594 A few Legendary Fragments from [July, 
and other members of the United States International Polar Ex- 
pedition from the Eskimos of Roint Barrow, Alaska, which is the 
extreme north-western point of the continent of North America, 
_ during a stay of two years (from 1881 to 1883). The fact that 
several of them show features indicating a relationship with well- 
known Greenlandic stories seems to the writer to render them, 
scanty as they are, worthy of publication. 
Two or three of them have already been published by Lieut. 
Ray, the commander of the expedition, but as they appeared in 
a government publication,’ perhaps not accessible to all readers, 
it will not be out of place to repeat them here. 
Occupied as our party was with the manifold routine scientific 
work of the station, it was exceedingly difficult to get hold of 
‘ any of the traditions of the natives, though they showed no 
; unwillingness, from superstitious or other reasons, to talk freely 
about them. In the first place there were so many (to the Eski- 
mos) more interesting things to talk about with us, that it was 
a difficult to bring the conversation round to the subject in ques- 
. , tion. Then-our lack of familiarity with the language was a great 
hindrance to obtaining a connected and accurate version of any 
story. The jargon, or kind of Zingua franca, made up of Eskimo 
: roots and “ pigeon English ” grammar, which served well enough 
= for every-day intercourse with the natives, enabled us, with the 
ae help of expressive gestures, to get the general sense of the story, 
_ but rendered it impossible to write down an Eskimo text of the 
tale which could afterwards be translated. Moreover, the confu- 
; sion and difficulty was still further increased by the fact that two 
== Or three people generally undertook to tell the story at once. , 
In writing out the following stories I have endeavored to avoid 
__ introducing ideas and expressions of my own, and to ad 
5 closely as possible to the simple sense of the brief disco 
-~ sentences of the narrators. 
=I. How people were made. Long ago, Aselu, a dog—“ where 
_ he came from I did not hear ”—was tied to a stick. He bit the 
_ stick [7. e., set himself free] and went into the house, where he 
had intercourse with a woman, who gave birth to men and dogs: 
here as 
nnected 
The belief that a dog was one of their remote progenitors is a 
very common one among savages. According to Egede (Green: 
ae 
to Point Barrow» 
inate: 
2 Report of the United States International Polar Expedition 
i RENE By P. H. Ray. Wa: ni 88 Š. 
y 
