they were white like you, and weak as the
little children when the seal have gone away and the hunters come home
empty. I know of these things from the old men and the old women, who
got them from their fathers and mothers before them. These strange
white men did not take kindly to our ways at first, but they grew
strong, what of the fish and the oil, and fierce. And they built them
each his own house, and took the pick of our women, and in time
children came. Thus he was born who was to become the father of my
father's father.

'As I said, I was different from my people, for I carried the strong,
strange blood of this white man who came out of the sea. It is said we
had other laws in the days before these men; but they were fierce and
quarrelsome, and fought with our men till there were no more left who
dared to fight. Then they made themselves chiefs, and took away our old
laws, and gave us new ones, insomuch that the man was the son of his
father, and not his mother, as our way had been. They also ruled that
the son, first-born, should have all things which were his father's
before him, and that the brothers and sisters should shift for
themselves. And they gave us other laws. They showed us new ways in the
catching of fish and the killing of bear which were thick in the woods;
and they taught us to lay by bigger stores for the time of famine. And
these things were good.

'But when they had become chiefs, and there were no more men to face
their anger, they fought, these strange white men, each with the other.
And the one whose blood I carry drove his seal spear the length of an
arm through the other's body. Their children took up the fight, and
their children's children; and there was great hatred between them, and
black doings, even to my time, so that in each family but one lived to
pass down the blood of them that went before. Of my blood I was alone;
of the other man's there was but a girl. Unga, who lived with her
mother. Her father and my father did not come back from the fishing one
night; but afterward they washed up to the beach on the big tides, and
they held very close to each other.

'The people wondered, because of the hatred between the houses, and the
old men shook their heads and said the fight would go on when children
were born to her and children to me. They told me this as a boy, till I
came to believe, and to look upon Unga as a foe, who was to be the
mother of children which were to fight w