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The Eskimo Boy and His Father Fishing

Not long ago a man named Rasmussen, whose father was a missionary in Greenland and whose mother was an Eskimo, made a long journey through Eskimo land. At one place he found a dead whale on the seashore and the Eskimos there felt as rich as we should if a carload of coal or fire-wood were dumped down in the yard. They were busy tearing off strips of the fat, called blubber, that lies under the whale's skin. Some of them were hauling it two days' journey on their sleds. Some of the people Rasmussen saw had never even heard of white men or of any of the things the white man makes. They themselves had to make everything they had.

Their boats (or kyaks) were of seal skins sewed into a water-tight sheet and stretched over a frame-work of whale rib bones and long walrus tusks, tied together with sinews and strips of leather. In these tiny boats they paddle around in the sea and catch seals with spears.

Nearly all the Eskimos live along the seashore where they can catch fish, seals and walrus. The seal is the greatest wealth the Eskimo has. The seal eats fish and keeps warm in the ice-cold water because he has a coat of soft, fine, water-proof fur, and under his skin a thick layer of fat. Seal meat is bread to the Eskimo. He cooks with seal fat and makes clothes, boats, and tents of the sealskin.

In winter the Eskimo wears two suits of fur, one with the fur inside and the other with the fur outside. In summer one suit is enough.

When spring comes and the snow house begins to melt, the Eskimo moves into his sealskin tent or into a stone hut chinked with dirt. Some of these stone huts are hundreds of years old. Toward the end of summer there are some berries that get ripe on low-growing bushes, and many bright flowers bloom in the northland. Then the Eskimos sometimes make trips inland. They eat berries, rabbit meat, birds, and wild reindeer. Wild ducks and many other birds are there in summer, but they fly away to warm lands when cold weather comes, and the people go back to the seashore to lay in their winter supply of seal meat.

The wild animals that live here all the time do not seem to mind the cold. They have warm fur, and the rabbit changes his color to keep from getting caught. He is snow white in winter so that the fox cannot see him on the snow, but in summer his coat is brown so that the fox cannot see him on the ground.

The Eskimo has one helper, the dog that pulls his sled. We call him the "huskie". This dog has a thick, warm coat so that he can curl up in the dry snow, put his four feet and his nose into a little bunch, lay his bushy tail over them, and sleep through a blinding snow storm that would freeze a white man to death. Sometimes the snow covers him entirely as he sleeps and he has to dig himself out when he wakes up.

When Admiral Peary went over the ice to the North Pole, in 1909, Eskimo dogs pulled the sleds that carried his food and tents, and Eskimo men helped him. He found them to be honest, brave men, trusty helpers, and good friends.

The Eskimos are very fond of games. They play football and several kinds of shinny, using long bones for shinny sticks. Sometimes they skate on new smooth ice, using bone skates tied fast to their soft shoes. As they do not go to school and have no books, the days must seem long in bad weather, for they have nothing to do but sit around the little fire in the dark smoky little snow house. They have many indoor games. The house is too small to play tag or run around, so they have sitting down games. There are as many as fifty kinds of string games something like our cat's cradle.

This is the simplest kind of living to be found anywhere in the world. Every family in the world needs a certain amount of food, clothes, fuel, shelter, tools, and playthings. In different countries there are different ways of getting these things, depending on the weather, on the things that will grow, and the things that man finds in the ground, or in the woods, or in the sea. Each Eskimo family must make or get all these things for itself.

The Eskimos do not need money because they do not buy nor sell. If two Eskimos should meet and want to trade two dogs for a sled, they would just trade as two schoolboys swap knives. The Eskimos would be much more comfortable if they could trade some of their sealskins for lumber to build houses and for flour and dried fruit to eat with their never ending meat. We cannot trade with them because they are too far away for us to build railroads to their land, and the sea is so full of ice that ships cannot get through it Perhaps the aeroplane will let us see more of the Eskimo.

—J. Russell Smith. Courtesy of the John C. Winston Co.

Questions

Glance quickly at the first paragraph. How would this do as a title or topic for it: "Doing things for yourself"?

The second paragraph connects the idea that it is very hard to do everything for yourself with the various things told about the Eskimo in the rest of the story. So that you may understand better, the Eskimo is compared with Robinson Crusoe, who had to do everything for himself but had a better chance because of the country in which he lived. A topic for the second paragraph might be, "The Eskimo's life compared with Robinson Crusoe's".

Beginning with the third paragraph, the author tells how the Eskimo lives. It is not necessary to make a topic for every paragraph. We can make a general heading under which some of his ways of living can be grouped. Arrange the heading and the sub-headings as follows:

How the Eskimo manages to live.

(a) His house. (b) His food, (c) His clothing.

Now look through the rest of the story, and you will see that it can be included under the following headings:

The Eskimo dog.

Eskimo games.

Why the Eskimo does not buy and sell.

In making an outline it is not necessary to put in every single idea in the piece you are outlining.

Now, after going through the selection to see how the outline is made, you can easily answer the following questions:

1. How does it happen that you do not have to depend on your own family for the things you eat and wear and use? Make a list of the people who help you to get the things necessary for every-day life. Your list might begin with the baker, the milk-man, and the shoemaker.

2. Try to draw a picture of the outside of the Eskimo's winter house as it is described here.

3. Make a list of the things you think an Eskimo boy or girl about your age would do from morning to night—his day's program, you may call it.

4. Do you think the Eskimo is glad when summer comes? Why?

5. Tell a story that a "huskie" might tell of his experiences.

6. Make a list of raw materials, such as wood, that would make the life of the Eskimo more comfortable.