ESKIMO CHILDHOOD 



their minds they have the old superstition that two 

 names give the child a better chance of living. 



As I sit, pen in hand, looking back over those 

 fascinating years in Okak, there come to my mind 

 pictures upon pictures of the Eskimo children at their 

 play ; and I think again, how true it is that the play- 

 time years of childhood are a preparation for the 

 active work of grown-up life. " The child is father 

 to the man" is a saying that holds true of the 

 Eskimos even more than of most peoples. The 

 Eskimo baby is born to live an Eskimo life ; the boy 

 will grow up to be a hunter like his father ; the girl 

 will be a mother some day, busy over the clothing 

 and the sealskins and the bootmaking; and the in- 

 herited aptitude for the ordinary work of an Eskimo 

 life shows itself and shapes itself in the children's 

 games. I have seen the girls playing at " shop," and 

 the boys playing at " rounders " with a rag ball, but 

 these are games that they have learnt from the mis- 

 sionaries' children, mere interludes in their ordinary 

 play. 



An Eskimo girl plays at being mother, just as 

 girls do all the world over, and there is generally a 

 baby brother or sister to lend reality to the play. 

 The real mother does not bother much about the 

 baby if there are big sisters to look after it. 



If there is no baby to be nursed, the girls play 

 with dolls. I suppose there have been dolls among 

 the Eskimos from time immemorial dolls of stone 

 or bone, scraped and scrubbed into shape with hard 

 flint stones ; dolls of wood, with wide-eyed, staring 

 faces, carved after the Eskimo cast with high cheek- 

 bones and broad, flat noses ; and dolls nondescript, 

 mere bundles of rags, or rather of sealskin scraps, 



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