'HE materials and the man have not yet come together which

THE

are to result in any picture of the social life of the American Indians or Eskimo equal in fidelity to that which is printed of our own social life on the pages of the ordinary "society" novel. At least this is one of the reasons why nothing has ever been published which exhibits to the civilized reader the play of sentiment and passion, fear, hope, aspiration and reverence which actuate the red or the brown man as much, if in different mode, as they do his paler cotemporary. It is true we have the novel of the Cooper class, in which a red man, evolved from the inner consciousness of the author, is impregnated with the ideas and sentiments of a Chateaubriand. This has, however, become antiquated, even with the philanthropist, and seldom furnishes texts for missionary meetings in these days. We have numerous graphic accounts of the manners and customs of the Indian tribes as regarded from the white standpoint, but these are wholly defective in the region of greatest interest, that of the native mental atmosphere. There are speeches, still to be found in school readers, in which Indian chiefs apostrophize the "Great Father" in language well chosen and eloquent, dignified by its simplicity and directness, and only unsatisfactory from the absence of any means. of knowing how much of the reporter or interpreter is combined with the original.

It is hardly to be expected, perhaps, that the "squaw-man" of the west or the keen-witted trader of the north would realize the

Copyright, 1878, by E. D. Cope.

value to the world of a faithful picture of the life which he (more than any other man) is better situated to observe; even if he were competent to delineate it. Where shall be found a Becker who will give us an Indian "Charicles"?

Another and most serious difficulty lies in the way. In the life of the average native, especially in the far north, there is little but a struggle for existence with a niggardly environment. Their festivals are few and consist chiefly of eating and violent motions, termed dancing for want of a better and more characteristic word, or in donations where the host is the giver. Their shamanistic performances, full of excitement and interest, still have little to satisfy the love of enjoyment latent in every human being. Having no theatres, no books, no improvisatores, no means more rational than the above-mentioned examples for exciting pleasurable sensations, there is no reason for wonder when we find in the savage mind the physical relations of sex, representing to him nearly all that civilization finds in art, literature or philanthropy. Ideas connected with these relations as his sole source of unalloyed pleasure, permeate all his social relations, his wit, his motives, his tales, traditions, animistic faith and desires.

Hence, not only would the faithful relation of the mental phases of his life be unsuited to modern taste and modesty, but the mode of action of other sentiments in his mind and social relations, not in themselves offensive, is so intermingled with the first mentioned as to render the representation of them, if dissected separately, in most cases only a mangled caricature of savage thought.

To the same absence of means for rational pleasure may be ascribed the fatal predilection for drunkenness and gambling universal among savages and reappearing among the very poor in the slums of great cities.

Dr. Rink, in his "Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo," has come nearer than any one else toward occupying part of the vacant field by a judicious expunging of the erotic element in the folk-lore he relates.

The personal experience of the author during several years in Northwestern Alaska gave him now and then a glimpse of the social thought of the Eskimo and Indians by whom he was surrounded, and from these reminiscences may be gleaned a few items which, without trespassing on the realm of Cooperian fiction, may give a slight insight into the working of the human mind under savage conditions. But it must be recollected that

any view of native characteristics which leaves out the erotic element, resembles a vine from which the trellis has been removed.

The Eskimo of Norton Sound, Alaska, resemble most of the northern savage peoples in a total absence of reticence on all subjects, except before strangers. After friendship is assured, a matter often a long time postponed after first acquaintance, conversation may be freely indulged in on any subject relating to the individual unless it be the shamanic mysteries or superstitions. In this way I learned that even Eskimo life has its touches of romance. A middle aged woman, employed as a seamstress by our party, told me the story of her life.

Born at Shaktolik, her wanderings had been confined between the Indian territory inland, the Yukon mouth on the south, and the Polar Ocean. When of marriageable age her parents, being old and desiring to settle their daughter in life, took her with them to the Kaviiak country. They had heard of an old man there, very wealthy, according to their ideas, in deerskin dresses and supplies of food, and who, in addition to the two he had already, wished to acquire another wife to be the youthful pet of his old age. They arrived at his house in the depth of winter, were hospitably received, and opened negotiations. The wayward girl, moved by the contemptuous glances of the elder wives, the absence of eye-lashes and presence of sundry wrinkles in her proposed partner, or by the fact that she would be wholly separated from her own people, fled in the night with a passing party of dog-sledges and natives, leaving her chagrined parents to settle as they might with the Kaviiak sage.

At Shaktolik she knew a young Eskimo, tall, handsome, a good hunter, and unmarried. Friendly glances passed between them; in short, she loved him and hoped to be his wife. To adorn his deerskin garments, to applaud him at the winter dances, to proudly receive the sinew and belly of the deer, wife's perquisites, when, on his return from hunting, she met him with the smoking dishes of seal meat and fish she knew so well how to prepare these privileges she lovingly and proudly anticipated. Alas! "his face was very good but his heart was very bad." After trifling with her affections for months he left her for a more engaging damsel, who, to the vindictive joy of the abandoned one, also suffered in her turn.

For a long time she refused all propositions of marriage; the

very thought was hateful to her. Then came a misfortune. While she was off with a salmon fishing party, preparing the winter store of dried fish, her parents and entire family went southward to another village on their way to set their nets elsewhere.

During the salmon fishery it is against Eskimo ethics to boil water inside the house. It is bad for the fishery. The soup-pot was set near the beach and while the others were collecting bits of driftwood, the youngest child, a few years old, moved thereto by sorcery on the part of the Indians of the interior, threw grass and poisonous plants into the boiling pot. All ate and died. Poor Atleäk was thus left an orphan with no means of support; the inhabitants of the village where they died claiming the property left by her family, and doubtless converting such of it as was not destroyed at the interment to their own use long before the news reached Shaktolik.

She immediately claimed the protection of an only and very distant relative by marriage, in whose house she worked and by her neat sewing and constant industry kept herself supplied (through barter of work for skins) with clothing and other necessaries which were not hers by the communal bond of the tribe. Shortly afterward winter set in and she went northward with a party bound for Kotzebue Sound. It was a hard winter, the deer retreated to the most inaccessible valleys, the supply of fish failed. Her party finding that they could not rely on obtaining food at their various bivouacs, were obliged through semi-starvation to take a short cut to the Sound through the territory of the dreaded and hated Indians.

Traveling as rapidly as possible, one day they came upon a little open spot by the bank of a stream where were two Indian houses. The few footprints in the snow were of women's feet, and curiosity tempted the boldest to peep into one of the houses. The inhabitants were dead or dying of starvation. The men were seeking the deer far away. The women had denied themselves to save little bits for a child some two years old, whose thin cheeks were rosy compared with the wasted ones of his dying relatives. Death was surely coming to them, and after that what but death ' remained for the boy? They begged the shrinking Eskimo to take him and keep him, that his life might be saved. But the race-hatred was too strong and they had hardly food enough to keep their own party alive. One by one refused.

At last the girl who had lost her lover, who was an orphan (as

she thought) through Indian sorcery, took pity on him and said, "I have no husband to work for, I will take the boy; he shall be my brother, and when I am old I shall not be left alone."

So the Eskimo left the house of death and took the boy. From that time to the time I met her, her hands had been busy for him. He was then a lad of fifteen, bright, active and promising, and knew only the Eskimo life and tongue. His deerskin dresses were as handsome as any in the village and his foster-sister's activity provided for all his needs. Good was returned for (supposed) evil by the poor, ignorant Eskimo girl. She became indifferent to matrimony, since she had an object upon which to expend her love, and it is to be hoped that when age enfeebles her step and bows her athletic form, her adopted child will not forget his obligations. The essential features of this girl's career, at least so far as her love affairs are concerned, are they not duplicated in a dozen novels?

Another phase of life, which one might expect almost anywhere rather than among the Eskimo, I had occasion to observe there.

A young woman, really quite fine-looking, and of remarkably good physique and mental capacity, was observed to hold herself aloof from the young men of the tribe in an unusual manner. Inquiry, first of others, afterward of herself, developed the following reasons for the eccentricity: In effect she said that she was as strong as any of the young men; no one of them had ever been able to conquer her in wrestling or other athletic exercises, though it had more than once been tried, sometimes by surprise and with odds against her. She could shoot and hunt deer as well as any of them, and make and set snares and nets. She had her own gun, bought from the proceeds of her trapping. She did not desire to do the work of a wife, she preferred the work which custom among the Eskimo allots to men*. She despised marriage; held she had the right to bestow favors where, when and to whom she pleased, as fancy prompted, or not at all.

When winter came, having made a convert in a smaller and less athletic damsel, the two set to work with walrus-tusk picks. and dug the excavation in which they erected their own house, which was of the usual type of Eskimo houses, walled and roofed

*It must be borne in mind that both sexes work hard, and labor is by custom equitably divided; the more severe work all falling to the men. The women of the family have often more influence in affairs of trade than the males, and there is no discrimination against them.