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                           The FIRST BOOK of

                               +ESKIMOS+

[Illustration]

  The author and artist are indebted to a great many scientists and
  other careful observers who have lived among the Eskimos. The
  whole record of our sources is too long to give, but here are
  some we have found particularly helpful: various writings of Dr.
  Franz Boas, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Rockwell Kent; also the Federal
  Writers Project, _A Guide to Alaska_, and books by Edward Moffat
  Weyer, Jr., Clarence L. Andrews, Aage Gilberg, Knut Rasmussen,
  Fridtjof Nansen and Peter Freuchen. Many articles in the _National
  Geographic Magazine_ have been consulted, as have publications of
  the United States Natural History Museum. In addition to valuable
  pictorial material in most of the foregoing, we have received
  assistance in preparing illustrations from the Fish and Wild Life
  Service of the United States Department of the Interior.

  Without help from all these sources and others, too, this book
  would not have been possible. Very special thanks go to Dr. Ruth
  Bunzel, anthropologist with the Bureau of Applied Social Research
  of Columbia University, for her advice regarding the manuscript.

                                 19 20

    Printed in the United States of America by ~The Garrison Corp~.

                            SBN 531-00525-9





                           The FIRST BOOK of

                                ESKIMOS


                        _by_ BENJAMIN BREWSTER

                     _Pictures by_ URSULA KOERING

                            [Illustration]

                            [Illustration]

                         FRANKLIN WATTS, INC.
                         575 LEXINGTON AVENUE
                          NEW YORK 22, N. Y.

               _Copyright 1952 by Franklin Watts, Inc._

[Illustration: ~This shows all the places where Eskimos have lived.~]




THE LAUGHING PEOPLE


If you could look down at the world from high above the North Pole,
this is what you would see--an icy ocean with land almost all around
it. The brown-skinned people who have lived along this shore for many
hundreds of years are Eskimos.

[Illustration: ~a harpoon~]

When white men first met the Eskimos, they were surprised by several
things. The Eskimos never used salt. They lived on nothing but meat and
fish and water. And they were the most cheerful people in the world. An
Eskimo laughed more in a day than anyone else did in a week.

Nobody knows exactly where these laughing people came from but many
scientists think they traveled across from Siberia into Alaska, just
as their cousins the Indians did. Nobody knows why they decided to
stay there near the top of the world. But we do know that Eskimos like
the country where they live. They settled along the shore of the ocean
where they could find both sea and land animals to eat. The weather
there was not as cold as it was farther inland or even in some parts of
the United States.

Long ago Eskimos invented wonderful ways of getting food and of staying
warm. They trained dogs to pull their sleds. They learned to find their
way home over great fields of drifted snow, even in the dark night.
They knew exactly what to do in order to live and have a good time.

[Illustration: ~Papik with his fish spear~]

The Eskimo people found different ways of living in different parts of
the Arctic country. But everywhere they had many of the same customs.
Some groups settled near forests, and they used wood in their tools and
for building igloos. (_Igloo_ is the Eskimo word for house, no matter
what it is made of.) Other groups had no trees, so they made skin tents
for summer and snow houses for winter, and they used bone and ivory
for tools. One group lived where they could find chunks of pure copper
which they made into tools. A very few learned to make tools from the
iron in meteorites. (A meteorite is a shooting star that has landed on
the earth.)

[Illustration: ~a salmon hook~]


THE PEOPLE

When white men moved into the Arctic country, Eskimos borrowed many
modern inventions, such as guns and stoves, and they changed many of
their old ways of living. But they still think they are luckier than
people who live where houses are big and hard to build and the hot
summers are long.

Summer in Eskimo land is often hot, but it's always short. For several
weeks the sun shines night and day. Winter lasts for more than half of
every year up there, and for several weeks the sun doesn't shine at
all--it's dark night twenty-four hours a day.

A great many customs in the warmer parts of the world seem strange and
silly to the Eskimos. They think they do things the way people should
naturally do them. In fact, they call themselves The People.

[Illustration: ~an ivory comb~]

The fringe of land where The People spend their lives belongs to
different countries now. Part of it belongs to the United States, part
to Canada and Denmark and the Soviet Union. But The People are still
Eskimos. They all talk the Eskimo language wherever they live.

[Illustration]

Their language is one of the hardest in the world to learn. In order to
speak it, you must know many more words than most people ever learn in
order to speak English. In the old days Eskimos had no alphabet and no
way of writing down their language. But today many of them can read and
write, and there are even books and newspapers in Eskimo.

[Illustration]


PAPIK AND HIS CLOTHES

A long time ago, an Eskimo boy named Papik lived in a tiny village on
Baffin Island. All winter his home was a round little house built of
snow, out on top of the frozen sea.

Papik was warm and comfortable in his snow house, and outdoors he kept
warm, too. He looked all bundled up in his clothes made of animal
skins, but his winter suit was really lighter and softer than yours.

[Illustration]

It was easy for Papik to get dressed. First he pulled on his pants made
of baby sealskin, with the soft, white hair on the inside. Next he
put on his deerskin stockings and his slippers of bird-skin with the
feathers inside. Over these he drew a second slipper of sealskin and
his waterproof sealskin boots.

[Illustration: ~Papik wore these clothes in winter. His mother sewed
good luck charms into them.~]

Finally Papik slipped his jacket over his head. He even had his cap on
because it was made right into his jacket.

Papik didn't have to fuss with buttons or zippers. He just tied an
animal-skin thong around each leg to hold the tops of his boots up. Now
he was dressed in his underclothes--which were also his summer outfit.

To go outdoors in winter, he put on an extra pair of pants and an extra
jacket made of deerskin with the hair outside. These, with deerskin
boots and mittens, were all the clothes he needed for a trip out over
the ice with his father.

[Illustration: ~His mother's jacket was extra large so she could carry
his baby brother inside it on her back.~]

Each mitten looks as if it had two thumbs--and it had. Papik's mother
made them that way so that he could turn them around without taking
them off and wear them backwards if he got one side wet.

Papik's sister Milak wore clothes almost exactly like his. The grownups
did, too. When white men came to the Arctic, they found Eskimo clothes
were better for winter there than anything else that could be made.

[Illustration: ~Eskimos lighted their lamps by striking sparks from
stones called flint and pyrite.~]


INSIDE THE IGLOO

Papik and Milak had no regular bedtime. They slept when they were
sleepy. Lamps burned in their house all the time to give heat as well
as light.

An Eskimo lamp worked in the cleverest kind of way. It was made of
soapstone--a soft stone that could be hollowed out into a bowl. This
bowl was filled with oil which came from seal fat, called blubber.
Along one side of the bowl ran a little ridge of moss. This was the
lamp's wick.

[Illustration: ~A cooking pot hung above the lamp. The rack was for
drying clothes.~]

When the wick was lighted, it burned with a hot, white, steady flame.
The children's mother watched it and was careful that it never smoked.
To keep the lamp filled, she put a chunk of blubber near the flame. As
the flame burned it kept melting oil out of the blubber, and the oil
kept oozing down into the bowl where the wick soaked it up. The lamp
never ran over and never ran dry.

[Illustration: ~Eskimos never scolded their children for waking them
up.~]

Sometimes the round dome-shaped room got too hot and the roof began
to melt. Then Papik would go out with his snow-cutting knife and help
his father fix the drip. Instead of patching the roof, they shaved it
down! This made the ceiling colder, and the dripping water froze. When
the house was not warm enough, Papik and his father went out and heaped
more snow on the roof and sides. This kept the cold out.

[Illustration: ~Sometimes new puppies were kept warm in the rack over
the lamp.~]


BREAKFAST IS READY

The seal oil lamp was also a cooking stove. When Milak and her mother
wanted to cook, they hung a soapstone pot over the flame. They melted
ice and snow for drinking water in a pot, too. Some of the ocean ice
was too salty for drinking water. But many Eskimos knew that when ice
was a year or more old it lost its saltiness, and that was the ice they
melted.

Milak didn't have to help with much cooking. Eskimo families on Baffin
Island liked meat and fish raw. In fact, that is where the word Eskimo
came from. It was the name that the Indians gave to their neighbors in
the north, and it meant "People-who-eat-their-food-raw."

[Illustration: ~fork~]

[Illustration: ~spoon~]

Before breakfast time, Milak went outside and got a chunk of frozen
fish. The whole outdoors in winter was a deep-freeze, so it was easy to
keep a good supply of food. Milak tossed the fish on the floor. When it
had thawed till it was about as soft as cream cheese, her mother cut
off the best chunks for the children. Grownups didn't start to eat till
the children had been served.

In winter it was breakfast time whenever anybody woke up and began
chattering to the others. Because it was so dark outside in the long
winter night, nobody kept track of time. Eskimo families just slept and
woke when they felt like it.


GETTING READY FOR A TRIP

Even when it was quite dark Papik sometimes went hunting with his
father. First they got their sled ready. The sled was made of bone and
pieces of driftwood, with a high pair of deer antlers for handles at
the back. Its runners had to be slick and smooth so that the dogs could
pull it easily.

[Illustration: ~Eskimos had different kinds of sleds. This was
Papik's.~]

[Illustration: ~Hunters riding on sleds never talked to each other. If
they did, the dogs would stop and listen.~]

Long ago the Eskimos discovered that a coating of ice made a sled's
runners good and slick. But ice won't stick very well to bare wood
or bone. So this is what they did: At the beginning of winter they
plastered the runners with a thick coat of mud and decayed moss, which
would stick tight when it was frozen. Now an ice coating would stick to
the mud.

Each time Papik used the sled, he iced the runners. He filled his mouth
with water and squirted it back and forth. As the water froze, Papik
squirted on more, until he had a thick layer of ice over the mud and
moss.

Next Papik and his father put harness on the dogs and hitched each one
separately to the sled. While the dogs barked and quarreled with each
other, Papik hung a snow knife and a rope made of skin over the sled's
handles. He put a harpoon and a big polar bearskin on the bottom of the
sled, and now they were ready to start.

[Illustration: ~A snow knife made of walrus ivory for cutting snow~]

Papik's father snapped his long whip over the dogs' heads. He could
make the whip crack right near a dog's ear without ever touching it.
Papik could do this, too. By the time he was six years old, he could
aim the whip anywhere he wanted to, although the lash was more than
twenty feet long.

[Illustration]

At the whip's crack, the sled was off. The team spread out like a fan
behind the lead dog, who was a natural leader and always traveled at
the very front. Papik sat on the bearskin behind his father who used
the whip to guide the dogs.


PAPIK HUNTS SEAL

[Illustration]

At a place where they thought there might be seals, Papik and his
father stopped. They turned the sled upside down and pushed the points
of the runners and the antlers deep into the snow. The sled had to
be an anchor to hold the dogs while the Eskimos hunted. Now Papik
unhitched the lead dog and held tight to his harness strap. The dog ran
ahead, sniffing the snow. He was looking for a seal hole.

[Illustration]

Although seals lived in the water, they weren't like fish. They had
to come up for air. When the ocean froze, they gnawed many breathing
holes through the ice. They could get plenty of air through the holes,
even when a blanket of snow covered the ice.

[Illustration: ~The harpoon handle came loose from the barb.

The sharp barb of the harpoon acted like a fishhook.~]

Suddenly the lead dog began to bark. He had smelled a seal hole. Papik
pulled him away and ran back to the sled. He must not let the dog
frighten the seal away.

Papik's father poked around in the snow till he found exactly where the
hole was. Then, with his snow knife, he carved a snow seat so he could
be comfortable while he waited for the seal to come. He put a piece
of fur under his feet with the hair side up. He might have to wait
motionless for hours, and he had to keep his feet warm. Beside him he
laid his harpoon--a special kind of spear with a line attached to it.

For a long time Papik played near the sled. At last his father's sharp
ears caught a little noise. It was a seal breathing. Quietly he stood
up, plunged his harpoon straight down, and hit the seal.

[Illustration: ~The hunter held on to a line attached to the barb and
pulled the harpoon handle out, so it would not break.~]

[Illustration: ~A woman's knife was called an ulo.~]

Papik came running at his father's shout. Together they chipped the ice
away from the edges of the hole, making it big enough so they could
pull the seal out and kill it.

[Illustration: ~Milak's doll~]

Now they took little ivory pins and closed up the slit that the harpoon
had made in the seal's skin. They didn't want any of the animal's
blood to spill out. Seal blood was an important food. And when it was
prepared in a special way, the children often used it for chewing gum,
too! Papik's family, and the dogs as well, would have plenty to eat
when they got home.


A USE FOR EVERYTHING

Milak and her mother were ready to cut up the seal with a special
knife, called a woman's knife. They cut the blubber away and carefully
peeled off the thin layer of skin between the blubber and the hide.
When this thin skin was dry, they would use it like cellophane, for
wrapping things.

To make the furry outside skin ready for sewing, Milak rubbed it with
snow or ice, then dried it in the cold outdoor air. Next she chewed it
to make it soft.

[Illustration: ~Eskimo women did almost no cooking or housework so they
had time for sewing the warm clothes everyone needed.~]

[Illustration: ~an ivory needle~]

[Illustration: ~a thimble~]

An Eskimo woman could do wonderful things with her hand-carved ivory
needles and the thread made of animal tendons called sinew. She could
join skins together so that they were absolutely watertight. As Milak
and her mother worked, they sang. Milak made dolls out of scraps of
fur.

[Illustration]


BUILDING A SNOW IGLOO

When Papik and Milak weren't busy, they played outside in the snow with
other children. They tumbled around with the puppies, threw snowballs
and slid down their houses.

The houses were very strong. They could last all winter. But very
often a family or a whole village would pack up and go off to find new
hunting grounds or just to visit another village. When they moved, they
built new houses, if they didn't find empty ones to use.

It took only a few hours to make a new house. This is how Papik's
family did it: His father looked for a place where the snow had drifted
deep in one big storm, so that he could get solid, even chunks of it.
(Snow on level places in Eskimo land was seldom very deep!)

With his snow knife Papik's father cut out blocks about the size and
shape of a small suitcase and placed them in a circle ten or twelve
feet across. Each block leaned inward.

[Illustration: ~The second row of blocks began to spiral upward.~]

After the first row of blocks had been laid, Papik's father shaved two
of them down, the way you see in the picture. When he laid the next
row, the blocks began to slant in a spiral, upward and inward. Soon,
the spiral almost closed in over his head, because he worked inside
while his family worked outside.

[Illustration: ~This snow house would be used for hunting or a short
visit. It had no window.~]

Finally, there was only a small hole at the very top. He cut a block
just the shape of this hole and fitted it into place. Now he was inside
a house that had no door!

But he and his wife had already decided where to put the door. So he
started to dig his way out, making a tunnel _under_ the wall. At the
same time, his wife tunneled toward him from the outside. After a while
they met. Now they made the tunnel strong by roofing it over with snow
blocks.

[Illustration: ~A regular house had a window made of seal intestines
sewed together. Or it might have a pane of thin clear ice.~]

Papik and Milak were busy all this time, too. They pushed loose snow
into the cracks between the blocks. Then they helped shovel more snow
all over the house and tunnel. When they were through, it looked just
like a snowdrift.

[Illustration: ~unpacking dry heather~]

Inside, their father cut a small hole up through the roof for
ventilation. Cold air would come into the house through the tunnel. Hot
air would leave through the hole in the roof.

Next, their father dug the middle of the floor deeper, leaving a snow
bench all around the circular room. He tramped hard on the floor to
pack it down. Then he sprinkled water on it to give it a hard finish.

Milak and her mother were ready to make the beds. They unpacked bundles
of dry heather--a plant with tough, springy stems--that they had
collected in the summer. They spread the heather on the snow benches.
This was a mattress. Over it they laid deerskins, making one big
blanket for the family.

The snow benches were seats as well as beds. Often Papik and Milak sat
there cross-legged, while their parents made tools and clothes or sang
or told long stories.

[Illustration: ~snow bench~

~door~

~storeroom for meat and fish~

~storeroom for clothing and harness~

~snow bench~

~One kind of snow house would look like this if you saw it from above
with the top off.~]

[Illustration]

Outdoors the sky was sometimes filled with weird, quickly changing
colored light, which we call the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.
This is the way Papik's father explained the lights: Even though people
died, their spirits kept on living. Some of them were in the sky. The
changing, jumping lights were really spirits having a wonderful time
playing a kind of football game--kicking a walrus head around.


SUMMER COMES

As the days grew longer, late in winter, Papik and Milak played
outdoors more and more. Then one day when Papik climbed on top of the
snow house, the roof suddenly caved in! Summer had come. Papik wasn't
really surprised. Summer in the Arctic always came in a sudden burst.
There was no gradually warming spring.

Nobody scolded Papik for breaking the house. Instead, his family moved
into a deerskin tent on the land, where they would live all summer.
Dozens and dozens of different kinds of brilliantly colored flowers
bloomed in no time. Clouds of mosquitoes appeared and made life
uncomfortable for people and dogs. The ocean ice broke up with great
cracking noises.

[Illustration]

At first the earth was swampy and the Eskimos sometimes starved because
they couldn't hunt. As the ground dried out the dogs carried small
packs on their backs. The Eskimos had to walk and carry big loads on
their own backs, hung from straps around their foreheads.

[Illustration: caribou]

As soon as the ice had opened up in the sea and streams and lakes, the
Eskimos could travel on water, too. The whole family sometimes got into
an umiak--a big boat made of skins. A man or boy could go out in a
little skin boat called a kayak.

There was much work to do during the hot days--and plenty of daylight
in which to do it. The nights grew shorter, until there was no night at
all. The huge sun hung in the sky and never went down. Nobody in the
village slept much. Even the children went without any sleep at all for
two or three days at a time!

[Illustration]

Papik and his father hunted for deer. They used bows shaped from deer
antlers and strengthened with deer sinews that had been glued to the
horn. Their arrows had points of flint or walrus ivory.

In summer, whales and walruses swam back from warmer water into the
Arctic Ocean. To catch them, an Eskimo hunter used a big harpoon.
Sometimes he could harpoon a whale from land or from big cakes of ice
near land. Often several men went hunting together in an umiak, which
had oars and a sail made of seal intestines sewed together. The boat
was so light that two men could lift it, but so strong that it could
hold two or three tons of whale meat.

[Illustration: Papik hunted these big animals with bow and arrows.]

[Illustration: The umiak towed the whale to shore.]

Each hunter had his harpoon and line. Tied to the line was a watertight
sealskin blown up like a balloon. This was called a float. After the
hunters harpooned a whale, the animal tried to swim away, but the
floats dragged in the water and finally tired it out. Then it was easy
for a man to send a spear straight into the whale's huge heart and kill
it.

[Illustration: a sealskin float]

The whale belonged to the whole village. All the women helped cut
it up. And everybody agreed that the best food in the world was the
whale's skin and the blubber under it. They cut this off in strips and
ate some raw while it was fresh. Then they cut the rest of the whale up
and stored it under rocks so that the dogs couldn't get at it.

[Illustration: a drum]

After a lucky whaling trip, the villagers naturally wanted to
celebrate. So they had a feast. A man beat a big flat drum made of
deerskin or sealskin stretched tight over a hoop of wood or bone.
People danced and sang songs they made up as they went along. And
everybody ate and ate and ate.

In the evening they played catch with a light ball made of skin stuffed
with moss. Or they whipped a heavier, clay-stuffed ball around the
village with the long whips they used for their dog teams.

[Illustration: a fancy ball]

There were other games at feasts, too. The men had archery contests
with bows and arrows. When a man hit the target, the women showed their
approval by running up and rubbing noses with him.

If a strange man came, there was usually a boxing match between him
and one of the village men. If the stranger lost, he might have to go
away. Life was so hard that only strong people were wanted in an Eskimo
village.

Papik practiced these games, just as he practiced hunting. Before long
he would be a man and would do the things a man did. There would be a
feast when people agreed he was grown up. By then he could take care of
himself, even if he was far from any village, all alone in the winter
snow.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Eskimos Made Wonderful Inventions]

[Illustration: This is how Eskimos hunted little birds with darts. Each
dart had several points.]

[Illustration: a throwing board and dart]

[Illustration: a bow drill for making fire]

Eskimos invented ways of killing whales, the largest animals in the
world, with only a few pieces of wood and bone and hide. They invented
ways of hunting powerful polar bears with only small handmade weapons.
They invented a new kind of lamp, which was perfect for their needs.
They made the coldness of the Arctic work for them, when they turned
ice and snow into useful tools. They could even make their food do
double duty--sometimes they built sleds of frozen skins and meat or
fish. Later they and their dogs could have a feast of the thawed-out
meat.

[Illustration: Eskimos invented snow goggles to protect their eyes from
the glare of sunlight on snow.]

Eskimos used every part of an animal. What they didn't eat they turned
into clothes or tools or building materials. They even made fine thread
from the fibers in bird feathers. All around these two pages you'll
find inventions that helped Eskimos to live in the Arctic.

[Illustration: Eskimos invented little skin shoes to protect their
dogs' feet when they had to travel over sharp ice.]

[Illustration: Eskimos often hung skin linings inside snow houses. This
kept the snow from melting and made the house much warmer.]

[Illustration: Eskimos fastened waterproof jackets tight to their
kayaks. They could turn over in the water without getting anything but
their faces and hands wet.]

[Illustration: polar bear]

[Illustration: white whale]


THEY SHARE WHAT THEY HAVE

Eskimos were so good at working with their hands that they could use
their wonderful inventions to live alone if they wanted to or had to.
But they were very sociable, too. They made lots of visits--and long
visits. Nobody ever knocked when he entered a friend's door. In fact,
the Eskimos had no word for "Hello." Visitors were expected to come
right in.

[Illustration: walrus]

As long as there was anything to eat, no Eskimo ever went hungry.
Eskimos always shared their food and houses. No one ever owned a house
after he moved out of it. But to show that he intended to come back
home, he left some tools in his house. Tools, dogs, clothes, good luck
charms and toys were about the only things an Eskimo called his own
personal property. It never occurred to an Eskimo to pile up wealth
enough to hire someone else to work for him.

[Illustration: narwhal]

The Eskimos had no laws about sharing. They knew they _must_ share in
order to live at all. They had no chiefs as Indians had, and no police
or prisons or warriors.

If people decided something an Eskimo did was wrong, usually they just
wouldn't talk to him, or they asked him to leave the village. That was
real punishment. Nobody liked a man who was too lazy to hunt, but they
divided their food with him and his family anyway. They shared with
orphans, too. Every child had a home. Eskimos loved children.

[Illustration: bowhead whale]

[Illustration: The whole village shared the food when these big animals
were killed.]

[Illustration]


MACKENZIE ESKIMOS

Papik and Milak had never seen a white man. They lived in the days
before explorers began to visit the far north country. But other
Eskimos had already met white traders and men who hunted whales in
sailing vessels.

[Illustration]

The village where Hilltop and his sister, Driftwood, lived was near a
whaling station at the mouth of the great Mackenzie River in Canada.
The children knew some traders and thought they were very funny people
indeed. To begin with, white men always had at least two names. No
Eskimo ever had more than one, and it was always the name of someone
who had died. Eskimos thought that these names were unhappy and brought
bad luck unless they were given very soon to a new baby. There were no
special girl names, like Mary, or boy names, like John. Any name was
good for either a boy or a girl.

[Illustration: Hilltop used a double-ended paddle for his kayak.]

White men looked peculiar, too--their beards, for instance. Eskimos
almost never had beards, but white men either shaved or had a lot of
hair on their faces. White men's beards were a nuisance in winter,
because they filled up with icicles and made faces freeze.

[Illustration: Dogs helped hunt bears. The men had to aim their guns
carefully. A good dog was worth more than a bearskin.]

Even funnier were the traders who had hairy faces but no hair at all on
the tops of their heads. Hilltop and Driftwood had never seen a bald
Eskimo.


USING NEW THINGS

The Eskimos laughed at all the things that seemed so strange and
foolish to them. They laughed, too, about the useful things that the
white men brought. It was good to light a seal oil lamp with matches
instead of a bow-drill. It was safer to kill a polar bear with a gun
than with a spear.

Now that the Eskimos had guns, hunting was easier, but they had to
do more of it. They killed animals for their own use, and they did
extra hunting because they needed furs to trade with the white men for
bullets and guns and new things to make their homes more comfortable.

[Illustration: Hunters drove caribou into lakes where it was easy to
shoot them from kayaks.]

[Illustration: This kind of house was called an igloo, just as snow
houses were.]


NEW WAYS AND OLD

Hilltop and Driftwood lived in a house made of logs covered with sod.
The sod was grass, dug up with the earth around the roots when the
ground wasn't frozen. It helped to keep the houses warm.

Look at the picture and you will see how different this log cabin was
from the ones you know about. The walls sloped inward, instead of going
straight up. This was important for two reasons. First, piling chunks
of sod was easier against sloping walls than against straight ones.
Second, the slanting walls made less space at the top. That meant less
air to heat than in a squared-off house.

[Illustration: Eskimos played string games like cat's cradle. This one
is a deer.]

A log house was very warm. In fact, Hilltop and Driftwood felt
uncomfortably hot when dinner was being cooked on old-time lamps or
over a new-fangled iron stove.

The grownups took off most of their clothes indoors, and the children
didn't wear anything. Everybody sweat a great deal. This is how they
wiped themselves dry: When the men sat around the house at night,
they often spent their time whittling pieces of wood into toys or
ornaments or tools. The shavings they made were very small and fine,
like excelsior. Piles of the shavings were always heaped up at the side
of the room. When anyone got sweaty, he wiped himself dry with the
excelsior and threw it away. He used his towel only once, so it never
got dirty.


THEY DIDN'T GET LOST

[Illustration: Dogs sometimes pulled umiaks on sleds.]

In winter, Hilltop and Driftwood often went traveling with their
parents. Riding on sleds, they visited other villages, and sometimes
they built snow houses, just as Papik and Milak had done. But their
sleds were a little different, and the dogs were not harnessed in the
same way. Instead of hitching each dog separately to the sled, Hilltop
tied them all to one line and they all pulled together in single file.

[Illustration]

Eskimo dogs were tough and strong. Each one knew his own name and the
names of all the others in his team. A dog usually hated to leave his
team if he was sold. Sometimes he would run away from his new master
and travel as much as sixty miles to get back home. Eskimos took good
care of their fierce, hard-working dogs, although they weren't gentle
with them. To train them and make them obey, Eskimos used whips. But
they had to be careful. Too much punishment made a dog refuse to work
at all. If their dogs hadn't worked and helped them travel, Eskimos
couldn't have found enough food.

Even though Eskimo families traveled far away over wide snowy plains,
they never got lost. They knew which way the winds blew, and they
could tell by looking at the snowdrifts whether they were keeping on a
straight course. In the darkest night they could find their way just by
feeling the drifts with their mittened hands.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


FOOLING THE SEALS

Sometimes Hilltop went with his father on hunting trips when the ice
was breaking up, and he learned about the habits of seals. He learned
that a seal is always watching out for polar bears, which are its worst
enemy. When a seal comes out on the ice for a nap, it always chooses an
open flat place. That way it can hear bears, or see them, before they
come too close. And the seal gets its sleep in little snatches--often
only a half-minute nap at a time. Then it wakes up and looks around.

On his first hunting trip, Hilltop saw the seals far off, wiggling and
scratching themselves with their flippers. And then he saw his father
crouch down and make the same motions! As he crawled along over the
ice, he wiggled and scratched. He was making the seal think he was just
another seal. Then, when he was close enough, he raised his gun and
shot it.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Men often fished this way in spring and fall.]


FISH TO EAT

In winter, the men from Hilltop's village also went fishing with nets
which they poked down through the ice. Driftwood helped her mother
clean the fish with her special woman's knife--the kind that Eskimo
women used everywhere. Then she did something many Eskimos never used
to do. She cooked the fish.

Once Driftwood tried sprinkling the fish with salt that white traders
had given her. But her family didn't like it.

If there were many fish, the women cleaned them, took out the backbones
and stored them away to freeze. In early summer and fall, they hung the
fish up to dry. Once in a while the men caught so many that the women
couldn't keep up with them. Then they cleaned the fish and tossed them
into a big box. Later they built a heavy log wall around it to keep out
bears and wolves. Hilltop and Driftwood particularly liked to eat this
kind of fish raw, after it had been frozen in winter--even if it was
rotten.

[Illustration: The women hung fish and meat up to dry like this.]

[Illustration: Copper Eskimos]


OPEN WATER

As summertime came, the whole village waited for the exciting time when
the ice began to thaw and break up. The whales and walruses came back
into the Arctic Ocean. They swam up between long cracks in the ice
called "leads."

Eagerly the men and boys waited along the edges of the leads. Who would
see the first walrus? The day Hilltop went with the men in an umiak to
hunt whales in a lead was even more exciting. The men paddled a long
time before they saw a whale blowing its waterspout in the distance.
Then they quickly pulled the umiak out onto the ice and waited.

Suddenly the whale came up to blow again, not far away. The men all
fired their guns at once, aiming at its heart, which was deep in its
body and as big as a barrel.

[Illustration: a Copper Eskimo bow]

It took everybody in the village to pull the whale out onto the ice.
They used a block and tackle they had got from the white sailors.
Then, after the villagers had cut up the whale, they held a great
feast. There was plenty of meat and blubber for all--including the
dogs--and whalebone to be traded for more bullets and guns.


NEIGHBORS

Not very far from Hilltop's village lived people that the white men
called Copper Eskimos because they had learned to use copper for some
of their tools.

[Illustration: A Siberian Eskimo teacher uses books written in the
Eskimo language.]

Other neighbors along the coast did a new kind of work after white men
came. In their high, waterproof boots, they waded into the ocean and
chipped away the black rocks near the edge of the water. The rocks were
really coal which the white men wanted and taught them to use. Eskimos
have always kept on learning how to make the most of the land in which
they live.

[Illustration: A Copper Eskimo cache]


GREENLANDERS

Nearly half the Eskimos in the world now live in Greenland. Not many of
them have ever seen a snow house, although most of their huge island is
covered with ice.

[Illustration: With luck a North Greenlander can catch a hundred or
more small birds in an hour.]

Greenland Eskimos have known white men for more than nine hundred
years, but they still hunt in many of the old ways. In the northern
part of the island, hunters use nets to catch little birds called auks,
which come there by the millions on the exact day the last snow melts
in spring. It takes eight or nine auks to make a good meal for one
person!

[Illustration]

Sometimes Greenlanders paddle their kayaks out to icebergs and perch
high up, on the lookout for seals. Instead of being just pure white,
the icebergs shine with beautiful tints of blue and green and purple.
Greenlanders' clothes, too, are bright, embroidered and decorated with
many of the colors of the Aurora Borealis.

[Illustration: People in West Greenland dress like this. Some women
pull their hair so tight that it comes out and they often get bald over
the ears.]

[Illustration: Eskimos are such good mechanics they quickly learned to
fit outboard motors on umiaks.]


TROUBLE AHEAD

Traders began to visit the Eskimos in Alaska a long time ago. The
Eskimos sold them caribou meat to eat and sealskins--and whalebone.
When the traders explained what the whalebone was for, the Eskimos
could hardly stop laughing.

Women down in the warm world wanted whalebone to stiffen their corsets,
so they would look thin where they weren't. You can imagine how silly
this seemed to the Eskimos, who thought people looked best when they
were plump all over. But the white men traded them guns and cloth and
stoves and tea for whalebone, so they caught many whales.

[Illustration: a whalebone corset]

For a while the Eskimos got along very well with their trading. Then
things changed. Most of the whales had been killed off by white men
whose ships could follow the whales all the way as the great sea
animals migrated from the Arctic Ocean down toward the South Pole. Most
of the walruses were gone, too. The whalers killed them for oil and for
their ivory tusks. Next, the caribou began to disappear. Eskimo hunters
had killed most of them so that white men could have meat.

[Illustration: Some Eskimos taught reindeer to pull sleds.]

By now, Eskimos had learned to need the things they got from traders,
and they were almost starving because so many of their food animals
were gone. They needed a new way to make a living. What could they do?

At last the head of the American school for Eskimo children had an
idea. He thought of bringing reindeer from Siberia to Alaska. Reindeer
are a kind of caribou that has been trained to live with men.

[Illustration: Laplanders from Scandinavia came to teach the Eskimos
how to herd reindeer.]

He persuaded the government and some individual people to try his plan.
The reindeer could eat the grass that grew thick in the hot Alaskan
summer. In winter they could use their horns and hoofs to dig down
through the thin Arctic snow and eat lichens. A reindeer was a sort of
combination horse and cow! It provided meat to eat, milk to drink and
strength to pull heavy loads. Its skin was valuable, too.

[Illustration: Alaskan Eskimo children often wear dresses to keep their
fur clothes clean.]

Reindeer were first brought to Alaska in 1891. Now there are many, many
thousands of them.


ESKIMO COWBOYS

The Alaskan Eskimos became the cowboys of the far north! Each year
they have reindeer roundups, much like cattle roundups in the West. Of
course, they don't ride horses the way cowboys do. But they sometimes
rope reindeers with lariats, and they herd them into huge corrals for
branding.

[Illustration: Alaskan kayakers wear waterproof suits made from animal
intestines.]

The thin reindeer hides are valuable, so Eskimos don't spoil them by
burning on a brand. Instead they notch the edges of the animals' ears
in special ways. As the reindeer move from the corral through a narrow
chute, the cowboys cut the notches, so that each man can tell his own
animals.

[Illustration]

Very few Eskimos have grown rich from their reindeer, but reindeer
herding has become an important way of making a living for some of
them. Others still hunt and fish. Some get work part of each year on
fishing boats or in mines or on the docks loading ships. But most
Eskimos are still very poor.

[Illustration]


ESKIMO ABC'S

John and Susie Alook are Eskimo children who live in Alaska today.
Although they speak Eskimo at home, they go to school and study
English. They learn to read, write and count.

Long ago, when Papik and Milak were children, no Eskimo could count
beyond twenty--the number of fingers and toes he had. Any number bigger
than that was just "more-than-one-can-count." Some Eskimos only
bothered to count to six. That was enough, because they had so few
things they needed to count. If they caught a lot of fish, nobody cared
to figure out how many. The important thing was that the whole village
had enough to eat.

[Illustration]


DOCTORS AND NURSES

John and Susie Alook have first and last names. Eskimos have borrowed
this two-name custom and many others from white people. They have had
to learn about doctors and dentists, too, because the Eskimos are not
as healthy as they used to be.

Before the white men came, most Eskimos never had decayed teeth. Now
they do. Measles, tuberculosis and other diseases which they never
had before make them sicker than they make white people. But doctors
and nurses are now helping the Eskimos to prevent and cure these new
diseases.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


DANCING ON AIR

When their village has a whale feast, John and Susie share in the
celebration and dance. This is how the dance goes: A lot of people
hold a big walrus skin that has hand-holes cut around the edges. John
stands on the skin and they toss him into the air.

[Illustration: Dancers were sometimes tossed twenty feet up in the air.]

Higher and higher they toss him. He keeps his balance, lands on his
feet, over and over again, dances in the air and sings a song. At last
he tumbles off his feet, and it's someone else's turn. The dancer who
goes the highest is the winner.

John and Susie are proud of the way their mother and father can
dance--not only the old-time dances but new ones, too. Eskimos are just
as good at the white men's dances as the white men are themselves. And
they love singing just as much as ever. Now they sing the songs they
hear on the radio as well as their own songs.

The new world has brought many changes and many problems to the
Eskimos. To be sure, they have new inventions, but they have new
illnesses, too. Their old way of living is ended, and they haven't yet
found a good new way. But they are still The Laughing People.





  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES


  Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical
  errors.

  Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.

  Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

  Enclosed cursive font in ~tildes~.

  Enclosed letter-spaced characters in +plus signs+.