HUNTING AND FISHING EACES 143 



it seldom happens that ' children are born in a family quick after 

 one another '.^ 



Stow remarks that ' the Bushmen seldom had large families ' ; ^ 

 Theal, on the other hand, says that * the earliest Dutch colonists 

 observed that they were remarkably prolific ' ^ — one of the very 

 few statements which attribute a high fertihty to any of these 

 races. Passing now to the New World we find a similar abundance 

 of evidence pointing to the same conclusion. ' The Greenlanders 

 are not very prolific. A woman has commonly three or four 

 children, but at most six ; they generally bear but one child in 

 two or three years.' * Writing more than a hundred years later 

 than Crantz, Nansen gives very similar testimony, which has 

 already been quoted,^ as has that of Murdoch for the Port Barrow 

 Eskimos.^ The latter adds that ' they do not commonly bear 

 children before the age of twenty '.' According to Bessels the 

 number in an Eskimo family near Smith Sound is on the average 

 two ; this low figure is due to infanticide, he goes on to say.® In 

 the Ungava district ' the number of children born varies greatly, 

 for, although these Eskimo are not a prohfic race, a couple may 

 occasionally claim parentage of as many as ten children. Two or 

 three is the usual number.' ^ Armstrong notes of the Eskimos 

 generally ' that they are not a prolific race from all that I could 

 learn '.^^ Of the Aleutes Bitter says that the average number in 

 a family is two or three. ^^ 



Writing of the neighbourhood of Hudson Bay, Hearne says : 

 ' Providence is very kind in causing these people to be less prohfic 

 than the inhabitants of civilized nations ; it is very uncommon 

 to see one woman have more than five or six children ; and these 

 are always born at such a distance from one another, that the 

 younger is generally two or three years old before another is born 

 into the world.' ^^ Among the Eastern Tinneh to be confined once 

 every three years is ' a high average '.^^ The author responsible 

 for this statement goes on to say that ' the women are capable of 

 bearing children from fourteen to forty-five — a long period of their 



1 Wilhelmi, Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, vol. v, p. 180. ^ Stow, 



Native Races, p. 50. ^ Theal, loc. cit., p. 44. * Crantz, loc. cit., vol. i, 



p. 161. * p. 99. Hutton, however, gives a high figure for the birth-rate 



(Eskimos of Labrador, p. 80). ^ p. 99. ' Murdoch, loc. cit., p. 39. 



This author says further that ' all authors who have described Eskimos of unmixed 

 descent agree in regard to the generally small number of their offspring ' (ibid., 

 p. 419). " Bessels, loc. cit., p. 112. » Turner, loc. cit., p. 189. 



1' Armstrong, Personal Narrative, p. 195. " Ritter, Zeit. fur all. Erd., vol. xiii, 



p. 265. 12 Heame, Journey, p. 312. " Ross, loc. cit., p. 305. 



