ESKIMO 



2077 



ESKIMO 



bear, deer, foxes, hares and birds; some of 

 these delicacies are stored away for the win- 

 ter. Occasionally the meat is cooked over 

 the lamp, but more often it is eaten raw. 

 K-k nnos have enormous appetites, and it is 

 said that two of them can easily consume a 

 small seal in one meal. 



How They Travel. The dog is the Eskimo's 

 horse, and the sledge is his moving van, fam- 

 ily carriage, automobile and railway train. It 

 can be used all the year except in Southern 

 Greenland. Driftwood, when it can be ob- 

 tained, makes the runners, which are connected 

 by bone or ivory bars tied with rawhide. How- 

 ever, if you were to go to Eskimo-land you 

 would see many strange substitutes used in 

 sledge-making; for instance, -rolls of skins 

 sewed in a bag which is frozen into the right 

 shape, or packs of fish, and even blocks of ice 

 for the body, with frozen fish for runners and 

 the spreading antlers of a deer for a back rest. 

 Four or eight strong, well-trained dogs are 

 harnessed to the sledge with rawhide and are 

 governed by a whip with a very long lash which 

 the driver uses with great dexterity. Those 

 who have read Jack London's The Call of the 

 Wild have a fine word-picture explaining how 

 the teams are managed and how careful the 

 driver must be to keep perfect discipline. If 

 one dog bites his neighbor, the second dog 

 takes revenge by biting the one next to him, 

 and so on through the whole pack, until there 

 is a general fight which is likely to result in 

 injured dogs and tangled harness. 



Snowshoes are a great help in overland 

 travel. For travel by water the Eskimo has 

 the kayak, or fishing boat, and the umiak, or 

 family boat, sometimes called the woman's 

 boat. The kayak is a very light canoe made 



TWO FORMS OF THE KAYAK 



uf .-kin stretched over a frame of bone or 

 wooden ribs. It is often as long as twenty 

 feet, but- never more than twenty inches in 

 width. The round opening in the middle 

 where the paddler sits has a sort of cuff which 

 he can button around him to make the boat 

 absolutely water-tight (see illustration). When 

 a boy is ten years old he is taught to use the 

 kayak, and he learns to handle it with mar- 

 velous skill, often capsizing it on purpose in 



order that the bottom may take the shock 

 of a heavy wave, and then quickly righting it 

 again. The umiak is large enough to hold 

 the entire family and all the household be- 

 longings. It is flat-bottomed and has a sail 

 as well as paddles. 



Occupations and Amusements. The Eskimo 

 must fish and hunt very diligently in order to 

 keep himself and his family supplied with 

 food, clothing and the materials required for 

 their implements. He uses the spear and the 

 harpoon for killing polar bears, seals and 

 whales, and for land game sometimes a mod- 

 ern rifle is employed. In Greenland and 

 Alaska the Eskimos engage in trade with the 

 whites, selling skins, ivory, whalebone and 

 eiderdown. 



They are a fun-loving people, fond of music, 

 story-telling and games. One of their favor- 

 ite pastimes somewhat resembles football, and 

 other popular games are throwing stones at a 

 target, card-playing, wrestling, tossing a per- 

 forated bar and catching it on an ivory point, 

 racing, and the like. The children have plenty 

 of sport with tobogganing, hockey, snow-shoe- 

 ing and snowballing, and they "play dog" with 

 their small sledges and deerskin reins, just as 

 other little boys and girls "play horse." 



Character, Religion, Government. Mission- 

 aries have brought a great number of Eskimos 

 into the Christian faith, but those who have 

 not been converted still worship the "whale- 

 spirit," and believe in the sea-demons which 

 figure in their folk-tales, and in the power of 

 the "medicine-men" to keep them under con- 

 trol. They are extremely peaceful in dispo- 

 sition, always good-natured, kind and hos- 

 pitable, readily sharing their goods with one 

 another. Although they live in small groups 

 or villages, there is no central government of 

 any kind, the only rule being that of the fam- 

 ily. There is great good-feeling among the 

 different groups, and no one has ever heard 

 of one village making war upcm another. 



The Eskimo race is apparently dying out, 

 and to-day there are fewer than 30,000 in ex- 

 istence. This is due largely to their ignorance 

 of hygiene, and the introduction of contagious 

 diseases by white visitors, which make it a 

 rare thing for an Eskimo to live to an age 

 of more than sixty years. L.F. 



Consult Stefansson's My Life with the Eski- 

 mos ; Nansen's Eskimo Life; Murdock's "The 

 Point Barrow Eskimo," in Ninth Annual Report 

 of the Bureau of Ethnology, published for the 

 Smithsonian Institution. The latter is a govern- 

 ment document. 



