jump across a crack had slipped and fallen in. 

 If he rose at all, he probably came up under the 

 ice. 



Almost the first words of those who returned 

 were about the bell which they had heard all 

 night. The lantern they had seen but once or 

 twice, owing to the storm. But the bell had 

 cheered them greatly. To use Kannakut's own 

 words: " It made our hearts strong." 



Certain prominent educators objected to the 

 plan to establish schools among the Eskimos of 

 northern Alaska; they said that the attempt 

 would fail and prove a waste of money. They 

 believed that the Eskimos could make no use of 

 education, and could not acquire it, for lack of 

 memory and application. They declared the Es- 

 kimos are improvident and thoughtless and in- 

 capable of anything better than barbarous 

 poverty. . 



It is easy for professors of ethnology to advance 

 such theories, but I think it better to judge by 

 the facts gathered from actual experience in an 

 Eskimo schoolroom. 



At our school on St. Lawrence Island we have 

 Eskimo boys of fifteen and sixteen, who, after 

 only two years of schooling, can read the Eng- 

 lish of the Second Reader with considerable flu- 

 ency, and who have advanced in arithmetic as 

 far as decimal fractions. They can add, sub- 

 tract, multiply and divide with a fair degree of 

 accuracy. In fact, the average Eskimo boy is a 

 good natural mathematician. Those boys are 



often quicker in reckoning than white boys at 

 home. 



As far as I can discern, they remember from 

 day to day, from week to week, and from the 

 first winter of school to the next winter as well 

 as any other boys. Some things they forget, 

 but so do all boys. Indeed it is a mis- 

 take to suppose that because these boys are Es- 

 kimos, they are not very much like other boys, 

 the world over. To change Burns's immortal 

 line a little, " A boy's a boy for a' that," wher- 

 ever you find him. The difference is developed 

 later in life, and is caused by different habits 

 and different modes of living. 



As to the other objection, namely, that an edu- 

 cation will do an Eskimo no good, it is like 

 the first, founded on theory instead of on fact. 

 The education which we are giving the boys and 

 girls of this village is doing great good already, 

 for it has led the boys to reject the odious super- 

 stitions with which the shamans, or sorcerers, 

 contrive to hold the natives in a state of slavish 

 terror. 



My older boys now laugh at the threats which 

 the shamans make, and ridicule their antics. 

 With one generation of free schools shamanism 

 in Alaska will die out, and no one who has not 

 lived in an Eskimo village can understand what 

 a curse it is, and what abominable crimes are 

 committed by the sorcerers. 



The shamans were the only persons at St. Law- 

 rence Island of whom we were really afraid. 



