LIFE AND HISTORY OF THE ESKIMOS 



"Neither did they know the sun; they lived in darkness; 

 day never dawned. Only in the houses had they light. They 

 burned water in their lamps, for at that time water could burn. 

 But the people who did not understand how to die became far 

 too many ; they overcrowded the earth — and then a mighty 

 flood came. Many were drowned, and there were thus fewer 

 people. On high mountain-tops where often we find mussels 

 we see the traces of this flood. 



" Now the people were fewer two old women began to talk. 

 ' Let us be without day,' one of them said, ' if at the same time 

 we may be without death ! ' I think she was afraid of death. 



" 'No,' said the other one, 'we will have both light and 

 death.' And as the old woman had spoken these words so it 

 came to pass. 



" Light came, and joy and death. 



"It is told that when the first man died the corpse was 

 covered with stones. But the corpse returned — it did not 

 understand quite how to die. It put its head up from the 

 stones, wanting to get up. But an old woman pushed it back 

 again. 



"'We have sufficient to drag and our sledges are small,' 

 she said. 



' ' For they were on the point of breaking camp to go 

 hunting. So the dead man had to return to his mound of 

 stones. 



"Now, when the people had light they were able to go out 

 hunting, and were no longer forced to eat from the soil. And 

 with death came the sun, the moon, and the stars. 



" For when the people die they rise to the sky and become 

 radiant." 



The rules, which played an important part before the time 

 of the mission, can be compared to a collection of unwritten 

 laws which tell men what, under certain conditions, they must 

 observe and conform to. As with most primitive peoples, these 

 rules relate especially to birth and death. 



All these rules of life, which, perhaps, seem unreasonable 



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