The women do not appear to be, in general, very prolific.  Illumea indeed had borne seven children, but no second instance of an equal number in one family afterward came to our knowledge; three or four is about the usual number.  They are, according to their own account, in the habit of suckling their children to the age of three years; but we have seen a child of five occasionally at the breast, though they are dismissed from the mother’s hood at about the former age.  It is not uncommon to see one woman suckling the child of another, while the latter happens to be employed in her other domestic occupations.  They are in the habit, also, of feeding their younger children from their own mouths, softening the food by mastication, and then turning their heads round so that the infant in the hood may put its lips to theirs.  The chill is taken from water for them in the same manner, and some fathers are very fond of taking their children on their knees and thus feeding them.  The women are more desirous of having sons than daughters, as on the former must principally depend their support in old age.

Twelve of the men had each two wives, and some of the younger ones had also two betrothed; two instances occurred of the father and son being married to sisters.  The custom of betrothing children in their infancy is commonly practised here, in which respect these people differ from the natives of Greenland, where it is comparatively rare.  A daughter of Arnaneelia, between two and three years old, had long been thus contracted to Okotook’s son, a hero of six or seven, and the latter used to run about the hut calling his intended by the familiar appellation of N~o~oll=e-~a (wife), to the great amusement of the parents.  When a man has two wives there is generally a difference of five or six years in their ages.  The senior takes her station next the principal fire, which comes entirely under her management; and she is certainly considered in some respects superior to the other, though they usually live together in the utmost harmony.  The men sometimes repudiate their wives without ceremony, in case of real or supposed bad behaviour as in Greenland, but this does not often occur.  There was a considerable disparity of age between many of the men and their wives, the husband being sometimes the oldest by twenty years or more, and this also when he had never married any former wife.  We knew no instance in which the number of a man’s wives exceeded two, and, indeed, we had every reason to believe that the practice is never admitted among them.  We met with a singular instance of two men having exchanged wives, in consequence merely of one of the latter being pregnant at the time when her husband was about to undertake a long journey.