stefansson-wrangel-09-15-044-012

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stories, "Jack and the bean stalk.'" "Maurer talks Eskimo, not quite the same
as her dialect but she can understand.

Homesick for Nome and some ice and snow. She would like
some seal oil and sourleaves and salmon berries. On Wrangell she had seal oil
but no sour leaves.

People on the boat have been kind. She only talks to a
few - not very much to them. Sometimes I can get her to talk a little to
someone else.

Yesterday she told me she had read your "Life with the
Eskimo," every word of it - and "I think it is every word true, what he says
about north country." So she pays you the perfect tribute.

I haven't yet heard her make any comment to show any
difference in her feeling about any of the men of the expedition except to speak
of Maurer's ability as a hunter.

About her stories, she has a real gift in the way she
expresses herself. It might be she could write a group of folk tales, legends
and they might be saleable. I don't know about the value of such things but
I find them quite interesting and different. The polar bear tale is like the
Japanese Fox woman, and your story is somewhat similar. The Milky Way is the
"trail of the old woman" - the great dipper the caribou and when the handle is
straight out it means to the Eskimo good hunting and many reindeer.

In telling me about the polar bear on Wrangell she said,
"Sometimes Eskimo say polar bear (Nanook) know poor people and does not hunt
them." Then she told me the story of the poor woman who had a mean husband,
and how the woman met the bear and looked in its eyes all day, sun up to sun
down, eye to eye until the bear dropped down and went away. I must write that
story, too, while I have time. I took me from ten last night until almost two
in the A.M. to write down the Lady in the Moon.