10 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS PSYCHOLOGY 



live more than a year or two in one place&quot; (48:42), does not 

 seem to hold as a general characterization. Rather it appears 

 more correct to hold, with Barnum that, while * on acount of the 

 difficulty of obtaining food, the Innuit are forced to travel about 

 a great deal, yet they are not a nomadic race&quot; (3. xii). So too 

 Rink asserts that 



&quot;the Eskimo may more properly be classed among the people having 

 fixed dwellings than among the wandering nations, because they gen 

 erally winter the same places through even more than one generation, so 

 that love of their birthplace is a rather predominant feature in their char 

 acter.&quot; (53. 9; for a use of love of home in folk-lore see 53: 466.) 



Crantz suggests that their belief that the soul may remain at 

 home, while the man is away on the chase, is due to home 

 sickness. 



The subdivisions of Eskimo society fall under three heads, the 

 family, the housemates, and the place-fellows. 



The family consists of the parents and children, together with 

 relatives by adoption, also by marriage, whenever a married 

 child remains in the parental home. The father is regarded as 

 the head of the family, but as Murdoch says, his rule is founded 

 more on respect and mutual agreement than on despotic 

 authority.&quot; (42:427; cf. 66:190.) 



Boas emphasizes the place of kinship in Eskimo society when 

 he says, &quot;the social order of the Eskimo is entirely founded on 

 the ties of consanguinity and affinity between the individual 

 families&quot; (5: 578). According to Holm, &quot;the bond of blood is 

 regarded as an obligation to stand by each other under all 

 circumstances.&quot; (30: 87.) Rink cites the rather complicated 

 system of kinship terms and the ability to remember rela 

 tives several generations back as evidence of the importance 

 of relationship to Eskimo thought. (52:22.) Even if the 

 family is divided by removals to distant settlements, the obliga 

 tions of kinship are in force whenever mutual aid is required. 

 ^(See 53:25.) 



Holm narrates an incident from real life, illustrating the 

 bond between brothers and sisters. 



A hunter at a village named Nojarik had caught a narwhal. In a 

 village called Sennilik he had a married sister. In the winter no one 

 goes to visit between these two places. But this brother undertook the 

 long and perilous journey, carrying a large package of meat in a band 

 about the forehead. &quot;He was very much afraid that she should suffer 



