he south
explained that what they wanted was to take the Eskimo to that far-off
land called America, where at a place called Chicago most wonderful
things were gathered together in huge igloos for all the world to see.
They wanted the Eskimo to come themselves and to bring with them their
boats and dogs, their sleds, their tools, their clothing, and the
things with which they hunted whales and seals and polar bears. In
fact the white men could not pretend to show the world anything very
remarkable, unless such clever people as the Eskimo brought their
things with them.

The men from the south urged and flattered and argued till a number
of the Eskimo let themselves be persuaded. The Eskimo had no idea of
the trouble and disaster they were letting themselves in for, or they
never would have started. The beautiful fairy-tales told by the white
men inflamed their imaginations. They had always been very well
pleased with their own white, cold world of whales and seals and
kayaks--those canoes in which they are as much at home as the fish in
the sea. But here was a chance to travel, and see marvels, and come
home and rouse the envy of those who had not dared. It was too good a
chance to miss. They would return rich men, and have nothing to do but
brag about their adventures for the rest of their lives.

Pomiuk's father didn't care to go. But he was broad-minded. It was a
big sacrifice for him to part with his wife and son, for it is the
teeth of the women that must chew the sealskins to make them pliable
for shoes and clothes: it is the fingers of women that do all the
sewing. But Pomiuk's mother could show the helpless white women how to
make skin boots, and Pomiuk could teach the paleface men and children
to use the dog whip as he used it every day. If the Eskimo brought
back money enough to buy many things at the nearest trading-post, the
time spent on the long southward trek would not be wasted. The Eskimo,
unlike the northern Indian, is a good business man, counting his
puppies after they are born and his fox-skins before he spends them.

So the Eskimo sailed away from their own coast, with a gnawing
homesickness at heart, though their lips were silent about it: and
when they got to Chicago the life was strange with hideous sight and
sound, and altogether unbearable: and they longed to get away from it
to the sea and the ice and behold again their northern lights, which
to the Eskimo are the spirits of the dead at pl