THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 423 



untruth, so that what their father had known in the form of stories 

 of historical interest could now be obtained from his sons only in 

 a form to be classed as folklore. 



One of the unfounded beliefs about primitive people, at least 

 such primitive people as I know, is that their women seldom have 

 trouble in childbirth. I was now told that several of the women 

 whose names I had recorded on my former visit and some of whom 

 I remembered had died in childbirth, which seemed, in fact, to 

 have been the most important single cause of death during the last 

 four years. 



We had some amusing experiences during the night with Emiu. 

 This boy had been bom either on the Diomedes or at Cape Prince 

 of Wales, his parents had died when he was young, and his foster 

 parents had brought him up in the vicinity of the mining camps 

 around Nome. He was always a most amiable and charming 

 little fellow. When at the age of fifteen or sixteen the miners dis- 

 covered that he was a wonderful foot racer he became the pet and 

 pride of every miner in that vicinity. For a year or two he won 

 long distance races and acquired the name of "Split-the-Wind." 

 Later somebody took him out to Seattle and for two years he trav- 

 eled around, sometimes as a runner and at other times as an atten- 

 dant at an Alaska moving picture show. He had never lived very 

 much with his own people under Eskimo conditions, and anyway 

 the snowhouse is unknown in Alaska except through the accounts 

 of those Eskimos who have been with whaling ships at Herschel 

 Island or farther east. These have brought back the stories but 

 never the skill of snowhouse-building. I have known only one 

 Alaska Eskimo who before 1913 learned to build snowhouses. Nat- 

 kusiak accompanied me for a year among the snowhouses of Coro- 

 nation Gulf and had been for ten or more years among the snow- 

 house-building people of Herschel Island and Cape Bathurst, and 

 yet he had never built a snowhouse until he learned from me the 

 fall of 1914 when we were caribou-hunting northeast of Kellett. 



Emiu had heard stories of people living in snowhouses, but had 

 never really believed it possible that the roofs would stand unsup- 

 ported by rafters or that the houses could be kept comfortably 

 warm without melting. Although he told us in the evening that he 

 now understood that this could be done, we found during the night 

 that he still did not believe it. I had been asleep for an hour or 

 so when I was awakened by Emiu lighting a candle. When I asked 

 what the trouble was he said that it seemed to him the house was 

 getting so warm that he was afraid the roof might melt and cave 



