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to the St. Francis to meet some friends. I really didn't know whether I'd find her on the boat when I got back or not, and I flew down below the minute I came aboard to see whether she was still on the ship. But by this time she had forgotten her impatience and was just getting back to normal when more reporters with cameras came on when the boat was about to sail. She again fled to her room and I couldn't get her up again until we were past Alcatraz.

Then she told me that people got paid for talking to papers and giving pictures, sometimes $20. I told her I hadn't heard of such a thing, unless they had written a story to sell, and her story had already been printed. But she was sure Eskimos at Nome had been paid for pictures.

Later she told me she bought 3 papers with Bennett's pictures in it, one to send to her "friend".

In the afternoon she went back to her usual happy frame of mind and told me some Eskimo legends, one long one about an Eskimo man who married Polar Bear and thought it was a human - and one about the Lady in the Moon. I like that one so well that I wrote it down last night. I tried to write it as nearly in her manner of telling it as I could - of course, I could not take notes. So I am afraid I didn't get quite the whole thing. It is a story of her mother's telling - her mother was from Council - and does not speak English.

To-day as we passed the coast below Santa Barbara she said the hills looked like Wrangell, only some hills were higher on Wrangell - all covered with snow in winter and brown and black in summer.

Bennett talks a lot and asks questions about everything. "not like me," Adasays, "always my people say I never ask questions about anything. On Wrangell the first year I do not talk much, but when Knight and Crawford go on ice trip and I am left alone with Maurer and Galle for week, I tell them stories - story of Lady in the Moon I told you. Galle like it very much. Then when I am alone with Knight we do not talk much, but he tells me

Last edit about 2 months ago by Samara Cary
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.

Last edit 2 months ago by Samara Cary
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