375 



draw, either on their implements or on natural objects. The 

 choice of subject does not seem to offer them the least diffi- 

 culty; it seemed to be natural, that as soon as they set the 

 pencil to paper, some one or other favourite mental picture, 

 which was extraordinarily clear to them, should begin to ap- 

 pear. In agreement with this also, it was chiefly the women 

 who drew house-apparatus and scenes from the settlement, 

 whilst the men chose to represent animals and scenes of the 

 hunt. One motive which both sexes have shown a predilec- 

 tion for, is a woman with a child in the "amaut". Samik has 

 even drawn in one figure (fig. 43) a pregnant 

 woman, who at the same time carries a child in 

 the amaut. For Samik this situation represents 

 the acme of desirable fertility. 



These drawings of the Polar Eskimos, a- 

 raong whom drawing is not a traditional exer- 

 cise, but is the occasional unfolding of a latent 

 talent, the presence of which is connected partly 

 with the special mode of thinking, partly with 

 the "culture of the hands", may be compared Pregnant woman 



. , , , . n . 1 1 1 • with child in the 



With drawmgs of nature-peoples, where drawing -атаиг (drawn by 

 has been practised for generations, so that the samik). 



art has already come under the influence of tradition. As ex- 

 ample the bushmen may be cited. We then see that there is 

 no difference in the power to conceive and reproduce, which 

 the Polar Eskimos display with regard to animals and to people. 

 These are reproduced in a manner which bears witness to an 

 almost equally sharp power of observation in both cases. This 

 seems to show, that the well-known tendency among other 

 hunting-peoples, accustomed to draw, to reproduce animals 

 better than men, is not due to the lack of observation of men, 

 but rather on the contrary to the fact, that the man's figure 

 being easiest to recognize is the more readily subject to sim- 

 plification. Just as with the Polar Eskimos, the nature-peoples 



