GILBERTSON: ESKIMO CULTURE 47 



to take care of themselves are neglected or treated with slight 

 consideration. (See 43 : 177 ; 20 : 101 ; 66 : 178 ; 30 : 181.) 



A practice found among the Eskimo which at first sight 

 outrages our moral sensibility is the abandoning and killing of 

 aged parents. They are sometimes put to death by their 

 own children; how can that be harmonized with that affection 

 for parents which we have described? The same treatment 

 may be dealt out to the sick and insane. As all these cases have 

 the same causes, we will treat of them together. 



The fundamental explanation for these acts must be sought, 

 not in any &quot;corruption of the heart&quot; of the Eskimo nor their 

 heathenism, but in the grim necessities of the struggle for 

 existence. It is the demand for the sacrifice of the individual 

 life that the group may survive. The scarcity of the food supply 

 or the hardship of the march may require that those who only 

 consume or who retard the progress be abandoned or dispatched. 

 This is well illustrated in an account by Boas : 



&quot;When a traveling party runs short of provisions, they sometimes 

 leave a woman or an old person, who may hinder their progress in a 

 small snow hut, in which such a person is walled up. In case the party 

 succeed in reaching their destination and replenishing their stock of 

 provisions, they return for the deserted one.&quot; (6: 117.) 



Sometimes the aged and sick themselves ask to be killed. A 

 young man told Hall, &quot;with tears in his eyes&quot; that &quot;it had 

 been his duty&quot; to put his parents to death &quot;as it was at their 

 request.&quot; (26:277.) An incident, which Nansen uses as an 

 illustration of the fact that &quot;the conceptions of good and evil 

 in this world are exceedingly divergent&quot; (43 : 170) is as follows: 

 A missionary spoke to a girl of the love of God and neighbor, 

 when she said to him : 



&quot;I have given proof of love for my neighbor. Once an old woman, 

 who was ill, but could not die, offered to pay me if I would lead her 

 to the top of the steep cliff from which our people have always thrown 

 themselves when they are tired of living; but I, having always loved my 

 neighbors, led her thither without payment, and cast her over the cliff.&quot; 

 (See also 43: 163; 42: 331; 17: 385; 6: 499.) 



Infanticide is practised under similar conditions from like 

 motives. They often kill children who are deformed or those 

 so feeble that they are not likely to live, and those whose mothers 

 die in childbirth and who have no one to nurse them. (43 :151 ; 



