Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/333

314 known to me and my Innuit informants. The infants are nursed until three or four years of age. The children, when old enough, find their amusement in playing with toys made of bone and ivory in the forms of various animals. When older, the boys are educated in rowing, hunting, and sealing; the girls are taught to trim the fire-light and keep it burning, to cook, dress leather, sew, help row the oomiens, and to do various other kinds of work. The women are not prolific. I believe they consider children troublesome. The race is fast dying out. Not many years more and the "Innuit" will be extinct.

The affection of the parents for their children is very great, and disobedience on the part of the latter is rare. The parents never inflict physical chastisement upon the children. If a child does wrong—for instance, if it becomes enraged, the mother says nothing to it until it becomes calm. Then she talks to it, and with good effect. On Saturday, February 28th, 1863, the infant son of Ebierbing and Tookoolito died in New York, aged eighteen months. The loss was great to both of them, but to the mother it was a terrible blow. For several days after its death she was unconscious, and for a part of the time delirious. When she began to recover from this state she expressed a longing desire to die, and be with her lost Tuk-e-lik-e-ta. The child was greatly beloved by both of the parents. In truth—I must be allowed to diverge here for a moment—there was cause for their great affection, and reason for peculiar grief on the part of the bereaved mother. I never saw a more animated, sweet-tempered, bright-looking child. Its imitativeness was largely developed, and was most engaging. Tukeliketa was a child to be remembered by all who ever saw him. For a certain length of time after a child is born the mother must remain in her own home, visiting no other tupic or igloo. The period for which this limitation holds good varies, sometimes reaching to the length of two months. At the expiration of the time she makes a round of calls at all the dwellings about, having first changed all her clothing. She