MURDOCH.] CHILDREN. A415 
a little snow hut in winter or a little tent in summer, in which she re- 
mains for some time—just how long we were unable to learn. Captain 
Herendeen saw a pregnant womanin Utkiaywin engaged, on March 31, in 
building a little snow house, which she told him was meant for her con- 
finement, but she had evidently somehow miscalculated her time, as her 
child was not born till much later, when the people had moved into the 
tents. She and her child lived in a little tent on the beach close to her 
husband’s tent, evidently in a sitting position, as the tent was not large 
enough for her to lie down in. Her husband was desirous of going oft 
on the summer deer hunt, but, under the circumstances, custom forbade 
his leaving the neighborhood of the village till the ice at sea broke up. 
The same custom of isolating the women during childbirth has been 
observed by Kumlien and Boas at Cumberland Gulf’, and in Greenland 
the mother was not allowed to eat or drink in the open air.2 Lisiansky 
describes a similar practice in Kadiak in 1805,° and Klutschak also 
notes it among the Aivillirnuut.* 
The custom of shutting up the mother and child in a snow house in 
winter must be very dangerous to the infant, and, in fact, the only 
child that was born in winter during our stay lived but a short time. 
Capt. Herendeen visited this family at Nuwik shortly after the death of 
the child, and saw the snow house in which the woman had been con- 
fined. He was about to take a drink of water from a dipper which he 
saw in the iglu, but was prevented by the other people, who told him that 
this belonged to the mother and that it was “ bad” for anyone else to 
use it. In Greenland the mother had a separate water pail. Fora 
time, our visitors from Utkiaywin were very much afraid to drink out 
of the tin pannikin in our washroom, for fear it had been used by Niaik- 
sara, a woman who had recently suffered a miscarriage. One man told us 
that a sore on his face was caused by his having inadvertently done so. 
This same woman was forbidden to go out among the broken ice of the 
land floe,during the spring succeeding her miscarriage, though she 
might go out on the smooth shore ice. Her husband also was forbidden 
to work with a hammer or adz or to go seal-cateching for some time 
after the mishap. 
Children are nursed until they are 3 or4 years old, according to what 
appears to be the universal habit among Eskimo, and which is prob- 
ably due, as generally supposed, to the fact that the animal food on 
which the parents subsist is not fit for the nourishment of young chil- 
dren. The child is carried naked on the mother’s back under her 
clothes, and held up by the girdle, tied higher than usual. When she 
wishes to nurse it, she loosens her girdle and slips it round to the breast 
‘Contributions, p. 28, and ‘Central Eskimo,” p. 610. 
?Egede, p. 192; Crantz, vol. 1, p. 215, and Rink, Tales, etc., p. 54. 
3 Voyage, p, 200. 
4“ Als Eskimo, ete.,’ p. 199. 
5 Egede, p. 192; Crantz, vol. 1, p. 215, °‘no one else mnst drink ont of their cup; and Rink, Tales and 
Traditions, p. 54 
