ESKIMO ETHICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 297, 10 December 1908, Page 4

ESKIMO ETHICS.

Villijulmr Stcfansson describes /in Harper's lilt? huiuu life of the Eskimo. Me tolls much that is most interesting. The entrance passage into Die Eskimo house is excavated, the door to the house is a hole ill tile lloor. The Kskinio discovered that cold air is heavier »hau warm, and will not rise from helow up into a warm room. Accordingly the door is left open day and night. " Lying oil the lloor beside the opening one can reach with his lingers down lo zero temperature, while one's shoulders is in the comfortable warmth of Lhe house." Few people, he says, are so fond of singing as the Eskimos, monotonous chanting as it may *eem to us to lie. The Eskimo hahies are seldom weaned till they are four or live years .ild. but are taught to chew tobacco •ind lo swallow the juice i.ciueen the »ges of nine and twelve months. He;ore whites came to North America .hey seem to have received their tobacco from Siberia sterols I>ehring Strait by prehistoric route?,. The customs, practically universal with both sexes, of inhaling tobacco siuoko and swallowing lhe juice of tobacco, seem to be of no recent growth. Nn conspicuous evil results of either practice are readily apparent.

The sexes are absolutely equal, marriages are perfectly free, and separation is equally free, lleutv a permanent union of uncongenial person* is wellnigh inconceivable. The writer never heard ail unpleasant word between a man and his wife. They have given up blood revenge and perpetual feud and even putting murderers to death., because epidemics had reduced the population so much that the people begun to :&lk and say, "We must not light amongst ourselves any longer; we are too few/' WHAT MAKES A CHIEF?

Perhaps tin; most interesting feature (if their life is to Lii- Found in what constitutes a chief:—"Out l day as Ovavnak and 1 sat on our snow blocks with hacks to the wind, foiling, I asked him why he was not satisfied with the huge pile already stored away—more than our family of twenty-two could cat in two years. He then told me that he was a chief, And why, did J suppose, was lie a chief; Or, now that he was a chief, did I suppose lie would continue being a chief if he were la/yV We iiad plenty of fish for our-clves th"rc at Tuktnyagtok. but who could tell if the people who had "one inland after reindeer might not return any day with ' empty sleds, or possibly with no sleds, carrying their children 011 their hacks hccau-e the dogs were dead of starvation '; \"o mail who wants to be called a good man slops lishing when he has just enough for his own household. Seeing Ovayuak is a chief, how can there ever he too much lisii on his lisli platform-,'; Xhu-, il seems that hj" who gives to the needy all he has is as great a ligurc in the life of the heathen Kski'iio as lie is in the sermons of the t'hristian white. Among the Kskimo a man is "chief" not bv formal election, 'nit through the consensus of public opinion, much a- certain iiirii f breadth ami integrity haw influence aiUOIl o l|s -"