Project Gutenberg's A Treasury of Eskimo Tales, by Clara Kern Bayliss

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: A Treasury of Eskimo Tales

Author: Clara Kern Bayliss

Illustrator: George Carlson

Release Date: February 11, 2008 [EBook #24569]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TREASURY OF ESKIMO TALES ***

Produced by Richard J. Shiffer and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

A TREASURY OF

ESKIMO TALES

BY

CLARA K. BAYLISS

_Author of "A Treasury of Indian Tales,"
"Old Man Coyote," etc._

ILLUSTRATED IN COLOR BY
GEORGE CARLSON

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1922,
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
Second Printing

Printed in the U. S. A.

[Illustration: HE SUMMONED HIS MASCOT WHICH WAS A HUGE WHITE BEAR]

PREFACE

The Central Eskimo live away up north in that great American
archipelago which lies between Hudson Bay, Baffin Bay, and the Arctic
Ocean; an archipelago in which the islands are so large, so numerous,
and so irregular in outline that, as one looks at a map of them, he
could fancy they were "chunks" of the continent which had been broken
to pieces by some huge iceberg that bumped into it.

The land is ice-bound during so much of the year that the inhabitants
cannot depend upon getting a living by the cultivation of the soil,
and have to subsist almost entirely upon meat which they get from
reindeer, seal, bear, whale, and walrus.

In summer their clothing is of sealskin and fishskin; and in winter it
is of the thicker reindeer hides. Their life is a hard one owing to
the rigorous climate, and they make it harder by their superstitions,
for diseases are supposed to be cured by charms and incantations of
the shaman or priest; and everything in the way of hunting, fishing,
cooking, or of clothing themselves must be done in a prescribed way or
it is "taboo" or "hoodoo" as the negroes say. When you read "The Baby
Eskimo" you will see just a tiny bi