MURDOCH.] MARRIAGE. 411 



discover that she was treated as a servant. She went with them to 

 the spring deer hunt, but we were distinctly given to understand that 

 the young couple would not be married till after the return from this 

 hunt, and that no intercourse would take place between them before 

 that time. When the season came for catching reindeer fawns, the 

 couple started off together, with sled and dogs aiid camp equipage in 

 pursuit of them, and always afterwards were considered as man and 

 wife. 



Most of the marriages took place before we heard of them, so that 

 we had no opportunity for learning what ceremony, if any, occurred at 

 the time. Some of the party, however, who went over to make a visit 

 at Utkiavwln one evening, found the house full of people, who were 

 singing and dancing, and were told that this was to celebrate the mar 

 riage of the daughter of the house. Marriage ceremonies appear to 

 be rare among the Eskimo. A pretended abduction, with the consent 

 of the parents, is spoken of by Bessels at Smith Sound 1 and Egede in 

 Greenland (p. l-i 2), and Kumlicn was informed that certain ceremonies 

 were sometimes practiced at Cumberland Gulf. 2 Elsewhere I have, not 

 been able to find any reference to the subject. A man usually selects a 

 wife of about his own age, but reasons of interest sometimes lead to a 

 great disparity of age between the two. I do not recollect any case 

 where an old man had a wife very much younger than himself, but we 

 knew of several men who had married widows or divorced women old 

 enough to be their mothers, 3 and in one remarkable case the bride was 

 a girl of sixteen or seventeen, and the husband a lad apparently not 

 over thirteen, who could barely have reached the age of puberty. 



This couple were married late in the winter of 1882- 8.3, and immedi 

 ately started off to the rivers, deer hunting, where the young husband 

 was very successful. This union, however, appeared to have been dis 

 solved in the summer, as I believe the girl was living with another and 

 older man when we left the station. In this case, the husband came &amp;gt;s 

 to live with the wife s family. 



As is the case with most Eskimo, most of the men content them 

 selves with one wife, though a few of the wealthy men have two each. 

 I do not recollect over half a dozen men in the two villages who had 

 more than one wife each, and one of these dismissed his younger wife 

 during our stay. We never heard of a case of more than two wives. 

 As well as we could judge, the marriage bond was regarded simply as 

 a contract entered into by the agreement of the contracting parties 

 and, without any formal ceremony of divorce, easily dissolved in the 

 same way, on account of incompatibility of temper, or even on account 

 of temporary disagreements. 



We knew of one or two cases where wives left their husbands on 



1 Naturalist, vol. 18. pt. 9, p. 877. 

 ^Contributions, p. Hi. 



H ompare Holm s observations in East Om nlaml &quot;iilH rt jiansko, un^t Menuosko kan vstre gift 

 meil en Konu. sum kimdo vjtro hans Modr.&quot; (Jeogralisk Tidskrit t, vol. 8, p. 91. 



