THE LAW AND THE ESKIMO

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 57, 30 November 1929, Page 31

THE LAW AND THE ESKIMO

LONG ARM, BUT AN EFFICIENT ONE

Across a monotonous landscape of glaring white plods a lone human figure. Mile after mile he treads onward, his snowshoes crunching the glistening surface, his breath coming in regular vaporous puffs, his will fixed upon reaching a lonely hamlet far over the northern rim of the globe, at which he will arrive in days, weeks, perhaps months. Such a man might appropriately be the model for a statue depicting justice in the Far North.

Twenty-five years ago Jack London founded an engrossing—and grim—story upon the white man’s love of justice, and the strange lengths to which he would go to uphold it, among the primitive peoples of the northern part of this continent, thousands of m lies from home. The natives of those wastes had no more occasion to be puzzled and awed by the events of London's “The Unexpected” than have their descendants now, when, again, the white man’s justice proves mysterious, unaccountable perhaps to the untutored mind, but inescapable.

Okchina, an Eskimo, was apprehended last May, charged with the murder of another Eskimo at remote Bathurst Inlet. About the same time Lily: Sarniga of Demarcation Point was charged with infanticide. The Royal NorthWest'Mounted Police held both in custody at Aklavik. The nearest court of justice was 2000 miles away in Alberta, and the lonely representatives of the white man’s justice could not slight the Eskimos’ sense of the fitting by removing the culprits from their home area for trial. :

To provide the offenders with a proper legal trial among their own kind seemed impossible, but it had to be done. Accordingly it was decided to transport a ; Magistrate, a prosecutor, and a defence attorney-2000 miles to Aklavik.

. Sihce the days of which Jack London wrote there . have been several similar instances in which vast and dreary distances have failed to cover up crime. One of the most noted cases in which , the white ■ wilderness of the 1 North proved to be a poor retreat for the criminal, occurred in 1921.

In August of that year Staff Ser-

gcant Joy of the Mounted Police stepped ashore on rocky Baffin Island. Despite the sparseness of habitation, .gossip seems to travel as rapidly there as in a crowded community, and the story has seeped back to civilisation that one Robert Janes, a ne'er-do-well, bad been murdered. Twenty-one months after the crime. Joy appeared in the remote settlement, where the murder of Janes had almost been forgotten. Detective Joy traced down Nookudlah, the alleged murderer, formally arraigned him before Justice of the Peace Joy, and as Warden Joy gaoled him for trial. Finally as deputy-sheriff, Sergeant Joy arraigned his man before Judge Rivet of Montreal, who had travelled 1000 miles for the trial. It took place at Ponds Inlet.

The jury was drawn from the crew of the steamer Arctic, who, while believing that the Eskimo had acted under great provocation, found him guilty of manslaughter. The whole procedure, which did not conclude till late in 1923, so impressed the natives that, it is said, Sergeant Joy was thereafter regarded as a mighty wizard. In another case, a mere investigation of the rumour of a murder required Staff-Sergeant Wight to travel 1286 miles across an unknown section of the interior of Baffin Island. In 1926 Julienne Tnttu was brought from a remote islet off Labrador to St. John’s, N.F., where she was put on trial for the murder of her demented husband while defending her child from au attack by him. She was acquitted. To carry 'out the forms of justice in this case required a journey lasting many weeks. Time, labour and money expended in the Far. North in carrying out the strict letter of the law is not regarded as ill-expended, even when there is an acquittal. If the Eskimos were not , convinced that an infraction of the law, no matter in what remote quarter of the Far North, brought with it a sure punishment, no white man could safely trade a single fo'x skin. Strict adherence to this policy has been instrumental in opening up hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory.