CHAPTER XLVII 



ESKIMO TALES FROM WINTER QUARTERS 



WHILE most of the men were engaged in various prepara- 

 tions for Storkerson's expected arrival or in relaying sugar 

 eastward, I spent my time recording ethnological infor- 

 mation from our Eskimos. My Eskimo informants at the North 

 Star were none of them over forty years old and their memories 

 extended back perhaps about thirty-five years. In that entire time 

 up to ten years ago they had known of three cases of insanity, and 

 when they described them it appeared that only one was genuine 

 insanity as understood by us. The other two were delirium accom- 

 panying protracted illness that eventually led to death. But dur- 

 ing the last ten years there have been ten cases of insanity among 

 the Mackenzie River Eskimos. Some of these insane people were 

 descendants of native Mackenzie River Eskimos, others were immi- 

 grants from Alaska. The total population of the Mackenzie dis- 

 trict, native and immigrant, is now less than a quarter of what it 

 was twenty-five or thirty years ago. This shows the tremendous 

 increase of insanity the last decade. Without resting the belief on 

 anything but indirect evidence I am of the opinion that these re- 

 cent cases are mostly the result of infections to which they have all 

 been exposed since white men became numerous in 1889. I de- 

 voted one day at the Star to writing down all the information any 

 of my housemates could give me concerning these insanity cases. 



A day was devoted to inquiries into plural marriages where I 

 recorded names and relationships of all persons concerned and 

 available facts about their lives. I found that polygamy and 

 polyandry seem to have been about equally common before the 

 coming of white men and both together doubtless made up less than 

 five per cent, of all marriages. 



As to consanguineous marriages I now obtained some informa- 

 tion that was new to me but which I verified later. For instance, 

 should a man marry a widow who is then with child this child 

 will be considered to be related not to the dead father and his 

 relatives but to the new husband and to his relatives. 



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