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Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



natives understood pictures without any difficulty, and could draw figures of 

 human beings, especially their clothing, with some approach to accuracy. There 

 drawings of animals, liowever, and even of the implements that they used every 

 day of their lives, were extremely poor. Probably the making and clothing of 

 dolls, and the cutting out of skins for their own clothes, when the whole pattern 

 is present to the mind beforehand, had accustomed them to think abstractly 

 of the shape and details of the human figure. On the other hand they seldom or 

 never make toys in the shape of animals as other Eskimos do, and so less often 

 conceive of the separate details of the animal body and combine them abstractly 

 into one proportionate whole. 



Fig. 66. Okalluk and Tusayok, the former making a cooking-pot from a tin can, the 

 latter making arrow-heads from an antler 



Another sign of intellectual inertia is their inability to pursue a logical 

 train of thought. For example, a native will never tell a story straightforwardly 

 from beginning to end. He starts in the middle, returns on himself to explain 

 some allusion, and wanders backwards and forwards in this manner mitil he has 

 completed all he has to tell. He is easily diverted into another channel or 

 another subject. Direct questions, unless they are simple requests for an en- 

 largement on some remark he has just made, almost invariably confuse him, 

 and he becomes incoherent or silent. This explains to some extent the amazing 

 variations in the accounts that different natives give of the same event or story 

 where the words are not stereotyped into fixed formulae. 



It cannot be said, however, that the Copper Eskimos are altogether lacking 

 in mental alertness. Their daily conversation proves otherwise, their constant 

 use of irony, for example, an irony that consists in saying exactly the opposite of 

 what is meant. Thus when a native remarks to another qiyuittutin, "You don't 

 know how to do it," he nearly always means "You are clever, aren't you?" 

 and when Avraima had outstripped the rest of us in his pursuit of two polar bears 

 his wife proudly remarked, "Avranna is slow, isn't he? A regular old woman." 

 Mental alertness is shown again in the quickness with which they adapt them- 

 selves to the customs and ways of the white man. They are extremely clever, 

 too, in imitating the peculiarities and mannerisms of one another. My PuivHk 

 companions were always mimicking the peculiar voice inflection of the Prince 



