improvement be correct, then we must accord to the most northern nation
of the globe a fair degree of brain energy--potential though it be.
Aside from the mere physical methods of determining the degree of
intelligence, it is urged by some writers, among them the historian
Robertson, that tact in commerce and correct ideas of property are
evidence of a considerable progress toward civilization. The natural
inference from this is that they are tests of intellectual power, since
mind is a combination of all the actual and possible states of
consciousness of the organism, and an examination of the Eskimo system
of trade draws its own conclusion. Their fondness for trade has been
known for a long time, as well as the extended range of their commercial
intercourse. They trade with the Indians, with the fur companies, the
whalers and among themselves across Bering straits. Many of them are
veritable Shylocks, having a through comprehension of the axiom in
political economy regarding the regulation of the price of a thing by
the demand.
[Illustration: _No. 7._]
THE MORAL SENSE AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT.
With the aptitudes and instincts of our common humanity Eskimo morals,
as manifested in truth, right and virtue, also admit of remark. Except
where these people have had the bad example of the white man, whose
vices they have imitated, not on account of defective moral nature, but
because they saw few or no virtues, they are models of truthfulness and
honesty. In fact their virtues in this respect are something phenomenal.
The same cannot be said, however, for their sexual morals, which, as a
rule, are the contrary of good. Even a short stay among the hyperboreans
causes one to smile at Lord Kames's "frigidity of the North Americans,"
and at the fallacy of Herder who says, "the blood of man near the pole
circulates but slowly, the heart beats but languidly; consequently the
married live chastely, the women almost require compulsion to take upon
them the troubles of a married life," etc. Nearly the same idea
expressed by Montesquieu, and repeated by Byron in "happy the nations of
the moral North," are statements so at variance with our experience that
this fact must alone excuse a reference to the subject. So far are they
from applying to the people in question that it is only necessary to
mention, without going into detail, that the women are freely offered to
strangers by way of hospitality, showing a decided preference for white
men, whom they believe to beget better offspring than their own men. In
this regard one is soon convinced that salacious and prurient tastes are
not the exclusive privilege of people living outside of the Arctic
Circle; and observation favors the belief in the existence of pederasty
among Eskimo, if one may be allowed to judge from circumstances, which
it is not necessary to particularize, and from a word in their language
signifying the act.
Since morality is the last virtue acquired by man and the first one he
is likely to lose, it is not so surprising to find outrages on morals
among the undeveloped inhabitants of the north as it is to find them in
intelligent Christian communities among people whose moral sense ought
to be far above that of the average primitive man in view of their
associations and the variations that have been so frequently repeated
and accumulated by heredity; and where there is no hierarchy nor
established missionaries it is still more surprising to find any moral
sense at all among a people whose vague religious belief does not extend
beyond Shamanism or Animism, which to them explains the more strange and
striking natural phenomena by the hypothesis of direct spiritual agency.
It must not be understood by this, however, that these people have no
religion, as many travellers have erroneously believed; that would be
almost equivalent to stating that races of men exist without speech,
memory or knowledge of fire. A purely ethnological view of religion
which regards it as "the feeling which falls upon man in the presence of
the unknown," favors the idea that the children of the icy north have
many of the same feelings in this respect as those experienced by
ourselves under similar conditions, although there is doubtless a change
in us produced by more advanced thought and nicer feeling. On the other
hand, how many habits and ideas that are senseless and perfectly
unexplainable by the light of our present modes of life and thought can
be explained by similar customs and prejudices existing among these
distant tribes. Is there no fragment of primitive superstition or
residue of bygone ages in the supposed influence of the "Evil Eye" in
Ireland, or in the habit of "telling the bees" in Germany? Is there not
something of intellectual fossildom in the popular notion about Friday
and thirteen at table, and in the ancient rite of exorcising oppressed
persons, houses and other places supposed to be haunted by unwelcome
spirits, the form of which is still retained in the Roman ritual? And is
not our enlightened America "the land of spiritualists, mesmerism,
soothsaying and mystical congregations"?
When the native of Saint Michael's invokes the moon, or the native of
Point Barrow his crude images previously to hunting the seal, in order
to bring good luck, is not the mental and emotional impulse the same as
that which actuates more civilized men to look upon "outward signs of an
inward and spiritual grace," or not to start upon any important
undertaking without first invoking the blessing of Deity? And are not
the rites observed by the natives on the Siberian coast, when the first
walrus is caught, the counterpart of our Puritan Thanksgiving Day?
Perhaps the untutored Eskimo has the same fear of the dangerous and
terrible, the unknown, the infinite, as ourselves, and parts with life
just as reluctantly: but it cannot be said that our observation favors
the fact of his longevity, although long life seems to prevail among
some of the circumpolar tribes, the Laps, for instance, who, according
to Scheffer, in spite of hard lives enjoy good health, are long-lived,
and still alert at eighty and ninety years.--(De Medecina Laponum.)
Owing to his hard life, the conflict with his circumstances and his want
of foresight, the Eskimo soon becomes a physiological bankrupt, and his
stock of vitality being exhausted, his bodily remains are covered with
stones, around which are placed wooden masks and articles that have
been useful to him during life, as I have seen at Nounivak island, or
they are covered with driftwood as observed in Kotzebue sound, or as at
Tapkan, Siberia, where the corpse is lashed to a long pole and is taken
some distance from the village, when the clothes are stripped off,
placed on the ground and covered with stones. The cadaver is then
exposed in the open air to the tender mercies of crows, foxes and
wolves. The weapons and other personal effects of the decedent are
placed near by, probably with something of the same sentiment that
causes us to use chaplets of flowers and immortelles as funeral
offerings--a custom that Schiller has commemorated in "Bringet hier die
letzen Gaben."
The future destiny of these people is a question in which the theologian
and politician are not less interested than the man of science. Some
observers seem to think that their numbers are diminishing under the
evil influence of so-called civilization. But as every race participates
in the same moral nature, and the entire history of humanity, according
to Herder, is a series of events pointing to a higher destiny than has
yet been revealed, there is no reason why the sum of human happiness,
under proper auspices, should not be increased among the Innuit race.
Arch-deacon Kirkby, a Church of England clergyman who has lately visited
them in a missionary capacity as far as Boothia, speaks in the highest
terms of their intelligence and capacity for improvement. Here, then, is
a brilliant opportunity for some one full of propagandism and charity to
repeat the acts of the modern apostles and extend the influence of
civilization to the gay, lively, curious and talkative hyperboreans
whose home is under the midnight sun and on the borders of the Icy Sea.
[Illustration: WRANGEL ISLAND.
Journal, American Geographical Society, Vol. XV, 1883.
Bulletin N^o. 3. Rosse.]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: In November, 1882, while in London, I met Mr. Gilder, the
_Herald_ correspondent, who accompanied the U.S. ship _Rodgers_, and he
showed me this record and paper which he had taken from the cairn during
a subsequent visit to the island.]
[Footnote 2: De Virginibus velandis. Lutetiae Parisiorum. 1675 f^o., p.
178.]
[Footnote 3: See Guy's Hospital Report, XIX, 1874; also "Histoire
Medicale du Tatouage," in Archives de Medecine Navale, Tom. 11 and 12,
Paris, 1869.]
[Footnote 4: Retzius, Finska Kranier, Stockholm: 1878.]