GILBERTSON: ESKIMO CULTURE 15 



reveal a mental attitude in such cases, as at Norton Sound, where 

 the Eskimo speak of themselves as the &quot;fine or complete people,&quot; 

 and their neighbors, the Tinne Indians, by a name meaning 

 &quot;louse-egg.&quot; Cartwright considered it the highest honor that 

 could be paid him by the natives of Labrador when they dubbed 

 him an Eskimo. (12:110.) 

 Crantz says, 



&quot;The Greenlanders consider themselves as the only civilized nation in 



the world &quot; (16: 149); &quot;they are far superior in their own estimation 



to the Europeans, who supply an inexhaustible subject of raillery for 

 their social parties.&quot; (16. 125.) 



The Eskimo of Point Barrow consider themselves the equals if 

 not the superiors of the white men with whom they have to 

 deal; 



1 they do not appreciate the attitude of arrogant superiority adopted by 

 many white men in their intercourse with so-called savages.&quot; (42: 42.) 



Even Nature is regarded as partial to the Eskimo. &quot;Our world 

 up here does not love strangers,&quot; they told Rasmussen; that was 

 the reason the water did not freeze over at the usual and desired 

 season. (50:83.) 



There is also a disposition for a local group to look down upon 

 other Eskimo; there is what we would call sectionalism. Of 

 course one factor here may be ignorance, re-enforced by imagina 

 tion, as in Stefansson s experience. (59: 176.) &quot;Only here 

 in this place are to be found the big storytellers,&quot; of a song 

 recorded by Thalbitzer (63 : 309), is typical of a common Eskimo 

 attitude. The following curious experience of Holm is a propos. 



Before we reached Angmagsalik, the other Eastlanders told us that 

 only bad people lived there. When we came to Tasinsarsik on the Ang 

 magsalik fjord, the inhabitants said that the people on the other side 

 of the fjord were bad people. . . . When we later spoke with the 

 inhabitants of the other part of the fjord, we were told that at their 

 settlement there were only good people, but that people we had not yet 

 seen were bad. At last, it turned out that there were only good people 

 on Angmagsalik fjord, and that the bad ones were dead or had moved 

 to Sermiligak.&quot; (30; 167.) 



Several writers admit that, even from a Kabluna point of view, 

 there is not a little justification for the Eskimo s self-esteem. 

 Crantz, who is not disposed to exaggerate the Eskimo s good 

 qualities, gives as the reason of their sense of superiority that 

 &quot;many improprieties which they observe too frequently in the 



