MURDOCH.] CHILDREN. 415 



n little snow hut iu winter or a little tent in summer, in which she re 

 mains for some time -just how long we were, unable to learn. Captain 

 Herendeen sawa pregnant woman in Utkiavwlfi engaged, on March 31 , in 

 building a little snow house, which she told him was meant for her con 

 finement, but she had evidently somehow miscalculated her time, as her 

 child was not boru till much later, when the people had moved into the 

 tents. She and her child lived in a little tent on the beach close to her 

 husband s tent, evidently in a sitting position, as the tent was not large 

 enough for her to lie down in. Her husband was desirous of going oft 

 on the summer deer hunt, but, under the circumstances, custom forbade 

 his leaving the neighborhood of the village till the ice at sea broke up. 

 The same custom of isolating the women during childbirth has been 

 observed by Kumlien and Boas at Cumberland Gulf 1 , and in Greenland 

 the mother was not allowed to eat or drink in the open air. 2 Lisiansky 

 describes a similar practice in Kadiak in 1805, :i and Klutschak also 

 notes it among the Aivillirniiut. 1 



The custom of shutting up the mother and child in a snow house in 

 winter must be very dangerous to the infant, and, in fact, the only 

 child that was born in winter during our stay lived but a short time, 

 (. apt. Herendeen visited this family at ^mvttk shortly after the death of 

 the child, and saw the snow house in which the woman had been con 

 fined. Fie was about to take a drink of water from a dipper which he 

 saw in the iglu, but was prevented by the other people, who told him that 

 this belonged to the mother and that it was &quot; bad&quot; for anyone else to 

 vise it. In Greenland the mother had a separate water pail. 5 For a 

 time, our visitors from Utkiavwlfi were very much afraid to drink out 

 of the tin pannikin in our washroom, for fear it had been used by Niak- 

 silra, a woman who had recently suffered a iniscarriage. One man told us 

 that a sore on his face was caused by his having inadvertently done-so. 

 This same woman was forbidden to go out among the broken ice of the 

 land floe, during the spring succeeding her miscarriage, though she 

 might go out on the smooth shore ice. Her husband also was forbidden 

 to work with a hammer or adz or to go seal-catching for some, time 

 after the mishap. 



Children are nursed until they are II or 4 years old, according to what 

 appears to be the universal habit among Eskimo, and which is prob 

 ably due, as generally supposed, to the fact that the animal food on 

 which the parents subsist is not fit for the nourishment of young chil 

 dren. The child is carried naked on the mother s back under her 

 clothes, and held up by the girdle, tied higher than usual. When she 

 wishes to nurse it, she loosens her girdle and slips it round to the breast 



1 Contributions, p. 28. anil &quot;Central Enkim&amp;lt;&amp;gt;,&quot; p. 610. 

 &quot;Egede, p. 192; Crantz. veil. 1, p. 215. and Kink, Tales, etc., p. 54. 

 Voyage, p, 200. 

 &quot;Als Eskimo, etc., p. 199. 



* Egede, p. 192; Crantz, vol. 1, p. 21f&amp;gt;. &quot; no one else in nut drink out of their cup;&quot; a&amp;gt;*d liink. Tales and 

 Traditions, p. 54 



