Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/197

176 skill and strategy. He had, as he chose to believe (though I immediately explained, or tried to explain, that the gift was not intended for the moment), accomplished a great feat in charming a kodluna into giving him a gun as recognition of his magical power. So complete was his happiness, that he told me I should have the choice of his two wives, all his tuktoo skins (reindeer furs) that I might need, and sealskins for making boots, and other articles in abundance. That he had great riches of this description, probably obtained from his credulous worshippers, was evident from the rolls of beautiful skins I saw around me. While the angeko was thus expressing himself, his second wife came in, and quietly took a position near the household lamp, which she began to renew with fresh seal-blubber. This gave Mingumailo the opportunity to again press the offer of one of his wives to me. He begged of me, there and then, to select either of them; but I soon gave him to understand I was already supplied with a wife at home. This, however, neither satisfied his ideas about matrimony, nor, as it appeared, those of his wives; for both of them at once decked themselves out in all the smiles and blandishments that they possessed. I asked them if they really coincided in the offer their husband had made, and was immediately told that they gladly did. However, I was about again declining the offer, when the angeko suddenly made a sign to Koojesse, leaving me alone with the proffered wives. I uttered a few kind words to them, and, giving each a plug of tobacco with a friendly grasp of the hand, left the tupic and went toward the boat. On my way, and just outside the angeko's tupic, I noticed an oar of a kia stuck upright in a drift of frozen snow. Upon it were suspended little packages done up in red woollen rags, differently and ingeniously arranged. On one side hung a portion of a well-dressed sealskin, beautifully variegated by parti-coloured patches sewed on to it, as if for signs. I inquired of several Esquimaux the meaning of this, but none would inform me till I met Koojesse, who said it was for a