Page:The Netsilik Eskimos (1931).djvu/102
The Seal Eskimos and their country.
"The natives of this spot form the narrowest and most insulated tribe of men that has yet been discovered by navigators: a fact which gives interest to whatever their characters may present. Here if any where, we ought therefore to find how the human mind is developed under the narrowest education, in what manner the "light of nature" as it is termed, operates on the moral character and conduct, and how far human reason can proceed, under the smallest possible quantity of materials to act on, and under a very narrow range of application. If also there are peculiarities of character, whether for good or evil, the moralist and mataphysician may here speculate on what belongs to the original mental constitution of these people, and what is derived from their narrow and limited intercourse with their own species, in a society so restricted in numbers, and so incapable of changing customs or altering habits, where there is nothing beyond themselves to see, and no one to imitate."
John Ross
(Sketch of the Boothians).
Cut off from the surrounding world by ice-filled seas and enormous trackless wastes, a little handful of people calling themselves Netsilingmiul (the Seal Eskimos) have been suffered to live their own life, entirely untrammelled by outside influence, right up to the present time.
According to the census I made of them there were around Pelly Bay 32 males and 22 females, on Boothia Isthmus 39 males and 27 females, at Murchison River 22 males and 15 females, at Bellot Strait 10 males and 8 females, and finally at Adelaide Peninsula 47 males and 37 females. In other words, this gives in all 259, namely 150 males and 109 females. The marked excess of males over females was not due to any greater mortality among the females, but to infanticide, which will be referred to later.
I made this census as carefully as was possible, writing down all the names by families at the villages I visited; in the case of two