Marriage, Childbirth, etc. 163 



very quietly, closed the door behind her, and leaned her back against it without 

 saying a word. We were wondering at her unusual silence when suddenly we 

 noticed that one of her eyelids was badly swollen and surrounded with a large 

 black ring. I asked her who had caused her black eye, and she said "Ikpakhuak, 

 with his fist"; but when I asked her why, all she would say was that he was 

 angry, and that she herself had done nothing to cause his anger. She was 

 afraid to go back to her tent, so I went over to see Ikpakhuak and hear his 

 version of the matter. The old man was whittling a stick in his tent, and 

 looked rather sullen when I entered, for he knew that Higilak had. been over 

 to our house. We talked about the hunting for a while and the chances of more 

 caribou appearing, then, suddenly changing the subject, I asked him why he 

 had struck Higilak in the eye. "Oh, she talked too much," he answered, 

 with a look that implied, "You know what a chatterbox she is." The affair 

 was over as far as he was concerned, and Higilak might safely return as soon 

 as. she wished. Half an hour later the two of them were laughing together in 

 their tent and Higilak was making fun of her attractive appearance. 



Jealousy is probably the commonest source of trouble. Higilak was very 

 proud and jealous of her husband and would ridicule her possible rivals on 

 every conceivable occasion. Generally speaking, though, the women are well 

 treated by their husbands, and the longer a couple has been married the less 

 they tend to quarrel. It is the widows who have the hardest lot. Their kinsmen 

 are bound to support them and provide them with a home, but naturally a mani 

 with a wife and children of his own to take care of has no desire to be burdened 

 with a widowed sister any longer than he can help. Friction, too, may arise at 

 any time between sister and wife. Sometimes the widow becomes a public 

 harlot; she will offer herself, that is, to any man who wants her for a day or a 

 week, in the hope that some one will finally keep her permanently; should she 

 give birth to a child no one will ever reproach her. Young widows never have 

 any difficulty in finding new husbands, but the middle-aged often have to 

 wait a long time, if they re-marry at all. The people have a proverb about 

 them which runs: "She had no property. She was an old woman when she 

 finally remarried, an aged woman". 



All travellers have remarked on the small number of children in the average 

 Es.kimo family. Parry, for example, says that "the women do not appear in 

 general very prolific. Illumea had borne seven children, but.no second instance 

 of an equal number in one family afterwards came to our knowledge; three or 

 four is about the usual number."^ 



M. Mauss even goes so far as to say that the maximum is four to five, and 

 thinks that there may have been an error of observation in the only case he 

 knew of where more were mentioned — a family of eight children reported by 

 Captain Comer from Hudson bay^. Holm, however, says that among the 

 Ammassalik Eskimos of East Greenland the average number of children that 

 each woman bears seemed to be about three or four, counting only those who 

 survived, while seven or eight children were by no means uncommon. My 

 own data tend to show that among the Copper Eskimos from four to five children 

 are bom, on the average, to each woman, and three survive, while there are 



'Parry, Vol. IV, p. 42. Cf. Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 101. 

 'L'Annfe Sociologique, Qifeme annde, 1904-05, p. 61, note 2. 



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