Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/129

 Reviews, 97

The winter-house, unlike the tent, belongs to no one family : it is the property equally of all who inhabit it ; it is built and repaired by their common efforts. The game, which in summer is appropriated by the head of the family for his own use and that of his dependents, in winter is shared in common by all the housemates. The special economy of the family has dis- appeared. Although, as we have seen, the family is not wholly erased, still, for many purposes other than merely economical, it has become merged in the larger household. All housemates are looked upon as being in some way related. Indeed, the word housemates has been used by English writers to translate words which seem more accurately to mean ho7ise-kin. Marriage is forbidden between housemates. The patriarchal rule of the family gives place to the headship of a man, one of the house- mates, who is recommended by his personal characteristics rather than by right of birth. He is usually an old man, a good hunter, a rich man, or an angakok (wizard). His powers are not very extensive. He receives strangers, distributes places or parts, composes internal differences, but little more.

But beyond the circle of the housemates is that of the place- fellows, in the original a special word which M. Mauss thinks is evidence of the existence of very close moral bonds between the individuals thus described. In the Hudson's Bay fiord of Angmagssalik the whole population of each settlement is comprised in one long house. Whether or not this, as M. Mauss thinks, may be held to prove the closeness of the relation between the winter-house and the tie which binds together the various families associated in the settlement, it seems certain that the inhabitants of the different houses in a settlement were originally closely bound to one another and to the kashim. The settlement is not a simple agglomeration of houses, an exclusively territorial and political unity : it is a domestic unity. A family atmosphere pervades it. The members are united by a bond of real affection, entirely analogous to that which in other societies binds together the different families of a clan. All observers have been struck with this, and have expanded on the gentleness, the intimacy, the general gaiety which reigns in an Eskimo settlement. A sort of affectionate kindness is diffused over all. Crime is

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