366 



THE AM ERIC AX MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Tahtahrahq, when about three years old (1917), cutting 

 meat. — In Eskimo land one eats when he is hungry — if there 

 chance to be any meat. The children soon learn that there are 

 times of plenty and feasting, and times of want, or even fam- 

 ine. They learn early also one of the most highly developed 

 of Eskimo virtues, hospitality : that no little boy or girl will 

 ever be allowed to go without food as long as anyone in the 

 tribe has some to be shared 



Me-gis-s'oo listening to the Victrola taken north by the 

 Crocker Land Expedition 



taliq"s wife died, and she 

 could not use it again until 

 after some sulisequentlyborn 

 child had been named in 

 specific honor of the de- 

 ceased. Most Eskimo names 

 are fantastical or without 

 signification, but Mer-k'oo 

 means a feather, Tah-tah- 

 rahq a raven, Ee-wid-doo 

 sinew (thread), Ahl-ning- 

 \v;\}\ a girl baby. 



The Eskimo children 

 have almost no playthings: 

 a few bits of bone, some- 

 times rudely carved into 

 representations of men, wo- 

 men, seals, or walrus, pieces 

 of flat stone, occasionally a 

 small l-ah-moo-tik (sledge) 

 which can be used for coast- 

 ing on the hard snow banks, 

 rarely a modification of the 

 stick-and-ball toy or game 

 — the list is not long. As 

 soon as the light came back 

 in the latter part of the 

 winter, Ky-u-ti-kah and 

 even Ky-u-tahq spent every 

 day practising with a dog 

 whip that Pood-lahq made 

 for them. I was surprised 

 to see how well the older 

 little boy could snap the 

 lash, which was twelve or 

 fifteen feet long even on the 

 small-sized model that he 

 u.-(m1. The children grow 

 up with the young dogs and 

 are very fond of them. The 

 consequence is that, when 

 they grow large themselves, 

 they know dogs thoroughly 

 and can manage them well, 

 the girls l)eing almost as 

 adept as the boys. 



At Etah, there were sev- 

 eral children around most 

 of the time and we saw 

 much of them at the expe- 

 dition headquarters, where 



