416 
exlreniely limited means; and we marvel that a people subjected 
to all the hardsldps and uncertainties of life in the Arctic should 
foster a genuine love of art and display high talents in sculpture 
and engraving. We may recall that they possessed an equal gift 
for music, and that among the songs to which they danced on winter 
evenings there were some really beautiful melodies. 
3.S571 
Kskinio travelling by sIolI and dog-team. (Tliolo Uy J, J. 
In the sidieres of social life and religious beliefs, however, the 
Eskimo ranked lower than most Indian tribes in Canada. Their 
small and, as a rule, widely separated communities recognized no 
chiefs of any kind. Alen of unusual ability or personality, especially 
if they were shamans, wielded a certain amount of influence; but 
even they seldom thought of issuing commands to their communities, 
still less to the inhabitants of other communities in their neighbour- 
hood. Rules of conduct that had arisen in various ways, and were 
generally sanctioned by long anticpiity, regulated life within each 
group, and for anti-social practices such as theft and nun-der the 
penalty was death, either by sentence of the group or through the 
oj^eration of the blood-feud. Like so many primitive races, the 
Eskimo lacked the independence of judgment and free initiative 
that chai’acterize more civilized peoples. Hence discord seldom 
reared its head in their semi-communistic baiuls, and there was little 
need of any one in authority when each man’s impulses unconsciously 
took the same direction as the impulses of his neighbours. 
