The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1891-03-07
EsQuiaAux PEOPLE.
They Grease Themselves but Never
Wash Their Faces.

4 AOxVum0VA wi A6s
They Grease Themselves but Never
Wash Their Faces.
Miss Olof Krarer, the little Es-
quimau lady, entertained large
and interested audience at the First
Methodist Church last week with
her lecture on the manners and Gus
toms of the Esquimaux of Green
land. The little Esquimau lady is
but forty inches in height, but stout
and thick set, weighing as much as
an average woman. She has fair
complexion, with long black hair,
and strongly resembles Swede i'll
facial appearance.
She commenced by saying that
she was born in greenland and was
educated in a missionary school i'll
Iceland. At the age of IS she left
with company of others, includ-
ing her father, for Iceland. A num-
ber.of sailors who were shipwrecked
on their coast, after Drawing the
cold of year, wanted to get back
to Iceland, and prevailed upon the
Esquimaux to lend them dogs and
sleds for the journey. To insure
the return Of their dogs, however,
they offered to accompany the sail
ors. The speaker was one Of the
party. They arrived in Iceland
after journey of two months, and,
delighted with the warm climate,
decided to remain there.
The speaker said she had four
brothers and three sisters of whom
she was the youngest. Her father,
who was in inch shorter than she,
weighed 100 pounds and her moth
er $50 pounds. She weighed 1856
pounds when she arrived in Iceland,
and weighs only 12O pounds now.
The average height of her people,
she said, was much below four feet.
A man four feet high was consid-
cred unusually large. The oldest
person of whom they had any rec
ord was 60 years old. The average
life of her people was thirty years.
Fish and blubber was their princi-
pal food, and it was due to the oil
that their appearance was yellow
and smoky.
An Exquamau, she said, never
washes himself. She herself never
put her hands in water for fifteen
years, unter her arrival in Iceland,
and then when a bowl of water and
piece of soap was given her, she
ate the soap. When she first saw
the Icelanders wash themselves she
thought they were foolish.
Instead of washing, the people of
her country, she said, lathered them
selves with grease and oil, which
was a great protection against cold.
In Greenland there are no schools,
no ministers, no doctors, no rulers
]-everybydy lives for himself. They
have but one sickness, bad cough,
which she thinks is similar to con-
sumption, and which she attributes
to the smoke Of the fat and oil in
the snow houses.
It is mistaken idea that all Es-
quimaux have black hair. It is
black only on account of the grease.
She said her hair was so greasy
! when she arrived in Iceland that a
persons hand would stick to it like
a plaster. Her hair was shaved off
close to her head and it came out
it's present color.
She spoke of the northern lights,
the starlight and occasional moon
light of the long, dark winter, and
the sore eyes and affiiction of being
snowblinded during the few months
the sun shone. She told of their
hunting trips, the celebration at
tending the capture of whale,
their mode of hunting and fishing.
She told of their dogs and sleds,
their snow houses, papered. and CAR
peted with skins. She mentioned
their peculiar mode of marriage,
how a young man had to steal his
bride, risking his life in SO doing,
knowing he would be killed fcaught
in the act. If he secures the girl,
however, he is praised for his brav-
cry and he takes the girl for his wife
for life. There is no such thing as
divorce. And yet the proportion
of bachelors is much less than in
this country.
Children are punished by being
burned by a red hot bone, which
leaves scar for life. This lis their
only mode of punishment.
Their only amusementsare sleigh
riding for girls who are married
Ia father would not trust his un-
married daughter out with a young
man for fear she would be stolen)
and custom of sitting down in the
snow house and guessing who is the
prettiest, beauty being determined
by the amount of grease person
has on.-Oakland (Cal. Enquirer.
i American women are said to rank
highest both as to o.the number and
I innnrtance Of their inventiOna.