Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo

A Study in Social Morphology

Marcel Mauss, James J. Fox

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415330350
• eBook ISBN: 9781136542008
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo is one of the first books in anthropology to adopt a sociological approach to the analysis of a single society. Mauss links elements of anthropology and human geography, arguing that geographical factors should be considered in relation to a social context in all its complexity.
The work is an illuminating source on the Eskimo and a proto-type of what an anthropologist should do with ethnographic data and exerted considerable influence on the development of social anthropology.
English translation first published in 1979.

1 General Morphology

Before we begin our investigation of the special forms of morphology that Eskimo societies assume at different times of the year, we must first determine their invariant features. Despite the changes in Eskimo morphology, certain fundamental features always remain the same, and upon these depend the particular variables with which we are going to be concerned. The location of these societies and the number, nature and size of their elementary groups constitute immutable factors. The periodic variations which we are going to describe and elucidate are based on this permanent foundation. We must, therefore, first try to understand this foundation. In other words, before considering the seasonal morphology of Eskimo societies, we must determine the essential features of their general morphology.¹

Eskimo are² to be found between 78° 8’ latitude in the north (the Itah settlement at Smith Strait on the north-west coast of Greenland³) and 53° 4′ in the south, on the west coast of Hudson Bay, which is the furthest point to which Eskimo regularly travel but not where they reside.⁴ On the coast of Labrador, they are found up to 54° latitude and on the Pacific as far north as 56° 444′.⁵ The Eskimo thus cover an immense area of 22 degrees of latitude and almost 60 degrees of longitude, extending into Asia, where they have a settlement at East Cape.⁶

In this vast region, however, both in Asia as well as in America, they occupy only the coasts. The Eskimo are essentially a coastal people. Only a few tribes in Alaska inhabit land in the interior.⁷ These are the Eskimo who are settled on the Yukon delta and the Kuskokwim, and who may be considered as maritime river-dwellers.

It is possible, however, to be more precise. The Eskimo are not simply a coastal people. They are people of the water’s fringe – if we may use this term to designate all the relatively abrupt terminations of the sea coasts. This explains the marked differences between the Eskimo and other arctic peoples.⁸ Except for the deltas and the little-known rivers of King William Land, all the coasts that the Eskimo occupy have the same character: a more or less narrow strip of land skirting the edges of a plateau that gives way, more or less abruptly, to the sea. In Greenland, the mountains overhang the sea; and, moreover, the immense glacier which has been given the name Inlandsis (Inland Ice) leaves only a mountainous belt whose widest part (wide on account of the fiords) measures a scant 140 miles. This belt is broken by the outlets to the sea made by the inland glaciers. The fiords and the islands in the fiords are the only areas that are protected from the strong winds and, as a consequence, they enjoy a bearable temperature. They alone offer grazing land for game animals, and readily accessible areas where marine animals can catch fish or may themselves be caught.⁹ Like Greenland, the Melville Peninsula, Baffin Land and the northern shores of Hudson Bay also have steep, dissected coasts. Even where the interior plateau is free of glaciers, it is swept by winds and always covered by snow; it offers little habitable land except for a narrow margin along the shore, and deep valleys abutting on glacial lakes.¹⁰ Labrador has the same character, but with an interior climate that is more continental.¹¹ The Saint Lawrence area of northern Canada and the Boothia Peninsula end in a more gentle expanse, especially at Bathurst Inlet, but, as in other regions, the interior plateau restricts to a relative minimum the area which, when seen on a map, appears as if it ought to be habitable.¹² The coast to the west of the Mackenzie River has the same features from the end of the Rocky Mountains as far as the icy headland at Bering Strait. From this point all the way round to Kodiak Island, the southern limit of the Eskimo zone, there is alternately delta tundra and steep-falling mountains or plateaux.¹³

If the Eskimo are a coastal people, the coast is not for them what we ordinarily think of as a coast. Ratzel¹⁴ has defined ‘coasts’ in a general way as ‘the points of communication between the sea and the land or, rather, between this land and other more distant lands’. This definition does not apply to the coasts that the Eskimo inhabit.¹⁵ Between them and the land behind them there is generally very little communication. The peoples of the interior do not spend much time on the coast,¹⁶ nor do the Eskimo move far inland.¹⁷ The coast is here exclusively a habitat; it is neither a passage nor a point of transition.

After this description of the Eskimo habitat, we must consider how the Eskimo are distributed over the land they inhabit: the particular composition of their social groups, their number, size and disposition.

First, we must know something about the political groupings that comprise the Eskimo population. Do the Eskimo form distinct tribal aggregates, or a nation – a confederation of tribes? Unfortunately, besides its lack of precision, the usual terminology is difficult to apply here. Eskimo society is, by its very nature, somewhat vague and fluid and it is not easy to distinguish which fixed units make up its composition.

A distinct language is one of the surest criteria for recognizing a collectivity, either a tribe or a nation. But the Eskimo show a remarkable linguistic unity over a considerable area. Where we do have information on the boundaries between various dialects,¹⁸ which is not often, it is impossible to establish a definite connection between the area of a dialect and a specific social group. Thus, in the north of Alaska, there are two or three dialects spoken by ten or twelve groups which some observers have thought they could distinguish and to which they have applied the term ‘tribe’.¹⁹

Another criterion that distinguishes a tribe is a common name shared by all its members. But, on this point, it is clear that the tribal nomenclature is very imprecise. In Greenland, there is no mention of any name that refers to a properly-defined tribe, or, in other words, to an agglomeration of local settlements or clans.²⁰ For Labrador, the Moravian missionaries have not recorded a single proper name. The only names that we do have are for the Ungava district on Hudson Strait, and these are extremely vague and hardly proper names at all (they refer to ‘distant people’, or ‘people of the islands’, etc.).²¹ It is true that in other areas there are more clearly defined lists of names.²² But with the exception of Baffin Land and the west coast of Hudson Bay, where names appear to have stayed the same and are reported identically by all authors,²³ there are very serious discrepancies everywhere among observers.²⁴

A similar vagueness also applies to boundaries. A boundary is still the clearest indication of the unity of a group who think of themselves as a political entity. But there is only one mention of this, and that applies to the least known portions of the Eskimo population.²⁵ Tribal warfare is yet another way whereby a tribe affirms its existence and identity; but we know of no case of tribal warfare except among the central Eskimo and the Alaskan tribes for whom there exist special circumstances.²⁶

From all these facts, we cannot conclude with complete assurance that there is absolutely no tribal organization among the Eskimo.²⁷ On the contrary, there are a number of social aggregates that definitely appear to have some of the features which ordinarily define a tribe. Yet, at the same time, it is apparent that more often than not these aggregates assume very uncertain and inconsistent forms; it is difficult to know where they begin and where they end. They appear to merge easily and to form multiple combinations among themselves; and rarely do they come together to perform common activities. If therefore the tribe exists, it is certainly not the solid and stable social unit upon which Eskimo groups are based. The tribe, to be more precise, does not constitute a territorial unit. Its main characteristic is the constancy of relations it permits between assembled groups. Among such groups, communications are more easily maintained than if each group seized upon its own territory and identified with it and if fixed boundaries clearly distinguished different groups from their neighbours. Eskimo tribes are separated from one another by barren expanses, completely denuded and hardly habitable, with headlands round which it is impossible to navigate at any time. As a result, journeys between tribes are a rarity.²⁸ It is indeed remarkable that the only group that gives the impression of being a proper tribe is the group of Eskimo at Smith Strait. Geographical circumstances have completely isolated it from all other groups and, although it occupies an immense area, its members form, as it were, a single family.²⁹

The true territorial unit is, rather, the settlement.³⁰ By this we mean a group of assembled families who are united by special ties and who occupy a habitat in which they are unevenly distributed, as we shall see, at different times of the year, but which constitutes their domain. A settlement is, thus, a concentration of houses, a collection of tent sites, plus hunting-grounds on land and sea, all of which belong to a certain number of individuals. It also includes the system of paths, passages and harbours which these individuals use and where they continually encounter one another.³¹ All this forms a unified whole that has all the distinct characteristics of a circumscribed social group.

(1) The settlement has a definite name.³² Although other tribal or ethnic names may fluctuate and are reported differently by various authors, the names of settlements are clearly localized and are always reported as the same. As good evidence of this, one need only compare the list of Alaskan settlements which we cite later (Appendix 1) with the one compiled by Petroff. Except for the so-called Arctic district, these lists hardly differ at all, whereas the tribal names that Porter cites are very different from those of Petroff.³³

(2) The name of a settlement is a proper name used by all its members and by them alone. Ordinarily, the name consists of a descriptive place name followed by the suffix -muit (‘native of—’).³⁴

(3) The territory of a settlement has clearly recognized boundaries. Each settlement has its grounds for hunting and fishing on land and sea.³⁵ Tales tell of their existence.³⁶ In Greenland, Baffin Land and in the north of Labrador, settlements are strictly localized comprising a fiord with its upland grazing lands. Elsewhere they include either an island with the coast facing it, a headland with its hinterland,³⁷ or the bend of a river in a delta with a bit of coast, etc. Except when a major catastrophe destroys the settlement, the same people or their descendants always stay in the same spot: the descendants of Frobisher’s victims in the sixteenth century still remembered that expeditio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Translator’s Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 General Morphology
• 2 Seasonal Morphology
• 3 The Causes of Eskimo Seasonal Variations
• 4 The Effects of Eskimo Seasonal Variations
• 5 Conclusion
• Appendix 1 The Kuskokwim District
• Appendix 2 Age and Status of the Inhabitants of the Kuskokwim District
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index