1886,] the Foint Barrow Eskimos. 595 
land, p. 195) the Greenlanders believed that white men were the 
offspring of a similar union between a woman anda dog. (The 
same story is also referred to in Rink’s “ Tales,” &c., p. 471.) 
i 2. Another account of the origin of human beings. In the 
east, a tall tube [like a reed. The narrator to illustrate this 
pointed to one of our bamboo fishing-rods] stuck up from the 
ground. A man broke the tube. “ Behold, ‘many men and 
women!” 
i 3. The origin of reindeer and fishes. Both reindeer and fishes 
were made by a mythical person of whom we got only a vague 
account, though he was often mentioned. He was said to be a 
little man with long tusks like a walrus, and many of the little 
Eskimo figurines and masks of ivory, soapstone or wood, which 
we brought home from Point Barrow, represent such a being, and 
are, perhaps, meant for images of this person. 
When the deer was not, this man made one out of earth. The 
deer all had large teeth in the upper jaw and were “ bad ”—they 
bit people. So he said to them: “Come here!” and when they 
came he pulled out these teeth. Now they are “ good.” 
The reindeer, of course, like the sheep and other ruminants, 
; has no incisor teeth in the upper jaw, and this myth is certainly 
an ingenious way of accounting for this fact, which must have 
Seemed very strange, since all the other animals known to the 
Eskimos are well supplied with teeth in both jaws. 
on the fish were not, this man hewed a piece of wood by 
€ river side with his adze. The chips fell into the water and 
were fishes 
ere seems to have been a similar myth in Greenland. Ac- 
_-- ording to Crantz: “ They say fishes were produced by a Green- 
lander 
! P. 204); and Egede tells a similar story (Greenland, p. 196). 
but the natives know what these phenomena are and account for 
them as follows: ip 
into the sky, carrying a dried sealskin and torches of tar. With 
_ the to 
ze rches and rattling the sealskin. 
Ur, 
3 taking the shavings of a tree, drawing them between his ' 
1 legs and casting them into the sea ” (History of Greenland, Vol. 
- John Simpson, ithe surgeon of the Plover, the English diş- : ; 
‘ry ship that wintered at Point Barrow thirty years before us, < 
K 
4. Thunder and lightning. It rarely thunders at Point Barrow, 
Long ago a grown person and a child went up | ; : 
sse they make the thunder and lightning, apparently by waving 
