Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 2Parry, William Edward, Sir
History
Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 2
Parry, William Edward, Sir
Arctic regions; Northwest Passage; Parry, William Edward, Sir, 1790-1855
In short, there are few, if any people, in this state of
society among whom the women are so well off. They always sit upon the
beds with their legs doubled under them, and are uneasy in the posture
usual with us. The men sometimes sit as we do, but more generally with
their legs crossed before them.
The women do not appear to be, in general, very prolific. Illumea indeed
had borne seven children, but no second instance of an equal number in
one family afterward came to our knowledge; three or four is about the
usual number. They are, according to their own account, in the habit of
suckling their children to the age of three years; but we have seen a
child of five occasionally at the breast, though they are dismissed from
the mother's hood at about the former age. It is not uncommon to see one
woman suckling the child of another, while the latter happens to be
employed in her other domestic occupations. They are in the habit, also,
of feeding their younger children from their own mouths, softening the
food by mastication, and then turning their heads round so that the
infant in the hood may put its lips to theirs. The chill is taken from
water for them in the same manner, and some fathers are very fond of
taking their children on their knees and thus feeding them. The women
are more desirous of having sons than daughters, as on the former must
principally depend their support in old age.
Twelve of the men had each two wives, and some of the younger ones had
also two betrothed; two instances occurred of the father and son being
married to sisters. The custom of betrothing children in their infancy
is commonly practised here, in which respect these people differ from
the natives of Greenland, where it is comparatively rare. A daughter of
Arnaneelia, between two and three years old, had long been thus
contracted to Okotook's son, a hero of six or seven, and the latter used
to run about the hut calling his intended by the familiar appellation of
_N~o~oll=e-~a_ (wife), to the great amusement of the parents.
When a man has two wives there is generally a difference of five or six
years in their ages. The senior takes her station next the principal
fire, which comes entirely under her management; and she is certainly
considered in some respects superior to the other, though they usually
live together in the utmost harmony. The men sometimes repudiate their
wives without ceremony, in case of real or supposed bad behaviour as in
Greenland, but this does not often occur. There was a considerable
disparity of age between many of the men and their wives, the husband
being sometimes the oldest by twenty years or more, and this also when
he had never married any former wife. We knew no instance in which the
number of a man's wives exceeded two, and, indeed, we had every reason
to believe that the practice is never admitted among them. We met with a
singular instance of two men having exchanged wives, in consequence
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