If people decided something an Eskimo did was wrong, usually they just wouldn't talk to him, or they asked him to leave the village. That was real punishment. Nobody liked a man who was too lazy to hunt, but they divided their food with him and his family anyway. They shared with orphans, too. Every child had a home. Eskimos loved children.
bowhead whale
The whole village shared the food when these big animals were killed.
MACKENZIE ESKIMOS
Papik and Milak had never seen a white man. They lived in the days before explorers began to visit the far north country. But other Eskimos had already met white traders and men who hunted whales in sailing vessels.
The village where Hilltop and his sister, Driftwood, lived was near a whaling station at the mouth of the great Mackenzie River in Canada. The children knew some traders and thought they were very funny people indeed. To begin with, white men always had at least two names. No Eskimo ever had more than one, and it was always the name of someone who had died. Eskimos thought that these names were unhappy and brought bad luck unless they were given very soon to a new baby. There were no special girl names, like Mary, or boy names, like John. Any name was good for either a boy or a girl.
