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THE AMEIUCAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



The hood of tlie Eskimo woiuaus coat has been 

 the Eskimo bab.v's cradle for more centuries than 

 history can tell. This is the little Eskimo boy, 

 Tah-tah-rahq, when two years old (1916) with 

 his mother Ahnee-nah. The baby's bare body 

 rests against his mother's back, he wears a short 

 shirt of young blue foxskin and a tiglit-fitting 

 sealskin hood edged around the face with blue 

 fox tails. A family is especially proud of its 

 boys, for they will grow into great liunters, the 

 heroes of the Eskimo race 



some of US always could find time to 

 play with them. My little playmate 

 was Me-gis-s'oo, eight years old. She 

 would stand as much petting and 

 kissing as any little American girl 

 of her age, Ijut I never could teach her 



to kiss me in return. The Eskimo suh- 

 stitute for kissing is rubbing of noses. 

 Tah-tah-rahq and Ig-loo-suah-mi were 

 three-year-old boys who loved to get 

 underfoot, and many were the perfectly 

 natural contests l)etween them over 

 blocks or other playthings that we let 

 one or the other of them have. 



The girls begin early to help their 

 mothers. Almost the only item of 

 housekeeping in an igloo (winter house 

 of stones and turf) or toopik (summer 

 tent of seal skin) that requires any 

 skill is the tending of the flame of the 

 native stove-lamp. This is a shallow, 

 oval-triangular pan or dish, somewhat 

 like a big clam shell in shape, although 

 not so deep, from twelve to eighteen 

 incites across carved out of soapstone. 

 When in use it is propped up on edge 

 on stone supports on a special platform 

 at one side of the bed platform. It is 

 ])rovided along its lower edge with a 

 wick improvised from dried moss, 

 which sucks up the oil that gradually 

 tries out of the lumps o'f blubber placed 

 in the upper part of the contrivance. 

 The object is to obtain the greatest pos- 

 sible amount of flame for liglit and 

 lieat, with the smallest possible amount 

 of smoke, and it requires some knack 

 and much training to pat the moss into 

 ])roper shape for this with the curved 

 l)ranch of a willow l)ush that is used 

 for the purpose. Then the girl must 

 acquire skill in the use of the oo-Ioo, or 

 woman's knife, shaped like an Ameri- 

 can chopping knife, M'hich is used in 

 cleaning, scraping, and cutting skins 

 for the making of garments, and for all 

 other purposes for which the Eskimo 

 woman uses a knife. 



Ah-nee-nah, Me-gis-s'oo's mother, had 

 many fox traps placed along the hill 

 slopes up Foulke Fjord from Etah, and 

 she used to take the little girl w^ith her 

 when she went out to examine them. 

 Thus was the child trained in know- 

 ledge of the habits of the ti/-ing-nee-a]i, 

 or blue and white foxes, which furnish 

 the l)est material for hooded coats and 



