Northwest History. Alaska. Eskimos.

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1936
• Subjects: white man; Eskimos; civilization; native race; Point Barrow; Leon S. Vincent; whalebone; construction; climate; Northwest; Pacific > History > 20th century; Alaska; Arctic; Fuller; Many Islands; Pacific; Barrow; eskimo*
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/90971

White Man's Style Homes Proving Fatal For Eskimos. WHITE MAN'S STYLE HOMES PROVING FATAL FOR ESKIMOS By STUART WHITEHOTJSE Once again, civilization is proving to be a curse, instead of a blessing, to a native race. Because they have too willingly embraced the white man's way of living, the Point Barrow Eskimos are nearing extinction. That is the story of the vanishing race, just brought from the top of the world by Leon S. Vincent, who for three years conducted the Eskimo school at Barrow. We all have read how natives of the South seas put oh the clotfing of the whites and so subjected their outdoor bodies to the ills of civilization. They had not built up any resistance to the diseases of the whites, and so died by the thousands until, in many islands today, just a handful of old men and women remain of once mighty races. The same thing has occurred at Barrow, in a different way, Vincent says. For centuries, the Point Barrow Eskimos lived in warm houses, made on a frame of whalebone, lined with skins and covered with turf. Long entrances to these houses were dug, so that the heat was retained. Experience, and the law of the survival of the fittest, taught the Eskimos that those houses were best adapted for the deadly cold of winter. The houses were small, and not very pleaasnt—but human life thrived and was kept warm inside them, during the long Arctic nights. Then came the white man. The Eskimos saw the frame building construction of the whites, and were entranced with it. Square houses were so much more attractive than their simple homes! So nearly all of the 300 Eskimos abandoned their old winter homes and built for themselves small wooden houses, about the size of one or two car garages. They found these houses much more roomy than the homes of their ancestors. But—"They cannot heat these houses; there is little driftwood around Barrow anymore," says Vincent. "Therefore, the Eskimos are chilly all winter, and are being swept away by tuberculosis, a disease that was unknown a few years ago. "I believe that unless they return to their old style of dwelling, suited to their climate, they will all be gone within a few decades." Thus has civilization once more brought gift of death, instead of a fuller life, to a people unable to learn its proper use.