AMONG THE ESKIMOS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3440, 8 March 1932, Page 6

AMONG THE ESKIMOS

I WOMAN’S 35 YEARS IN ARCTIC.. WHERE WIVES HAVE NO WORRIES. Thirty-five years ago a young bride set out from Kincardine (Otario) to share with her husband the arduous life of a missionry in the remote stretches of the Arctic. She is, writes a correspondent to the NewsChronicle, Mrs. I. 0. Stringer, wife of the present Archbishop of Rupert’s • Land, and in a colourful talk before the Winnipeg Women’s Canadian Club she related her experiences among her Eskimo parishioners. Mrs. Stringer was the first woman to set foot on Herschel Island. At " that time the Hudson Bay Company or the mounted police had not established posts on the island. Her first

home, she stated, was a one-roomec hut of sod. Later it was replaced bj a house of timber, brought north from San Francisco—a 2000-mile voyage, and it became known as “Igoopukk”—the biggest house. Seventeen years passed, Mrs Stringer said, before the first convert reward their efforts. At first she was terrified when stalwart Eskimos with pierced lips and bedecked faces big headdress and shaven heads cam* into her house, brandishing the knives they always carried. She soor learned, however, that it was onlj curiosity that brought them. Both men and women were exceedingly clever in making boats withoul nails, and fashioning vessels fronr horns. The womenfolk of these “Children of the Arctic” were adepl at the dressmaking art. Using i queer curved knife, they could fashior a garment with amazing speed. Thej were stickers for style, too, eacl garment being inset with white fur

Worries of house-cleaning had yet to be experienced by the women of the North. The Eskimos could build an "igloo" in an hour, which meant that when one house got uncomfortably dirty the family moved into another. Language barriers proved an obstacle to missionary work at first, but by degrees the Eskimo attended a little school established for their benefit. Later, other "special schools" were set up on the island, where natives were now taught the rudiments of education and animal husbandry; and a determined effort was now being made to encourage them in reindeer ranching. Mrs. Stringer did not dwell on the hardships of her life in the North, but told of her two eldest .children who were born on Herschel Island, with her husband as doctor, nurse and attendant. Her son, Merschel, is a missionary doctor on the Columbia River, and her daughter (Mrs. J. Wilkinson) recently returned from India.