Periodical Distributions to Obviate Accumulations of Wealth
From Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, p. 97. (Heinemann, 1908.)
"(The Eskimos) have an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth—which would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich he convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and after much eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river Dall saw an Aleoute family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, two hundred strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, two hundred beavers and five hundred zibellines. After that they took off their festival dresses, and putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that, though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their friendship.[50] Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year. In my (Kropotkin) opinion, these distributions reveal a very old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all debts, which took place in historical times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that old custom."
The Samoyedes
From Icebound on the Kolguev, p. 384, by A. Trevor-Battye. (Constable, 1895.)
"Family affection among the Samoyeds is very strongly developed. It would be impossible to find greater evidence of this among any people. Another extremely marked character among them is family order. All everyday offices and occupations are carried out by a well-defined method and subdivision of labour. I never saw a single instance of anything approaching a family quarrel.... They are very handy sailors, patient and successful hunters and fishermen, and admirable workmen with such tools as they understand. No man can repair a damaged boat more quickly than a Samoyed, and from the roughest drift-wood (such as an English carpenter would throw on the fire), they fashion bows, arrows, sleighs, spoons, drinking-cups, bullet-moulds, and a variety of articles of everyday use."
The Belle of Kolguev
From Icebound on the Kolguev, p. 130.
"Her sister-in-law Ustynia was really, if you accept the type, a pretty girl.... Her eyes were bright, and a pleasant smile played about her lips. When she laughed—and these people are always laughing—she betrayed the most perfectly beautiful teeth it is possible to imagine. Indeed all these people, even old Uano, had most wonderful teeth—white, regular and perfectly shaped. On her fingers Ustynia wore heavy rings of white and yellow metal, and her hands, like those of all Samoyeds, were faultless in shape and extraordinarily supple. If you add to this a dress reaching to the knees, formed of young reindeer skin, worked in many stripes of white and brown, the skirt banded with scarlet cloth and dogskin fur, and foot and leg coverings of soft patterned skin reaching above the knee—there you have Ustynia, the belle of Kolguev."