A Young Wife with her Baby in her Hood.
The ornamentation on the front of her jacket is strings of various coloured beads, much prized by the women.
Eskimo Family Group.
The Eskimo marry at an early age, generally at about 14 years of age, the marriage being arranged between the parents of the parties.
Women and their adventures figure largely in Eskimo folk tales. One of them might almost point to a feminist movement in the Arctics! Two brides, it is narrated, ran away from their homes before their very first children ever saw the light. After awhile the fathers went in search of their lost daughters. When the girls found they were discovered they wept [[105]]bitterly, and declared themselves most unwilling to return to their husbands. The fathers, however, were quite relieved to find them comfortably off where they were, and having stayed a couple of “sleeps” in their daughters’ house, returned home without the brides. When they got back to the tribe they had this amazing thing to tell—that two women without the company of any men, lived happily all by themselves, and were never in want!
There is a charming little story of a lonely woman who owned a bear cub, and loved it and brought it up like a child and called it her son. The bear repaid her devotion, and supported her by his prowess in hunting so well that the rest of the villagers grew jealous and planned to kill him. So, conscious of their evil designs, he departed, almost as much to the grief of the children of the village as to that of his “mother.” He never ceased, however, to repay her love, and continued out on the ice floes to catch seals for her support.
The gruesome story of the murderess Toodlânak has never hitherto—so far as the writer can ascertain—been included in any ethnologist’s collection of the Eskimo legends.
It is narrated by the Ancient Ones that there lived this Toodlânak, who was an evil spirit in female disguise. She had a large house (igloovegak) built by the side of the route used by hunters going inland after deer. It was far up country, many days’ journey either from the sea or from the pastures of the interior. [[106]]The house was large and comfortable, and Toodlânak had a reputation for hospitality. She loved to entertain any who passed that way and to give them food and shelter for the night. She allotted to them the best rugs and the most comfortable part of the sleeping bench. Presently, however, it began to be noticed that few if any of these hunters returned. At last the brother of one of these inexplicably missing men determined to look into things. He started out with a companion, and in due course both reached the half-way house. Out came Toodlânak, as usual, all smiles and amiability, inviting them to enter and refresh and rest themselves there for the night. They did so, but the suspicious young man kept his wits about him, and never relaxed a sharp look-out on his hostess. He had a notion that she knifed her guests in their slumber.
Unknown to Toodlânak, he secreted a flat stone within the bosom of his tunic (the netseak), and, rolling himself in his blanket, lay flat on his back apparently in deep sleep. His hostess had also retired to rest, and seemed also quite dead to the world. But, about midnight, he saw her rise by the dim light of the lamp, and creep over to his companion where he also lay asleep on the bench. The movement betrayed the fact that the awful creature had a knife-like tail with which she struck her victim through the chest and killed him. She then crept stealthily towards the watcher, and would have served him the same way but that he was ready for her. The vicious tail struck, [[107]]indeed, at his chest, but shivered on the hidden stone, broke off, and left Toodlânak defenceless. The hunter sprang up and killed her on the spot. He searched all over the place, and found the remains of innumerable victims, and their property hoarded away. He broke down the house, buried his luckless companion, and returned home with the news that at last the country was ridded of its pest and might be safely travelled. [[108]]