The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1914. WHERE CHILDREN RULE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 38, 14 February 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1914. WHERE CHILDREN RULE.

It is a singular fact that Eskimo chilIron are never punished or forbidden inything. This ideal state of existence, at any rate from a child’s point of view, is vouched for by travellers who have visited the Arctic lands. This practice amongst the snow-dwellers is > explained in various ways, and it is now alleged that the true reason of the veneration in which infants arc held in the far north has been discovered. Vilhjainnr Stefansson, in a recently published article on “The religious beliefs of the Eskimo,” flatly states that his party discovered why it is the children are not punished, and 1 points out as a fact which is too often ignored by explorers and missionaries md other pioneers amongst simple peo)les that scarcely anything that primitive man does is done without a religious motive. The Eskimo with whom stefansson is best acquainted are hose in the extreme north of the '•'orth American Continent, and it was ; mongst this isolated people he heard woman call her eight-year old child ‘mother.” Following up the matter •he made discoveries, which enabled dm to summarise some of the beliefs if the Eskimos. “When a child is X mrn it comes into the world with a anil of its own (nappan), hut this soul is as inexperienced, foolish and feeble ts the child is and looks. Jl is evi-

lout, therefore, that the child needs a more experienced and wiser soul than its own to do the thinking for it and take care of it. Accordingly the mother, as soon as she can after the birth M' the child, pronounces a magic formula to summon from the grave the waiting soul of the dead to become the guardian soul of the new-born ■hild, or its atka, as they express it. This acquiring soul, let is explained, then luis to do the thinking for the child and to help in every way to keep it strong and healthy. When the child has learned to talk it speaks with all the wisdom which the dead one ac■munlated in his lifetime and all the higher wisdom which only comes after death,” il is explained that this acquired “soul” is to do the thinking

for the little one and to help in every way to keep it strong and healthy. The Eskimo child is regarded as wiser than its parents, and this probably accounts for the wondrous patience with which children are treated. 'When they reach their teens the young ones realise they are no longer the rulers of the family and their punishment begins, hut in their earlier years children of this strange people altogether escape the rod.