An introduction to the history, natives, geography, cities, and modern problems of the largest state.
Evelyn Stefansson, has written a book which is stuffed with interesting facts and sound reasoning. She is quite comfortable with concepts like "enlightening misstatements" and "picturesque over simplifications". She kids Hollywood for its portrayal of Eskimos rubbing noses, without demonizing the audience for watching the movie. She discounts theories about the climate of Alaska and Eskimo illnesses by comparing their health with that of South Pacific islanders, eliminating climate as a variable. Her accounts of the effects of the first casual contacts with white people on the health of the Eskimos, with their naive immune systems, got me to thinking about why the Neanderthals seemed to vanish as they came into contact with the Cro-Magons.
I also always wondered what the Eskimos did for gardens. It seems like the vegetable garden was introduced by missionaries, and the inventive Eskimos quickly became cash crop farmers. With one interesting side effect: cavities. Cavities were almost unknown among the carnivorous Eskimo, until they started eating their vegetables. The forest Indians, further south, ate their carrots and got cavities, but when Stefansson wrote this book, in the late 30s, older Eskimos still remembered the first cavities in their community.
As a kid I always wondered why, if people wore fir to keep warm, they didn't wear the fir on the inside of their coat. It appears that Eskimos do.
Back in her day, there were still people who remembered the Russians. And, she recounts how the Nobles of St. Petersburg ( which is back!) donated 1,200 books to the Sitka library. For a small community library, that's quite a haul.
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