122 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



pretty badly on the way down, and Roxy consoled me 

 by saying that Ovayuak would be sure to have some. But 

 when we got to Tuktuyaktok we found that Ovayuak 

 hadn't any. He said that ordinarily Mr. Firth supplied 

 him with some as a part of his trade goods, but as the 

 Eskimos never cared to eat salt and as he himself never 

 thought of asking for it, it happened some years that Mr. 

 Firth did not give him any. This was one of those years. 



In that connection Ovayuak raised the question of 

 whether a white man really needs salt or whether the salt 

 habit with some people is like the tobacco habit with 

 others. He said that since he could remember, most of 

 the Mackenzie River Eskimos had used tobacco, both 

 men and women. Mothers frequently teach tobacco 

 chewing to their children before they are one year old, 

 and they grow up to be exceedingly fond of it. In fact, 

 many Eskimos now imagine that they cannot live with- 

 out it. Ovayuak had heard, however, from the men who 

 were old when he was a boy, that in their childhood no 

 one used tobacco and that when tobacco was first brought 

 in (which I estimate to have been about 1850) everybody 

 disliked it. Even now he said there were two or three 

 Eskimos who did not use tobacco and seemed to get along 

 just as well as the others who did. 



On the other hand there were only two or three Eski- 

 mos who did use salt and the great majority abhorred it. 

 The common Eskimo belief was that the desire for salt 

 was peculiar to white men, but he himself thought it was 

 only a habit almost any Eskimo might acquire. Con- 

 versely, he thought that it was a habit which any white 

 man who tried could probably break, and he suggested 

 that in a little while I would cease craving it. 



However, I had not stopped worrying when Ilavinirk 



