2 Social Life among our Aborigines. [January, 
value to the world of a faithful picture of the life which he (more 
than any other man) is better situated to observe; even if he were 
competent to delineate it. Where shall be found a Becker who 
- will give us an Indian “ Charicles” ? 
Another and most serious difficulty lies in the way. In the life 
of the average native, especially in the far north, there is little but 
a struggle for existence with a niggardly environment. Their 
festivals are few and consist chiefly of eating and violent motions, 
termed dancing for want of a better and more characteristic word, 
or in donations where the host is the giver. Their shamanistic 
performances, full of excitement and interest, still have little to 
satisfy the love of enjoyment latent in every human being. Hav- 
ing no theatres, no books, no zmprovisatores, no means more 
rational than the above-mentioned examples for exciting pleas- 
urable sensations, there is no reason for wonder when we find 
in the savage mind the physical relations of sex, representing to 
him nearly all that civilization finds in art, literature or philan- 
thropy. Ideas connected with these relations as his sole source 
of unalloyed pleasure, permeate all his social relations, his wit, 
his motives, his tales, traditions, animistic faith and desires. 
Hence, not only would the faithful relation of the mental phases 
a of his life be unsuited to modern taste and modesty, but the mode 
-= of action of other sentiments in his mind and social relations, not 
-in themselves offensive, is so intermingled with the first mentioned 
as to render the representation of them, if dissected separately, 
in most cases only a mangled caricature of savage thought. 
= To the same absence of means for rational pleasure may be 
ascribed the fatal predilection for drunl and gambling uni- 
versal among savages and reappearing among the very poor in 
the slums of great cities, 
Dr. Rink, in his “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” has 
come nearer than any one else toward occupying part of the 
vacant field by a judicious expunging of the erotic element in the 
folk-lore he relates. 
_ The personal experience of the author during several years in 
Northwestern Alaska gave him now and then a glimpse of the 
social thought of the Eskimo and Indians by whom he was sur- 
rounded, and from these reminiscences may be gleaned a few 
items which, without trespassing on the*realm of Cooperian fic-. 
tion, may give a slight insight into the working of the human 
mind under savage conditions. But it must be recollected that 
