ODD CUSTOMS 71 



live on any other food I know, for I have made the 

 experiment. For water they eat snow. 



The dogs are not housed at any season of the year; 

 but summer and winter they are tied somewhere near 

 the tent or igloo. They are never allowed to roam at 

 large, lest they be lost. Sometimes a special pet, or 

 a female that has young puppies, will be taken into 

 the igloo for a time; but Eskimo puppies only a month 

 old are so hardy that they can stand the severe winter 

 weather. 



Enough has been said to give the reader a general 

 idea of these strange people, that have been so 

 valuable to me in my arctic work. But I want to 

 say again, at the risk of being misunderstood, that I 

 hope no efforts will ever be made to civilize them. 

 Such efforts, if successful, would destroy their primi- 

 tive communism, which is necessary to preserve their 

 existence. Once give them an idea of real-estate inter- 

 est and personal-property rights in houses and food, 

 and they might become as selfish as civilized beings; 

 whereas now any game larger than a seal is the com- 

 mon property of the tribe and no man starves while 

 his neighbors are gorging themselves. If a man has 

 two sets of hunting implements, he gives one of them 

 to the man who has none. It is this feeling of good- 

 fellowship which alone preserves the race. I have 

 taught them some of the fundamental principles of 

 sanitation and the care of themselves, the treatment 

 of simple diseases, of wounds, and other accidents; 

 but there I think their civilization should stop. This 

 opinion is not based on theory or prejudice, but on 

 eighteen years of intimate study and experience. 



