Psychology and Morality 229 



is surrounded. The very religion of the Copper Eskimos, so far from stimulating 

 their intellectual growth, has helped to stunt it, although that rehgion was itself 

 their own creation, or at least so moulded by them as to fit in with every detail 

 of their daily life. For it has led them to ascribe every mysterious or simply 

 unusual phenomenon to a supernatural agency, an explanation that immediately 

 dampens every impulse to anything in the nature of a scientific enquiry. Incred- 

 ible and even contradictory assertions (or so they seem to us) are accepted 

 without question, for there is no boundary between the possible and the impossible 

 when spiritual forces are free to intervene at any moment. It is not strange 

 therefore that the Copper Eskimo should be a true Epicurean, holding that life 

 is a short and uncertain thing at the bestj and that the wise man will grasp 

 at what pleasures he can in his course without stopping to ponder over those 

 things that do not directly affect his immediate welfare. 



It is natural, too, that the natives should believe implicitly in clairvoyance 

 or second sight. More interesting is their peculiar belief in the projection of the 

 human will. I stayed one night with two families who were camped at the 

 mouth of a creek near Cape Lambert in order to spear the. migrating salmon. 

 Hardly any salmon at that time had made their appearance, so just as I was 

 leaving, one of the natives asked me to "will" that the fish should enter the 

 creek. That very evening a large shoal of salmon did enter the weir and were 

 speared. The native came to thank me a few days later; he said, "You bade the 

 fish come up, so they came, and we have killed large numbers of them." With 

 a similar idea an old man in Coronation gulf begged Dr. Anderson to cherish 

 good thoughts of him and his family so that they would come to no harm. On 

 another occasion, when the mosquitoes were plaguing us very badly, Kanneyuk 

 circled her finger round her eye and cried "Wind, wind." She seemed to think 

 that if you told the weather to clear or a wind to spring up or anything at all 

 to happen your appeal would very probably take effect. To tease *her I sum- 

 moned the mosqmtoes to come, and she earnestly protested against my action. 

 During a storm the natives often cry out, "Be fine, it is very unpleasant when 

 the weather is bad, be fine;" or again, "We can't seal when the weather is stormy, 

 be fine!" Several times I have heard Higilak appeal thus to the weather when 

 her husband was away hunting. It was not the spirit world that the relatives 

 had in mind when they made these appeals, for once when I added, "Hearken 

 and obey," they all burst out laughing; rather they seemed to hold that the very 

 expression of one's thought, the mere utterance of a wish, in some dim and 

 obscure manner worked for its fulfilment.' 



The intellectual inertia of the natives is apparent in their counting. A 

 woman wanted to tell me that I had six cartridges. She held up three fingers 

 and said "three," pingahut, then again held them up and said "three." I tried 

 to make her count consecutively. She began on her fingers "one, two," then for 

 the third finger said "one" again and, on being corrected, "three." For the 

 fourth finger she was quite at a loss, but another native volunteered "four." 

 Beyond this neither of them had any numerals, though there are words for 

 both "five" and "six." Very few of the natives, however, know the word for 

 six, and in ordinary conversation any number above three is "many."^ 



It is significant in this respect that not a single native was encountered who 

 had the slighest conception of a map, with the sole exception of Uloksak. Even 

 he had only a vague comprehension. He understood that certain lines repre- 

 sented the coast and others the rivers, and he seemed to be able to picture a 

 bay as a curve, but he totally failed to comprehend the purpose of a map, and 

 so could not reproduce on paper his own topographic knowledge.' Yet the 



»Cf. Stefansson, My Life with the Eskimo, p. 295. 



sCf. Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 343. 



'A native of Minto inlet, however,' drew an accurate sketch of the west coast of Victoria island for 

 one of McClure's people (Armstrong, p. 338 et seq.), and Dr. Anderson saw a Tree river Eskimo draw a toler- 

 able outline of the coast near Bathurst inlet, so that there are evidently a few natives who have vague 

 notions of topography. 



