An Eskimo boat, or kayak, as it is called, is made of sealskins sewed together so as to make a water-tight sheet and stretched over a framework of whale rib bones and long walrus tusks, tied together with strips of hide. (Fig. 6.) In these tiny boats Eskimos paddle around on the sea. Okuk is very proud when, like his father, he can manage a boat of his own in the sea, and spear a seal. For boating, coats of skin are worn. These are tied around the open ing where the man sits in the boat, so that no water can get into the boat. If a boat upsets, it turns clear over and comes ' up again. If the pad dles are not lost the Eskimos are safe.
In winter Eskimos all wear two suits of fur, one with the fur inside and the other with the fur outside. In summer the one with the fur outside is warm enough. The clothes of the men and women are very much alike. The baby's suit is sometimes made of bird skins.
When spring comes and the snow house begins to melt, the family moves into a sealskin tent or into a hut built of stones chinked with dirt. Toward the end of summer some berries ripen on low-growing bushes, and many bright flowers bloom in the green grass of the northland. Then our Eskimos make a trip inland. There they eat berries, rabbit meat, birds, bird eggs, and wild reindeer. Wild ducks and many other birds live in Eskimo land in summer, but when cold weather comes again they fly away to warm countries. The Eskimos then go back to the sea shore to lay in their winter supply of seal meat.
3. The animals.—The wild animals that live in this cold northland all the time do not seem to suffer from the weather. They have warm fur to protect them from the winter's cold. Sometimes their color protects them from their enemies. (Fig. 9.) The rabbit changes his color to keep from being caught. In the winter he is snow-white, so that the fox cannot see him on the snow, and in summer-time he is brown, so that the fox cannot see him on the ground. The fox also is aided by a white coat in winter-time, so that the rab bit cannot see him coming! Alunak and his family have one helper, the dog that pulls their sleds. We call him "huskie". He 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 snowstorm 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 awakes.
When Admiral Peary, an American, 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, happy men, trusty helpers, and good friends.
4. Eskimos and their games.—Eskimos are very fond of games. They wrestle, run races, and play football and several kinds of hockey or shinny, using long bones for shinny sticks. Sometimes they skate on new smooth ice, using bone skates tied fast to their soft shoes. As the children 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 small, dark, smoky, snow house. For this reason they have many indoor games. But because the houses are too small to allow them to play tag or run ning games, theirs are for the most part sitting-down games. There are as many as fifty kinds of games something like our cat's cradle, played with a leather string. To pass the time away, the men sometimes make carvings from bits of stone and ivory. They carve bears, seals, sleds, and other things, and their work is much praised by white men. (Fig. 12.) 5. Six things we need.—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 on other things that man finds in the ground, in the woods, or in the sea.
Each Eskimo family must make or get all of these things for itself. Theirs is the simplest kind of living to be found anywhere in the world. They do not need money, be cause they do not buy cr sell. If two Eskimos should meet and want to exchange a dog for a sled, they would just "swap", as two schoolboys trade marbles.
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 meat; meat, meat. We can not trade with them much, because they are too far away for us to build railroads to their land, and because the sea is so full of ice that ships cannot get through it. Perhaps the airplane will let us see more of the Eskimo.
This book will tell you how other people in other countries get the things they need for their living.