52 
tainty of the food supply. Tliese operated both directly and 
indirectly, their indirect effects being perhaps the more far-reaching. 
The hardships of the never-ending food quest fell heaviest on the 
weaklings, who were often deliberately abandoned when they could 
no longer keep pace with the wanderings of the main tribe. In sea- 
sons of famine women were the first to suffer, and their loss seriously 
diminished the number of the next generation.^ Their lives were 
full of drudgery at all times and their status very inferior,- so that 
they often sought to escape the added burdens of maternity, especi- 
ally in seasons of want, by the twin practices of pre-natal abortion 
and infanticide. " The hardships the women suffer, induce them, too 
often to let the female infants die, as soon as born ; and they look 
upon it as an act of kindness to them. And when any of us spoke 
to a woman who had thus acted, the common answer was; ‘She 
wished her mother had done the same to herself!’ As late as 1916, 
during a rather severe winter, five Eskimo mothers around the west- 
ern end of Coronation gulf, where the total population did not exceed 
four hundred, destroyed their babies within an hour of delivery. As 
the Indians generally hesitated to sacrifice their male offspring, who 
would be the hunters of the community, their constant destruction 
of girl babies seriously affected the balance of the sexes. High infant 
mortality, female infanticide, and famines, all due in the main to the 
economic conditions, kept the hunting tribes down to a marginal 
level so that many of them barely escaped extinction.'^ The two 
regions where food was most abundant, southeastern Ontario and 
the coast of British Columbia, were precisely the two regions that 
were most densely inhabited. 
1 " It was frequonlly lluMr lot to bp left without a sIokIp inorsol.” Hrarne: Op. cit., p. 130. 
2 Even among the Iroquois the women occupiecl an inferior po.sition, and endured many hard.ship.s, 
although they enjoyed gn-ater privih'ges and exercised more influence politically than the women 
of other tribes except perhaps the Eskimo; c/. Weld, Isaac: “Travels Through the States of North 
America,” pp. 377-412 (Lr>ndrn, 1799). P''or the Maritime tiilies See " .lesuit Relations”; edittxl by 
R. G. Thwaites, vol. iii, p. 101 (Cleveland, 1896-1901); and fttr a rei»re.senta1 ive [dains’ tribe, the Assini- 
boine. See the Kelsey Papers, pp. 21 f. It is perlinps nnneeessary to add that the women accepted 
this inferior status without question, and generally found as much contentment in life as their sisters 
in more favoured conununities. 
3 Thompson: Op. cil., p. 130. C/. Mackenzie, Alexander; “Voyages from Montreal through the 
Continent of North .America to the Frozen and Pacific O'caiis in 1789 and 1793”, pp. xcvii f (London, 
1801). 
4 “ Abortions were freciuent and infant mortality such that hardly one in thirty survives.” “ Jesuit 
Relations”: edited by R. G. Thwaites, vol. i, p. 257. C/. Uardisty, W. L. : “Notes on the Loucheux 
Indians”; Smithsonian Kept., 1866, p. 312. 
