166 



Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



price of the adoption. After the baby was born, however, they decided to , 

 keep all their children, and rather unscrupulously went back on the agreement 

 without restoring either of the articles, the pot or the knife. 



Frequently the parents settle their problem by simply suffocating their 

 baby and throwing it away. Even a mother will do this, for apparently she 

 has no spontaneous affection for her offspring at the time that it is born. In 

 the autumn of 1915 a Pingangnaktok native travelled westward with his wife 

 and joined the Dolphin and Union strait natives at the Liston and Sutton islands. 

 There, on January 22, the woman gave birth to a girl. Neither of the parents 

 wanted to have any children at the time, for their companions were intending 

 to return to Tree river the following day. They were both young still, they 

 said, and in all probability would have at least one more child later, a boy per- 

 haps who could take care of them when they grew old. The woman therefore 

 suffocated her child and laid it out on the ground a few yards from the camp, 

 where it was soon covered by the drifting snow. Only a year or two previously 

 this couple had similarly exposed another little girl baby. There were three 

 other cases of infanticide that winter in the vicinity of our station, more than 

 the average number, probably, owing to the severity of the weather at this 



(Photo by G. H. Wilkins) 

 Fig. 51. Kalyutaryun and her baby Okomik 



time and the shortage of food. One woman exposed a child about three years 

 old ; it was bewitched, she said, and only a burden to her. The child was prob- 

 ably defective, for, though it had grown in size, it had not developed properly 

 and could neither stand alone nor walk. 



Where twins are born one at least must either be killed or given away, 

 for an Eskimo woman cannot possibly rear both children at the same time. 

 If one is a boy and the other a girl, it is invariably the girl that is made the 

 victim. Boys, in fact, are seldom exposed, for they will support their parents 

 when they grow up. The utmost callousness is displayed in the matter. One 

 woman laughed over a baby girl she had killed two or three years before, and 



