Forgotten books: My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos

Josephine Diebitsch Peary in Greenland - 1891-92.
The author dressed with a kooletah, an Inuit coat made of caribou skin - Photo from the book. 

In these days of traveling and camping I finished the book My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos.  

The author was Josephine Diebitsch Peary, wife of the Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary. She accompanied her husband in the expedition to Greenland of 1891-1892. 

Josephine was a keen observer and took notes of many details of the life of the Eskimos - the Inuit. 

She explained their process for building tents from seal skin sewed with narwhal sinus and for poles using narwhal tusks - wood was precious in Greenland and probably it's now. 

Warning: her views of the Eskimos may offend some readers in our times of snowflake sensibilities. 

Enjoy these experts from the book: 

Her first time inside an Eskimo tent. 

...to my dismay the Eskimo ladies belonging to the house took off all of their clothing except their necklaces of sinishaw, just as unconcernedly as though no one were present.

About the natives communal life.

It is the rule that every animal killed, larger than a seal, must be divided among all the men in the community, regardless of their share in the securing of it.

Finding that there was domestic violence in the Eskimo families.  

Ikwa has beat Mané so badly that she cannot come out of her tent; her head is cut and bruised, and one eye is completely closed.

Reporting on the Eskimo first encounter with burros. 

They were vastly amused at the burros, which they persist in calling “big dogs”

Josephine Diebitsch Peary had doubts and worries about the impact of their expedition on the Eskimos' lives. 

I could not help thinking, Have these poor ignorant people, who are absolutely isolated from the rest of humanity, really benefited by their intercourse with us, or have we only opened their eyes to their destitute condition?

Interestingly, she carried a revolver .38 for self defense. This caliber would be polemic for traveling to an area with polar bears. But most of the Eskimos fared worse with lances and harpoons. 

Interesting old travel book. You can read it free in Project Guttenbeeg.

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