Note 314 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

7º. Militarism. Among the Greenlanders warfare is unknown314. Boas, speaking of the Central Eskimos, says: “Real wars or fights between settlements, I believe, have never happened, but contests have always been confined to single families”315. In Alaska it is otherwise, for “the Northern Indians are frequently at war with the Eskimos and Southern Indians, for whom they at all times entertain the most inveterate hatred”316. This absence of militarism enables the Greenlanders and Central Eskimos to have men performing women’s work living among them, as we have seen in § 1 of this chapter317.