeper roots.
Typically, the writing materials were charcoals or mixtures of blood and ground stone. Writing surfaces were usually animal hides with lines of text often following the contour of the hide. Initially, writing was such a rarity that messages were often passed along from hand to hand. A message or inquiry, unless it was specifically directed would pass through a half dozen or more literate persons, often with comments or annotations, and pass back and along. The Thule writing tradition developed as an amorphous one, with broad chains of correspondence passing news and inquiries great distances, alongside specific messages to private individuals. By 1450 the tradition of these extended messages was well established.
The Walrus dialogues represented a quantum advance in this tradition. It was a focused series of discussions exploring a single topic, moving steadily back and forth among a defined group of individuals.
The starting query was explicitly not directed to the neighboring Shaman, they had no Walrus at their former haul outs either. But the message was passed along, and there were enough Shaman who for various reasons, the loss of their own Walrus, the decline of local populations or the intricacies of hunting and trade in areas where they persisted, that many felt some motive or use to reply.
Much of the early correspondence was largely gibberish - myths and folktales about Walrus, mystical presumptions, assumptions, unfounded theories and guesses. It was typical of any round table discussion of a broadly known but poorly understood topic.
But steadily, nuggets of real information began to be sifted out. An evolving understanding began to emerge that Walrus declines and disappearances were not local, but a widespread phenomenon taking place over large areas, on roughly the same time frames. Whatever was displeasing the spirits, it was occurring widely. As early as 1450, the Shaman Pattangayok circulates an observation that Walrus decline seems to accompany human presence.
In more practical terms, the Shaman Kanosak, and later the Shaman Nagojut, both from Baffin Island begin to circulate detailed descriptions of Walrus anatomy, including drawings. Both are from areas where local haul outs retain significant populations and there is thriving hunting, both accompany hunting expeditions.
Nagojut in particular becomes fascinated by the question of diet, wondering if there is a decline in food supply. This is negatived in several letters which observe that Walruses aren’t getting skinny, they’re simply absent. He examines dozens of stomach contents, gradually circulating his conclusions that the animals are bottom feeders. This is confirmed by Kanosak and by other Shaman who, inspired by the example, examine stomach contents of other hunts.
The notion that perhaps the sea floor has become inhospitable, or that the spirits of the sea floor are resentful circulates, but offers no real prospect.
A key insight comes from the Shaman Miksa. He lives adjacent to a nearly abandoned haul out. A small population of Walrus persists there, perhaps a dozen animals, all wary of humans. The local waters are rough and stormy, the population makes little effort to take sea harvest and focuses on farming and animal husbandry, but it still remembers the days of glorious harvest.
Shaman Miksa finds himself discouraging the local villages from harvesting the last Walrus, and instead finds himself watching the animals, receiving and sending on correspondence. There are so few animals and their habits are so regular, that he begins to piece together insights into their nature and behaviour, which he writes and sends on to his fellows. Their positive responses encourage him to continue. Motivated by the discussion, and the need to belong to the developing ersatz community, he maintains his habits of observation and records.
As he watches them, over years, he begins to realize that the females breed slowly. They gestate for a long time after mating. Their calves remain with them for extended periods. The insight is not immediately accepted. Other Shaman with more experience of sea harvests note that seals breed prolifically on ice floes, and spend little time with their pups. But the observation, once made, is confirmed by other Shaman’s with more direct experience of haul outs. Now that it is pointed out to them, they try watch for individual cows and calves. Yes, it does seem that they breed slowly, that their calves remain with mothers for long periods, and that they do not breed again until the calf is on its own.
It is never clearly stated by any Shaman that human hunting is bringing about the collapse of the populations, although this seems at least vaguely understood some. But rather, the focus shifts to understanding the slow birthrate. The Walrus do not replace their numbers as easily as seals do.
One solution is more females, and a hunting policy of killing males and sparing females. This springs in part from observations that only a few males do most of the breeding. In areas of healthy populations, this has an effect, although not as rapid or dramatic as several correspondents report. Attempting to avoid killing females takes pressure off the reproducing part of the population, and long term tends to change the demographic of the recovering population.
It is found that males need to swim together for protection from Orca or Sharks, so rather than a single breeding male allowed for, a small population of males must be tolerated.
Shaman K makes the observation that while calves spend extended time with their mothers, that this does seem to vary from what people have seen or speculated. Perhaps Walrus could be encouraged to breed faster if calves can be separated from their mothers earlier. Various approaches are discussed and tried, some turn out to be fatal to calves, some fatal to shamans, some useless.
Over time, it is found that sustained harassment from Umiaks and at haul outs can separate females and young juveniles into cohorts, and that once separated, females seem more likely to breed.
This in turn leads Shaman Tiquak to propose the next step. If juveniles or infants can be driven from their mothers, perhaps some of them can be brought to abandoned haul outs, to recreate or rebuild a local population. The notion attracts much commentary, and eventually the consensus that perhaps it ought to be tried. The discussion begins to consistently compare Walrus with Caribou, and the need to lead Caribou to new feeding grounds.
The effort is made, and initially the result once again is several dead Walrus calves and a few dead Thule. Infants are found easier to transport than Juveniles are to drive. But infants require hands on attention and feeding.
Still, families of infants are established in several locations by interested Shaman, who watch their charges grow into animals of thousands of pounds. While young, the animals are very attached to the humans who look after them.
Many of the new introductions are of very small numbers of animals, sometimes a single one, and obtaining and raising what are in many areas vanished but legendary creatures, is both a matter of prestige and relationship/obligations among Shamans, and a source of cultural awe to locals. In European terms, it would be like the local witch actually demonstrating their magical prowess by owning a unicorn or small dragon.
Because of the significance of the event, most Shaman’s are able to discourage hunting of the re-establishing populations.
As they grow, some of them become aggressive and intolerant, these tend to be killed. Many of the newly establishing herds are much more tolerant of humans, in part from association from very early ages, and in part from culling the more dangerous individuals.
As the animals grow into adults the techniques for managing herds are employed. Juveniles are driven from their mothers at early ages. Females are encouraged to breed early. Young breeding females are protected. Females who take longer to reach sexual maturity are sometimes culled, although it will be almost a century before this practice becomes widespread and consistent enough that it will make a difference. Instead, the real factor is low population densities as a result of forced colonizations of empty haul outs, which leaves females not competing with and not pressuring each other. This makes it easier for younger, smaller females to feed, to grow, and to mate.
For their part, the Shamans develop their own rituals, learning and imitating various kinds of walrus bellows, wearing tusked headdresses and brown capes, and approaching herds or individuals with a sort of humping shambling dance, all of which has the effect of making the humans appear walruslike, at least sufficiently so as to lessen the trigger for a fear reaction.
It is not an entirely smooth process. Shaman or their students are occasionally killed, or sometimes injured or forced to run for their lives. Ideas of all emerge, most poorly grounded. Sometimes they are tried and reported. As often, they are circulated in the correspondence, perhaps in the hope that someone else will take the risk. Circulated ideas are debated, refined, reshaped, abandoned, inverted.
Nor is it entirely collegial, rivalries emerge in the correspondence, sometimes active enmities. Personal ambitions, local rivalries, active arrogance, jealousy, malice and ignorance all play their part. Credit for a useful development is often claimed by others who advance their own rationalizations or variations. Sometimes suggestions are made in the hopes that a rival will be killed trying it. There is competition for status or prestige. But there is also friendships that develop, jokes that are shared, pure speculation and inquiry.
There are no great intuitive leaps in the correspondence. Unlike the case of Ptarmigan, no genius has the flash of insight which transforms the Walrus from a wild animal to a domesticate. Instead, knowledge and technique builds slowly, piling up in painfully tiny steps, each successful idea or innovation becoming the stepping stone to a further innovation or insight into some aspect of animal’s life and how it might be manipulated.
A significant part of what takes hold is irrelevant, a small part is actively dangerous, but much that is useful is developed. The lives and requirements of Walrus come to be understood. In particular, it is realized that Walrus as sea bottom feeders, are like Caribou as vegetation feeders. For the most part they offer no competition to humans, they do not feed on the same things as humans, or on the same things as other animals that humans prize. Rather, they fatten on a food source that humans cannot access.
Because the animals breed slowly even with best efforts, their kills are carefully managed. There are different approaches to this. In many areas the killing is carefully controlled by the Shaman, sometimes by deferring to capricious spirits who might be prone to withdrawing Walrus or messing about with weather or more important harvest species. Sometimes by explaining that their flesh is poisonous unless the proper time consuming rituals are done, or rare additives are procured. Sometimes by confining it to particular ceremonies or seasons.
In some localities, Walrus killing is a matter of ‘law’, with Walrus formally charged (as much as the Thule had formal law systems) as if they were persons, tried and sentenced, a means which allowed a steady but flexible low level harvest.
In all areas, Walrus are implicitly a famine food. Mostly left alone in deference to Shamanic influence or local prestige in good times. In bad times, food is food. Inversely, a healthy local Walrus population comes to be associated with prosperity, and so there is a subtle motivation to defer to Shamanic judgement.
Over the next two generations, Walrus populations rally, and the animals are distributed widely. Hundreds of abandoned haul outs become sites of 'seeding' small growing populations becoming established, with contact between isolated haul outs driven by human intervention.
