438 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



trade but brought a few things for presents. We were in another 

 sort of trouble through the ingenuity of Pikalu and Palaiyak, who 

 had explained, the evening the Captain was robbed, that I had 

 the power to make the whole village sick. It appeared that now 

 the whole village was sick. They had been taken with an extremely 

 severe cold, the severity being perhaps due to the fact that they had 

 caught it from us. There was no use trying to explain to them the 

 germ theory of contagion, nor any point in trying to evade full 

 responsibility for the visitation. The method I took was to let my 

 Eskimos explain for me that when Captain Gonzales met me he 

 had told me the story of their treatment of him in a very bad 

 form, making me very angry, and that it was while still angry that 

 I had sent the disease upon the village. I now understood that they 

 had had more provocation than I thought and that they were really 

 good and friendly people and I was therefore willing to let the 

 disease die off gradually without any serious consequence. The 

 old man asked me again and again whether I was going to have 

 any of the people die, and spent the evening in telling me all the 

 extenuating things he could think of, saying how much they ad- 

 mired me and how well they had liked Natkusiak and me when we 

 visited them some years before. All this flattery was designed to 

 get me to call off the disease. 



We treated the old man and the boy as well as we could. We 

 accepted his presents and did not give him any in return, for, ac- 

 cording to his view, repayment would have destroyed their efficacy. 

 But we made some trades with him, giving him very favorable 

 prices for certain articles that he had brought without intention of 

 selling, such as part of his clothing. When I bought his coat he was 

 so poorly dressed that after selling it he began to have misgivings 

 about making the trip home in his under-coat even though the 

 weather should be good to-morrow, but I reassured him by offering 

 to lend him a coat and saying that I would send a sledge with him 

 to bring it back. I bought also his two dogs. He had two others 

 which he had borrowed for the occasion and these would serve to 

 take his light sledge back. The next morning the weather was so 

 mild that in view of the comparatively short distance the old man 

 assured us that he could get home all right in his under-shirt. At 

 parting I sent word by him that, while I would stop the disease 

 from which they were suffering, I would nevertheless have to pun- 

 ish them for their treatment of the Captain. This punishment 

 would take the form of forbidding them to come in large parties to 

 visit us. The largest number that we would receive were as many 



