The Eskimo child accepts himself as the equal of any created thing, but there is nothing blatant about him, nor is his independence obtrusive. He is born hardy, and lives hardy, trudging along on the march in his place beside the grown-ups. Each Eskimo man and woman is an independent entity, free to go where he pleases. There is no law, no tribunal, no power to limit or command him, but instinctively he observes the rule of doing as he would be done by, and he teaches his child the same Golden Rule. A boy or girl is never considered an encumbrance and is readily even eagerly adopted if his own parents die. The Eskimo child is ushered into the earthly arena with no flourish of trumpets, for his coming is but an incident of the journey if Fate has decreed that he should be born when the family is on the march. The hour's stop for the mid-day meal often sees a new little valiant soldier added to the ranks of the clan and starting his traverse of Arctic trails. If the baby is born while the family is in camp, mother and babe separate themselves from the rest of the family for a month, no one being allowed to look at, much less fuss over, the little stranger.
Naming an Eskimo baby is fraught with significance. If the last grown man who died in the band was one revered, one whose footsteps are worthy to be followed, the name of the departed clansman is given to the newborn child. The belief is that the spirit of the dead man hovers around the community and immediately upon the birth of the child takes possession, a re-incarnation in the baby-body. Withdrawing itself in twelve months' time, the spirit of the ghostly god-father lingers by to influence the character and destiny of the growing child.
We trace a well-known nursery rhyme to the igloo of the Eskimo. The summer-born baby dispenses with clothing for the first six months of its earthly pilgrimage, cuddling its little bare body close to its mother's back under her artikki, or upper garment, which has been made voluminous to accommodate him. But the husky babe who comes when King Wenceslaus looks out on the Feast of Stephen has his limbs popped into a bag of feathers before his mother takes him pick-a-back, or else he is wrapped in a robe of rabbit-skin. So we see that it was an Eskimo mother who first crooned in love and literalness,
"By-o, Baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
To get a little rabbit-skin,
To wrap his Baby Bunting in."
Mother-love is a platform upon which even ancestral enemies can meet. While I sat cross-legged (and, like cotton, absorbent) last summer enjoying the hospitality of the Oo-vai-oo-aks, to us entered a beautiful-faced Loucheux Indian mother with a pair of twins pendant,—rollicking chaps. The younger Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak dropped on the floor her lord's boot which she had been dutifully biting into shape and jumped up to greet her visitor. There was no mistaking that smile of hospitality. Snatching from the visitor one of her baby boys, the young hostess kissed and cried out to it with an abandon of maternal joy, the culminating point of which was feeding it from her own breast. Thus, in one instance at least, has the ancient feud of Loucheux and Eskimo died.
A baby Eskimo is nursed until it is two years old or older, and learns to smoke and to walk about the same time. The family pipe is laid upon the couch, and papa, mamma, and the children take a solacing whiff as the spirit moves them. These pipes are identical with those used by the Chinese, and hold but half a thimbleful of tobacco, the smoke being inhaled and swallowed with dreamy joy.
The hardihood of Eskimo children is scarcely believable. It is not unusual for children of six years to trudge uncomplainingly for twenty-five miles by the side of their elders; and we came to know a little seven-year old chap who was quite a duck-hunter, and who went out every day alone and seldom came back without at least two brace. At eleven years, with his watertight boots, spear in hand, and coil of line on his back, he takes up the Innuit man's burden, and does it with an air both determined and debonair. If you ask a mother if she does not think this a somewhat tender age for her boy to essay to keep up with the men on the hunt, she merely smiles as she sews her waterproof seam, and says, "The First Innuits [Eskimo] did so."