There are no wedding ceremonies among the Esquimaux, and hardly anything like sentiment is known. The relation of man and wife is purely a matter of convenience. The woman requires food, and the man needs some one to make his clothing and to take charge of his dwelling while he is hunting. Marriages are usually contracted while the interested parties are children. The father of the boy selects a little girl who is to be his daughter-in-law, and pays her father something. Perhaps it is a snow-knife, or a sled, or a dog, or now, that many of them are armed with firelocks, the price paid may be a handful of powder and a dozen percussion caps. The children are then affianced, and when arrived at a proper age they live together. The wife then has her face tattooed with lamp-black and is regarded as a matron in society. The method of tattooing is to pass a needle under the skin, and as soon as it is withdrawn its course is followed by a thin piece of pine stick dipped in oil and rubbed in the soot from the bottom of a kettle. The forehead is decorated with a letter V in double lines, the angle very acute, passing down between the eyes almost to the bridge of the nose, and sloping gracefully to the right and left before reaching the roots of the hair. Each cheek is adorned with an egg-shaped pattern, commencing near the wing of the nose and sloping upward toward the corner of the eye; these lines are also double. The most ornamented part, however, is the chin, which receives a gridiron pattern; the lines double from the edge of the lower lip, and reaching to the throat toward the corners of the mouth, sloping outward to the angle of the lower jaw. This is all that is required by custom, but some of the belles do not stop here. Their hands, arms, legs, feet, and in fact their whole bodies are covered with blue tracery that would throw Captain Constantinus completely in the shade. Ionic columns, Corinthian capitals, together with Gothic structures of every kind, are erected wherever there is an opportunity to place them; but I never saw any attempt at figure or animal drawing for personal decoration. The forms are generally geometrical in design and symmetrical in arrangement, each limb receiving the same ornamentation as its fellow. None of the men are tattooed.
Some tribes are more profuse in this sort of decoration than others. The Iwillik, and Kinnepatoos are similar, and as I have described; but the Netchillik, Ookjoolik, and Ooqueesiksillik women have the designs upon their faces constructed with three lines instead of two, one of them being broader than the others. The pattern is the same as that of the Iwilliks and Kinnepatoos, with the addition of an olive branch at the outside corners of the eyes and mouth.
Marriage with them is not the sacred institution of civilization, but exchanges are very common. If a man who is going on a journey has a wife encumbered with a child that would make travelling unpleasant, he exchanges wives with some friend who remains in camp and has no such inconvenience. Sometimes a man will want a younger wife to travel with, and in that case effects an exchange, and sometimes such exchanges are made for no especial reason, and among friends it is a usual thing to exchange wives for a week or two about every two months. Unmarried men who are going on a journey have no difficulty in borrowing a wife for the time being, and sometimes purchase the better half altogether.
It might be supposed that in such a state of society there would be no romances, no marrying for love; but that would be a mistake, for there have been several romantic little episodes that came under my observation during my residence in North Hudson's Bay. There is a poor old man dwelling with the Iwilliks, near Depot Island, named Iteguark, who had two very attractive and useful wives, or Nu-lee-aug-ar, as is the native term. The old man had been a good hunter, but a few years ago met with an accident that resulted in his right knee becoming stiffened, and his hunting days were over. He can still hunt seals through the ice, but cannot work up to them on top of the ice, nor can he chase the reindeer and musk-ox on his native hills. Then it was that Oxeomadiddlee looked with envious eyes upon the youngest and fairest of Iteguark's wives, and induced her to come and live with him. She knew that her new lover was strong and active, and better able to support her than her old love, and listened to the voice of the tempter.
Iteguark was not disposed to submit meekly to this treachery on the part of his friend Oxeomadiddlee, so one morning while the truant wife and her new husband were sleeping in their igloo, Iteguark entered and sought to take the life of the seducer with a hunting knife. But Oxeomadiddlee was on his guard, and being a man of immense strength, he caught his adversary by the wrist, and by the sheer force of his grip compelled him to drop the weapon on the floor. He then released his hold, and Iteguark rushed out to his own igloo and got his bow and quiver; but his enemy was still watchful, and took the bow and arrows away and destroyed them. Here ended hostilities. Oxeomadiddlee paid the old man for his wife, and that settled it forever. Presently another Inuit, named Eyerloo, fell desperately in love with poor old Iteguark's remaining wife, and with his arts and blandishments won her away from her husband. There was no fight this time. The poor old man gave up completely, and said the world was all wrong, and he only waited for his summons to leave it and mount the golden stairs.
A few years ago an Igloolip Inuit named Kyack won the affections of one of Ikomar's wives and this brought on a duel in which Kyack came very near leaving Mrs. Kyack a widow. Ikomar got the head of his enemy in chancery, and tightened his arm around his neck until Kyack dropped lifeless upon the snow. He gradually recovered, and would have returned the stolen wife, but Ikomar refused to take her back, and demanded payment instead. This was tendered to him, and being appeased by the offer further trouble was avoided.
Punnie, one of Armow's daughters, was, in her youth, affianced to Sebeucktelee, but when she reached a marriageable age became the wife of Conwechungk, her adopted brother. The pretext for this new arrangement was that Sebeucktelee's father had not made payment at the time he made the wedding contract, and that Punnie loved Conwechungk better anyhow, and would take advantage of the omission of the intended father-in-law. It made no difference that Conwechungk had another wife—in fact, it was all the better on that account, for he would have one for himself and another to loan around to his neighbors. When I left Depot Island I noticed that he had not only loaned his first wife away, but had traded his dearly beloved Punnie for Tockoleegeetais' wife for an indefinite period, while Sebeucktelee had taken to his bosom Netchuk, the discarded wife of Shockpenark. But life is altogether too short to allow of a complete and reliable record being made of the social gossip of an Esquimau village. Intermarriages are common, and everybody is related to every one else in the most intricate and astonishing manner. I once read of a man who married a widow, and his father, subsequently marrying the daughter of this same widow, was driven insane by trying to ascertain the exact relationship of their children. Such trifles have no effect upon the Inuit brain, or the entire nation would long ago have become raving maniacs.
The natives of Hudson's Strait dress very much like the others, the difference being in the women's hoods, which, instead of being long and narrow, are long and wide, and provided with a drawing string. Instead of the long stockings, they wear a pair of leggings that reach about half-way up the thigh, and trousers that are much shorter than those of the western tribes. The Kinnepatoos are by all odds the most tasteful in their dress, and their clothing is made of skins more carefully prepared and better sewed than that of the others, except in occasional instances.
The bedding of all these Esquimaux is made of reindeer-skins—thick untanned skins of the buck forming what corresponds with the mattresses, and a blanket to cover them is made of well-tanned doe-skins, sewn together so as to be wide at the top and narrowing into a bag at the feet. All sleep naked, winter and summer, a single blanket formed of three doe-skins covering a father, mother, and all the children.
[Illustration: ESQUIMAUX BUILDING A HUT.]