Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos/Chapter 2

The sketches of Eskimo life given in the foregoing show that these people, like so many other children of Nature, accept all pleasant happenings with great and spontaneous rejoicing, while evil times are endured with a surprising and often sublime resignation. But in their autobiographies, the religious ideas expressed are so hesitating and uncertain that it seems at first as if all were confusion and that the contradictions continually met with must almost preclude the finding of any sense in the scheme as a whole. One is here too often apt to forget that one is dealing with primitive minds, and only when one has realised that the mode of thought and the logic of the stone age are not the same as ours can one appreciate the underlying unity in all these apparent inconsistencies.

I once went out to Aua's hunting quarters on the ice outside Lyon Inlet to spend some time with the men I have referred to in the foregoing. For several evenings we had discussed rules of life and taboo customs without getting beyond a long and circumstantial statement of all that was permitted and all that was forbidden. Everyone knew precisely what had to be done in any given situation, but whenever I put in my query: "Why?", they could give no answer. They regarded it, and very rightly, as unreasonable that I should require not only an account, but also a justification, of their religious principles. They had of course no idea that all my questions, now that I had obtained the information I wished for, were only intended to make them react in such a manner that they should, excited by my inquisitiveness, be able to give an inspired explanation. Aua had as usual been the spokesman, and as he was still unable to answer my questions, he rose to his feet, and as if seized by a sudden impulse, invited me to go outside with him.

It had been an unusually rough day, and as we had plenty of meat after the successful hunting of the past few days, I had asked my host to stay at home so that we could get some work done together. The ​brief daylight had given place to the half-light of the afternoon, but as the moon was up, one could still see some distance. Ragged white clouds raced across the sky, and when a gust of wind came tearing over the ground, our eyes and mouths were filled with snow. Aua looked me full in the face, and pointing out over the ice, where the snow was being lashed about in waves by the wind, he said:

"In order to hunt well and live happily, man must have calm weather. Why this constant succession of blizzards and all this needless hardship for men seeking food for themselves and those they care for? Why? Why?"

We had come out just at the time when the men were returning from their watching at the blowholes on the ice; they came in little groups, bowed forward, toiling along against the wind, which actually forced them now and again to stop, so fierce were the gusts. Not one of them had a seal in tow; their whole day of painful effort and endurance had been in vain.

I could give no answer to Aua's "Why?", but shook my head in silence. He then led me into Kublo's house, which was close beside our own. The small blubber lamp burned with but the faintest flame, giving out no heat whatever; a couple of children crouched, shivering, under a skin rug on the bench.

Aua looked at me again, and said: "Why should it be cold and comfortless in here? Kublo has been out hunting all day, and if he had got a seal, as he deserved, his wife would now be sitting laughing beside her lamp, letting it burn full, without fear of having no blubber left for tomorrow. The place would be warm and bright and cheerful the children would come out from under their rugs and enjoy life. Why should it not be so? Why?"

I made no answer, and he led me out of the house, in to a little snow hut where his sister Natseq lived all by herself because she was ill. She looked thin and worn, and was not even interested in our coming. For several days she had suffered from a malignant cough that seemed to come from far down in the lungs, and it looked as if she had not long to live.

A third time Aua looked at me and said: "Why must people be ill and suffer pain? We are all afraid of illness. Here is this old sisier of mine; as far as anyone can see, she has done no evil; she has lived through a long life and given birth to healthy children, and now she must suffer before her days end. Why? Why?"

This ended his demonstration, and we returned to our house, to resume, with the others, the interrupted discussion.

"You see" said Aua. "You are equally unable to give any reason when we ask you why life is as it is. And so it must be. All our ​customs come from life and turn towards life; we explain nothing, we believe nothing, but in what I have just shown you lies our answer to all you ask.

"We fear the weather spirit of earth, that we must fight against to wrest our food from land and sea. We fear Sila.

"We fear dearth and hunger in the cold snow huts.

"We fear Takánakapsâluk, the great woman down at the bottom of the sea, that rules over all the beasts of the sea.

"We fear the sickness that we meet with daily all around us; not death, but the suffering. We fear the evil spirits of life, those of the air, of the sea and the earth, that can help wicked shamans to harm their fellow men.

"We fear the souls of dead human beings and of the animals we have killed.

"Therefore it is that our fathers have inherited from their fathers all the old rules of life which are based on the experience and wisdom of generations. We do not know how, we cannot say why, but we keep those rules in order that we may live untroubled. And so ignorant are we in spite of all our shamans, that we fear everything unfamiliar. We fear what we see about us, and we fear all the invisible things that are likewise about us, all that we have heard of in our forefathers' stories and myths. Therefore we have our customs, which are not the same as those of the white men, the white men who live in another land and have need of other ways."

That was Aua's explanation; he was, as always, clear in his line of thought, and with a remarkable power of expressing what he meant. He was silent then, and as I did not at once resume the conversation, his younger brother Ivaluardjuk took up the theme, and said:

"The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls.

"All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, like we have, souls that do not perish with the body, and which must therefore be propitiated lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies."

"In the old days, it was far worse than it is now," put in Anarqâq. "Everything was more difficult, and our customs accordingly much more strict. In those days, men hunted only with bow and arrow and knew nothing of the white men's firearms. It was far more difficult to live then, and often men could not get food enough. The caribou were hunted in kayaks at the crossing of rivers and lakes, being driven out into the water where they could be easily overtaken in a kayak. But it was hard to make them run the way one wished, and therefore ​rules were very strict about those places. No woman was allowed to work there, no bone of any animal might be broken, no brain or marrow eaten. To do so would be an insult to the souls of the caribou, and was punished by death or disaster. There is an old story, and a true one, showing the danger that lurks in the souls of animals for us human beings, and it is about

"Once some women were left alone at a spot where the caribou were accustomed to swim across a river. The women were to wait there for their husbands, who were away hunting. But the men were away a long time, and the women had not food enough, and being near starvation, gathered together bones of animals that had been killed there some time before, and to save their lives, boiled fat from the bones and ate it. Thus they managed to save themselves from dying of hunger, but in doing so disobeyed the strict rule that forbids any breaking of bones at the fords.

"At last, after a long time, their men came home from the hunting, and some had found game and others none. One of the men who had got nothing told his wife she had better go away to her elder brother. His comrades tried to persuade her to stay, saying they would willingly feed her now that they had meat enough, but she did as her husband had said and went off to her brother. She reached the place where lie was and lived with him. One day her brother's wife asked her to carry their little child in the amaut, as she herself wanted to make a pair of kamiks for her husband. The woman went out with her brother's child, and sat down in a small gully not far from the house. And while she was there, the earth suddenly closed over her and she could not get out. Later in the day, the woman and child were missed, and when some went out to search for them, it was seen that the earth had closed over them, and the child could be heard crying, and the woman singing:

"So the woman perished because she had done what was forbidden at the sacred places. The powerful souls of the caribou had killed her."

— — —

In all living beings there are forces that render them particularly sensitive to the rules of life that human beings endeavour to follow. These forces lie in the soul and the name.

The soul, tᴀrniɳa or inu·sia, is that which gives to all living things their particular appearance. In the case of human beings it is really a tiny human being, in the case of the caribou a tiny caribou, and so on with all animals; an image, but very much smaller than the creature itself. The inu·sia (meaning "appearance as a human being") is situated in a bubble of air in the groin; from it proceed appearance, thoughts, strength and life, it is that which makes the man a man, the caribou a caribou, the walrus a walrus, the dog a dog, etc. Where any act of violence is committed against this soul, or any offence by breach of taboo, it becomes an evil spirit, wreaking harm and death in return. But it must not be supposed that all animals are angered when they are killed. Animals have in reality no objection to being killed by human beings, as long as the rules of life are observed by the latter, It may even happen, and not infrequently, that an animal will approach a human being, actually desiring to be killed by that particular person. An animal may perhaps be tired of being what it is: and since its soul cannot change its envelope until the body has been killed, it is natural that animals should sometimes wish to die. The great danger in killing animals commonly hunted lies in the fact that there is hardly a single human being who has kept the rules of life and lived throughout in accordance with the laws laid down by the wisdom of his forefathers. Therefore it is said that the greatest danger lies in the fact that unclean and often guilty human beings have to depend entirely, on the souls of other beings for food.

But in addition to the soul there is also the name to be considered, and in regard to this it is stated that:

Everyone on receiving a name receives with it the strength and skill of the deceased namesake, but since all persons bearing the same name have the same source of life, spiritual and physical qualities are ​also inherited from those who in the far distant past once bore the same name. The shamans say that sometimes, on their spirit flights, they can see, behind each human being, as it were a mighty procession of spirits aiding and guiding, as long as the rules of life are duly observed; but when this is not done, or if a man is tempted to some act unwelcome to the dead, then all the invisible guardians turn against him as enemies, and he is lost beyond hope.

Men have their knowledge of the soul, which none can see, and which in itself is so incomprehensible, from the story of the soul which migrated from one animal body to another. This story, which is also wellknown among the Greenland Eskimos, is as follows:

There was once a woman who gave birth to an abortion, and taking care that none should know, she threw the thing to the dogs, for she did not wish to observe all the troublesome rites imposed on women thus rendered unclean.

The abortion was eaten by a dog, and remaining in its body for some time, was ultimately born of the dog that had swallowed it, and lived as a dog. And when people threw out refuse from their houses, it would run up with the other dogs for something to eat. But it did not rightly understand how to be a dog, it could not push its way to the front, and thus it never got enough to eat. It grew thin, and the woman who had given birth to it at first, said:

"Do not stay behind like that, but push your way to the front, or you will never get anything to eat.".

And accordingly, it adopted the custom of the dogs, and pushed its way to the front wherever there was a chance of anything to be got, but often it got only blows for its pains. And at last it grew tired of being a dog, and changed from the body of one animal to another.

At one time it was a fjord seal. It lived down under the ice, and had its blowhole like the other seals. The seals were not afraid of death, and therefore had no fear of man, but would agree among themselves which hunter they would allow to capture them. And then they would lie there under the blowholes waiting till a little thing like a drop of water should fall down on them. It pricked their bodies, and often hurt.

The soul quite enjoyed being a seal, but all the same it felt it would like to be a wolf, and so it became a wolf. It stayed with the wolves for a time, but then it grew tired of that, for the wolves were always moving from one place to another, and never stayed anywhere ​for long, there was no time to spend in making love; they trotted and trotted about and knew no rest.

Then it became a caribou. The caribou were always feeding, and therefore it was pleasant to live among them, but on the other hand they were always afraid, always in dread of some danger. So it left them and became a walrus. The walrus were good to live with. They too were always feeding; and they never went in fear of anything. But they had a way of beating one another on the snout with their tusks, and because of this, the soul grew dissatisfied with its life among them.

Thus it wandered from one animal form to another, and when it had passed through all of them, it returned to the seals, that it liked so much.

Then one day it allowed itself to be captured by a man whose wife was barren. He took the seal home to his wife, and as she stood over the carcase to cut it up, the soul slipped into her body. The woman became pregnant, and the child within her grew so fast that it made her ill. At last she gave birth to a boy, a fine, well-proportioned child, but when it tried to speak, all it could say was

"uɳa·, uɳa·".

The boy grew up and became a skilful hunter. It was not long before he had a sealing float made from the whole skin of a bearded seal, for he was marvellously strong. And he went hunting, killing whale and seal and all manner of beasts.

Thus the woman's abortion became a human being again after having lived in the bodies of all beasts, and the young man proved a good son to his parents, hunting and finding meat for them till the end of their days.

I asked Aua why the soul was always given so prominent a place in their religious ideas, and he answered:

"We ignorant Eskimos living up here do not believe, as you have told us many white men do, in one great solitary spirit that from a place far up in the sky maintains humanity and all the life of nature. Among us, as I have already explained to you, all is bound up with the earth we live on and our life here; and it would be even more incomprehensible, even more unreasonable, if, after a life short or long, of happy days or of suffering and misery, we were then to cease altogether from existence. What we have heard about the soul shows us that the life of men and beasts does not end with death. When at the end of life we draw our last breath, that is not the end. We awake ​to consciousness again, we come to life again, and all this is effected through the medium of the soul. Therefore it is that we regard the soul as the greatest and most incomprehensible of all.

"In our ordinary everyday life we do not think much about all these things, and it is only now you ask that so many thoughts arise in my head of long-known things: old thoughts, but as it were becoming altogether new when one has to put them into words."