LEARNING TO LIVE AS AN ESKIMO 71 



We would pull the fish out as quickly as we could and 

 throw them in a pile inland, then shove out the net and 

 walk to the second net. We would similarly empty that 

 and then pull in the third net. By the time that was 

 done we would go back to the first net, pull it in and 

 find it just as full as it was the time before. We never 

 counted the fish but I should say that on a good night 

 three or four of us caught between one and two thou- 

 sand, giving from fifteen hundred to three thousand 

 pounds of food. 



The hardest work of the women came during the day. 

 With half-moon-shaped steel knives as sharp as razors 

 they cut open the fish, cleaned them, removed the back- 

 bone and hung up the rest to dry. This was done 

 when the run of fish was not very rapid. When large 

 quantities were being caught, the women did not have 

 time to remove the backbones, but merely cleaned the 

 fish and threw them into enclosures made log cabin 

 fashion out of pieces of driftwood. When the fish in each 

 of these boxes were three or four feet deep, the whole 

 thing would be roofed over with a pile of logs, thus fur- 

 nishing adequate protection from dogs and foxes and 

 indeed from any animal except a polar bear. Even from 

 bears these caches were safe so long as the fish were per- 

 fectly fresh, for a polar bear does not hunt fish and does 

 not seem to recognize the smell of fresh fish as the smell 

 of food. But caches containing "high" fish will be 

 broken into by bears — probably because all rotten meats 

 and rotten fishes smell much alike. 



I had read in books that the Eskimos eat their food 

 raw, but found little of this. The Mackenzie people are 

 no more likely to eat a fresh fish raw than we are to eat 

 a beefsteak raw. I have seen butchers and cooks eat 



