THE FIRST HAWK
During the short Greenland summer the Eskimos live along the seacoast. They put up their strange skin huts and hunt and fish and make merry through the season when the sun shines at midnight.
Now in places along the Greenland coast there are steep high cliffs. Here the birds which fly farther north in summer make their nests.
Often, as the Eskimo sits by his campfire, he hears the half-angry, half-sad cry of "Kea! Kea! Kea!" Looking up then, he often sees a lonely hawk sitting on the highest, most desolate cliff.
The Eskimo father laughs when he hears this cry and sees the lonely bird on the cliff top. Then the little Eskimo children creep nearer to their father with certainty that a new story is in store for them.
"Tell us the story of the hawk!" the Eskimo children cry eagerly.
This then is the story which the Eskimo father tells to his little ones "in their funny furry clothes."
"Long, long ago in a tiny Eskimo village, there lived a strange-looking old woman. Her neck was so short that she really looked as though she had no neck at all and as though her head was set upon her shoulders.
"People laughed when they saw the funny-looking old woman. Some were so unkind as to make fun of her strange appearance.
"This unkindness made the old woman very unhappy.