I would like to note here that muskox are in fact not oxen. They’re basically long-haired goats. They have multiple layers of fur, with the super long, rougher fur on top, and much denser, softer fur underneath.
Also they live in the arctic, and in winter storms they hunker down in groups and shield one another from the wind (think penguins!), and they can sometimes remain functional and active in really crazy low nighttime arctic temperatures that send other animals and humans scurrying for shelter.
When attacked, they huddle up with the calves in the middle, and all hindquarters facing inwards and horns facing out. It’s an usually social strategy of defense compared to their closest relatives, and very effective.
Some Arctic Native tribes depended on muskox for food, fur, bones, and horn. They would migrate seasonally to the areas where muskox hung out (places where spares foliage is able to grow and survive, even if the muskox have to break it out from under snow or permafrost), while the muskox would migrate between one or two different areas for food as well. The Native hunters left campsites that are still heaped with bones.
Europeans came through and fucked everything up for everyone, as usual. Such as by randomly shooting muskox for sport, tearing through entire herds that were in their defensive formations, targeting the young muskox, and so on.
Also, one time a European ‘explorer’ captain got his ship stuck in the ice near an island, and he and the crew had to abandon ship. They just left it there, stuck in the ice. A nearby tribe discovered it, and then for (iirc) like a decade they started making regular migrations to the shipwreck, stripping it for parts they couldn’t get locally, either at all or in such quantities, like metal, wood, european-style leather boots, leather in general, sailcloth, etc. Then they’d load them onto sleighs, and then make tools or trade with neighboring tribes. They changed up their whole seasonal migration pattern to just steadily take advantage of all that good material provided by that one ship for years.
Wood and other soft materials left in the arctic, like in that ship, are kept at such cold temperatures that most organisms that cause decomposition can’t survive or be active enough to decompose shit, so the frozen wood and cloth and leather on and of the ship was well preserved while it waited for harvesting.
Eventually, the Europeans (Brits iirc?) fucked shit up for that tribe, too. But they did great for a while there. I admire the hutzpah of apparently an entire tribe agreeing to a novel project like that, changing up their entire economy when they found an opportunity, and then sticking too it for years and years. Cooperation like that feels so out of reach, so often, these days. I mean I’m sure there were imperfections that were lost in the version of the story I read, but even so. It’s so cool to me. Also, fuck those Europeans and the ship they rode in on. It’s not enough karma - not even the slightest bit close to enough - but it’s a little karma, ya?
Source: potentially flawed memory of a book about the arctic I read within the last two years, and which is popular to get re-published over and over, but which was written like 10 years ago, so the information might be outdated. I can’t right now remember the name of the book or the author either. >.> It’s a good read though, for real.
