THE ESKIMOS AND THE MISSION 



approval to the advice of one of the very poorest of 

 the men, because he was a good man and a chapel- 

 servant ! Times have changed ; and the Eskimos 

 have learnt a better appreciation of a man's worth. 



If there is a vacancy in their ranks, the remaining 

 Kivgat meet the missionary and talk over the 

 question of a suitable man or woman for the office, 

 and there never seems to be any great difference of 

 opinion about the right one to choose. 



In addition to the chapel- servants, each village 

 has a committee of three or four men, elected by the 

 people themselves. 



These men have more strictly temporal duties ; 

 they look after the outward welfare of the village, 

 and convey the wishes of the people to the mission- 

 aries. Elections are by ballot, and take place every 

 three years ; and weighty functions they are. In 

 our village of Okak there were four representatives, 

 and every man thus had the right to put four names 

 on a piece of paper: my duty was to collect the 

 papers in a bowl, while the men sat solemnly in 

 rows in the church. The missionary gravely 

 unfolded the papers, and read the names aloud, 

 while the store-keeper and I jotted down the 

 numbers. It was quite evident that the thing had 

 been talked over for many a day, for the voting was 

 practically unanimous, and the reading of each 

 paper produced a grunt of assent from the lines of 

 voters. There was one spice of comic relief to the 

 solemnity, and that was when we discovered that 

 some village humorist had written his own name 

 four times. "Aron, Aron, Aron, Aron," read the 

 missionary; and the whole assembly went off into 



roars of laughter, while those who were near enough 



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