PTARMIGAN: SMALL DOMESTICATE, BIG IMPACT
One of the most remarkable elements of the Thule Agricultural Revolution is its timing. The Thule Agricultural Complex was an independent invention, none of its plants or techniques were derived from other existing agricultural complexes. The Thule Complex is one of the handful of known independent inventions of Agriculture in the world, and significant for that alone.
It is especially significant since it took place so recently, in fact, that a significant body of cultural lore allows us to chart its early evolution and development. The formative period of Thule Agriculture took place within a period of a few hundred years, and literally, within a century of that, the development of writing created an unparalleled occasion to document that history.
Much of this, of course is subject to the archeologists ambiguity. We can say that the practice of root cutting and planting was acquired from the Dene-Ina and spread from a region of Alaska around 900, into Thule culture. But we can’t identify the first cutting, or the first Thule clan to engage the practice. We can identify the three locations where Agriculture began, but can’t say which one was first or exactly what year the first crop was planted. We don’t know who domesticated the first Caribou, although there are numerous stories and claims.
But with the Ptarmigan, we can actually say when, and where and who, or so the Thule tell us. The year was 1310 plus or minus 5. It took place in a Thule agricultural village called Mittimatalik in the northwest corner of Baffin Island, remote from the agricultural core region. The person was Anayoutopak.
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Anayoutapak stumbled through the wan light of midsummer. She turned back, marking the location of a hill in her mind. She was perhaps two days walk from home, perhaps three. She would need to know the landmarks to find her way home to her children.
It was getting harder. Everything around the village was picked clean. Not even foxes could be found. It hadn’t been so long ago that a half day’s walk could bring home enough to feed her children.
Those had been better days. Her husband had been alive then. The ice had not taken him yet. The two of them had a Caribou, had plowed good fields and enjoyed the bounty of the land. His death had devastated her. More so when his relatives took their caribou and forced her from their fields. A woman alone had no need for such fields, they had said. Alone? What of her children? But she’d had to stand by as they claimed the ripening next year crop for themselves, and left her to beg for scraps of what had once belonged to her and her man. A man might have made the difference, but she could not find one. She was older, and there were no shortage of younger women. She had mouths to feed, and her rivals had none or fewer. She had few kin to offer alliance.
She’d been allowed fields of her own, for her and her children. On the outskirts of the village, poorer sandy fields. She and her children had painfully dragged sacks of rocks, had tried to raise such windbreak mound as they could. It wasn’t enough. She got by on roots and stems and leaves stolen from other fields, a little here, a little there, and was beaten for her troubles. There were fish sometime though, and mice if they were hungry enough, and travelling out beyond the village, well, there were spots where if you knew how to look, you might catch a rabbit or a fox, or knock down a bird, or find a small patch of bistort.
But it was getting harder. Harvests had not been good. Even her meager garden was stolen from. Men and even a few women travelled out from the village, hunting for a little more. The men of course had the advantage. They could travel the shores in their Kayaks, they could go further afield, hunt the bigger game, what there was of it.
All she could do was walk. Three days walk, and barely half a sack filled. Her feet ached, she was weary and sick of the unforgiving land. She traversed the wind sheltered side of a gully, looking for bits of green in the sun kissed spots. Perhaps some sweetvetch? Perhaps a stray roseroot?
Up ahead, a stray breeze brought a sound to her. A croaking. The sound of ptarmigan, a slow bird of the tundra. She listened carefully. More croaking. They were up ahead, around the next bend. The sun would be hard there, they were probably feeding. Laying her sack down, she gathered up a handful of gravel in one hand, lifted her walking stick in the other and crept forward. Peaking around, her heart fluttered. There were easily a half dozen birds. More. Feeding or roosting in a matt of arctic willow.
Steeling herself, she rushed forward, yelling to shock them. A handful of gravel thrown hard stunned three, knocking them over. With her stick she struck another just as it was taking off. A wild swing brushed the wing of another in the air, sending it tumbling, she smashed it as it hit the ground.
She was elated. The birds were wealth. Meat for her and her children, and fine feathers. If only there were eggs. Then she spotted the signs of a nest.
Almost ecstatic, she dug it out. Six fine eggs. She seized one, cracked the tip and swallowed the contents down, luxiating in the taste.
Oh this was such a find!
Ptarmigan country. The birds were still common around here. She could come again, take more. Idly, avarariciously, she stroked the eggs, thinking of swallowing another down. Save some for the children, she thought. Eggs would be such a treat. She imagined the looks on their faces.
Or maybe not, eggs were delicate. They might break on the way back. Perhaps she should have them all here, herself. The birds would be treat enough.
But.... she was still a mother.
Perhaps wrap them in moss and arctic willow, that should keep them safe enough for the trip back, especially if she was careful.
Eggs. It reminded her of the little pearls of bistort, that grew into new plants.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could plant eggs like bistort pearls and grow a crop of birds. Oh what a bounty that would be.
She paused.
Well.... Why not?
Eggs hatched, chicks came forth, they grew into birds. So why not? Something like a plan came into her mind.
Carefully, she took each bird she’d killed. She slit their stomach and buried an egg inside each one, then packed it carefully in her sack. Her steps, as she began the long walk home, were light.
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She took a more direct route. It was two days walk, though the ground was harsh. When she arrived home, her children feasted with her.
One of the eggs was broken when she got home. That left four. She minded them carefully, and more by luck than skill, all of them hatched. She had no wisdom for the feeding of chicks. She experimented, trying to determine what they welcomed. She had the crops and gullets of adult birds to guide her. Two of the chicks died before she determined that they needed insects as well.
The other two chicks grew rapidly, one better than the other. She was amused by the way the little birds flocked after her as they grew, always trying to follow her when she was around. Her children adored the little creatures as pets. One died, she wasn’t sure why.
She made another trip, bringing back three killed birds. But she’d found two nests. Eleven eggs. Nine hatched. Another trip. Six eggs. Four hatched. Her children learned to feed the chicks as she went out on her long expeditions, bringing back whatever she could find. The chicks, under supervision of her children, wandered among her field, picking what they could. Sometimes she and her children were hungry, and the chicks were tempting. The first bird that grew to maturity was spared, they were too fond of it.
Wait, she counselled, wait.
But it was hard. Nights were hungry. The crop came in. In celebration, they killed the largest of the younger birds, and shared its meat alongside a meal of sweetvetch. Some of the half grown birds vanished. Flown away? Or taken by neighbors. She considered breaking wings, to keep them from flying away.
Then, one day, in a corner of her garden, she found a nest of eggs. Her oldest child saw her smile when she returned home, and thought that it was like the sun breaking over the warmest day of summer.
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By the third season, her flock had, despite eggs failing to hatch, despite chicks dying, or birds vanishing, grown to over forty birds. Cutting the feathers or breaking the wings kept them from going too far away. They were better at raising chicks it turns out, than she was.
Her neighbors regarded her with something like bemusement. This notion that birds could be raised like a crop took a certain off kilter point of view, but it seemed to work. A cousin was lamed in an accident, and he came to live with her. Not much for hunting, he could still get around, and between him, herself and her older children, they defended what she built
Confidence was her best weapon. She was no longer the despairing woman who her husband’s kin had dispossessed so easily. Years of self reliance, the thrill of accomplishment, the fascination of her project had made her something different. Confident, capable. Fascinated. She knew her birds as well as she knew her children.
Her neighbors stole a bird or two, of course. She could not help that. She gave a few as gifts. Offered eggs as compliments to the birth of children. A few of the more ambitious women tried their hands at the effort themselves, with significantly less success, but with enough to keep them at it.
One day a famous shaman, a man whose name was known the length and breadth of the land came to the village, leading two caribou. Much was whispered about this man. That he could tell at a glance what land would be bountiful, and what would not. It was said that the spirits whispered constantly in his ear. That whatever he planted grew faster, tasted sweeter, that the sun loved him, and he knew all the secrets of water, and a hundred ways to plant and plow.
The village was agog. The richest farmers stood proudly at their fields, dressed in their finest skins, their chests puffed out. Women bowed before him. Children collected leaves and seeds to show him.
But of all the people in the village, it was her he came to see. Three days he stayed in her home. She told him everything she knew or thought, every guess and every conclusion, every lesson she had learned or taught herself about raising birds like plants. Finally, when he went away, he took two living birds with him, and a nest of eggs. He left a Caribou as a gift.
The village was astonished, and more than a little intimidated.
She just smiled.
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Over the next ten years, more Shamans came and went. She would not travel, and so instead, great and wise men came to her, to learn her ways. Her fame spread. Some came from vast distances, even from beyond the Island. Gradually the village came to accept that among them was a person of profound magic and supernatural importance.
As her flock grew, her children matured. She was vaguely surprised to find herself able to arrange advantageous marriages. The fields of her family expanded and prospered, children and grandchildren following in her ways.
By the time she died, she had changed the world of the Thule.
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The ptarmigan is a sedentary bird living in the arctic and subarctic in North America and Eurasia, found in tundra and rocky hills and mountainsides. Non-migratory and relatively poor flyers, the Ptarmigan are mostly ground birds occupying remote habitat, and avoid predators by hiding, fleeing or establishing secure nests.
None of these strategies are particularly effective. In the wild, up to 80% of ptarmigan die in their first year, with mortality rates of 50% thereafter for each year of a three or four year lifespan. To make up for this, Ptarmigan have a formidible reproductive rate, laying clutches of six to nine eggs three or four times a year. Eggs are incubated within 24 to 26 days. Offspring are independent within ninety days, and reach sexual maturity inside of a year. In two generations, approximately 16 months, a ptarmigan hen may produce 324 descendants.
The diet of ptarmigan is roughly similar to Musk Ox or Caribou, in the wild, they eat principally plants - willow buds and catkins, seeds, leaves, flowers and berries of other plant species. They thrive in and around Thule agriculture, without distressing the plants or undermining crops. In the wild, insects are eaten by the developing young. This is a trait that has been retained into adult birds as a result of selective breeding of domesticated birds, and ptarmigan have found a secondary use in many areas as insect control and crop management.
Because of their preference for remote habitats with few predators, even wild ptarmigan are surprisingly approachable. The domesticated variety is extremely human tolerant and will remain close to human territory. Domesticated ptarmigan display neotenous features, often behaving like chicks and preferring to flock around human keepers. Wings can be clipped or broken to prevent flight or escape, but this is seldom done.
Oddly, domesticated ptarmigan are at more risk of predators than wild specimens. Dogs, Arctic Fox and Arctic Owl will all prey upon ptarmigan out of the presence of humans. For this reason, a flock herder is preferred to discourage opportunistic predation. It’s often a balancing act, as these predators are used to control vole which would otherwise be a threat to crops, so the loss of a few ptarmigan from time to time is seen as an acceptable price.
In the wild, ptarmigan weight ranges from one to two and a half pounds. The birds gain weight for winter, and as much as one third of winter weight will be fat. Domesticated ptarmigan tend to be 50% larger. In addition to meat, ptarmigans are also raised for eggs, and selective breeding has increased the laying rate, domesticated ptarmigan whose eggs are harvested may lay as many as eight clutches a year. Ptarmigan are non-migratory, and as a result moult or shed feathers from white for fall and winter to brown in spring and summer. The moult feathers are collected and valued for padding.
Ptarmigan fall into the category of micro-livestock, small, docile and easily managed, rapidly reproducing animals with broad diets that can be raised for meat. Other examples of microlivestock include rabbits, guineau pigs, chicken, turkey, geese and duck. They are often critical sources of protein, comparable to larger domesticates, and vital to poorer areas.
Ptarmigan were particularly valuable to the Arctic Thule, given the limitations of the perrenial agricultural package. The harsh arctic environment restricted productivity for humans, so ptarmigan offered a ready opportunity to indirectly access inedible vegetation.
From the initial domestication, ptarmigan were readily adopted and spread rapidly through Thule territory, proliferating anywhere the agricultural complex established itself. From the estimated initial domestication in 1315, by 1335 ptarmigan were spread throughout Baffin Island and as far as the southern reaches of Ellesmere. By 1345, domesticated ptarmigan had reached the mainland. By 1360 they were found in the heartland of the Hudson Bay agricultural complex. By 1390 they had reached Alaska and begun to spread into Greenland. By 1400 they had reached Labrador. 1425 the southern reaches of Greenland. By 1435 they were found in Thule settlements in Siberia.
The rapid spread of Ptarmigan can be attributed to the limitation of Thule agriculture and the pressing need to supplement those limits whenever possible, it also responded to an overwhelming shortage and extremely high demand in Thule society at the time for protein of any sort. It came along at exactly the right time to proliferate dramatically.
The Shamanic networks were also critical to the spread of Ptarmigan. Shamans were key, not only to the distribution of birds and eggs, but they also provided the knowledge and lore for raising, breeding and maintaining the stock. Shamans were indispensible because they provided the entire package, the birds and the techniques or toolkit to manage them.
It’s estimated that ptarmigan provide as much meat to the Thule as Caribou and Musk Ox together.
