People of the Deer

by Mowat, Farley

• ISBN13: 9780786714780
• ISBN10: 0786714786
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-21
• Publisher: Da Capo Press

Summary

In 1886, the Ihalmiut people of northern Canada numbered seven thousand; by 1946, when Farley Mowat began his two-year stay in the Arctic, the population had fallen to just forty. With them, he observed for the first time the phenomenon that would inspire him for the rest of his life: the millennia-old migration of the Arctic's caribou herds. He also endured bleak, interminable winters, suffered agonizing shortages of food, and witnessed the continual, devastating intrusions of outsiders bent on exploitation. Here, in this classic and first book to demonstrate the mammoth literary talent that would produce some of the most memorable books of the next half-century, best-selling author Farley Mowat chronicles his harrowing experiences. People of the Deer is the lyrical ethnography of a beautiful and endangered society. It is a mournful reproach to those who would manipulate and destroy indigenous cultures throughout the world. Most of all, it is a tribute to the last People of the Deer, the diminished Ihalmiuts, whose calamitous encounter with our civilization resulted in their unnecessary demise.

Author Biography

Farley Mowat (1921-2014) is the author of more than forty books. He was a popular and distinguished naturalist and conservationist whose internationally acclaimed novels, books for young readers, and memoirs have been translated into fifty-two languages and have sold more than seventeen million copies.

Table of Contents

Foreword	10	(1)
Foreword to the 1974 Edition	11	(2)
I The Why and Wherefore	13	(12)
II Into the Barrenlands	25	(13)
III The Intruders	38	(10)
IV The Children	48	(18)
V The Lifeblood of the Land	66	(19)
VI Under the Little Hills	85	(15)
VII Feast and Famine	100	(15)
VIII Of Houses and Tongues	115	(15)
IX Eskimo Spring	130	(15)
X These Are Their Days	145	(15)
XI The Boy and the Black One	160	(16)
XII The Shape of the Law	176	(16)
XIII Kakumee	192	(17)
XIV The Breaker of Law	209	(13)
XV Stone Men and Dead Men	222	(17)
XVI From the Inland Sea	239	(11)
XVII Ghosts, Devils and Spirits	250	(19)
XVIII Ohoto	269	(12)
XIX Days of His Father	281	(17)
XX Last Days of the People	298	(17)
XXI The Days to Come	315