People of the Deer by Farley Mowat

away from the green back of a canoe, which lay beside the cabin. I helped them and in a few moments the canoe was free and ready for the water. Franz and I pushed off into the still-flooded river, and we worked with all our power to gain the other bank before the current could sweep us out into the opening bay. It was hard and exciting work, but even in the fury of that struggle I had time to notice that the water was not all brown. Long, tenuous, crimson streamers were flowing down the river, fading and disappearing as they joined the full flow of the current. We grounded on the opposite shore and leaped into the water to beach the canoe, out of the river’s grasp.
    The excitement of the shooting, and of the river crossing, ebbed as suddenly as it had risen and I stood on the rough rocks along the slope and looked down on the dead and dying deer. There were a dozen of them lying in my sight along the shore. Their blood was still pumping thickly into the foam-flecked eddies at the river’s edge, for only two of them were dead. The rest lay quivering on the rocks and lifted heavy heads to watch us blankly or, struggling to their feet, plunged forward only to fall again.
    It was a sight of slaughter and of horror, and the knowledge that each of these dying beasts was swollen with young did not make the bloody spectacle easier to bear. I was seeing the blood of the land flow for the first time, but though my eyes were still those of a stranger and I was sickened by the sight, Franz was quite unperturbed. Rapidly, and with the agility of a deer himself, he leapt among the rocks to reach the cripples. He carried a short-bladed knife and as he reached each wounded doe he made one dexterous thrust into the back of her neck and neatly severed the spinal cord running inside the vertebrae. It was efficient and it was mercifully quick. Within ten minutes all the wounded animals lay still and Franz began the task of cutting up the meat.
    One long stroke sufficed to open up the bellies. The sharp blade was used with such control that while it split the skin, it did not even mark the soft tissues of the swollen stomachs, distended with the fermenting leaves and lichens that the deer had fed upon. Then, reaching a bare arm into the hot cavities, Franz disemboweled each beast with one strong pull. Carefully he removed the livers and the kidneys and, using his knife as a chopper, he severed the hindquarters from the trunks. Leaving the forelimbs untouched, he sliced through the skin under the chins and cut out the heavy tongues.
    I watched with fascination and repulsion, but so sure were all Franz’s movements and so deft his touch, that the horror of the scene began to dull. I was filled with admiration for the man’s skill. Though I did not know it then, I was watching a man of Tyrrell’s deer people do his work, for Franz had learned his knacker’s arts at the hands of the Ihalmiut, who are, in truth, a People of the Deer.
    In less than twenty minutes all the carcasses were drawn and we were carrying the hindquarters to the shore. Where half an hour ago a herd of living deer had stood, now there were only shapeless, bloody heaps of meat that steamed gently upon the melting snow. The transition was too quick to have its full effect upon me then, and by the time I had lived in the land long enough to understand the truth behind a killing such as this, I too came to view it through Northern eyes, and to recognize the stark utility of death. But now it was my first spring in the Barrens, and the deer had returned. With their coming the long hiatus that life suffers during the interminable winter months was over. Outside the cabin the meat-hungry dogs raised their gaunt faces and howled exuberantly as each new change of breeze brought the strong smell of deer.
    Kunee and Anoteelik were in an ecstasy. Anoteelik rushed knee-deep into the swollen river to help us land and eagerly snatched up a piece of still-warm meat and