Rights and wrongs
I have already spoken of the feelings of these people in regard to offenses against property and crimes of violence. As to the relations between the sexes there seems to be the most complete absence of what we consider moral feelings. Promiscuous sexual intercourse between married or unmarried people, or even among children, appears to be looked upon simply as a matter for amusement. As far as we could learn unchastity in a girl was considered nothing against her, and in fact one girl who was a most abandoned and shameless prostitute among the sailors, and who, we were told, had had improper relations with some of her own race, had no difficulty in obtaining an excellent husband.
Remarks of the most indecent character are freely bandied back and forth between the sexes in public, and are received with shouts of laughter by the bystanders. Nevertheless, some of the women, especially those of the wealthier class, preserve a very tolerable degree of conjugal fidelity and certainly do not prostitute themselves to the sailors. I believe that prostitution for gain is unknown among themselves, but it is carried to a most shameless extent with the sailors of the whaling fleet by many of the women, and is even considered a laudable thing by the husbands and fathers, who are perfectly willing to receive the price of their wives’ or daughters’ frailty, especially if it takes the form of liquor. Dr. Simpson567 says: “It is said by themselves that the women are very continent before marriage, as well as faithful afterward to their husbands; and this seems to a certain extent true.” But he goes on to add: “In their conduct toward strangers the elderly women frequently exhibit a shameless want of modesty, and the men an equally shameless indifference, except for the reward of their partner’s frailty.” It seems to me that he must have been deceived by the natives concerning the first statement, since the immorality of these people among themselves, as we witnessed it, seems too purely animal and natural to be of recent growth or the result of foreign influence. Moreover, a similar state of affairs has been observed among Eskimo elsewhere, notably at Iglulik at the time of Parry’s visit.568