CHAPTER III 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE ESKIMOS 



My head was full of booklearning about the North. This 

 proved to be mostly wrong and consequently I met a sur- 

 prise at every turn. A whole series of surprises came 

 when I met the Eskimos. I have said nothing about them 

 before, but there had been some of them at Red River 

 and there were three or four dozen of them on the bank 

 as the Wrigley steamed up to Fort Macpherson. There 

 were white men standing among the Eskimos, and the 

 Eskimos and whites were about the same height. I had 

 been expecting the Eskimos to be small and was thinking 

 to myself that it was a curious thing that the Hudson's 

 Bay traders, Mounted Police and missionary at this place 

 should be of such small stature. When I went ashore 

 and shook hands with them, I found some of them were 

 taller than I, and I am half an inch under six feet. This 

 meant that some of the Eskimos were big men. I have 

 found since that while Eskimo women strike you generally 

 as being smaller than white women the Eskimo men of 

 the Mackenzie and Alaska are little if at all under the 

 average size, of Europeans. Possibly the women appear 

 small because they do not walk on their toes as do white 

 women in their high-heeled shoes. 



My very first day among the Eskimos I noted the free 

 swing of their walk and their independence of bearing as 

 compared with the Athabasca Indians they were walking 

 and talking with. This brought to mind what Macfarlane 



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