Eskimos May Soon Be Extinct

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7412, 20 December 1930, Page 23

Eskimos May Soon Be Extinct

WHITE MAN’S SICKNESS TAKES ITS DEADLY TOLL

N astonishing sidelight on present-day conditions of the Eskimos is given by Mrs Maude Radford Warren, who recently returned from

bou meat and fish which used to be their diet, and this summer I saw them eating soggy pancakes covered ■with syrup three times a day. “There is no amusement in the entire village in the winter. They read, however, after their day’s work is done.

a three months’ journey vithin the Arctic Circle, in the northwestern part of Canada, with Aklavik 's her headquarters. She travelled ’lone, with the aid of Indian and Eskimo guides, except when she went by ’.irplane, the most comfortable means of travel in the North-West.

“There are seven nuns in the village and five other white women connected with the Anglican missions.

“There is also one American woman who runs the restaurant. She is Mrs Vincent Host, a widow and former school teacher. She trades in furs with the trappers, who sleep on her kitchen floor, paying two muskrat skins for each meal.

Of strong physique and indifferent o hardships, Mrs Warren found the T fe of the frontier villages the “most drilling adventure” she had known since her work in first aid stations during the war. Mrs Warren does not "recommend he trip to the average woman traveller, “Bulldogs,” or moose flies, as big as wasps and twice as voracious, impaired the pleasure of sleeping out of doors, she confessed. Mrs Warren returns an enthusiastic ulmirer of the Eskimos, a cheerful and industrious people, but she is alarmed lest they vanish from the North-West within 50 years. "The Eskimos are dying off in great numbers from the ravages of influenza and other diseases brought in by the white man,” she states.

“The meal consists of fish, potatoes, tinned tomatoes, and mince pie. Mrs Kost also performs many other motherly tasks for the wanderers of the North-West, making their parkas and packing their rations when they start out again on the frozen trail. “The people in Aklavik, however, prefer the long, lonesome winter to the uncertainties of summer, when strangers come poking into their peaceful village, and inspectors and all sorts of officials disturb their routine. They had two days of heat, 84 degrees, this year, for which they were not prepared. The Eskimo children, still clad in,their caribou skins, all had nose-bleed and school had to

,r riio v have learned to eat white