ESKIMO BELIEFS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 119, 23 May 1932, Page 10

ESKIMO BELIEFS

CONTROL FROM UNSEEN SPIRITS OF ANCESTORS THE MARRIAGE BOND. VANCOUVER, March 30. With the pride of a. father f clever children, the “Bishop of the Arctic,” the Right Rev. A. Turquctil, is impatient of stories that have gained credence about Eskimo in!' ...ride, polygamy, anu old people “put a...iy” because they had become a burden to their fellows. The world of the Eskimo is, he says, a curious world—good and evil spirits, taboos, medicine men and sorcerers, strange superstitions, legeftds and beliefs handed down, from mouth to mouth, through generations, some of which may have had their origin in Mongolia, whence came the original Eskimo. It is primarily a world in which continued existence depends on th., capacity to hunt successfully.

Marriage is a commercial trar action betwe. heads of families, an instalment being paid at the time of contract, and the remainder when the. marriage age, which synchronises with the law of nature, is reached. An Eskimo youth, whose intended wife has died, may have an unborn child, provided it is a girl, hypothecated for him as mate.

The Eskimo husband may bring another wife into his home should he be dissatisfied with the first, and Wife No. 1 must accept her altered status, unless she can persuade another man to care for her and her children. If an Eskimo covet his neighbour’s wife, it is quite legitimate for him to offer to purchase her. If the husband says she is not for sale, she goes cheerfully to the victor, under the dominant primeval laws of the Arctic. The medicine men and witch doctors have great influence over the Eskimo, hedging him round with taboos, claiming they have direct touch with the spirit of dead ancestors, whom th y consult regarding causes of cecident an . sickness and the name of a new baby; they go into trances to sec the future. Others claim to be able to cut a man into many pieces and bring him back to life. These tricks are usually performed at night, behind curtains and with the aid of assistants. The Eskimo docs not believe in reincarnation; he only believes that the spirit of a forbear lives again in the name of a child. The Eskimo child is allowed to do as it pleases. There are no “don’ts” in the Arctic woman’s vocabulary, the assumption being that the child will be looked after hv its guardifin spirit. If the mother attempted to tell the child what it must • nd must not do, it would be tantamount to declaring her lac 1 -, of faith in the ability of the spirit to attend to its own business, and disaster would, she believes, almost certainly follow. If an Eskimo dies before his time, due to sickness or accident, it is because he has failed to observe some of the customs or taboos of his tribe. If he dies from old :.ge, it is simply because his spirit, tired of the world, desires to return to his ancestors. Old people, who cannot keep up wrth their fellows on the trail, slip away quietly and are never seen again. Eskimo men who have become a burden take their own lives in the interest of the group.

Although he follows the law of the survival of the fittest, the Eskimo, in the main, is an individualist. The family, rather than the camp, is the unit of society.