Harvey Carr states in his textbook on psychology (A Study of Mental Activity): "Hunger, thirst, sex, pain...are some of the more important and fundamental human motives"
One man's meat may be another man's poison, and one man's sin may be another man's salvation, if I may be allowed a variation on an old saying with which to preface one of the most controversial arguments on the native Inuit.
In my opinion, after three years of residence among the natives, the Inuit of the Northeast with whom I am familiar is not an immoral race. The natives are entirely innocent of sinning as far as sex is concerned. They follow habit and custom. When Chief Nashula offers the hospitality of his house and says: "One takes what is one's own," he also says: "Take meat, take shelter, take my wife, my daughters, use them as you will." To the strangers within his gates Chief Charlie or Chief Nashula is a courteous host who says: "Make yourself at home." But do not take him too literally. One does not poke into the bureau drawers belonging to the white host who cordialy greets one with "Make yourself at home." The situation is parallel.
The Eskimo's traditional behaviour is that of a child of Nature. He cannot sin, for he knows no sinning except that forbidden in his own two rules of conduct: "Thou shalt not lie; thou shalt not steal." The other aspects of his natural, national life are actuated by impulse or custom.
But the Inuit, neither male nor female, conforms to the accepted tenets of white man's morality and sex laws. He has no inhibitions. He has just two great urges in his psyche, hunger and sex. He or she assuages the need of either with the same naturalness as the white man slakes his thirst.
Until he has contacted the outside world the Inuit knows no disease, and the race is entirely free of the social scourges which culminate in the dread plague of syphilis.
The women are equally free of inhibitions and reticences, but the women of the council control absolutely those things appertaining to sex, birth, marriage and the death rituals. A tribe is controlled politically be five people. The chief, or Ung-ee-ouk-kok, seems to be selected by the tribe in a general meeting which becomes a three-day feast. The chief is a man of wide experience and good ability for leadership, and many times he is the oldest member of the group. Implicit faith is placed by the tribe in age and experience, yet they have no method of recording actual age in years.
After the chief come the four councilors. The chief is never a dictator, for the Inuit has no conception of one person as "I" controlling all the game, the preferable camping grounds and so forth. The person or individual is a part of a great Unity. The actual control of the tribe is in the hands of these councilors, two men and two women, with the men in charge of the moving of the hunt, the location of the trap lines, the obtaining of food, the building of the snow houses, and the procuring of meat for the dog teams. The distant hunt is always the task of the men; while the women who are as skilful followers of game as the men, do the hunting near the camp, hunting which is followed in widening and narrowing circles. The camp or permanent village of igloos is occupied eight to ten months of the year.
The Inuit will trade wives, and in this he does not appear to have anything on some of the more sophisticated strata of white civilization, sometimes known as "the bright young people." The native is polygamous. It is a part of his tradition and belief, so deep that the term religion may be applied with perfect seeming. Every adult has the right to sex experience, and marriage is a part of existence. When a tribe has unbalanced numbers in the sexes, polygamy follows. When one tribe has more adult women than men, the men will take care of the excess women by marriage; or we may find that where a tribe has more men than women, then the women will have more than one husband. But the chosen Mother of the Race will not distribute her favours to any but her husband. This point is more biological than religious, perhaps, and only the most prejudiced will consider the custom immoral. Immorality lies largely in the hidden thing, and it is the deception and not the actual sin which causes the majority of ruptures in the white marriage. The Inuit has no occasion to practice deception, and it is a "lie" if he does.
When two tribes with unbalanced numbers in the sexes get together, they may "trade-off" to bring the balance true, and this is the real explanation of the so-called wife trading. The Inuit has still little sense of trading values; in two hundred and sixty-six years the trader at the posts has not succeeded in making the native a keen bargainer. But he has a lively sense of economics and the balanced budget. His tribe must not exceed in number that which may be taken care of in estimated available food. The independence of outlook on the part of the northeastern dweller is his salvation for race preservation. Should he become a ward of the government, as is the case in Labrador and Greenland, then comes the call for a drastic change in living habits, but then also comes along the fact that the white man has made of a sturdy, self-supporting race, something which might be termed parasitic. The native as he is now is essential to the development of the North. The white man must have a guide when he goes there, and he must be taught the conditions of northern living when traveling.
In this peculiar land there are no sex laws as the white man has regulation. The Eskimo simply carries his prohibition of lying and stealing to the act of living a lie or living a theft. I questioned my Inuit father on this point of ethics, and also my initiate sponsor, Chief Charlie, putting the question:
"Do you not restrain your young people in respect of sex?"
And my reply came as another question:
"Does the white man have laws to that effect?"
I answer "Yes," and Nashula asks me: "Do they really obey those laws?" And now I must see that in this northeast country the white man's prestige depends upon a hedged point.
"One must observe the law," I reply, and to myself I say: "But do we observe the law in this regard?"
There is no illegitimacy recognized in Baffin Land among the natives. Any child is the property of the tribe until such times as when reaching purberty he takes on the semblance of the individual and is accounted worthy to bear a separate name. Until then his parents and others will have called him or her Mik-eeyuk, or the little one, or perhaps the descriptive term for the really (for the most part) fascinating Inuit baby, Tuk-ah-pik, or little round moon-face.
Undoubtedly the women of the tribe practice and know an infalliable birth-controlling agent. In my capacity as keeper of vital statistics and health department reports for the Canadian government during my service in the Northeast, I have measured the female reactionary period to Nature and found no variation, and I have found that the council women instruct others that the prerogative of the wife is refusal at such times as she desires. But it is quite in order that she offer to find substitute should she deem her husband's need too great to warrant continence. There is no word in the Eskimo language for "two-timing"; everything is very much in the open between men and women, and altogether above board.
To further the vital statistics I questioned old Lavinia, who as midwife was present at the births Nick and I oversaw in treatment, asking her about this birth-controlling medium."You are a man," said Lavinia, "you have no need for knowledge such as that."
Perhaps some understanding women, medical or lay, could obtain release of this secret of the Inuit, but as yet no white woman has penetrated to Baffin Land and into the Ungava country and been able to bring this information out.
The native of the Northeast has an absolute simplicity of outlook. He smiles and is entirely happy; there are no jealousies known and no envies held.
There is a symbolism of the marriage ceremony in the Inuit sex relationship. It somewhat puts the cart before the horse, and is more nearly a form of companionate marriage. It works more or less as follows.
The young hunter, when he has secured kyak and harpoon, will feel the primitive urges of race. He will go to his lady love, who then puts special stitchings on his sealskin boat. Perhaps this is the Eskimo counterpart of the modern co-ed receiving the fraternity pin of her accepted admirer, but with the giver of the gift in reverse. If the youth on his first hunt in this kyak kills a seal or other marine animal, that is good luck, and he and the girl friend announce their engagement. He will take her to his home for about three weeks, or as long as she desires to stay. They remain apart for the fourth week and then he pays a reciprocal visit for the next three weeks to her home. A full month of twenty-eight days is their next separation, at the end of which both will present themselves to the chief and the two women of the tribal council, and there they will make known their desires and intentions.
"One may live together until a year from now."
At the end of the year the couple are definitely married, provided in the meantime there has been no child. In the event of a child, which is not likely, the marriage continues from that time.
The white man's invention of the first express carrier system when explained to the Inuit brings a rich amusement. The Inuit woman rolls with laughter when she hears the tale of the stork. The rose-bush and cabbage stories would amuse them equally, only it is not possible to tell those because the Inuit has not seen a cabbage or a rose bush, and would not understand what they are. He or she does understand a bird. As it happens, the younger children of the tribes are as aware of the methods of reproduction as are their parents. There is a singular lack of immodesty on the part of the Eskimo, because he does not understand that there are to be any hidden functions of the body.
When the council of the tribe sees the need for children to be born and the race replenished, a survey of the fittest as to both prospective father and mother is made. It is an honor and a matter of pride when the mother proclaims her pregnancy. She is not considered the mother of her husband's child, but she is the living Mother of the Race. She is placed upon a mental pedestal in the minds of all the tribe. Her condition and progress is the subject of conversation at every gathering, at every dance and in every home. Here is a matter for general rejoicing. And as the mother awaits the coming of her child, interest quickens. If she walks along the rocks by the sea, a small child of the tribe will stop and, holding his ear to her fur covered bulk, will say:
"Ah, hah, one is there all right!"The Inuit of Baffin Land have one of the lowest birth-death rates in the world, proportionate to population. All the births which came under notice of the police officials in the three years of my service in the North were normal and the babies perfect, with the exception of one, and this brought up the age-old battle: "The white man does not like the life of that baby to have ended."
And the insistent retort from the native:
"That child has an Evil Spirit; he might grow and breed and become the father of more abnormal; the race must not deteriorate, the race must remain clean."
The labor of the Inuit mother is not prolonged, and she lives, as her ancestors have done, a normal life up to the day of her confinement. Her pelvis and reproductive organs are entirely as Nature designed them. The woman knows no constricting clothing throughout her life. She appears to be able to calculate the time for her delivery almost to the minute. Presently the older women of the tribe will appoint one to be the midwife; she will assist the woman in labor and as the child is born, sever the cord with her teeth; then hand the child to the mother for the natural care which any of Nature's creatures give their young. The police were able to introduce the giving of little whiffs of ether and othe aids to hygiene, for which the women were grateful and quick to recognize the use.
The mother suckles the baby until he has his chewing teeth, and this may be for four years. The child gets no personal clothing until he is a year old, and until then he lives within the mother's clothing, the small naked body getting the mother's body warmth. At twelve months the child gets garments of his own, made in miniature of the adult clothing.
Ee-ma, one of our house servants, was destined from babyhood to become a council member. We watched the continued training which had started in her very young days for this responsibility, and she was appointed to office following arrangements for her marriage which were made known at a great party of announcement to which I was bidden and which I attended.
The Inuit baby, as it first makes sounds, says: "Ma, Ma," as does the child of any other race. Thereafter it follows the intonations of its mother and father, and apparently instinct gives it the male or female expressions for I never saw any definite insturctions being given in this. The parents will never raise their hands to correct a child, and yet the children are not unruly, but are respectful to their elders, and to the older children in their own group. Nevertheless, I have watched a child tear a valuable fur to pieces quite uncorrected, and while I protested to the father, he replied:
"One can always get another fox fur, but my child shows he has a brain, and one cannot get another brain."
The modern schools of self-expression for the child may not use their Eskimo origins as publicity features, yet even so, self-expression for the child seems to be instinctive in Baffin Land.
I believe the Inuit woman, and probably the man, has solved the secret of the dividing line between love and passion. So tragically often the white man's and woman's marriage is the quick flame of an attraction based on sex alone. The Eskimo girl can fall in love, and does, but she does not present a sex problem in her attitude. Her sex craving is satisfied apart from the admiration she has for the man whom she loves; and she exercises no attitude of possession toward the man, nor does the native man show this possessive feature toward his woman. Toward the white man the Eskimo girl will express her emotions in gifts; she will give tiny moccasins of fur pieces made up in small sizes, and say:
"For the white man's woman; may a little of the spirit of this one reach the white man through his loved one."
Entirely disassociated from passion, the Inuit love is entirely free of all jealousy, and is apparently a calming and happy experience.
Far from being immoral, far from promiscuity, and with no sense of what the word unfaithful might mean, the Inuit could be called unmoral or amoral, I suppose, but I prefer to consider him as upright in his sex relation and clean living according to his lights.
The native is almost fanatic upon any deviation of the sex urge toward homosexuality. No man serves another man in that way, unless the comrade is wounded and is unable to carry out his own personal duties. Even the white policeman must do his own menial chores, chew soft his muliks when travelling, and other types of need. Sleeping bags, which are always made large enough for two persons, must never be occupied by two men, with the exception when the condition of near-starvation or illness because of accident, calls for the warmth of the younger man's body to save the life of the weaker tribal brother or son.
Many of the secret rituals of the initiate Inuit are with emphasis on sex. Yet, combining the religious conviction and their fine comprehension of race fitness, the Inuit is a more moral man perhaps than many of the white groupings. They have no gang crimes, no vice rackets, and there is no tribute paid from the prostitute because there is no prostitutes. Nothing of political protection or dominance is known in Baffin Land.
There are no newspapers in Baffin Land, no magazines, no movies, no exaggerated jitter-bug and swing continuously beating on the subject of sex. They have no occasion everlasting to think of that which is as easily satisfied to them as hunger on the stomach. The Inuit does not understand an obscene jest, strip tease would mean nothing to him; and the double entendre passes him by.