There they
danced and played games, and the northern lights were the young
people playing ball. Afterward they lived in houses on the shore of
a big lake overshadowed by a snow mountain. When the waters ran over
the edge of the lake, it rained on earth. When the "moon was dark,"
it was down on earth catching seal for a living. Thunder was caused
by two old women shaking a dried sealskin between them; the
lightning came when they turned the white side out. The "Big Nail"
we have heard of as the Eskimos' Pole, was a high-pointed mountain
in the Farthest North on which the sky rested and turned around with
the sun, moon, and stars. Up there the stars were much bigger.
Orion's Belt was so near that you had to carry a whip to drive him
away.
The women were slaves. An Eskimo might have as many wives as he saw
fit; they were his, and it was nobody's business. But adultery was
unknown. The seventh commandment in Egede's translation came to
read, "One wife alone you shall have and love." The birth of a girl
was greeted with wailing. When grown, she was often wooed by
violence. If she fled from her admirer, he cut her feet when he
overtook her, so that she could run no more. The old women were
denounced as witches who drove the seals away, and were murdered.
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