You cannot induce an Eskimo to think he wants anything just because you have found that thing to your liking. There are two reasons for this. First, long experience in the most rigorous climate which the human race inhabits has taught this man what garments are the most suitable for him in which to live and move and have his being. Second, although the Indian may ape the white man as a superior being from whom eleemosynary grub and gew-gaws may be wheedled, the Eskimo of the Mackenzie delta considers himself to be the superior of every created being. The Eskimo knows what he wants; he is always sure of it, and there is no vacillating. When he comes into the H.B. Company's post to trade, skins are his currency, the pelts of the silver-fox his gold coinage. A good silver, or black-fox is worth here about one hundred dollars in barter.
We saw a band of Nunatalmutes come into Fort Macpherson to do their summer shopping. They wanted English breakfast tea, superior rifles and ammunition, and a special brand of tobacco. Failing any or all of these, it was in vain that the Factor displayed before them the wares of John Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any seductive lure made in Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a-sook-tok bought what they found to their liking, took small change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the remaining six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once their savings bank and letter of credit for the season to come. The hungry-eyed H.B. man confided to us that two of these coveted pelts had been thus exhibited to him and thus tucked back into the Eskimo sinking-fund for three successive seasons.
As regards weapons, we found Eskimo hunters in the transition stage. The old-time spears, four feet long and tipped with ivory, are still in active service. The bows, with arrows finished in copper, flint, and bone, have been relegated largely to the boys, while Krag-Jorgensen, Lee-Enfield, and other high-power guns are bought from American whalers. The fish-hooks which I got in friendly barter are interesting to any one born with angling blood in his veins. Beautifully fashioned of ivory, copper, bone, and beads, the contrivance is a sinker, bait, and hook, all in one. The daily baskets procured with this lure incontestably proves the Husky a judicious hooker.
The Eskimo is a merger. Father Petitot shows us the close analogy between the Kogmollyc language and the tongues of eastern Asiatic tribes, ancient and modern. This Eskimo's speech, then, gives him a connection with the effete East (which is his west), while enamelled washbasins, with here and there a corrugated wash-board, prove that slowly but surely Canadian culture is reaching him from the south.
With two modifications, this Eskimo is invariably truthful. Like the Indians to the south of him, seeking to please you by answering a question in the way that you desire, he will at times tell you an untruth, for it seems to him discourteous to answer your question other than in the way which you anticipate. For instance, if you say to Roxi, "Wasn't that a grey goose we heard overhead?" Roxi will readily assent, though he well knows it to have been a mallard duck, but he would spare your ignorance. Again, it is Eskimo etiquette to belittle your own success in hunting and, in so doing, be not literally truthful. When we place this delightful trait alongside the fish-stories we are familiar with, who would seek to change the heathen?
Marriage with the Eskimo is not a ceremony, it is not even the taking of each other for better or for worse. It is an easy union entered upon and maintained so long as both parties are pleased. This arrangement has one manifest advantage,—Eskimo annals tell of no unhappy marriages. When unhappiness conies in at the door of the igloo, marriage flies out of the chimney. When a woman leaves her tentative husband, she takes herself and her babies back to the paternal topik, and no odium attaches. As the marriage vows melt into the Arctic air, the quondam husband is expected, however, to play the game. Last winter a young Nunatalmute and his sorry spouse came to the parting of the ways. She asked him to take her back to Papa, but he said, "No. You may go to-morrow if you wish, but I am ready to hunt in the opposite direction, and I hunt." Off to the chase he went and took the family auto, i.e., the sled and dogs, with him. The once-wife, travelling five days and six nights by the fitful light of the Aurora, found her way to her father, for the instinct of direction is unerring in these people; but the ex-bride's feet became badly frozen. Public opinion in this case was strongly roused against the husband and probably if there had been a tree handy he would have been lynched. This would have been the first lynching recorded in Canada. The feeling of the Eskimo community was that, when the wife announced her intention of enforcing a divorce, the bounden duty of the husband was either to drive her himself in proper state to her father's door or to let her have the dogs.
In their beliefs in the great powers of concentration and in re-incarnation we find traces in the Eskimo of those Theosophical ancestors of theirs far off on Asian shores. The ceremonies which approximate in time to our New Year's Day and Christmas show the importance they attach to concentrated thought. Early in the morning of what corresponds to our New Year's Day, two young men, one of them grotesquely dressed in women's garments, visit every igloo and blow out each seal-oil lamp. The lights are afterwards renewed from a freshly-kindled fire. The chief, asked the meaning of the ceremony, replied, "New light, new sun," showing his belief that the sun was yearly renewed at this time. This early morning visit from igloo to igloo reminds us of the "first-footing" of the Scottish village. The mummery of wearing the fantastic dress of the woman points back to the old Lord of Misrule.
About the season of Christmas, a great meeting is held in the igloo, presided over by the Angekok or medicine-man, who entreats the invisible powers for good fortune, immunity from storms, and a plenitude of blubber for the ensuing year. This invocation is followed by a family feast. Next day the ceremonies are carried on out-of-doors, where all from oldest to youngest form a ring-around-a-rosy. In the centre of the circle is set a crock of water, while to the communal feast each person brings from his own hut a piece of meat, raw preferred. This meat is eaten in the solemn silence of a communion, each person thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, and wishing for good. The oldest member of the tribe, a white-haired man or tottering dame, takes up a sealskin cup, kept for this annual ceremony, dips up some of the water and drinks it, all the time thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, while the others close their eyes in reverent silence.
Before passing the cup on to the rest of the company that they may drink, the old man or woman states aloud the date and place of his or her birth, as accurately as it can be remembered. The drinking and thinking ceremony is performed by all in succession, down to the last naked baby cuddling in its mother's artikki, the little child that cannot yet speak. The solemn rite is brought to a close by the tossing of presents across the ring from one to the other, the theory being that, as they generously deal with others, so Sidne will deal with them in the coming year. So up here on the edge of things, among our "uncivilised heathens," we have our Christmas presents and "Peace on earth, good will to men."