Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo

A woman who mated with a dog[1] got ten children. When they had grown larger, she ordered them to devour her father, whereupon she divided them into two parties and sent them off from home to seek their subsistence henceforth by themselves. Five of them, who were sent up the country, grew erkileks; and to the other five she gave the sole of an old boot, and put it in the sea, where it rapidly expanded and grew a ship, in which they went off, turning into kavdlunaks (Europeans).

Of this tale only the principal parts have been selected, and are given here in a very fragmentary form.

[1] This is an abstract of the tale mentioned in the note to No. 11, which for obvious reasons cannot be given in its original form. It seems to exhibit an analogy to several traditions of other nations – the idea about the origin of the Europeans, for instance, corresponding, as far as we know, to the origin attributed by a Japanese popular tradition to the Ainos of the Kurile Islands.