Children are nursed until they are 3 or 4 years old, according to what appears to be the universal habit among Eskimo, and which is probably due, as generally supposed, to the fact that the animal food on which the parents subsist is not fit for the nourishment of young children. The child is carried naked on the mother’s back under her clothes, and held up by the girdle, tied higher than usual. When she wishes to nurse it, she loosens her girdle and slips it round to the breast without bringing it out into the air. Children are carried in this way until they are able to walk and often later.
A large child sits astride of his mother’s back, with one leg under each of her arms, and has a little suit of clothes in which he is dressed when the mother wishes to set him down. When the child is awake, this hood is thrown back and the child raised quite high so that he looks over his mother’s shoulder, who then covers her head with a cloth or something of the sort. The woman appears to be very little inconvenienced by her burden, and goes about her work as usual, and the child does not seem to be disturbed by her movements. The little girls often act as nurses and carry the infants around on their backs, in the same way. It is no unusual sight to see a little girl of ten or twelve carrying a well grown, heavy child in this way.
This custom or a very similar one seems to prevail among the Eskimo generally. In Greenland, the nurse wears a garment especially designed for carrying the child, an amaut, i.e., a garment that is so wide in the back as to hold a child, which generally tumbles in it quite naked and is accommodated with no other swaddling clothes or cradle.[544] In East Greenland, according to Capt. Holm, “Saa længe Børnene ere smaa, bæres de i det fri paa Moderens Ryg.”[545]
Petitot’s description of the method of carrying the children in the Mackenzie district is so naïve that it deserves to be quoted entire.[546]
Les mères qui allaitent portent une jaquette ample et serrée autour des reins par une ceinture. Elles y enferment leur chère progéniture qu’elles peuvent, par ce moyen, allaiter sans l’exposer à un froid qui lui serait mortel. Ces jeunes enfants sont sans aucun vêtement jusqu’à l’âge d’environ deux ans. Quant aux incongruités que ces petites créatures peuvent se permettre sur le dos de leur mère, qui leur sert de calorifère, l’amour maternel, le même chez tous les peuples, les endure patiemment et avec indifférence.
At Fury and Hecla Straits, according to Parry[547], the children are carried in the hood, which is made specially large on purpose, but sometimes also on the back, as at Point Barrow. The enormous hoods of the Eskimo women in Labrador also served to hold the child. The same custom prevails at Cumberland Gulf.[548] In some localities, for instance the north shore of Hudson’s Straits, where the woman wear very long and loose boots, the children are said to be carried in these.[549] Franklin[550] refers to the same custom “east of the Mackenzie River.” The Siberian children, however, are dressed in regular swaddling clothes of deerskin, with a sort of diaper of dried moss.[551]
We never heard of a single case of infanticide, and, indeed, children were so scarce and seemed so highly prized that we never even thought of inquiring if infanticide was ever practiced. Nevertheless, Simpson speaks of the occurrence of a case during the Plover’s visit; “but a child, they say, is destroyed only when afflicted with disease of a fatal tendency, or, in scarce seasons, when one or both parents die.[552]” Infanticide, according to Bessels, is frequently practiced among the Eskimo of Smith Sound, without regard of sex,[553] and Schwatka speaks of female infanticide to a limited extent among the people of King William’s Land.[554]
The affection of parents for their children is extreme, and the children seem to be thoroughly worthy of it. They show hardly a trace of the fretfulness and petulance so common among civilized children, and though indulged to an extreme extent are remarkably obedient. Corporal punishment appears to be absolutely unknown and the children are rarely chidden or punished in any way. Indeed, they seldom deserve it, for, in spite of the freedom which they are allowed, they do not often get into any mischief, especially of a malicious sort, but attend quietly to their own affairs and their own amusements.
The older children take very good care of the smaller ones. It is an amusing sight to see a little boy of six or seven patronizing and protecting a little toddler of two or three. Children rarely cry except from actual pain or terror, and even then little ones are remarkably patient and plucky. The young children appear to receive little or no instruction except what they pick up in their play or from watching their elders.
Boys of six or seven begin to shoot small birds and animals and to hunt for birds’ eggs, and when they reach the age of twelve or fourteen are usually intrusted with a gun and seal spear and accompany their fathers to the hunt. Some of them soon learn to be very skillful hunters. We know one boy not over thirteen years old who, during the winter of 1881-’82, had his seal nets set like the men and used to visit them regularly, even in the roughest weather. Lads of fourteen or fifteen are sometimes regular members of the whaling crews. In the meantime the little girls are learning to sew, in imitation of their mothers, and by the time they are twelve years old they take their share of the cooking and other housework and assist in making the clothes for the family. They still, however, have plenty of leisure to play with the other children until they are old enough to be married.