THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 107 



summer of 1913 had been such a very bad ice year. Siksigaluk, 

 the police interpreter Eskimo, told us that during the summer 

 when a large number of his people were at Herschel Island awaiting 

 impatiently the arrival of trading ships from the west, and when 

 in their daily walks to the top of the island they kept finding 

 that the ice was jammed in against the land to the west of them, 

 Mr. Young, lay inissionary of the Church of England, told them 

 that probably the Lord had sent the ice to keep the wicked scien- 

 tists in the Karluk from getting into the country. From this re- 

 mark the Eskimos had deduced, and very logically, that the same 

 ice that was sent to keep the scientists out of the country had also 

 kept the trading ships out. For this reason the community were 

 very resentful against us for the non-arrival at the island of the 

 Belvedere, Polar Bear and Elvira! 



Later on at Fort Macpherson I saw Mr. Young and found that 

 he denied, no doubt with entire truth, that ho had ever made any 

 such remark. However, the Eskimos got the idea somewhere, per- 

 haps from their own inner consciousness, and the fact throws an 

 interesting light not only on their mental status but on the some- 

 what external Christianity which they have espoused so warmly. 



Just as children may be kindhearted, attractive and in every 

 way charming and still believe in Santa Claus or even in Jack 

 the Giant Killer, so the Eskimos are no less a delightful people for 

 all their childlike notions. In common with nearly all other ob- 

 servers, I find them less charming as they grow more sophisticated, 

 but this should not be charged against the missionaries, for the 

 sophistication is only in small degree their work. It is the aggre- 

 gate result of the intercourse of the Eskimos with all sorts of white 

 men, and not the particular result of their intercourse with mission- 

 aries, which is changing them gradually into a less attractive and 

 less fortunate people. 



The second day out from Herschel Island on the journey to- 

 wards Macpherson we overtook in a deserted Eskimo house Storker 

 T. Storkerson, who had been first officer on the schooner Duchess 

 of Bedford in 1906-07. This was the expedition with which I had 

 been connected as anthropologist, having intended to join it at 

 Herschel Island in the summer of 1906. On that occasion I had 

 come down the Mackenzie River and arrived at the appointed 

 rendezvous in August, waiting there until September for the expe- 

 lition. They never got through that far, however, for the freeze-up 

 overtook them at Flaxman Island, where the ship was eventually 



