LO, THE WISE ESKIMO

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 36, 12 February 1936, Page 9

LO, THE WISE ESKIMO

PROHIBITION DESIRED

Natives of Alaska who have petitioned the Territorial Board of Liquor Control at Nome to re-enact a Prohibition statute that made it criminal to give liquor to natives, evidently need no classical education to see that Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes—that famous old line about Greeks bearing gifts— applies to.anybody offering an Eskimo a free drink, states the "Christian Science Monitor."

During a recent half-year, says an Associated Press dispatch from Seattle, some 700,000 gallons of beer, wine, and hard liquors were consumed in Alaska. The population numbers not more than 60,000, and is chiefly composed of natives, about a quarter of them being illiterate. In other parts of the United States there is a wealth of newspapers and magazines to help on this business with enthusiastic prose and merry pictures of youth and age and a bottle of rum, Yo-ho!; but in Alaska the most available advertisement would seem to be individual induction of the native by way of the free drink. Much can be done that way, for after two years of repeal the petitioning Eskimos observe and declare that "the excessive use of intoxicating liquor by Eskimos and persons of mixed blood is highly demoralising to the race."

Many persons elsewhere will no doubt think the better of the Eskimo intelligence for this'Alaskan expression of timeo Danaos, Had the American Indians in general been as suspicious of this gift, it is safe to say that a fairminded citizen would be able to take more pride In that part of his national history which concerns the aboriginal population.