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Appendix

APPENDIX This page intentionally left blank T APPENDIX HE Eskimo poems that follow are presented first for their naive charm and frequent loveliness; then that whoever feels their loveliness and charm may feel and know the kinship of his soul with those of stone-age men. Of the unchangeableness of man's profounder nature that kinshipfelt may be the strongest evidence. The poems, or songs as they more truly are, stem from preEuropean days; they are traditional and form a part of the inherited culture of the Eskimos and Greenlanders of today. They have been translated twice to here emerge in English. But inasmuch as scientists have been their sponsors we may suspect whatever beauty their present form allows them to have been robustly inherent to the imagery of the originals. 249 The first six poems are from an article by C. W. SchultzLorentzen in Greenland, Vol. II, published by the commission for the Direction of Geological and Geographical Investigations in Greenland. The first and fourth poems were transcribed from the Eskimo by W. Thalbitzer; the second, third, fifth and sixth by Knud Rasmussen. Numbers seven to thirteen are from Across Arctic America and the fourteenth from the Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, both by Knud Rasmussen. The black-bluish spot referred to in the first poem appears on Eskimo children, as on the children of the Japanese and other East-Asiatic peoples; it is generally below the small of the back. It was the ancient custom among Greenlanders, before the majesty of European law invaded their lives, to resolve their quarrels by a contest of song. Of that custom Hans Egede has written:«They show their wit chiefly in satirical songs, which they compose against one another; and he, that overcomes his fellow in this way of debate, is admired and applauded by the rest of the assembly . If anybody conceives a jealousy, or bears a grudge to another upon any account, he sends to him, and challenges him to a duel in such or such assembly; where he will fight it out with him in taunting ditties. Whereupon the defied, in defence of his honour, prepares his weapons, and does not fail to appear at the time and place appointed, if his courage do not forsake him. When the assembly is met, and the combatants arrived, everybody being silent and attentive to hear what end the combat will take, the challenger first enters the lists, and begins to sing, accompanying it with the beat of his drum. The challenged rises also, and in silence listens, until his champion or adversary has done singing. Then he likewise enters the lists, armed with the same weapons, and lays about 250 his party the best he can. And thus they alternately sing as long as their stock of ditties lasts. He that first gives over is reckoned overcome and conquered. In this sort of taunting ditties they reproach and upbraid one another with their failings. And this is their common way of taking vengeance." Number six is a "taunting ditty.» The picture-making of the primitive Eskimos is of the character to furnish biologists with evidence for their conclusion that the mind of the primitive is similar to that of the child. It isn't. A culture is not a measure for the potentialities of men; it has its own organic, independent growth. And those pictures herewith reproduced , having been made by Greenlanders under the influence of European art and with the tools and materialsof the craft of wood cutting, resemble and are fully comparable to the more ordinary works of the wood cut period in European graphic art. Figure i is taken from Nansen's In Northern Mists, Figure 2 from the periodical Atuagagdliutit, edited, printed and published by Greenlanders. The other pictures are from the book Kaladlit Assilialiait, printed by the Greenlander Lars Moller, Godthaab, 1860. 251 This page intentionally left blank I Little whimpering babe, little suckling babe nestle against mother. How sheburns, how sheburns, straddling, she makeswarm my arm and my hands. Down there is the black-bluish spot which will never come off however much I lick her tender little loins. How she whimpers, how she begs little troublesome girl of mine. M3 II A smallptarmigan sat on the beautiful plain perched on a drift of snow. Red were...