THE UNLOVING ESKIMO

Throughout this chapter no reference has been made to the Eskimos, who are popularly considered a race apart from the Indians.  The best authorities now believe that they are a strictly American race, whose primal home was to the south of the Hudson Bay, whence they spread northward to Labrador, Greenland, and Alaska.[254] I have reserved them for separate consideration because they admirably illustrate the grand truth just formulated, that a race may have made considerable progress in some directions and yet be quite below the sentiment of love.  Westermarck’s opinion (516) that the Eskimos are “a rather advanced race” is borne out by the testimony of those who have known them well.  They are described as singularly cheerful and good-natured among themselves.  Hall says “their memory is remarkably good, and their intellectual powers, in all that relates to their native land, its inhabitants, its coasts, and interior parts, is of a surprisingly high order” (I., 128).  But what is of particular interest is the great aptitude Eskimos seem to show for art, and their fondness for poetry and music.  King[255] says that “the art of carving is universally practised” by them, and he speaks of their models of men, animals, and utensils as “executed in a masterly style.”  Brinton indeed says they have a more artistic eye for picture-writing than any Indian race north of Mexico.  They enliven their long winter nights with imaginative tales, music, and song.  Their poets are held in high honor, and it is said they get their notion of the music of verse by sleeping by the sound of running water, that they may catch its mysterious notes.

Yet when we look at the Eskimos from another point of view we find them horribly and bestially unaesthetic.  Cranz speaks of “their filthy clothes swarming with vermin.”  They make their oil by chewing seal blubber and spurting the liquid into a vessel.  “A kettle is seldom washed except the dogs chance to lick it clean.”  Mothers wash children’s faces by licking them all over.[256]

Such utter lack of delicacy prepares us for the statement that the Eskimos are equally coarse in other respects, notably in their treatment of women and their sexual feelings.  It would be a stigma upon an Eskimo’s character, says Cranz (I., 154), “if he so much as drew a seal out of the water.”  Having performed the pleasantly exciting part of killing it, he leaves all the drudgery and hard work of hauling, butchering, cooking, tanning, shoe-making, etc., to the women.  They build the houses, too, while the men look on with the greatest insensibility, not stirring a finger to assist them in carrying the heavy stones.  Girls are often “engaged” as soon as born, nor are those who grow up free allowed to marry according to their own preference.  “When friendly exhortations are unavailing she is compelled by force, and even blows, to receive her husband.”