512 W. THALBITZER. 
German) as Esk. e‘wa ‘a human inhabitant; one (man or spirit) who lives 
at a place.’ ‘His woman’ and ‘his mother’ are called the same in Greenlandic 
(arna:), and ‘his mother-in-law’ and ‘his rib’ are likewise called the same 
(sakia). The biblical story of Eve (e‘wa) being created out of Adam’s rib 
might very easily lead to various misunderstandings by the East Green- 
landic listeners. Firstly that Eve was not a name but signified a human in- 
habitant of the earth, man or woman (e'wa). If she were (possibly by mistake) 
designated ‘his woman’ (Greenl. arna’ instead of arnata:) this must be under- 
stood in the Eskimo language as ‘his mother’, viz. Adam’s mother. Further, 
that Adam is not a name but signifies ‘a Greenland seal’, and that in the 
mouth of the bible-reader Adam’s sakia ‘Adam’s rib’ is understood as ‘the 
Greenland seal’s mother-in-law.’ () In all this there is rich material for 
the formation of a mythical misconception. The biblical saying that ‘Eve 
was created from a man’s rib’ — or in misunderstood rendering, that “the 
(first) inhabitant of the Earth was created from the Greenland seal’s mother- 
in-law” — would very easily lead to a grotesque joke in the Eskimo fancy 
of the old woman who procreates like a man after she has changed her sex 
and in one or another manner acquired a man’s nature. Add to this that on 
the coast of East Greenland one has heard before of women who took up 
man’s work, dressing like a man, kaiaking, etc. (First Part p. 67 (1)).— The pro- 
bability of the hypothesis might seem to be weakened by the fact, that the motif 
of the perverse mother-in-law who behaves like a man towards her daughter- 
in-law is found again so far, so enormously far, from the mission-field in 
South Greenland as Cumberland Sound and the west-coast of Hudson Bay. 
These variants are found in Franz Boas’ collections from there. @) 
It would give us a fair perspective of the age of the tradition, and of 
the extent of its journey if it really could be considered as originating in 
the manner here only presumed. We might imagine that the source was 
not the Bible tradition introduced from Egede, but the Catholic mission 
of the Middle Ages. This again presupposes that once in the vanished 
centuries the migration of one or several families had taken place from 
Greenland across to the American side, right across to the coast beyond 
Hudson Bay — a possibility which is by no means excluded, though hitherto 
no testimony has been found in folk-lore. This hypothesis, however, will 
require support by kindred evidence before any great importance can be 
ascribed to it. 
Until further, we prefer to suppose that the main motif of the mother- 
in-law transformed to a man is of intrinsic Eskimo origin, which does not 
exclude its having been somewhat affected in South Greenland through know- 
ledge of the biblical story of Adam and Eve. 
1 As a matter of fact there is various evidence in the older literature of the 
Greenlanders wondering greatly at some of the biblical expressions and stories, 
among others the one referring to the myth of Adam’s rib. We read in P. Egede’s 
Journal p. 155, year 1730 (ed. 1788): “A woman asked me whether the custom 
amongst them of presenting the women with the ribs of newly caught seals .. 
might not have its origin in Eve having been created from a rib?” — and further 
p. 181, year 1740: “A native wished to know where Eve got her soul. I replied: 
For God it was just as easy to create a living woman from a rib as to create 
a living man from a clod of earth.” 
2 F. Boas, Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Вау, Tales no. 54, p. 248, and 
no. 24, p. 323. 
