1 The translations to which I refer are (1) É. Durkheim, Sociology and Philosophy, translated by D. F. Pocock with an introduction by J. G. Peristiany, Cohen & West, London, 1953; (2) M. Mauss, The Gift, translated by I. Cunnison with an introduction by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Cohen & West, London, 1954; (3) R. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, translated by R. and C. Needham, with an introduction by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Cohen & West, London, 1960; (4) É. Durkheim and M. Mauss, Primitive Classification, translated with an introduction by R. Needham, University of Chicago Press, 1963; (5) H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrifice, translated by W. D. Hall with a foreword by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Cohen & West, London, 1964; (6) C. Bouglé, Essays on the Caste System, translated with an introduction by D. F. Pocock, Cambridge University Press, 1971; (7) M. Mauss and H. Hubert, A General Theory of Magic, translated by R. Brain with a foreword by D. F. Pocock, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972. To this group should, perhaps, be added M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, translated with an introduction by M. Freedman, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1975. Although not a formal contributor to the Année sociologique in its early phase, Granet was an eminent student of Durkheim and an intimate academic associate of Mauss, Davy and Bouglé.
2 Louis Dumont, who was lecturer in Indian sociology at the Institute, was particularly instrumental in promoting interest in the works of the Année school. My title quotation is taken from a lecture he gave in Oxford in 1952 which was later published in French as ‘Une science en devenir’ in L’Arc 48: Marcel Mauss, Aix-en-Provence, 1972, pp. 6–21.
3 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Introduction to R. Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, p. 9.
4 Two invaluable sources on the development of the social sciences in France and on the position of Durkheim and his school are T. N. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences, Harvard University Press, 1973, and S. Lukes, Émile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study, Allen Lane, London, 1973; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1975.
5 In their intellectual division of labour, Mauss investigated the nature of exchange, Davy the contractual bonds created by exchange. Davy published his findings in a lengthy monograph, La Foi jurée: Étude sociologique du problème du contrat, la formation du lieu contractuel, Alcan, Paris, 1922.
6 Both title-page and table of contents of the ninth volume of the Année sociologique assign exclusive authorship of this essay to Mauss. The first and last pages of the essay, however, attribute authorship to Mauss with an underline noting that the essay was written ‘avec la collaboration’ of Beuchat. The precise nature of this collaboration is difficult to determine, although we know from some brief published notes on Mauss’s seminar on the Eskimo (1903–4) in which Beuchat participated that his interests were in Eskimo migrations, morphology and technology. His collaboration is, thus, most clearly indicated in chapter 2 where he is, in fact, given explicit credit for maps and drawings. On the other hand, a final footnote absolves him of any responsibility for the editing and correcting of proofs. These indications, as well as the evidence of other research and writings of the two men, make it abundantly clear that this is primarily and predominantly a work by Mauss himself.
7 Nelson H. H. Graburn and B. Stephen Strong, Circumpolar Peoples: an Anthropological Perspective, Goodyear Publishing Co., Pacific Palisades, 1973, p. 171.
8 See Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication, Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 3.
9 Richard B. Lee, ‘!Kung Spatial Organization: an Ecological and Historical Perspective’ in R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers, Harvard University Press, 1976. For a recent study of Eskimo seasonal variations, see David Damas, ‘Characteristics of Central Eskimo Band Structure’ no. 5, National Museums of Canada Bulletin 228, Ottawa, 1969, pp. 116–38.
10 With the establishment of a sixth section devoted to social morphology, a seventh section was created to retain diverse items. This gradually took on a more or less definitive form and came to include (1) Aesthetic Sociology (vol. 3), (2) Technology (vol. 4) and (3) Language (vol. 5). The subsection on language was added when A. Meillet joined the group.
11 L’Année sociologique, vol. 2, 1899, p. 520.
12 ‘Le sol, la société et l’état’, L’Année sociologique, vol. 3, 1900, pp. 1–14.
13 See Durkheim’s letter to Simiand dated 15 February 1902 which is quoted in S. Lukes, Émile Durkheim, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1975, p. 295.
14 ‘Divisions et proportions des divisions de la sociologie’, L’Année sociologique, n.s., vol. 2, 1927, reprinted in Marcel Mauss, Oeuvres, vol. III, pp. 178–245, ed. Victor Karady, Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1969.
15 Ibid., p. 178.
16 Ibid., p. 178.
17 Ibid., p. 180.
18 Ibid., pp. 205–7.
19 See Mauss, Manuel d’ethnographie, Payot, Paris, 1947, p. 10.
20 See V. Karady, ‘Présentation’ to M. Mauss, Oeuvres, vol. I, p. xliv.
21 See Mauss, Oeuvres, vol. Ill, pp. 73–4.
22 L’Année sociologique, vol. 7, 1904, pp. 225–30. In particular, these reviews contain a discussion of the Eskimo division of objects and beings into two seasonal categories and the cultural injunction to avoid mixing elements of the two categories. This is further elaborated in chapter 4 of Seasonal Variations and can be readily recognized as one of the earliest sources for later anthropological investigation of categories and their confusion. See, for example, Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1966.
23 These references to archaeological data in which Beuchat had a special interest tend to confirm the impression that his collaboration was particularly concentrated on this chapter of the essay.
24 As in so much of Mauss’s early work, the influence of Henri Hubert, who co-authored two major essays with him, deserves recognition. In this case, as Mauss himself notes, Hubert’s essay, ‘Étude sommaire de la représentation du temps dans la religion et la magie’, was of particular importance in the shaping of his concluding argument.
25 Oscar Jaszi, ‘An Inductive Vindication of Historical Materialism’ first published in Huszadik Szazad, Budapest, 1906, and reprinted in The Review: a Quarterly of Pluralist Socialism (Brussels), vol. 5, 1963, p. 65.
26 Claude Dubar, ‘Retour aux textes’ in L’Arc 48: Marcel Mauss, p. 25.
27 Mary Douglas, ‘Symbolic Orders in the Use of Domestic Space’ in P. J. Ucko, R. Tringham and G. W. Dimbleby, eds, Man, Settlement and Urbanism, Duckworth, London, 1972, pp. 513–14.
28 See, in particular, S. Lukes, Émile Durkheim, pp. 226–36.
29 In the introduction to the translation of Hertz, Evans-Pritchard writes: ‘If a personal note be allowed, I would, though with serious reservations, identify myself with the Année school if a choice had to be made and an intellectual allegiance to be declared’; Death and the Right Hand, p. 24.
30 See G. Lienhardt, Social Anthropology, Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 44–51.
31 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940, p. 93.
32 See Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to July 1895, Washington, 1896, pp. 625 ff.
33 There are two accounts of events surrounding the wreck of the Karluk. The first is an appendix, ‘The Story of the Karluk’, written mainly by John Hadley and included in V. Stefánsson’s The Friendly Arctic, Macmillan, London, 1921, pp. 704–30; the second is The Last Voyage of the ‘Karluk’ as told by her captain, R. A. Bartlett, to R. T. Hale, Boston, 1916. This volume contains a group photograph (facing p. 10) of members of the expedition, including Beuchat, taken just before their departure from Nome.
34 Mauss, Oeuvres, vol. Ill, p. 489.
1 Reprinted from L’Année sociologique, vol. 9, 1904–5, pp. 39–132.
2 See Durkheim (1899a) and section VI of the Année sociologique, vols 1–9.
3 We are using the term ‘population’ for want of a better one. It would be quite inaccurate to speak of an Eskimo nation, for the Eskimo tribes, themselves poorly defined, have never provided even the embryo for such a group. But it would be equally inaccurate to imagine that the differences among the tribes of this group are of the order of those that distinguish tribes of other so-called primitive populations. (The number of Eskimo has been estimated at scarcely 60,000; see Rink (1887, pp. 31 ff.), whose figures have not been disputed by later research.) The entire culture and race show a remarkable uniformity. On the unity of the race, see Rink (1887, pp. 8 ff.) and Bahnson (1892, p. 223). On the unity of the language, see Rink (1887, pp. 8 ff.; 1891, pp. 6 ff.) (though we would naturally not accept all his hypotheses) and, especially, Thalbitzer (1904, pp. 225 ff.). This unity was a fact well recognized by the earliest explorers and served as the basis of the instructions to Franklin and his successors. See Franklin (1823, p. 43), Miertsching (1864, pp. 37, 42) and Markham (1875, p. 151). On the unity of material culture and moral life, see Murdoch (1892), which is full of information. The book by Steensby (1905) is especially devoted to material culture and constitutes an excellent demonstration of the point we are now making. A certain number of specialized ethnographic works are all just as convincing. They are Mason (1896a), Murdoch (1885, pp. 307–16) and Murdoch, ‘The forms of the Eskimo bows’, Naturalist, 8, p. 869. [This non-existent reference involves a double confusion. Murdoch (1892, p. 199) refers to Emil Bessels’s observation of a bow made from pieces of antlers spliced together. Unfortunately, in his footnote, Murdoch mistakenly identifies his source as vol. 8 of the Naturalist rather than vol. 18 of the American Naturalist. Mauss copies this directly, attributes the source to Murdoch rather than to Bessels and thereby creates this spurious reference. JJF.] On legends, see Boas and Rink (1889), Boas (1901, pp. 355 ff.) and Boas (1904). The different groups of Eskimo have a single mythology, a single technology, a single form of social organization and a single language. As far as language is concerned, there are only dialect differences and, in the rest of their collective culture, there are only variations in practice. The present work will also serve to demonstrate that the Eskimo possess only one morphology. It is thus much easier to make sounder comparisons and generalizations.
5 We cannot list these tribes and their names here. We consider it sufficient to indicate the principal works that deal with this question of geographical nomenclature. Beginning in Alaska, they are the following: Dall (1870, pp. 180 ff.; 1877, pp. 1–8), Porter, (1893), Wells and Kelly (1890), Petitot (1876, pp. xiii ff.) and Boas (1888, pp. 414 ff.). As we shall see (pp. 25, 26), the various groups in Labrador and Greenland do not seem to have tribal names. The map with the best and clearest list is that in Thalbitzer (1904).
6 The founder of this discipline was Friedrich Ratzel, whose principal works, Anthropogeographie (vol. 1, 2nd ed., 1899; vol. 2, 1st ed., 1891) and Politische Geographie (1897), were reviewed in the Année sociologique along with other works of the same kind. See Année sociologique, vol. 2, 1899, pp. 522 ff.; vol. 3, 1900, pp. 550 ff.; vol. 4, 1901, pp. 565 ff.; vol. 6, 1903, pp. 539 ff.; vol. 8, 1905, pp. 613, 621. For a résumé by Ratzel, see Année sociologique, vol. 3, 1900, pp. 1–14. An exhaustive bibliography of these works up until 1899 can be found in Ratzel (1899, pp. 579 ff.); a continuation of this bibliography can be found listed under ‘Géographie humaine’ in the Bibliographie des Annales de Géographie. The most important recent works of this school are those of the French school of Paul Vidal de la Blache, Emmanuel de Martonne, Jean Brunhes and Albert Demangeon; see Vidal de la Blache (1903a).
7 Naturally, in any account as short as this, we cannot consider works of a kind that, though poorly classified, come closer to sociology than geography because they are, on the whole, studies of historical geography and consist of considerations on the geographical philosophy of social history. These include Ramsay (1902), Mackinder (1904) and, especially, Vidal de la Blache (1903b); see also Vacher (1903). Neither are we going to consider certain sketches, mainly by American ethnographers, that relate even more closely to what we are attempting here. These have mainly to do with the attempt to show the immediate effect of the physical environment on social life, especially in its technological and religious aspects; see particularly McGee (1896), Mason (1896b), Powell (1896), Hubbard (1896) and Fewkes (1896).
8 A later geographer of this school and the only one who really takes exception to this practice is Albert Demangeon. He believes, in fact (1905, pp. 455–6), that land has its effects on man through the mediation of society. He thus arrives at our theory; or rather, we have fixed upon a theory of his which he does not consistently apply. A comparison may help to make the point. W. M. Davis, in a curious article (1903, pp. 413–23), proposes that geography should account for the human life which the earth supports. Using an interesting schema, he attempts to show lines of correlation that geography has to lay out and the planes these lines transverse. In our opinion, one of these planes is, precisely and always, society; and it is in transversing society that geographical conditions have an effect, via the social mass, on the individual.
9 This is the plan of vol. 1 of Ratzel’s Anthropogeographie, which is the more sociological of the two volumes. See Ratzel’s own résumé (1900).
10 Thus the increase of the population in Meurthe-et-Moselle is the result not only of the existence of mines and canals, etc., but also of the discovery of the treatment process for iron pyrites and of protectionism.
11 For a better understanding of our point of view, an entire critique of these recent works would naturally be necessary. In our opinion, the effects of morphological phenomena are not limited to certain legal phenomena, of the kind, for example, that Brunhes has noted in regard to the regulation of water and irrigation rights; they extend as well to higher spheres of social physiology; see Durkheim (1902, pp. 252 ff.), Durkheim and Mauss (1903) and Bouglé (1903, pp. 75 ff.). Furthermore, it is by means of physiological phenomena, or because of the absence of these phenomena, that land factors produce their effect. Thus when one connects nomadism with the steppe, as Martonne does (1897), one forgets that the Nilotic steppe is, in part, cultivable and it is the absence of agricultural techniques that keeps certain people in a state of nomadism.
12 Steensby (1905) and Riedel (1902). Riedel’s work is his inaugural dissertation at Halle.
13 Hassert’s study (1895) deals mainly with the Asian origin of the Eskimo and questions of adaptation to the land. Hassert (1902) is a restatement of this first study. See also Boas (1883), Wächter (1898) and Isachsen (1903). To his credit, Captain Isachsen has put forward and demonstrated by his exploration of Devon Island the most probable hypothesis for the settlement of western Greenland; see also Sverdrup (1903, vol. 2, p. 275; English trans. 1904, vol. 2, p. 212). See Faustini (1903, p. 28), and the anonymous review [‘The Eskimo exodus’] in the Geographical Journal, vol. 23, 1904, p. 392. Faustini divides the Eskimo, on plausible grounds, into two branches: the one in the south-west and the other in the north, who were separated in the area around Nome, Alaska.
14 Mason (1896a).
15 It is useful to provide here a summary bibliography of the principal works that we have used so that they can henceforth be cited in abbreviated form. The most complete and nearly exhaustive bibliographies are to be found in Pilling (1887) and Steensby (1905, pp. 207 ff.).
The oldest works on Greenland are some of the best; among others, there is H. P. Egede (1741). We have also consulted the first edition, Egede (1729); a good French translation is that by Des Roches de Parthenay (Egede, 1763). Another valuable old work is Cranz (1765). The only good edition, the English one, which is less rare, is Cranz (1767), which deals with the southernmost tribes and constitutes a relatively independent source. Next come the books by H. J. Rink which, besides those already cited, are (1857; 1866–71, English trans., Rink, 1875). All these works deal with the Eskimo of western Greenland. The principal work devoted to the eastern Eskimo is that by Holm (1888). The collection of publications Meddelelser om Grønland of the Kommissionen for Ledelsen af de geologiske og geografiske Undersøgelser i Grønland is most valuable. The Commission has kindly sent us a copy, for which we are grateful.
On the Eskimo of Labrador, we have only scattered sources that are not worth citing here; the only monograph that deals with those Eskimo on the southern part of Hudson Bay is Turner (1894).
On the central Eskimo, the better documents are, in order of date, Parry (1824) and Lyon (1824). These two accounts deal with the tribe that settled at Iglulik during two successive winters. Next come the documents by Hall (1864; 1879) which unfortunately must be treated with caution and are, in part, badly produced; those of the Schwatka expedition, mainly the account by Klutschak (1881a), and finally the two monographs by Boas (1888; 1901).
On the Eskimo of the Mackenzie region, we have only scattered information and two unreliable works by Petitot (1876; 1887).
Publications again become abundant when we arrive in Alaska. But the better ones and the only ones that we have consistently used are Murdoch (1892) and Nelson (1899).
Other publications will be cited in the course of this study. Although it may not be possible to claim, as it has been, that the Eskimo constitute one of the best known peoples of the world, we must admit that we have at our command a collection of monographs about them that is relatively satisfactory.
1 A great deal of information on the general morphology of each separate tribal group can be found in Steensby (1905, pp. 50 ff.).
2 On the extent of Eskimo culture in former times, see Steensby (1905, pp. 23 ff. and pp. 50 ff.). The northernmost point which has been found to have been inhabited is at 83°, near Lake Hazeu on the Grinnell Peninsula; see Greely (1886, vol. 1, pp. 379–83). The entire northern archipelago was populated. There is a list of former Eskimo sites that were verified by voyagers prior to 1875 in C. R. Markham (1875, pp. 140 ff.). In the south the extreme point attained was Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Eskimo regularly spent the summer in Newfoundland in the eighteenth century; see Cartwright (1792, vol. 3, pp. 301–13), Packard (1891, p. 245) and Cranz (1770, pp. 301–13). On the other hand, the entire southern part of Hudson Bay appears to have been equally populated by Eskimo. See Dobbs (1744, p. 49). On the Pacific, they probably occupied the American coast to the Stikine River; see Dall (1877, p. 21). It is particularly remarkable that this immensely extended area which the Eskimo once inhabited was also exclusively a coastal region.
3 On the Itah tribe, see Kane (1856), Hayes (1860; 1867), Bessels (1879), Peary (1898) and Kroeber (1899). (Davis’s edition of notes from Hall’s journal is worthless.) The recently arrived book by Rasmussen (1905) contributes a considerable amount of new material.
4 Turner (1894, p. 176).
5 Kodiak Island. We consider the Aleuts to be a very distant branch of Eskimo culture and we have, therefore, not taken them into account. Similarly, we consider the Kaniagmiuts, the inhabitants of Kodiak Island, as a mixed group; see Pinart (1873, pp. 12 ff.).
6 On the Yuit or Yuin of East Cape, Siberia, often mistakenly confused with the Chukchi of the Chukchi Peninsula, see Nordenskiöld (1883, vol. 2, pp. 22 ff.) and Krause (1882).
7 Nowhere is there a good list of these tribes, but it is possible to construct one using the descriptions by Porter and his census-takers, Schultze and Woolfe; see Porter (1893, pp. 99–152, 166 ff.). The tribe of Kopagmiut that Petroff (1884, p. 121) describes as inhabiting the interior between Kotzebue Sound and Colville Bar is a pure fabrication; see also Murdoch (1892, p. 47, n. 7) and Steensby (1905, p. 120). The muddle may be explained by the fact that the Kowagmiut were confused with the Nunatagmiut, a mixed tribe that had, in fact, recently succeeded in extending their voyages from the north coast of Kotzebue Sound to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. On the Nooatakamiut (people of the forested land), see Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 14 and the map).
8 The inhabitants of the Asian coast of the Arctic Ocean are in fact tundra-dwellers.
9 One of the best descriptions of Greenland is still that of the elder [H.P.] Egede (1741, pp. 1 ff.), Dalager (1758) and, above all, Kornerup (1880, p. 87).
10 Boas (1888, pp. 414 ff.).
11 Stearns (1884, pp. 22 ff.).
12 The best description is the most recent; see Hanbury (1904, pp. 64 ff.). See also Geographical Survey of Canada, 1898. The earlier expeditions of Sir John Richardson, John Rae, P. W. Dease and Thomas Simpson were all made by canoe, and the coast was not visible except at a distance or at landing-points.
13 For a good description of the coast of Alaska, see also Beechey (1831) and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1901.
14 Among others, Ratzel (1899, vol. 1, p. 286). [One possible passage in Ratzel which Mauss may be paraphrasing is the following: ‘… dann ist sie [die Küste] der Uebergang vom Meer zum Land; und endlich ist sie der Uebergang vom Land zum Meer.’ JJF.]
15 It is true that Ratzel elsewhere defines the Eskimo as ‘Randvölker’, people on the shore of the ‘Oekumene’ (1899, vol. 1, pp. 35, 37 ff.). [Mauss is probably referring here to Ratzel (1891, vol. 2, pp. 3–86). JJF.] But this idea, which he develops further, is purely descriptive. In any case, it does not at all explain what it pretends to explain, namely the enormous spread and low density of the Eskimo population.
16 Naturally, this does not apply to Greenland, whose interior is covered by an immense glacier, nor to the entire Arctic archipelago which is populated only by Eskimo.
17 The only areas where regular contact was established between Eskimo and Indians are (1) the mouth of the Mackenzie and (2) the upper Yukon. On the Mackenzie, see Anderson, Rupert Land, 1831 [identification uncertain, possibly Anderson, 1856 or 1857. JJF.], Franklin (1823, pp. 48 ff.) and Petitot (1887, pp. 34, 37 ff.). One ought to point out as well that the main reason for these exchanges and gatherings was to trade with whites. On the Yukon, see Porter (1893, p. 123). Again one ought to point out that the tribes of the upper Yukon are under white influence and have become heavily intermingled with the Indians called Ingalik.
18 On the linguistic unity of the Eskimo, see the works cited in the Introduction, n. 3. It is still quite remarkable that for the region whose language is best known, that of western Greenland, one can distinguish only two dialects, a northern and a southern, separated by various significant differences. Thalbitzer (1904, pp. 396 ff.) and Schultz-Lorentzen (1904, pp. 302 ff.) tell us specifically of a former difference which the two populations are aware of but which nas now disappeared. The few contrary comments about the lack of comprehension between distant Eskimo groups are based entirely on casual remarks by ill-informed observers who were unable to spend the time necessary to appreciate the ways in which dialects shade into one another.
19 We refer mainly to the ‘Arctic’ district of Alaska; see Petroff (1884, section V) and Porter (1893, section VII). The list of tribes given by Dall (1877, pp. 37 ff.) not only differs from that of Petroff (1884, pp. 15 ff., 125 ff.) which contributed to its compilation but also differs completely from Porter’s (Woolfe’s). And even between Porter and his correspondent there are divergences; see Porter (1893, pp. 62 and 142). Finally, in Wells and Kelly, there is yet another table of divergent dialects which gives their relation to the tribes (1890, pp. 14, 26, 27; see also their excellent map which is clearly only very approximate).
20 The only proper names that we find are place-names. Even when we are not told that these names bear the suffix -miut, which designates the inhabitants of a place, such is the case. The affixes that are missing in Rink (1866–71, vol. 1, p. 65) reappear in the English translation (1875, p. 20) without any indication that this usage applies to the inhabitants of the place. Any connection between different ‘wintering-places’ is moreover said to be non-existent; see Rink (1875, p. 23).
21 Turner (1894, pp. 179 ff.): Itiwynmiut, ‘People of the North’; Koksoagmiut, ‘People of the Koksoak River’, etc.
22 See the lists of names in Richardson (1851, vol. 1, p. 87; 1861, p. 299).
23 The maps which the Eskimo gave to Parry (1824, Eskimaux Charts I and II facing pp. 197–8) show that although there may not be borders, there are at least defined areas of winter trekking. See especially Boas (1888, pp. 419–60 and his accompanying map which we have partially reproduced as Figure 6 in chapter 2). The lists of names from Parry and Richardson and those from Boas are identical with those in Hall (1864) for Frobisher Bay and Cumberland Sound as well as with those that Hall gives for western Baffin Land and Hudson Bay.
For boundaries on Baffin Land, see Boas (1888, pp. 421, 444, 463). (Nugumiut are considered strangers in Cumberland Sound; Padlirmiut do not encroach upon the summer hunting territory of the Talirpingmiut nor those of the Kingnamiut.) The maps of these boundaries provided by Boas should not, however, be interpreted in a conventional sense, especially since they indicate areas of travel in the interior as if they were genuine areas of settlement. On the boundaries of Melville Peninsula, Hudson Bay and the Back River, we have a collection of statements from Richardson (1851, vol. 2, p. 128), Schwatka in Gilder (1881, pp. 38 ff.) and Klutschak (1881a, pp. 66, 68; 1881b, pp. 418 ff.). See, however, Boas (1888, p. 466), who disagrees with Klutschak.
24 As far as Alaska is concerned, there is no unanimity even among the small group of observers who went through the Bering Strait between 1880 and 1890. Compare the list of names in Petroff (1884, p. 15) with those in Porter (1893, p. 164) or Nelson (1899, pp. 13 ff. plus map); or compare Nelson’s list with that of Woolfe, Schanz and Porter in Porter (1893, p. 108) or that of Jacobsen (1884, pp. 166 ff.).
25 Richardson (1851, vol. 2, p. 128) cites the text by Simpson (1875, p. 238) on the hunting territories reserved for families at Point Barrow. Murdoch (1892, p. 27) says he is unable to substantiate this fact. [ This note is difficult to decipher and I have translated it as it stands. Mauss has apparently confused John Simpson (1875) with Thomas Simpson (1843). On the page given by Mauss, Richardson quotes a letter by John Rae that refers to the explorations of Thomas Simpson and P. W. Dease. To complicate matters further, Murdoch says nothing about hunting territories on p. 27; but on p. 267 he refers to Richardson (1851, vol. 1, pp. 244, 351), who remarks on the ‘hunting grounds of families being kept sacred’. JJF.]
26 On the wars in Baffin Land and to the west of Hudson Bay, see Kumlien (1879, p. 28). This is different from Boas (1888, pp. 464–5), who, however, provides contrary evidence (1901, pp. 18, 27). For Alaska, see Wells and Kelly (1890, pp. 13, 14 and the tale of the Nunatagmiut, p. 25); see also Petroff (1884, p. 128) and Nelson (1899, p. 127).
27 A group in Baffin Land, the Oqomiut, appears indeed to comprise a collection of tribal aggregates; see Boas (1888, p. 424).
28 Rink (1877, vol. 2, p. 250; 1875, pp. 17, 21). Regarding the Tahagmiut, see Turner (1894, p. 177) and Boas (1888, p. 424).
29 See Kane (1856, vol. 2, p. 103).
30 For a definition of the settlement in Greenland, see H. P. Egede (1741, p. 60).
31 There seems to be a kind of regular return of old men to the place of their birth, at least in some cases; see Boas (1888, p. 466). See also the tale from Greenland, no. 36 (Nivnitak) in Rink (1875, p. 247) and the rite in Klutschak (1881a, p. 153).
32 Among the list of places and settlements that we will cite, the best and most scientifically established is that for western Greenland; see Thalbitzer (1904, p. 333). It is worth noting that almost all the names designate specific natural objects. Thus the name by which Eskimo designate themselves is nothing more than a geographical one.
33 See the tables in Petroff (1884, pp. 12 ff.) and Porter (1893, pp. 18 ff.). On these lists of names, see the works already cited in n. 19 above.
34 In the present state of our knowledge, we face an insoluble difficulty in knowing whether an individual is designated by the place where he was born or where he lives. We are told that on very solemn occasions (the festivities that we will discuss later, see p. 68) an individual states his name and place of birth. See Boas (1888, p. 605; 1901, pp. 142 ff.); for more or less the same custom, see Nelson (1899, p. 373).
35 For a particularly good example from Greenland, see Rink (1875, p. 23).
36 Rink (1875, p. 256).
37 For a good description of the rights of two villages over their hinterland, see Murdoch (1892, pp. 27 ff.).
38 Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 320; vol. 2, pp. 24, 34).
39 See Turner (1894, p. 201) and Boas (1888, p. 61). It appears that this taboo lasts only until a newborn child takes his name; see Cranz (1770, p. 110, note).
40 Boas (1888, p. 613) and Nelson (1899, p. 291). We are told, more precisely (Nelson, 1899, p. 289), that among the Malemiut, the name is conferred in the winter settlement; a child receives a temporary name on the tundra where his parents are hunting. To interpret the extent and significance of this custom in all Eskimo societies would require an extensive study, but for the moment we can say that this system of perpetual reincarnation gives the Eskimo settlement the singular aspect of an American Indian clan.
41 For examples of this relative permeability, in connection with the Iglulik, see Parry (1824, pp. 124 ff.).
42 Graah (1832, pp. 118 ff.).
43 Graah, who made his voyage during the summer, found about 600 inhabitants living in an unknown number (17 + x) of settlements. Along almost twice the length of coastline, Holm found no more than 182 Eskimo; see Hansen (1888) and Holm (1887–8, pp. 185 ff.).
44 The history of the formation of Frederiksdal can be found in the Periodical Accounts of the United Brethren, beginning in vol. 2, p. 414: thirty people come back from Lichtenau and 200 non-believers from the south and east concentrate there, while a large number of others announce their wish to come; see Periodical Accounts, vol. 2, p. 421. In 1827, 1828 and 1829 the population in the district grows regularly with additions from the south-east; see Periodical Accounts, vol. 10, pp. 41, 68, 103, 104 and also Holm’s account (1887–8, p. 201) based on Mission archives.
45 Holm (1887–8, p. 201) tells of a man from Sermilik whom he saw at Angmagssalik and who, as a child, had seen Graah.
46 See Holm (1887–8, pp. 193 ff.).
47 H. P. Egede (1741, p. 101); for Disco, see P. H. Egede (1788, pp. 235 ff.), and Cranz (1765, vol. 1, pp. 380 ff.) for Godhavn and the southern settlements. These provide statistical information on the Danish and southern Missions which Dalager (1758) confirms. But none of these documents is entirely reliable; they deal only with the fluid populations associated with the missionaries. The figures in Rink (1877, vol. 2, pp. 259 ff.) are not of great interest; we are using only the most recent sources.
48 See Ryberg (1894, pp. 114, 115, 121 and Table G; 1904, p. 172). For the proportion of men and women at Angmagssalik, see the texts cited above.
49 See Hansen (1888, pp. 204 ff.) and Ryder (1895a, p. 144).
50 On these various fluctuations and their specific causes, see Ryberg (1894, pp. 120, 122). An analysis of the various statistics contained in the Periodical Accounts of the Moravian Brethren since 1774 would show that the same thing regularly happens in Labrador. In Boas (1888, pp. 425 ff.) there is a series of statistical data on the Oqomiut, their four subtribes and their eight settlements, as well as their age, sex and status. These data are remarkably similar to those from Greenland. The tables from Captain Comer and the Reverend Mr Peck on the Kinipetu and Aivillirmiut fit the same pattern; see Boas (1901, p. 7).
51 Wrangell (1839, pp. 141 ff.). The advantage of Glasunov’s journey is that it was carried out in winter, and it retains this advantage over later censuses. Petroff (1884, pp. 23 ff.) summarizes the inadequacies of Russian censuses before 1870.
52 Petroff (1884, pp. 4, 17 ff.).
53 See Appendix 1.
54 Porter gives a detailed description of the various settlements, each described in turn with a certain amount of information on winter settlements and summer ones (1893, pp. 100–14, 154, 170).
55 See Petroff (1884, p. 12) and Porter (1893, p. 5). Kassiachamiut had 50 inhabitants (1893, p. 164).
56 Petroff (1884) reports that ninety-six Europeans lived in the same district.
57 For the islands, see Porter (1893, pp. 110 ff.) and Nelson (1899, pp. 6 and 256). King Island and Nunivak had 400 inhabitants each.
58 Porter (1893, p. 162).
59 We are not considering, and thus not discussing, cases that fall far below this mean, as for example, the ‘single house’ or the ‘summer camp’; see Porter (1893, p. 165) and Petroff (1884, pp. 11–12).
60 See Porter (1893, p. 137).
61 This is one of the earliest reported facts about the Eskimo. It is to be found even in Vormius, Museum Naturale, Copenhagen, 1618, p. 15. [This is apparently a reference to a work by the naturalist Ole Worm, 1588–1654; but the specific work that Mauss has in mind is uncertain. JJF.] For later sources, see Coats (1852, p. 35) and H. P. Egede (1741, p. 60). See also the first edition of this volume (1729, p. 27); it is so evident that there is perhaps no author who has not reported it. It is even said that Eskimo women completely refuse to believe that European women are able to have ten and twelve children. See Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 137) – the maximum appears to be four to five children. The only contrary case on which we have figures is that of a Kinipetu family with eight children recorded by Captain Comer in 1898 (Boas, 1901, pp. 6–7) but this is probably an observational error. (The same author mentions two families of that size, but only one appears in his table.)
62 In Appendix 2 we publish data taken from Porter. For the number of widows, the census documents on the Aivilik are in agreement: six widows (?) among thirty-four women. By contrast, there are only two widows among the Kinipetu, but this results from a larger number of polygamous marriages.
63 See C. R. Markham (1875, pp. 163 ff.), Peary (1898, vol. 1, preface, p. vii, appendix I) and Sverdrup (1903, vol. 1, preface; 1904, vol. 1, preface). Given the animal resources, these authors reasonably contend that small expeditions, even with poor provisions, have a better chance of surviving than better provisioned expeditions that are too large. Later expeditions from North America, D. T. Hanbury’s in particular, like the early expeditions by Franz Boas, C. F. Hall and Frederick Schwatka, were made by travellers who joined Eskimo groups. Franklin’s well-known fate was precisely because he had too many men with him. The first person to recognize this law was probably Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. xii).
64 The recent introduction of domesticated reindeer to Alaska is probably going to change the very morphology of Eskimo societies that succeed in rearing them; see Sheldon, Report on the Introduction of Reindeer in Alaska, Rep. USNM, 1894. [Sheldon’s paper is not in this Report. The precise reference is uncertain. JJF.]
65 See Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 138) and Peary (1898, vol. 2, p. 15).
66 Although hunting takes place twice each year at Point Barrow – a place where whales periodically pass from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific and back again – it is becoming less and less productive; see Murdoch (1892, p. 272) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 145).
European whalers have shifted their most important fisheries to the mouths of the Mackenzie River.
67 For an excellent description of the general conditions of Eskimo life, see Boas (1888, pp. 419–20).
68 On the closure of the seas in the North American archipelago, see C. R. Markham (1875, pp. 62 ff.) or the Arctic Pilot, 1904, vol. 1, pp. 28 ff.
69 On the causes of the depopulations of the northern archipelago, see Sverdrup (1903, vol. 1, p. 145).
70 On the climatic, maritime and economic conditions of life, see Holm (1887–8, pp. 287 ff.; 1888, pp. 47–8) Ryder, (1895a, pp. 138 ff.) and Ryberg (1894, pp. 144 ff.). We might add that before the arrival of Holm, the situation at Angmagssalik was grave as a result of the almost complete loss of dogs (1887–8, p. 134). In Table 1, we can see that in favourable years there is a simple movement of the population.
71 Nansen (1903, pp. 46 ff.).
72 Conditions of existence are equally precarious in Baffin Land and, in recent years, famine has regularly reduced the population. For the history of certain tribes, see Boas (1888, pp. 426 ff.).
73 The picture we sketch of life at Point Barrow is based on Simpson (1875, p. 245 (reproduced from Parliamentary Reports, 1855)) and Murdoch (1892, pp. 45 ff.).
74 The statement by Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 145) that the proportion of births was reduced from five to one merits only relative credence. Petroff’s documents (1884, p. 14) are completely incorrect; in fact, there is not even an enumeration of villages.
75 Moreover, the group intervenes forcibly, as a group, to limit the number of members in its charge: (1) by infanticide, especially of female children, as is evident for numerous tribes; (2) by murder of weak and sickly children which is also generally reported; (3) by abandonment of the sick and elderly and (4) by abandonment of widows, thus leaving them to die, as is reported in some tribes. On infanticide, see H. P. Egede (1741, p. 91), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 21), Rasmussen (1905, p. 29; dealing with the tribe at Cape York), Boas (1888, p. 580), Bessels (1884, p. 874; 1879, p. 185 on the infanticide of children of both sexes at Itah), Gilder (1881, pp. 246–7), Murdoch (1892, p. 417), Simpson (1875, p. 250) and Nelson (1899, p. 289). The purpose of infanticide is evidently to reduce the number of non-hunters. On widow abandonment, see Parry (1824, pp. 400, 409, 529), Lyon (1824, p. 323) and Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 97).
1 Frobisher (1867, p. 283), Hakluyt (1589, p. 628), Hall in Fox (1635, p. 56), Coats (1852, pp. 35, 75, 89, 90), H. P. Egede (1729, p. 27; 1741, p. 60), Cranz (1765, III, 1, 4) and Dalager (1758). We do not give other early authors, all of whom were acquainted with the sources we have just cited. The book by Cranz, in particular, was extremely popular and was used by all travellers and ethnographers.
2 On the Eskimo tent in general, see Murdoch (1892, p. 84).
3 For this word, see the dictionaries: P. H. Egede (1750, p. 128), Parry (1824, p. 562), Erdmann (1864) and Wells and Kelly (1890, pp. 36, 43). See also Rink (1891, pp. 72 ff.).
4 See Steensby (1905, p. 143) who arrived at the same conclusion as we have. The cone is, in some cases, sectioned in front where it forms a perfect cone. The perfect cone form is typical of western Eskimo culture. Early Greenland reports show the tent with a kind of doorway; see the plates in H. P. Egede (1741, p. 61), Cranz (1765, vol. 1, plate III) and Graah (1832, plate VI facing p. 73). This is probably an artistic exaggeration that transforms the perpendicular curtain of skin, which hangs down and closes the front of the tent, into a door.
5 Coats (1852, p. 35) notes the difference between Eskimo dwellings and Indian (Cree and Montagnais) tents. See Hearne (1795, p. 180).
6 Holm (1888, pp. 71 ff., plates X and XI) and Graah (1832, p. 73).
7 Holm (1888, pp. 72, 74).
8 See the good descriptions by Parry and Lyon in Parry (1824, pp. 270 ff., plate facing p. 271). The structure was even then often constructed of narwhal bones. On his first voyage to the north of Baffin Land, Parry had seen another kind of tent which utilized whale-ribs, probably because of the lack of wood (1821, p. 283).
9 Boas (1888, p. 552) and Chappell (1817, p. 29). For the types of tent in Alaska, see Nelson (1899, p. 258 ff.). For the southernmost abandoned sites found by Hall’s expeditions, see Bessels (1879, p. 235). For others, see A. H. Markham (1874, p. 285; 1878, pp. 79, 391) and Greely (1886, p. 47, n. 2). Those found by Sverdrup (1903, pp. 121, 171) all consisted of circles of round stones which suggest tents of the regular type. Only one abandoned site, seen by Lyon once at Cape Montague, cannot be explained as the remains of a tent; see Parry (1824, p. 62). The houses on the islands of the Bering Strait are a genuine exception to this rule; see Nelson (1899, pp. 255–6). But the conditions of Eskimo life on these islands, where they live virtually settled on true escarpments, are specific enough to explain the exception. Nevertheless isolated summer houses appear to be often seen in Alaska; see Nelson (1899, pp. 260 ff.) and Jacobsen (1884, p. 161).
10 For Angmagssalik, see Holm (1888, p. 87); for western Greenland, Rink (1875, p. 19) and H. P. Egede (1741, p. 60); for the central Eskimo, Boas (1888, p. 581); Klutschak (1881a) and Schwatka (1885) among the Netchillik and Ukusiksalik, Hall (1864; 1879) among the Nugumiut (on his first voyage) and among the Aiwillik (on his second), and Hanbury (1904) between the Back River and the Mackenzie; all made their summer explorations with Eskimo families by living in their tents, or, depending on the time of the year, in their snow igloos; see Petitot (1876, p. xx), Murdoch (1892, pp. 80 ff.) and Nelson (1899, pp. 260 ff.). From lists cited in Table 1, it is possible to deduce that each family in eastern Greenland has its own tent. Furthermore, it seems impossible that a tent would hold more than one or two families and, from this viewpoint, we believe that the statement by Back (1836, p. 383) that he found thirty-five people in three tents among the Ukusiksalik is inaccurate.
11 See Lyon in Parry (1824, pp. 270, 360).
12 Graah (1832, p. 93), however, describes a double tent with a partition.
13 The house is called an iglu. On this word, see the dictionaries cited above in note 3 of this chapter and Rink (1891, pp. 72 ff.). Exceptions are not at all convincing. If there are different names, or even if an equivalent word has more or less the same sense, this is for specific reasons. Thus in Alaska there is another word for the apartment; see Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 44). We will see why, in the central regions, the word iglu has been restricted to the snow-house, the house itself being limited to this one type of dwelling.
14 For the following discussion, see Steensby (1905, pp. 182 ff.), with whom we agree on the most important point, that of understanding the primitive character of the long-house. The effort by Steensby to link the Eskimo winter house to the Indian long-house (with Mandan and Iroquois houses as examples) shows, however inappropriate this may be, that for this author as for us, these two types of house are homologous.
15 The Mandan house, for example, lacks both passage and bench; nevertheless Steensby wants to compare it with the Eskimo house. Moreover, it possesses, like all Indian houses, a central hearth which occurs only in Eskimo houses in southern Alaska. The winter houses of the north-west coast of America have benches and partitions; see Niblack (1890, pp. 95 ff.). But the presence of a central hearth and the absence of the passage negates all parallels.
16 Holm (1888, pp. 66–7). For south-east Greenland in former times, see Graah (1832, p. 32 and plate II, which is excellent). See also Nansen (1903, p. 67) and S. Rink (1900, p. 43).
17 In fact, H. P. Egede expressly mentions that, in time of sexual licence, couples lie in the empty area under the platform. On the house, see H. P. Egede (1741, plate IX, facing p. 61) and Cranz (1765, plate IV). On this custom, see H. P. Egede (1729, p. 36) and P. H. Egede (1750, p. 100 under the entry malliserpok). On the other hand, it is indeed remarkable that the Angmagssalik house corresponds so well, especially in the form of its roof, with early authors’ reproductions of western Greenland houses and so poorly with recent authors’ depictions as well as some early ones for this region; see Davis in Hakluyt (1589, p. 788). See especially the woodcuts in Rink (1875, pp. 105, 191, 223); also the Danish edition (1866–71) and the Eskimo edition (1860) in which plates 3 and 4 are better. The house with upright walls, relatively clear of the earth and covered with a roof supported on beams placed on the walls, gives the distinct impression of a European house and was perhaps built under old Norse influence. On this influence see Tylor (1883–4, pp. 275 ff.). Not all of Tylor’s comparisons, however, appear to be well founded.
18 Only here does the edge of the bench extend to the floor leaving no empty space; see Figures 3 and 4.
19 Here the bench once more is raised with empty space below; see Murdoch (1892, fig. 11) and Nelson (1899, figs 80 ff.).
20 See H. P. Egede (1741, p. 63). Cranz (1765, III, 1, 4) is even more precise on the placement of the lamp. The partitioning of the bench normally disappears where there are proper compartments and, in short, is probably restricted to Greenland. In western Greenland the Eskimo lamp was not replaced by the European stove, except among the rich.
21 See the texts cited in the previous note plus Graah (1832, p. 35) and S. Rink (1900, p. 29, note 1).
22 For the houses of the Mackenzie region and the Anderson, see especially Petitot (1876, p. xxi and plate; 1887, pp. 41, 49, 50). If this passage were made of pieces of ice among the Kragmalivit (sic), there is a contradiction between the statements and the design based on the sketch (?) on p. 193. See Franklin (1828, pp. 41, 121 and plate); for Point Atkinson, see Richardson in Franklin (1828, pp. 215–16). The plan and the section by section plan lack two supporting beams for the central rectangle. See the information in Miertsching (1864, pp. 35, 37), Hooper (1853, p. 243) and Richardson (1851, vol. 1, p. 30; 1861, pp. 330 ff.). The description by Schultz (1895, p. 122) is based neither on observation nor on the statements by Bompas and Sainville, and is nothing but a repetition of H. P. Egede or Cranz.
23 See Petitot (1887, p. 41).
24 Richardson in Franklin (1828, pp. 216 ff.). The passage, based on plate 8, seems to be too short.
25 For the house at Point Barrow, see Murdoch (1892, pp. 72 ff.) and Simpson (1875, pp. 256, 258). For the house at Bering Strait, see Nelson (1899, pp. 253 ff., figs 80 ff.).
26 For the plan of the house at Cape Nome, see Nelson (1899, p. 254).
27 See Nelson (1899, fig. 74) and Elliott (1886, pp. 378–9). To the south, in the Nushagak district, the central wooden fireplace which is often used affects the construction of the house and tends to make the Eskimo house more like that of the Chilcotin; see Jacobsen (1884, p. 321). On the various types of house in Alaska, see Porter (1893, pp. 146 ff. and figs on pp. 96, 106). Reports from early expeditions by Beechey (1831, vol. 2, pp. 568–9) and by the Russians (Wrangell, 1839, pp. 143 ff.) are in agreement and demonstrate that the distribution of house types is just about the same.
28 For the house made of whale-ribs, see Nelson (1899, pp. 257 ff.) and Petroff (1884, pp. 38 ff.). For the Siberian Eskimo, see Nelson (1899, p. 263).
29 For these houses, see especially Boas (1888, pp. 548 ff.), Kumlien (1879, p. 43) and Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 131; vol. 2, p. 289). Figures 499–502 in Boas (1888) are particularly interesting (fig. 500 is taken from Kumlien), as they explain the nature of the abandoned sites found by Parry (1824, p. 105), which are evidently the remains of qarmang. Hall expressly mentions the fact that the Nugumiut gave up this mode of construction and made snow igloos only because they no longer had whale-ribs. See also Markham (1874, pp. 263–4).
30 For the houses of this region, see Parry (1824, p. 280; for the ruins on the Iglulik plateau, pp. 258, 358, 545), Lyon (1824, p. 115) and Boas (1901, p. 96).
31 Parry expressly mentions the absence of driftwood and the ensuing construction problems. Boas also mentions that the house made of whale-ribs was replaced by the igloo. On the winter houses at the abandoned sites on Bathurst Island, see Boas (1883, p. 128) and Ross (1835, p. 389). The whale-rib houses are mentioned in the traditions of Greenland, and indeed documented; see Carstensen (1890, p. 124).
32 It may appear that the igloo is a very primitive feature of Eskimo culture, for we know that the temporary snow shelter is used everywhere and the snow-cutting knife was part of prehistoric Eskimo material culture. But there are igloos and igloos, and in our opinion the permanent snow igloo, used as a winter house, is of recent origin. The igloo with a passage is unknown except where we have indicated; see H. P. Egede (1741, illustration on p. 71) and Rink (1875, fig. on p. 247). The Eskimo at Smith Strait expressly told Rasmussen that immigrants from Baffin Land had taught them how to make a proper igloo; see Rasmussen (1905, p. 31).
33 Boas (1888, pp. 539 ff., 1901, pp. 95 ff., fig. 40 on p. 97), Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 21) and Kumlien (1879, fig. 26 on p. 40).
34 See Parry (1824, pp. 159, 160 and plate facing, pp. 358, 499 and p. 500, which shows an excellent plan of a composite igloo). The best plan is provided by Augustus from the tribe at Fort Churchill; see Franklin (1828, p. 287). See also Lewis (1904, pp. 47, 55, 56, and 94 with photograph, ‘Little Whale R.’), Tyrrell (1898, pp. 136–7, p. 179, with a plan which relates to Labrador and the region of Chesterfield Fiord), Hanbury (1904, pp. 77–8, with plan from Baker Lake), Gilder (1881, p. 256), Schwatka (1885, p. 18), Klutschak (1881a, p. 23), Ross (1835, p. 230, for the Netchillirmiut) and Hall (1879, p. 128). If one believes certain less reliable authors, the igloo is supposed to be the form of the winter house in Labrador; see Maclean (1849, vol. 2, pp. 145–6) and Ballantyne (1867, pp. 28 ff.). Apart from the fact that the Ungava igloo has no passage (Turner, 1894, fig. 48), the evidence is restricted to Eskimo from Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay whose culture has rather degenerated; and it is certain that the Greenland type of house had preceded the igloo even there; see Turner (1894, pp. 224 ff.) and Murdoch (1892, p. 228). For a description of the old Labrador house, see The Moravians in Labrador, 1833, p. 17.
35 See the drawings in Boas (1888, pp. 546 ff.; 1901, p. 96).
36 See Parry (1824, p. 502).
37 See Frobisher (1867, first voyage, pp. 82, 84; second voyage, Cape Warwick, pp. 137–8, describes a village of qarmang.)
38 Coats (1852, pp. 35, 76) and Ellis (1748, p. 87). On the ruins on Melville Peninsula, see Bellot (1854, p. 354).
39 It is certain that there were no actual enclosed seas a few centuries ago and that this change was the result of the shift in polar currents; see Arctic Pilot, 1905, pp. 11 ff. and Richardson (1861, pp. 210 ff.).
40 See the texts cited above in note 30 and Lyon (1825, p. 67).
41 See Hall (1864, vol. 1).
42 On the morphological changes undergone by this tribe, see Preuss (1899, pp. 38–43).
43 See Ross (1819, vol. 1, pp. 114 ff.), Kane (1856, vol. 1, pp. 206, 416 ff.) and Hayes (1860, p. 224). The change was already apparent in 1861 at the time of Hayes’s second expedition (1867, p. 245). Moreover Hans Hendrik, the Greenland Eskimo, had fled among them and it was at this period that there occurred the great immigration which Rasmussen recounts (1905, pp. 21 ff.), and whose significance Peary somehow seems to ignore and Hayes, Hall and Bessels seem to grasp. On the actual situation see Peary (1898, vol. 1, p. xlix and Appendix), Astrup (1898, pp. 138 ff.) and, in particular, infinitely the most reliable book, that of Rasmussen (1905).
44 They carried on only the hunting of bears, birds and reindeer, along with the dangerous hunting at the edge of the ice.
45 The term umiak definitely persisted; see Kane (1856, vol. 2, pp. 124 ff.).
46 On these small houses, see especially Peary (1898, vol. 1, pp. 113 ff.), with the house-plans and cross-sections by Astrup (1898, p. 108) from the village of Keate, Northumberland Island. On construction, see Peary (1898, vol. 1, pp. 87, 91) and J. Peary (1893; 1903, p. 67 plus photographs of Itah). See also Rasmussen (1905, pp. 9 ff.). The igloo is now in fact replacing the stone house.
47 See especially Kane (1856, vol. 1, p. 124 and vol. 2, the Itah hut opposite p. 113); the drawing is certainly stylishly done. See also Ross (1819, p. 130).
48 See Ryder (1895b, pp. 290 ff.). The statement that this house has only one place for a lamp (p. 299) and, therefore, contains only one family does not seem justified. See Drygalski (1897, vol. 1, p. 585).
49 See Boas (1883, p. 128) and the texts he cites, also Greely (1886, pp. 379 ff.).
50 See the catalogue of ruins in Markham (1875, pp. 115 ff.).
51 Moreover, all of the northernmost ruins are evidently the remains of populations who were ready to emigrate or almost on the point of extinction. But in the Neu Herrnhut report of 1757, Cranz (1767, vol. 2, p. 258, note) reports that during a famine on Kangek Island, fifteen people who were unable to light their lamps for lack of oil took refuge in a very small stone house where they were able to warm themselves more easily, particularly by contact with one another. It is reasonable to suppose that similar causes would produce a similar contraction, if not of the winter family, at least of its dwelling.
52 Nearly all the texts cited above have information on this question pertaining to long-houses or composite houses. Suffice it to say that at least two families live or lived in the only small house that was actually inhabited, that at Smith Strait. See Hayes (1860, p. 64), Kane (1856, vol. 2, pp. 114, 116, which contains some improbable elements) and Hayes (1867, pp. 262, 270, where one family goes to settle with more than three others among the Kalutunah at Ittiblik (or Itiblu, according to Peary)). Moreover, the introduction of the igloo has changed the morphology itself.
53 For the maximum attained in Alaska, see Porter (1893, p. 164). Jacobsen describes the house of a rich Malemiut, indeed the chief at Owirognak, in which there are seven groups of relatives including adopted relatives (1884, p. 241).
54 For the maximum attained at Angmagssalik, where the house is mistaken for the winter settlement, see Holm (1888, pp. 87 ff.); see also Table 1.
55 Cranz (1765, III, 1, 4).
56 See Appendix 1. Those Alaskan villages in which the number of families coincides with the number of houses are Indian villages.
57 See the texts cited in n. 34. The description given by Lyon of an Iglulik house showing two Eskimo families on the same bench of the igloo is not quite correct.
58 See the texts cited in n. 25; see also Petitot (1876, p. xxviii).
59 See the plates in Rink (1875, pp. 74, 86, etc). For Labrador, see Periodical Accounts, 1790.
60 See Murdoch (1892, p. 83). At Nunivak Island, the house normally has four families. The same is true in the Nushagak district; see Porter (1893, pp. 108, 126). Probably on the basis of this fact, Boas believed he could definitely connect the Eskimo winter house with that of the Indians of the north-west coast (1891).
61 This can, perhaps, be deduced from several indicative descriptions, but it is formally stated and demonstrated in the drawing of the layout of Angmagssalik. See Holm (1888, p. 66 and plate XXIII). Number 7, the old widower, has a place to himself but no lamp.
62 On the kashim in general, see Richardson (1851, vol. 1, p. 365; 1861, pp. 318–19).
63 On the kashim in Alaska, see Nelson (1899, pp. 241 ff.). The earliest texts expressly mention it; see Glasunov in Wrangell (1839, pp. 145, 149, 151, 154), Beechey (1831, vol. 1, p. 267; vol. 2, pp. 542, 550, 569), Zagoskin in Petroff (1884, pp. 38 ff.) and Simpson (1875, p. 259 (Point Barrow)). The censuses by Dall (1870, p. 406), Petroff (1884, pp. 35 ff.) and Porter (1893, pp. 103 ff.) are full of information; see also Elliott (1886, pp. 385–6). Prosperous villages have two or three kashim; see Nelson (1899, pp. 242 ff., 391), where it is clear that, at Kushunuk on Cape Vancouver, two kashim were in use at the same time, and Porter (1893, pp. 105, 107, 114, 115, etc.). Jacobsen tells of a legend about a village at the mouth of the Yukon with one hundred kashim (1884, pp. 179, 207); see also Nelson (1899, p. 242). See the other enumerations in Jacobsen (1884, pp. 225, 226, 228) of villages with several kashim. It is very difficult to know the kind of social structure to which these two kashim correspond and what their use might be. Perhaps they are linked to the clan organization that Nelson noted. The village at Point Barrow which had three kashim in 1851 had only two in 1856; see Murdoch (1892, pp. 79 ff.) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 144) (we do not know what to make of the fact that these kashim were built of ice in 1889).
64 On the kashim at Point Warren, see Miertsching (1864, p. 121), Armstrong (1857, p. 159) and Petitot (1876, p. xxx). For an important description of the kashim on Point Atkinson, see Richardson in Franklin (1828, pp. 215–16). See also the texts cited above and Richardson (1851, vol. 1, pp. 254–5).
65 Boas (1888, pp. 601 ff.) and Hall (1879, p. 220). The ruins reported by Parry (1824, pp. 362 ff.) are evidently those of former kashim made of whale-ribs. The memory of festivals and practices was preserved. Beechey (1831, vol. 2, p. 542), who took part in Parry’s first expedition, compares the kashim at Point Hope with that of the eastern Eskimo. For Gore Bay, see Lyon (1824, p. 61). See also Boas (1901, tale 16) about a kashim of stone.
66 Okkak’s letter, 1791, in Periodical Accounts, 1792, vol. 1, p. 86: ‘The Kivalek people built a snow house to game and dance in, and being reproved for it, their answer was “that it was so difficult to catch whales, they would have a katche-game to allure them.”’ But some women who had danced suddenly die and the ‘gaming house’ is knocked down. It is remarkable that Erdmann’s dictionary, which we have at least leafed through, contains no reference to the word ‘kache’ (?) ‘qagche’ (?). For Ungava Bay, see also Turner, American Naturalist, 1887. [Precise reference uncertain. JJF.]
67 On Disco, see Rink (1886, p. 141). See, more precisely, the tale in Thalbitzer (1904, pp. 275, 297).
68 See Rink (1875, p. 8, plus tales on pp. 273–6). See Kleinschmidt (1871, pp. 124–5); Rink (1887, p. 26; 1891, section 20, no. 16, section 29, no. 11). Probable indications, among others, in Cranz (1767, vol. 2, pp. 29, 73: Report on Neu Herrnhut for 1743 and 1744, and pp. 365, 367) suggest the existence of some kind of kashim.
69 See Elliott (1886, pp. 385–6) and Jacobsen (1884, p. 321).
70 Boas (1888, pp. 601–2; 1901, p. 141, on the Nugumiut) and Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 320).
71 See Jacobsen (1884, p. 323).
72 See pp. 57–62 below.
73 Boas (1901, p. 141 on the Nugumiut) and Murdoch (1892, p. 83).
74 Schanz in Porter (1893, p. 102, which appears to be copied from Glasunov) and Nelson (1899, p. 285, etc.).
75 Nelson (1899, p. 287), Jacobsen (1884, p. 212) and Elliott (1886).
76 Besides the kashim, the tent and the long-house, there exist several other specialized and temporary structures which are not of great relevance and, consequently, we can confine ourselves to mentioning them briefly. These are houses of an intermediate form between the tent and the igloo. They are only used regularly in the central regions. In Baffin Land, in spring, when the vault of the snow-house begins to melt and before it is possible to live again in a tent, the Eskimo construct igloos with walls made of snow but with a dome formed of skins; among others, see Parry (1824, p. 358) for a good description. Conversely, at the beginning of winter, the tent is sometimes covered with turf, shrubs and moss; skins are then placed over this initial covering and a vault of snow is erected at the entrance. Sometimes this structure remains; see Boas (1888, pp. 551, 553). Virtually everywhere the Eskimo make use of these intermediate structures, especially when in the course of a trek, even in summer, a period of bad weather forces them to construct a shelter. Kane (1856, p. 46) describes these intermediate structures at Disco in 1851. We should also mention that small houses and tents are generally used to isolate a tabooed woman. On Point Barrow, see especially Murdoch (1892, p. 86); see also Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 141). This is one example of the effect of social physiology on morphology and there are others as well. We are leaving out the summer houses in Alaska, since this question is a little too technical to be discussed here.
77 The figures cited above on Eskimo settlement relate to winter settlements. The concentration of all ‘social unity’ on one point eventually results in a maximum concentration. See the discussion in Rink (1877, vol. 2, p. 253) and very good descriptions in Cranz (1765, XII, 1, 4 and 5), Boas (1888, pp. 482 ff., 561) and Schanz, Woolfe and Porter in Porter (1893, pp. 102 ff., 148, 164).
78 Winter movements are not common except in Baffin Land; see Boas (1901, p. 421). The map of these movements provided by Boas (Map II) ought not, however, to mislead us about the extent of these movements.
79 The only tribe that constitutes a relative exception to this rule is the one at Smith Strait; see Kroeber (1899, pp. 41 ff.) and Peary (1898, vol. 1, pp. 502 ff.). But we have explained that there are special conditions involved for this tribe.
80 See Table 1 in chapter 1, and Holm (1887, pp. 89 ff.).
81 Tales in particular preserve the theme about individuals who live in isolated houses, but this is precisely because of the romantic character of this kind of life; see Rink (1875, pp. 278, 568 [?]) and Boas (1901, p. 202). Hayes (1860, pp. 242–4) explains the existence of isolated individuals on Northumberland Island, Smith Strait: the wife of one individual is a sorceress.
82 Petroff (1884, pp. 125–6 ff.).
83 See Petroff (1884, appendix II) and the texts cited in chapter 1 n. 51 above.
84 See nn. 49 and 50 to this chapter and Sverdrup (1903, vol. 1, p. 150; vol. 2, p. 179; maps: vol. 1, p. 320; vol. 2, p. 128). In these regions there are also ruins of houses which were grouped together; see Sverdrup (1903, vol. 1, p. 211; vol. 2, p. 371).
85 The majority of texts cited in nn. 41–56 of this chapter are drawn from descriptions of winter settlements to which we refer for the last time. Steensby (1905, pp. 51–141) also gives numerous references which we need not list.
86 The plans of Lichtenfels and Neu Herrnhut provided in Cranz (1765, II) come from European missionaries.
87 Rasbinsky in Nelson (1899, p. 247), Jacobsen (1884, p. 324) and Porter (1893, p. 107). One, a winter village facing a summer village, was certainly constructed under Russian influence.
88 See n. 5 of this chapter. The text by Coats which discusses the only ‘case’ is evidently exaggerated.
89 See Richardson in Franklin (1828, pp. 215–16) and Richardson (1851, vol. 1, pp. 254–5). In the north of Melville Peninsula, the ruins are all connected; see Bellot (1854, p. 207). In his discussion of Netchillirmiut igloos, Richardson (1851, vol. 1, p. 350) says: ‘Social intercourse is promoted by building houses contiguously, and cutting doors of communication between them, or by erecting covered passages’. It is quite remarkable that at Cook Inlet, at the point where Indian and Eskimo societies meet, there exists a village in which all the winter houses are connected with the kashim; see Jacobsen (1884, p. 362).
90 There is a great deal of general information on a large number of summer camps in Steensby (1905, pp. 50–130, 142 ff.).
91 For meteorological details, see Kornerup (1880, pp. 28 ff.), Holm (1887–8, pp. 227 ff.) and Warming (1888, pp. 139 ff.).
92 See the descriptions in Nansen (1903, pp. 72 ff.), H. P. Egede (1729, p. 25; 1741, p. 90), Cranz (1765, III, 1, 5) and Rink (1875, p. 7; 1866–71; suppl., p. xiii). The stories clearly indicate the passage from winter to summer; see Rink (1875, pp. 189, 132).
93 Cranz (1770, p. 247).
94 In the southern districts, large camps are formed to fish for capelin, but they are quite temporary and transient.
95 See Rink (1875, vol. 2, pp. 250 ff.).
96 It is possible to extract the history of the dispersions and periodic movements from accounts of different missions during the first years of their establishment: for Labrador, see Periodical Accounts, and for Greenland, Cranz (1765, V; 1770, pp. 4 ff.) and P. H. Egede (1741; 1788, p. 245). There is not enough space here to publish this research which we have done.
97 For maps from Chesterfield Inlet to Repulse Bay, see Parry (1824, p. 195, plate facing p. 198).
98 See Parry (1824, pp. 269, 279) and Lyon (1824, p. 343).
99 For the migration of the tribes of Baffin Land and the area of their dispersion during the summer, see Boas (1888, pp. 421 ff.), where he summarizes the majority of texts.
100 There is a great deal of information in almost all the voyagers’ accounts. Among others, see Franklin (1828, pp. 120–1) and especially those who were sent in search of Franklin. They made their explorations during the summer and everywhere they found abandoned winter villages, scattered tents and dispersed camps. We do not have the space to indicate all the references; these are already provided by Steensby (1905). We may simply add to his and to those of Boas the following: Hanbury (1904, pp. 42, 124, 126, 127, 142, 144, 145, 176, 214, 216) and Tyrrell (1898, pp. 105, 110), which cover the least known regions between Chesterfield Inlet and the Mackenzie.
101 On these journeys, some of which extended over two years, see Murdoch (1892, pp. 43, 45) and the texts cited; also Simpson (1875, p. 243) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 137).
102 Petitot (1887, p. 28). The majority, however, are meeting-points for trading with Europeans or Indians; elsewhere we find the same tribes completely dispersed; see Petitot (1887, pp. 166, 167, 179). Hooper (1853, p. 260) reports a large camp of two hundred tents in July 1850 at Herschel Island. See also MacClure (1853, p. 92).
103 Hooper (1853, p. 348 and illustration facing p. 350) and Richardson (1851, vol. 1, p. 248).
104 Equally temporary phenomena explain the larger camps observed by Beechey (1831, vol. 1, pp. 247, 256), which are quite close to other small camps.
105 On these villages, rather than Nelson (1899, pp. 285 ff.), see Schanz and Weber in Porter (1893, pp. 180 ff.).
106 The village observed by Nelson (1899, p. 261) at Hotham Inlet is a temporary trading village. For other similar instances, see Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 137) and Murdoch (1892, p. 80).
107 For these villages, see Nelson (1899, pp. 242 ff.) who limits the existence of permanent summer villages to the Kuskokwim region.
108 See Porter (1893, p. 123) and Elliott (1886, pp. 402, 404). The Togiagmiut, according to Jacobsen (1884, p. 347) and Elliott (1886, p. 401), still lived in summer tents although they were affected by the same conditions as the Kuskokwgmiut, the Kvikkpagmiut, Ikogmiut, etc. We therefore surmise that the use of the house and the summer village constructed of wood originated with the Russians in these regions.
109 Ratzel (1895, pp. 163 ff.; 1897, pp. 263–7; 1899, vol. 1, pp. 217 ff.); see also Durkheim (1901, p. 565).
110 See Boas (1888, p. 421) and Figure 6 above; see also the map in Parry (1824, plate facing p. 198). The major expeditions by Hall and Schwatka to the Boothia Peninsula and King William Land and by Hanbury over the entire arctic coast were made in company with Eskimo families.
111 The most remarkable voyage is that of some people from Baffin Land to Smith Strait and of their attempt to return; see Rasmussen (1905, pp. 21 ff.) and Boas (1888, pp. 443, 459). The Eskimo frequently crossed from western to southern Greenland; see Holm (1888, p. 56).
112 Parry (1824, pp. xiii, 185, 195, 198, 251, 253, 276, 513, 514), Lyon (1824, pp. 160, 161, 177, 250), Franklin (1828, p. 132, dealing with Herschel Island), Petitot (1887, p. 73, which is absurd), Beechey (1831, vol. 2, pp. 291, 331), Miertsching (1864, p. 83), Hall (1864, vol. 2, pp. 331, 342), Boas (1888, pp. 643–8), Holm (1888, tables, woodcuts on plate XXXI) and Simpson, Discoveries on the Shores of the Arctic Sea, p. 149. [Reference uncertain, possibly either T. Simpson (1843) or Dease and Simpson (1838 and 1839). JJF.]
1 In any case, we must do away with the classic notion of the ‘arctic house’ which is still found in Berghaus (1850–2, p. 67).
2 See the isotherms, even for winter, in Bartholomew (1899, map XVII), although the cold pole of Werchoi’ansk (Siberia) should be omitted. See also Geogr. Jour. 1904. [Specific reference uncertain, probably Mackinder. JJF.]
3 Hearne, one of the first explorers, drew this opposition (1795, pp. 160, 162), as did Coats (1852, p. 33); see also Petitot (1887, p. 26).
4 Jacobsen (1884) specifically notes the greater endurance of the Indians of Alaska.
5 See Porter (1893, p. 103) and Elliott (1886, p. 405).
6 Steensby (1905, p. 105, thesis 2; pp. 199 ff.).
7 Except among the Eskimo of Point Barrow (Murdoch, 1892, p. 344), snowshoes have not been in use for very long and may even have been imported. In any case, those mentioned by Kumlien (1879, p. 42) and Boas (1901, p. 41) are certainly rare and of recent origin, probably imported by whalers. Their use has been spread by Europeans in Greenland and by the Eskimo from Baffin Land to Smith Strait. According to Maclean (1849, vol. 1, p. 139), the Eskimo were confined to the coast just because of their lack of snowshoes. Steensby (1905, p. 10) speaks somewhat incorrectly of ‘snesko’, probably referring to the waterproof boot. The only exception is that of the Nooatok of Alaska, but they are intermixed with Indians and, since they can follow game, live in the interior; furthermore they have a morphology that is quite similar to that of the Cree or the Tinneh. See Wells and Kelly (1890, pp. 14–15, 26–7), Porter (1893, p. 125) and Nelson (1899, p. 18). But we know practically nothing else about this tribe.
8 In 1822 there was practically no summer at Iglulik; the people remarked on this to Parry and told him that they did not disperse to hunt reindeer; see Parry (1824, p. 357).
9 The preceding description is, in large part, similar to that given by Boas (1888, pp. 419–20); see also Richardson (1861, pp. 300 ff.). The Eskimo of Point Barrow who live by hunting reindeer during the winter constitute the exception which actually confirms the rule, because they can do this thanks to their snowshoes; see Simpson (1875, pp. 261–3) and Murdoch (1892, pp. 45 ff.).
10 We are not considering for the time being the question of the length of arctic days and nights. Whereas the darkness causes a general slowing down in animal and vegetable life, the enormous impact of the summer sun effects an incomparable growth. On this point see G. Andersson (1902) and Rikli (1903).
11 For lack of space, we cannot discuss here the progressions and variations through which this dispersion and spreading out occurs. But it would be a pity not to quote Parry’s description (1824, p. 534) of the perfect accord and the automatic nature of these movements: ‘In all their movements they seem to be actuated by one simultaneous feeling that is truly admirable.’
1 We will not make every effort here, as we did with morphology, to provide a table of every Eskimo law and religious practice, nor to give a list of equivalents of every custom in each Eskimo society whether well known or not, nor to indicate, when we lack such equivalents, the cause of the absence of this or that fact. The task would be difficult if not impossible, and, given the nature of our subject, misleading as well. It is enough for us to recall the remarkable unity of the whole of Eskimo culture (see Introduction, n. 2), and it will be enough for us to show the extent of some of the main phenomena and to indicate, as we proceed, their different effects in the diverse societies, so that we can draw our conclusions.
Neither have we troubled to provide a description of the two technologies of summer and winter, whose contrast is just as great as the two systems of law or religion. Steensby (1905, pp. 142 ff.) has dealt with this question very well.
2 European travellers who either passed through Eskimo territory or who stayed in one place and were unable to follow Eskimo migrations have provided very little information on summer religious activities. They tell us nothing and we can draw our own conclusion. The collective summer festivities in Alaska (see Woolfe in Porter (1893, pp. 141–2) and Nelson (1899, p. 295)) and in Greenland (see Cranz (1765, IV, 1, 5) and the tales, which are partially fantasy, in Rink (1875, pp. 125, 137 ff.)) are quite simply exceptions that are associated with markets. The festivities held in June at Point Barrow (see Murdoch (1892, p. 375) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 142)) are the result of whale-hunting that extends the duration of the winter group. Moreover, these festivities appear to be distinct from the ‘formal’ festivals of winter; see Murdoch (1892, p. 365).
3 These are sometimes different in summer and winter. On provisional naming among the Unalit, see Nelson (1899, p. 289). For the custom at Angmagssalik, see n. 24 in this chapter.
4 These are naturally different depending on the number and nature of the populations and objects involved. On Ungava, see Turner (1894, p. 193); on Greenland, see H. P. Egede (1741, pp. 82–3).
5 The description of the majority of performances by angekok refer to houses and, hence, to the winter. See, however, Parry (1824, p. 369). Holm (1888, p. 123) says of Angmagssalik: ‘De rigtige Angekokkunster foregaa kun om Vinteren’. [‘The true angekok artist performs only in winter.’]
6 For these performances in Greenland, see Egede (1729, p. 45; 1741, p. 115) and Cranz (1765, III, 5, 39 and 41), who says that the magician cannot make his tour among the Torngarsuk before the autumn and that this tour is shortest in winter. In Rink (1875, pp. 37, 60), the great art appears to be restricted to the winter. For Labrador, see Turner (1894, pp. 194 ff.); for the central regions, see Boas (1888, pp. 592 ff.; 1901, pp. 121, 128 ff., 240: tale 53) and Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 319); for the Mackenzie, see Petitot (1876, p. xxiv); for Point Barrow, Murdoch (1892, pp. 430 ff.); for the western Eskimo, Simpson (1875, p. 271), and for Alaska, Nelson (1899, pp. 435 ff.).
7 Nelson (1899, pp. 284, 288) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 149).
8 Parry (1824, p. 509) and Hall (1864, vol. 2, pp. 182, 197).
9 For the central Eskimo, see Boas (1888, p. 611: ‘It is a busy season’. [604: ‘It is then a busy season for the wizards.’ JJF.]; 1901, pp. 121 ff.). For a striking anecdote, see Rasmussen (1905, P. 29).
10 H. P. Egede (1741, pp. 85 ff.) and Cranz (1765, III, 5, 3 ff.);see also the reports on Neu Herrnhut.
11 On confession, see Boas (1901, pp. 128 ff.) and Lewis (1904, p. 63); Lyon (1824, pp. 357 ff.) notes the same facts.
12 For this reason it is probably necessary to have an angekok in the winter settlement. For Smith Sound, see Rasmussen (1905, p. 161) and for western Greenland, Cranz (1767, vol. 2, p. 304, note).
13 See Petroff (1884, p. 132), Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 24) and Schanz in Porter (1893, p. 94).
14 For the Nugumiut, the kashim is dedicated to a spirit, and consequently all that occurs there has a religious character; see Boas (1888, p. 601; 1901, pp. 148, 332: tale). In Greenland, the word that signifies a festival and an assembly contains the radical ‘qagse’. See references cited in chapter 2 n. 66 above.
15 Nelson (1899, pp. 285 ff., 388 ff.), Murdoch (1892, p. 374) and Boas (1888, p. 602).
16 Nelson (1899, pp. 368 ff.), Elliott (1886, pp. 393 ff.), Zagoskin in Petroff (1884), Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 143) and Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 24); also Murdoch (1892, p. 434) and the comparisons made in the notes.
17 Nelson (1899, pp. 358 ff.).
18 Woolfe in Porter (1893, pp. 140–1); for the festival at Ignitkok, see Jacobsen (1884, p. 260). These two travellers make the same error and do not appreciate the idea of namesakes. See Wassilieff in Wrangell (1839, p. 130) and Elliott (1886, pp. 390, 393); also Zagoskin’s report in Petroff (1884, p. 130) and Wells and Kelly (1890). We have no information about the presence or absence of this ritual at Point Barrow. For the central regions as far as Chesterfield Inlet, we have little information; see, however, Petitot (1887, pp. 156, 167), which is dubious. For the central Eskimo, see Boas (1888, pp. 608, 610, 628 n. 6; 1901, pp. 146, 148, and tales on pp. 186, 330), Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 120), Kumlien (1879, p. 48), Lewis (1904, pp. 41 ff. (the tribe at Fort Churchill) and p. 242 (Blacklead Island)). As for Greenland, we know only the outlines of the ritual; see P. H. Egede (1750, p. 5: ‘Attekkessiorok, dat cui quid nominis gratia’). For Labrador, see Erdmann (1864, p. 20, col. 2; p. 42). See also Rink (1875, pp. 281 ff., tale no. 47), which deals with a ritual offering to a child who has the same name as the deceased, and Cranz (1770, pp. 110, 334).
19 On the Nugumiut, see Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 320), also Boas (1888, p. 606). In our opinion, the rite called the extinguishing of the lamps, which occurs throughout Greenland, is, according to observers, nothing more than a rite of sexual licence often associated with a séance of the winged angekok which probably once accompanied the sun festival summarily noted by Cranz (1765, III, 3, 23 and 24); see n. 89 in this chapter. On the exchange of women that follows the extinguishing of the lamps among the Qumarmiut, see S. Rink (1900, p. 44: ‘som Skik var over hele Kysten baade hvergang det var Nymaane og efter visse Fester’: ‘as was customarily done along the entire coast at each new moon or after certain festivals’).
20 See pp. 62 ff.
21 Boas (1888, p. 604, Appendix, note 6; 1901, p. 141).
22 Boas (1888, p. 611; 1901, p. 140). Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 313) alludes to this rite which consists in pressing a bird’s skin onto the head of the child, after its birth.
23 A text in Boas (1901, p. 140) allows this conjecture.
24 Holm (1888, p. 91); see also the obscure text in H. P. Egede (1741, p. 81).
25 We allude to the myth of Sedna, examples of which, we believe, can be found throughout Eskimo culture. Sedna appears to be the primary mythological figure assigned to explain and sanction the taboos concerning sea animals and, consequently among others, the seasonal taboos. For this myth, see Lyon (1824, p. 362), Boas (1888, pp. 583 ff.; 1901, pp. 120, 145 ff., 163) and Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 321). On the distribution and origin of this myth, see Boas (1904), and for my review of Boas, see Mauss (1905).
26 Beliefs such as those that underlie the tale from Greenland concerning Igludtsialek are precisely the product of these taboos and of a Sedna myth which is entirely autochthonous. The female angekok requests her ‘summer dress’ to go up into the mountains to break up and destroy the ice; see Rink (1875, pp. 150 ff.).
27 Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 321) and Boas (1901, p. 122), also Tyrrell (1898, pp. 169 ff.) and Lewis (1904, pp. 43, 122). In Hanbury (1904, pp. 46 ff., 69, 97, 100), there are some very interesting details about the injunction against working reindeer-skin on the ice or sealskin on land, etc.
28 Boas (1901, p. 122) and Hall (1864, vol. 1, pp. 201–2). Something that happened by chance to the founders of the Labrador Mission demonstrates that the same belief was current there; see The Moravians in Labrador (1833, pp. 21–2, 100).
29 Boas (1901, p. 123).
30 Boas (1901, p. 123); see also the myth mentioned in Boas (1888, pp. 587–8). It appears, moreover, that the myth has taken various forms, even among the Aivilik; see Hanbury (1904).
31 Boas (1901, p. 124).
32 Boas (1901, p. 124).
33 Boas (1901, p. 122).
34 See Durkheim and Mauss (1903). In exactly the same way the Zuñi seem to have classified things into those of summer and those of winter in accordance with their two phratries. Among the Eskimo, the division into things of the sea and things of the land appears to us to coincide with that between summer and winter.
35 See Durkheim (1902).
36 This opposition has already been noted by Parry (1824, p. 534), Lyon (1824, p. 250), Boas (1888, pp. 562 ff.), Lewis (1904, p. 52), Richardson (1861, pp. 318 ff.), Glasunov in Wrangell (1839, pp. 130 ff.) and (for Alaska) by Schanz in Porter (1893, p. 106); and see also the generalizations by Petroff (1884, pp. 125 ff.). Moreover, although the excellent books by Rink (1875, pp. 23 ff.; 1887, p. 26), Nelson (1899) and Murdoch (1892) do not expressly mention this opposition, they provide a considerable number of facts that support our theory. There is also a gap in the work of Steensby, who recognized the opposition of the two technologies but did not see that of the two legal structures of Eskimo society.
37 For western Greenland, Cumberland Sound and Churchill River, see Morgan (1871, pp. 275 ff.). Another list from Cumberland Sound was published by Dall (1877, pp. 95 ff.).
38 See n. 50 in this chapter.
39 On the composition of the summer family, see Rink (1875, pp. 20 ff.) and Turner (1894, p. 183).
40 The role of provider was recognized by the first Danish authors; see Cranz (1765, III, 3 and 4 and the numerous facts mentioned in the reports for 1738, 1743, etc.).
41 See Rink (1875, p. 28 and the tales on p. 169).
42 Unless someone has marriageable daughters. If the children are very young, they seem to be regularly put to death. For contrary evidence, see Murdoch (1892, p. 318), but, as is well known, the population at Point Barrow is extremely reduced.
43 Rink (1875, p. 24) and Holm (1888, p. 97).
44 Rink (1875, p. 24), Turner (1894, p. 190 which is particularly clear), Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 370), Boas (1888, pp. 545 ff.) and Nelson (1899, pp. 285 ff.).
45 Rink (1875, p. 25), Holm (1888, p. 88) and Boas (1888, p. 566).
46 See chapter 1, n. 10. Lyon (1824, p. 353) also mentions the fact that a young widow would be available to all the members of the settlement for some time before she was put to death.
47 This latter fact could serve to explain another one that is curious and, at first sight, disconcerting: the absolute independence of the child and the respect that parents have for it; see the texts cited above in chapter 1, n. 40 and nn. 17 and 18 in this chapter. They never strike a child and even obey a child’s orders. The child is not just the hope of the family, in the sense that we would give to that word today, but the reincarnation of an ancestor. Within the restricted, isolated and autonomous summer family, the child is like the pole that attracts beliefs and interests.
48 The first comparison between the moral order of the Eskimo long-house and of the Indian house was made by Rink (1887, p. 23); see also Tyrrell (1898, p. 68).
49 See Morgan (1871, pp. 275 ff.).
50 See Rink (1887, pp. 93 ff.) with equivalent terms, and P. H. Egede (1750, p. 32: iglu), Kleinschmidt (1871, p. 75: igdlo), Erdmann (1864, pp. 52, 63) and Petitot (1876, p. xliii). See also Egede (1729, p. 45).
51 Rink (1877 [?], vol. 2, pp. 9, 26) and Petitot (1876, p. xxix).
52 Murdoch (1892, p. 75).
53 Jacobsen (1884, pp. 240–1). Most of the ‘meillagers’ are people adopted by the quasi-chief, Isaac. See the description of the winter family in Holm (1888, p. 66: Table XXIII and, for names and genealogies, p. 95).
54 Rink (1875, p. 25). See also H. P. Egede (1741, p. 79); Cranz (1765, III, 2, 13), Holm (1888, pp. 85, 94), Turner (1894, pp. 188–9) and Boas (1888, p. 579). For contrary evidence, see Lyon (1824, pp. 352–4) and Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 22): these are certainly inaccurate and perhaps allude to sexual licence.
55 From Egede to Holm (1888, p. 194), all Danish writers have used the term, ‘sammenbragde’. Egede (1729, p. 79) adds something that does not occur subsequently, ‘in dit saadan Huse’. In Rink (1875, p. 291), there is a tale of a boy who is supposed to have married his adopted sister in Greenland; but the adoption was recent and the children had not been brought up together.
56 Moreover, in Point Barrow, cousins are often regarded as brother and sister; see Murdoch (1892, p. 421).
57 Nelson (1899, p. 291).
58 One can even extract from the genealogy given in Holm (1888, p. 95) the fact that the cousins Angitinguak (m.), Angmalilik (m.), Kutuluk (f.) and Nakitilik (f.) all married people from their settlement, and their children also married within the settlement where they had settled.
59 Nelson (1899, p. 291).
60 On the totemic clan of the Unalit and its exogamy, see Nelson (1899, pp. 322 ff.).
61 In Rink (1875, pp. 25–6), the existence of genuine heads of houses is really reported only for northern Alaska. See also Simpson (1875, p. 272), Murdoch (1892, p. 429), Petroff (1884, p. 125) and Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 135).
62 On this point, see Rink (1875, pp. 26, 54; 1887, p. 22), also Cranz (1770, p. 329).
63 Nunaqatigit in the Greenland language. See Rink (1891, p. 93, section 29) and the various dictionaries.
64 Reinforced by the continual communal feast which constitutes life in the kashim or in the winter igloos.
65 See p. 47 above.
66 Egede (1729, p. 37; 1741, p. 91), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 20), Dalager (1758), Coats (1852, p. 76: ‘gentle and sociable’; see chapter 2 n. 1 in this book), Parry (1824, pp. 500, 533), who deals with both the moral regime of the winter settlement and that of the winter long-house, and Wassilieff and Glasunov in Wrangell (1839, p. 129). We refer only to the older authors because later remarks have since become completely stylized; see Nansen (1903, pp. 293 ff., 138 ff.).
67 See especially Cranz (1765, III, 4, 28). Nelson (1899, pp. 301 ff.) gives a kind of historical picture made up of diverse facts from Alaska in 1881–2.
68 Rink (1875, p. 34).
69 See examples in Murdoch (1892, p. 420), Simpson (1875, p. 252), Parry (1824, p. 529: the Iglulik), Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 135) and Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 19). Fidelity in marriage appears to these latter authors to be contrary to the custom of wife exchange, but no such contradiction exists.
70 Rink (1875, pp. 34 ff.; 1887, p. 24), Nelson (1899, p. 293), Schanz in Porter (1893, p. 103), Boas (1888, p. 582; 1901, p. 116) and Lewis (1904, p. 32).
71 Rink (1875, pp. 35–6). It is expressly stated that threatening the life of a ‘housemate’ is not liable to blood vengeance. But, to the contrary, see the numerous tales in Rink (1875: no. 30 on pp. 224 ff.; 38 on pp. 255 ff., etc.). See also Hanbury (1904, p. 46). Tyrrell (1898, p. 170) mentions a rule (for Labrador?, Chesterfield Inlet?) which requires a murderer simply to adopt the family of his victim; we suspect this comes from some confusion with Indian practice. However, see Boas (1901, p. 118) for data that could have given rise to the error.
72 See examples in the tales in Rink (1875: no. 22: Angutisugssuk, etc.) and Boas (1901, pp. 72 ff.).
73 See H. P. Egede (1729, p. 43; 1741, p. 86), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 23), Rink (1875, pp. 33, 67), Holm (1888, pp. 157 ff.; tales nos 47 ff. which deal with Angmagssalik) and Rasmussen (1905: Cape York and Smith Sound).
74 See Steinmetz (1892, p. 67). According to Tylor (1883–4, p. 268), the songs might be of Scandinavian origin. This is possible. But it is difficult to assert a European origin for the public reproach practised in Alaska (Nelson, 1899, p. 293) which results in the execution of the sentence. And a parallel practice could easily give rise to the Greenland custom. On the other hand, there are no other exact Eskimo equivalents; see examples from Fort Churchill in Franklin (1828, pp. 182, 197); see also Tyrrell (1898, p. 132) and Gilder (1881, p. 245).
75 See Cranz (1765, III, 4, 33).
76 Rink (1875, pp. 34–5), Holm (1888, p. 58); see also Nelson (1899, p. 430).
77 Rink (1875, pp. 34–5).
78 Boas (1901, pp. 121 ff.). See, however, an anecdote in Rasmussen (1905, p. 31) about the daughter of an angekok from Baffin Land abandoned by her father because she did not confess to having violated a taboo.
79 Boas (1901, pp. 121 ff.).
80 Rink (1875, p. 34) and Nelson (1899, pp. 291 ff.). For a remarkable rite (a declaration of war?), see Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 24) and Wassilieff in Wrangell (1839, p. 132).
81 Rink (1875, p. 35 and tales on pp. 174–5, 235, 206–7, and p. 211 in contrast to pp. 357–8). On tribes to the north versus those to the south, see Schultz-Lorentzen (1904, p. 320).
82 Boas (1888, p. 465; 1901, p. 116, tales nos 72 ff.), Kumlien (1879, p. 12) and Klutschak (1881, p. 228).
83 Holm (1888, p. 87) and S. Rink (1900, p. 45).
84 Rink (1875, p. 157, tales nos 39 and 40).
85 Boas (1888, pp. 465, 609; 1901, p. 116); see also Klutschak (1881, pp. 67 ff.), Schwatka (1884).
86 Nelson (1899, pp. 294 ff.).
87 Boas (1888, p. 609; 1901, p. 609). See also the tales about the bloody end of a ball game in Rink (1875, pp. 211, 226).
88 On the widespread exchange of women among the Eskimo, see Richardson (1861, p. 319) and Murdoch (1892, p. 413).
89 H. P. Egede (1741, p. 78) and P. Egede (1750, p. 100) on the word malliserpok. If Cranz does not mention this custom in his description, it is because of his tendency to be an apologist; but he mentions an ‘extinguishing of the lamps’ ritual in connection with whale-hunting (1765, III, 5, 43). In the report of the Mission we find other traces of it, for example in 1743; see Cranz (1767, vol. 2, p. 70). It is indeed remarkable that Rink neither mentions this custom nor has left a tale which properly relates to it, except perhaps for the universal Eskimo tale about the incest of the sun and moon (1875, p. 236). In the versions of the tale which we consider the most primitive, this incest always occurs in a kashim and naturally at the time of the extinguishing of the lamps. See the bibliography on this tale in Boas (1901, p. 359); see also Thalbitzer (1904, p. 275). This is very important because it demonstrates that the scene indeed occurs as we say; see Rasmussen (1905, p. 194).
90 See n. 19 in this chapter. See also Petitot (1887, p. 166) and Lewis (1904, pp. 55, 242). This exchange occurs after every angekok ceremony at Kinipetu. See Boas (1901, pp. 139, 158), Klutschak (1881a, p. 210) and Turner (1894, pp. 178, 200). The only probable exception is the tribe at Point Barrow where Murdoch searched vainly (perhaps insufficiently) for this practice (1892, p. 375). The custom of temporary exchange is practised, in any case, and Murdoch compares this to communal sex (1892, p. 415).
91 The prohibition on sexual relations between consanguines appears to be respected. See Holm (1888, p. 98) and the tale about the sun and moon already cited in n. 89 above.
92 Wrangell (1839) describes the way in which old women in the lower Yukon region offer themselves by virtue of distant kinship relations. But the practice is perhaps the same as that cited below.
93 Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 323), Lewis (1904, p. 41) and Boas (1901, pp. 139, 158).
94 For the Ikogmiut, see Nelson (1899, pp. 379, 494).
95 Moreover, from this latter point of view, a temporary exchange amounts to the same thing; see Murdoch (1892, p. 419) and Porter (1893, p. 39).
96 See Weber in Porter (1893, p. 103), Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 19), Murdoch (1892, p. 413), Parry (1824, p. 300) (who reports an anecdote about the angekok Toolemak) and Lyon (1824, p. 354), who speaks of the exchanging of sisters that is quite possible.
97 See Lyon (1824, p. 354).
98 Parry (1824, p. 530), Murdoch (1892, pp. 413, 419), Boas (1888, p. 579), Kumlien (1879, p. 42) and Lewis (1904, p. 55).
99 The angekok even appears to have a special right; see the anecdote in Parry (1824, p. 300); also Turner (1894, p. 200).
100 Peary (1898, vol. 1, p. 497) and Kroeber (1899, p. 56).
101 Peary (1898, vol. 1, p. 497). Rasmussen does not mention this detail in his excellent description of the exchange of women (1905, p. 64).
102 Kane (1856, vol. 2, p. 211).
103 Nelson (1899, p. 493) and Porter (1893, p. 103). Naturally this does not preclude those exchanges within the settlement which result in the same rights. See also Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 29).
104 Nelson (1899, p. 493).
105 The same terms are used as those for natural kin in Greenland. The American census-takers are convinced that the mingling of rights and of blood is so complete that the establishment of genealogies is almost impossible.
106 Nansen (1903, pp. 146, 204 no. 1); see also the obscure information from Klutschak (1881a, p. 234).
107 See n. 58 in this chapter.
108 Nelson does not in fact mention this in regard to the Unalit. And it is very remarkable that in the masked festivities of the neighbouring tribes (Ahpokagamiut, Ikogmiut), women are exchanged without regard to kinship; see Porter (1893, p. 103) and Nelson (1899, pp. 379, 494).
109 See Rink (1875, p. 28).
110 See Cranz (1765, III, 3, 22) and Boas (1888, p. 577).
111 For all that follows, particularly in regard to Greenland, see Dalager (1758), H. P. Egede (1741, p. 81, which is less precise), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25, which follows Dalager) and Rink (1875, pp. 10 ff., 22 ff.). It seems that Danish writers all refer to a codification of information compiled just once by Dalager, H. P. Egede and the Moravian Brethren, at the beginning of the European settlements. See Cranz (1765, X, sections 4, 5, 6 and the reports from Neu Herrnhut for 1746, 1750; 1767, vol. 2, pp. 88, 142). Nordenskiöld (1885, pp. 500 ff.) and Nansen (1903, p. 106) only repeat information from other Danish writers.
112 Among the central and western Eskimo, she always takes it with her in the event of divorce.
113 Rink (1875, p. 30), Holm (1888, p. 118) and Nelson (1899, p. 137).
114 Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25).
115 We are not aware of a single exception to this rule among all the writers who have discussed the Eskimo; we therefore refrain from providing references.
116 On property marks and their distribution, see Boas (1899, pp. 602 ff.) and Hoffman (1897, pp. 720 ff.) [?]. The distribution of these property marks certainly goes beyond the Mackenzie region; see Petitot (1887, p. 187). Boas states that they are not known in Baffin Land nor to the north-west of Hudson Bay; see, however, (1901, p. 94). But, without assuming the necessity of physical marks, it is certain that hunting rights as precise as those of the Eskimo could not be employed unless each hunter had some means of proving which weapon was his. See Dalager in Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25) as well as p. 75 above.
117 On the power of the totem, see Nelson (1899, pp. 323 ff.).
118 Nelson (1899, p. 438); see also Chappell (1817, p. 65).
119 Lyon (1824, p. 21); Chappell (1817, p. 55).
120 Anecdote in Nansen (1903, p. 91). European snowshoes are not subject to ordinary rules.
121 It is buried with her; see Boas (1888, p. 580).
122 See Rink (1875, p. 30), Turner (1894, p. 105) and Boas (1888, p. 541).
123 Rink (1875, pp. 23, 28).
124 Examples in Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 250).
126 See the tales in Boas (1901, pp. 172, 202, 211, 239, etc.).
127 See Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25), Rink (1875, pp. 10, 23), Holm (1888, pp. 83 ff.), Boas (1888, pp. 581 ff.), Murdoch (1892, p. 85), Petitot (1876, p. xxxi), Richardson (1861, p. 319), Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 137) and Petroff (1884, p. 125).
128 Holm (1888, p. 87), S. Rink (1900, p. 51), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25; X, 7), Dalager (1758), P. H. Egede (1788), Rink (1875, p. 27, who formally states that this is a rule for the winter settlement) and Nansen (1903, pp. 91 ff., who repeats Dalager, and introduces some errors). At Smith Strait, the communalism seems both absolute and limited exclusively to bopladfaeller; see the anecdote in Rasmussen (1905, p. 81), also Nordenskiöld (1885, p. 503), Boas (1888, p. 577), Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 290), Klutschak (1881a, p. 66), Kumlien (1879, p. 18), Petitot (1876, p. xxxii) and Porter (1893, pp. 103, 137, 141, etc.). Nelson and Murdoch have nothing to say on this subject.
129 S. Rink (1900, p. 51) and Rink (1875, pp. 26 ff.).
130 Rink (1875, p. 26), Dalager (1758), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 5), H. P. Egede (1741, p. 91), Boas (1888, p. 587: limited to strangers).
131 Nelson (1899, p. 285) says the same, that the kashim may be built by several villages of the same tribe and that this reinforces their feelings of friendship. Simpson (1875, p. 259) says that all kashim are the property of particular individuals. See also Parry (1824, p. 360). Murdoch (1892, p. 79) denies this.
132 Boas (1888, p. 577), Hall (1879, p. 226) and Klutschak (1881a, p. 234).
133 Rasmussen’s history of the Eskimo of Baffin Land states that these Eskimo introduced to the tribe at Smith Strait a communal rite of passing the bone (1905, p. 32); see also Hall (1864, vol. 1, p. 170; vol. 2, p. 120; 1879, p. 226) and Lyon (1824, pp. 125, 127).
134 Rink (1875, p. 28); or, rather, everyone in the district comes of their own accord, according to Dalager (1758). On Point Barrow, see Murdoch (1892, p. 438).
135 Rink (1875, p. 29). We are not saying that this whale-hunting takes place in winter, nor that the stranding of dead whales occurs in this season; we simply think that this right ought to be compared with the right of the assembled community in regard to smaller whales which applies especially in winter.
136 Rink (1875, p. 29), who repeats Cranz and Dalager.
137 Rink (1875, p. 29) and Nelson (1899, p. 294).
138 Rink (1875, p. 30). For Labrador, see Stearns (1884, p. 256); for central Eskimo, see Parry (1824, p. 530); Lyon (1824, pp. 302, 348–9). Lyon’s account has a minor error of observation but his remark about the feeling of envy in the community is quite significant.
139 See Rink (1875, pp. 27, 132 ff.: tale of Kunuk).
140 Boas (1888).
141 Seep. 59.
142 See nn. 17, 18, 93 and 94 in this chapter. See, in particular, Wrangell (1839, p. 132), also Porter (1893, pp. 138, 141).
143 Boas (1888, p. 605; 1901, p. 184).
144 Seep. 75.
145 The comparison has been made by Weber in Porter (1893, p. 106) and Wells and Kelly (1890, p. 28).
146 Nelson (1899, pp. 303 ff.).
147 Nelson (1899, p. 305); see also Jacobsen (1884, p. 281).
148 Hall (1864, vol. 2, p. 320) states: ‘The exchange of gifts is intended to produce an abundance of riches.’ This perhaps explains things better than the entire potlatch hypothesis.
149 See chapter 2 nn. 16 and 17. All writers agree that each family is absolutely independent.
151 See chapter 2 nn. 33–40. On relations within the family, see Parry (1824, p. 534) and Lyon (1824, p. 351).
152 To the contrary, see Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25), who says that the Eskimo always enter the winter house at one and the same time.
153 On adoption in general, see Steinmetz (1893), who notes Eskimo data.
154 Lyon (1824, p. 303) and Lewis (1904, p. 55). It is evident from Hanserâk’s lists given in Holm (1888, p. 183) that most families have taken in at least one or two strangers.
155 For Greenland, Rink (1875, tale no. 7 on pp. 124 ff.), Holm (1888, tale no. 4, etc.) and Rasmussen (1905, p. 226); for Labrador, Turner (1894, p. 265); for the central Eskimo, Boas (1888, pp. 602 ff.; 1901, pp. 309 ff.) and Petitot (1886, p. 8); for Alaska, Nelson (1899, p. 510 ff.).
156 The absence of a provider has a considerable effect on the life of old people who can claim food from their children as long as they can follow them.
157 See nn. 45 and 46 in this chapter. Cranz (1765, III, 4, 28) seems to indicate that it is indeed this phenomenon that, in Greenland, resulted in adoption.
158 Examples in Hall (1864, vol. 2, pp. 214, 219).
159 Dalager (1758, p. 96), H. P. Egede (1741, p. 88), Cranz (1765, III, 3, 25; III, 4, 41), Lyon (1824, p. 349), Hanbury (1904, p. 42, which mentions the offer of women) and Petitot (1887, p. 142).
160 On the permanent exchange of women, see p. 69; on the results of these exchanges, see Schanz in Porter (1893, p. 103).
161 On the eastern, western and central regions, see p. 71 and nn. 112–19; see also Boas (1901, pp. 116, 211, note in a tale).
162 For Greenland, see n. 116 in this chapter.
1 For examples, see the tale in Boas (1901, p. 335): every night is spent in the kashim.
2 The difference stands out in Carstensen (1890, p. 127).
3 Rink (1875, p. 80). The increase in the number of houses is considered by Ryberg as progress toward a European way of life. See chapter 1, Table 1, note c.
4 See, in general, Niblack (1890).
5 See Mauss (1906, pp. 202–4).
6 Boas (1897) and Durkheim (1900a, p. 336).
7 Boas (1897, p. 418). [Boas actually writes as follows: ‘The Indians express this alternating of seasons by saying that in summer the bā’xus is on top, the ts’ets’aēga below, and vice versa in the winter.’ Earlier in the same paragraph, Boas explains that bā’xus refers to those who have not been initiated and might be translated as ‘profane’. Ts’ets’aēga, the secrets, designates the winter ceremony itself. JJF.]
8 Mindeleff (1898); see also Durkheim (1904b, p. 663).
9 For a study of Wallachian seasonal migrations, see de Martonne (1902, p. 107).
10 Davids and Oldenberg (1881, pp. 298 ff.). See Oldenberg (1903, p. 360), Kern (1901–3, vol. 2, pp. 5, 42; 1896, p. 42).
11 See the tale in Rink (1875, p. 189) in which a woman is happy to leave the settlement and complains of having had too many visitors. Note Jacobsen’s happiness at escaping from the constant frenzied activity of a winter house (1884, p. 241).
12 Woolfe in Porter (1893, p. 137) on the tribe at Icy Cape and Point Kay; Murdoch (1892, p. 80) on the camp of Imekpun in 1883.
13 See some information along these lines in Durkheim (1897, pp. 100–2).
14 Regarding the idea of time, Hubert (1905) has recently arrived at a hypothesis about the rhythm of collective life which would explain the formation of the calendar.
15 See Durkheim (1904a, pp. 137 ff.).
16 See Durkheim (1902).
17 See Durkheim (1897, chapters 2–4).
18 Durkheim and Mauss (1903).
19 The editing and correcting of proofs for this work were mainly done by Marcel Mauss. Henri Beuchat is not responsible for any errors.