MURDOCH.] MARRIAGE. 413 



son, in the, paragraph referred to above, says that &quot;A man of mature 

 age chooses a wife for himself and fetches her home, frequently, to all 

 appearance, much against her will.&quot; The only case of the kind which 

 came to our notice was in 188. 5, when one of the Kllauwitawlnmeun at 

 tempted by blows to coerce AdwtVna, an Utkiavwifi girl, to live with 

 him, but was unsuccessful. 



A curious custom, not peculiar to these people, is the habit of ex 

 changing wives temporarily. For instance, one man of our acquaint- , 

 ance planned to go to the rivers deer hunting in the summer of 1882, 

 and borrowed his cousin s wife for the expedition, as she was a good 

 shot and a good hand at deer hunting, while his own wife went with 

 his cousin on the trading expedition to the eastward. On their return 

 the wives went back to their respective husbands. 



The couples sometimes find themselves better pleased with their new 

 mates than with the former association, in which case the exchange is 

 made permanent. This happened once iu Utkiavwifi to our certain * 

 knowledge. This custom lias been observed at Fury and Hccla Straits, 1 

 Cumberland Gulf, and in the region around Repulse Bay, where it 

 seems to be carried to an extreme. 



According to Gilder 3 it is a usual tiling among friends in that region 

 to exchange wives for a week or two about every two mouths. Among 

 the Greenlanders the only custom of the kind mentioned is the tempo 

 rary exchange of wives at certain festivals described by Egede. 4 



Holm also describes &quot;the game of putting out the lamps,&quot; or &quot;chang 

 ing wives,&quot; as a common winter sport in East Greenland. He also, 

 however, speaks of the temporary exchange of wives among these people 

 much as described elsewhere. 5 



I am informed by some of the whalemen who winter in the neighbor 

 hood of Repulse Bay, that at certain times there is a general exchange 

 of wives throughout the village, each woman passing from man to man 

 till she has been through the hands of all, and finally returns to her 

 husband. All these cases seem to me to indicate that the Eskimo 

 have not wholly emerged from the state called communal marriage, in 

 which each woman is considered as the wife of every man in the com 

 munity. 



Standing and treatment of women. The women appear to stand on a 

 footing of perfect equality with the men both in the family and in the 

 community. The wife is the constant and trusted companion of the 

 man in everything except the hunt, and her opinion is sought in every 

 bargain or other important undertaking.&quot; 



1 Parry, 2nd Voyage, p. 528. 



2 Kurulien, Contributions, p. 16. 



Schwatka s Search, p. 197. 



Greenland, p. 139. 



Geogr.. Tids., vol. 8, p. 92. 



Compare Parry, 2d Voyage, pp. 526-528, Nordenskiold (Vega, vol. 1, p. 449) : The women are &quot;treated 

 as the equals of the men, and the, wife was always consulted by the husband when a more important 

 bargain than usual was to be made.&quot; (Pitlekaj.) This statement is applicable, word for word, to the 

 women of Point IJarrow. 



