We respect the Eskimo for many things:  for his physical courage as he approaches the bear in single combat, for his uncomplaining endurance of hardships, for his unceasing industry, the cleverness of his handicraft, his unsullied integrity, sunny good-humour, and simple dignity.  But, most of all, he claims my respect for the way he brings up his children.  “A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure,” is a pretty theory, but Charles Lamb reminds us that each child must stand on his own footing as an individual, and be liked or disliked accordingly.  In the igloo and the tupik the child has his own accorded place and moves in and out of the home and about his occupations with that hard-to-describe air of assuredness that so distinguishes his father and mother.

The Eskimo child accepts himself as the equal of any created thing, but there is nothing blatant about him, nor is his independence obtrusive.  He is born hardy, and lives hardy, trudging along on the march in his place beside the grown-ups.  Each Eskimo man and woman is an independent entity, free to go where he pleases.  There is no law, no tribunal, no power to limit or command him, but instinctively he observes the rule of doing as he would be done by, and he teaches his child the same Golden Rule.  A boy or girl is never considered an encumbrance and is readily even eagerly adopted if his own parents die.  The Eskimo child is ushered into the earthly arena with no flourish of trumpets, for his coming is but an incident of the journey if Fate has decreed that he should be born when the family is on the march.  The hour’s stop for the mid-day meal often sees a new little valiant soldier added to the ranks of the clan and starting his traverse of Arctic trails.  If the baby is born while the family is in camp, mother and babe separate themselves from the rest of the family for a month, no one being allowed to look at, much less fuss over, the little stranger.

Naming an Eskimo baby is fraught with significance.  If the last grown man who died in the band was one revered, one whose footsteps are worthy to be followed, the name of the departed clansman is given to the newborn child.  The belief is that the spirit of the dead man hovers around the community and immediately upon the birth of the child takes possession, a re-incarnation in the baby-body.  Withdrawing itself in twelve months’ time, the spirit of the ghostly god-father lingers by to influence the character and destiny of the growing child.

We trace a well-known nursery rhyme to the igloo of the Eskimo.  The summer-born baby dispenses with clothing for the first six months of its earthly pilgrimage, cuddling its little bare body close to its mother’s back under her artikki, or upper garment, which has been made voluminous to accommodate him.  But the husky babe who comes when King Wenceslaus looks out on the Feast of Stephen has his limbs popped into a bag of feathers before his mother takes him pick-a-back, or else he is wrapped in a robe of rabbit-skin.  So we see that it was an Eskimo mother who first crooned in love and literalness,