There is no Eskimo tribe. No superstructure. Kinship (except very close) is not emphasized. Mere preference. Defined by locality. Simple, rudimentary. Spirit beings (and all animals because they have souls) have emotional intelligence. Separatistic sentiments (sea and land, can't eat caribou meat and seal meat together). Unceasing work. Can carry only one child at a time. First offer the child for adoption, and foster parenthood taken for granted, with little concern for biological identity of father or mother. Childless couples generally eager to adopt. Twins. Exposure of a child a quitclaim on the part of its parents. Male is the basic food producer. Tendency toward virilocal residence. Population number drained off by homicide of males. One-third of girls eliminated. Adulthood more women than men. Distasteful cannibalism. Anyone may hunt anywhere. The idea of restricting the pursuit of food repugnant to all (except some in Western Alaska). Who first strikes a walrus receives the tusk and one of the forequarters, the first assist the other forequarter, etc. Team activity. By joining the fray, a hunter exercises his power to open a new legal relation with respect to the other hunters of the moment. Wins honor and leadership among them by giving away food and goods, not for having possession of them. Permitted to accumulate wealth only so long as he is felt to be a public benefactor. Skills are unequal, and some people are more prone to initiate action (frequency, forcefully), and become the nucleus for the organization of the community. Proven skills, point the way for the group as a whole. Recognized. First among equals. Headman. Almost always the best hunter. Things and wives are easily borrowed. Continuous competition and often violent conflict for possession of women. Consent of her husband, versus challenge to his position as a man. Dominance prestige. To show his pride, or rest demeaned. All adult males involved in a homicide (as principal or acessory), always for some quarrel about a woman. Women almost never kill (one for taunt of sterility). Murder often followed by taking over the widow and children of the victim. Revenge killing not done ‘bravely’ but rather by stealth. The action is a legal execution: a privelege right of the executioner. When he heard he asked every man in the village if the man should be killed. All agreed. Approval for his act of riddance. Responsibility is theirs. Obnoxious person first ostrasized, though.

Among Eskimo legal postulates:
No man may own more capital goods than he himself can utilize. The self must find its relization through action. Creation or personal use of a material object results in a special status with respect t  o ‘ownership’ of the object. Aggressive behaviour must be kept within defined channels and limited within certain bounds.

Festive occasions with contests of blows (boxing or butting) or wrestling or singing (and mixed), applauded as winner. Sporting performance, not one of stealth, cunning, or ambush. Not annihilation but subjection.

Song cousins try to outdo each other. Tenor of songs is different from real dispute.

Sorcery and chronic lying placed in same category as homicidal recidivism. Widows are easy marks with no one to protect them. Criminal pranks.

Shaman's acts not immediately ‘legal’. Action on the sinner is ‘voluntary.’ May command pennance. Some angakok's can be ‘bribed’ to find a marriage obnoxious to the spirits. Acts of angakoks carry force over into humanly very dubious cases. Divination can be resorted to when fact is not known, but apparently only when an element of sin enters into the offence or when a death through sorcery has occurred.

Umiaks (shrewdest man in each village and recognized as leader), control the others, even to the extent of doing their trading for them. His authority lasts only so long as he is looked upon as a public benefactor. Such men make a point of gathering an abundant supply of food every summer in order that they may feed the needy and give numerous festivals during the winter. Eskimos are very jealous of anyone who accumulates much property, and in consequence these rich men are forced to be bery open-handed. Prolonged possession of too many capital goods a capital crime, goods subject to communal confiscation.

Privelege rights (including killing ‘ ' of close people). Demand right to have it done to one. Abandoned, but with miraculous rescues.

Law maintains social equilibrium, channeling behavior, versus waste.

Questions: What do they trade for?