Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos/Chapter 3

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It will now be clearly apparent, from the statements of the Eskimos themselves, as above quoted, that the idea of a God, or group of gods, to be worshipped, is altogether alien to their minds. They know only powers or personifications of natural forces, acting upon human life in various ways, and affecting all that lives through fair and foul weather, disease and perils of all kinds. These powers are not evil in themselves, they do not wreak harm of evil intent, but they are nevertheless dangerous owing to their unmerciful severity where men fail to live in accordance with the wise rules of life decreed by their forefathers. The purpose of the whole system is, to use an expression current among the Polar Eskimos of North Greenland, "to keep a right balance between mankind and the rest of the world". The term used by the Hudson Bay Eskimos for the guiding powers is ᴇrsigiʃavut, "those we fear" or mianᴇriʃavut, "those we keep away from and regard with caution". Individually, they are as follows:

Arnâluk takánâluk, "the woman down there", the spirit of the sea, the mother of marine animals, living at the bottom of the sea. She is also referred to, almost with a touch of contempt, as Takánakapsâluk: "the bad one" or "the terrible one down there". The immigrant Netsilingmiut call her Nuliajuk, that being the name she bore when she lived as a little girl among men in the days before she became a spirit.

Sila, the spirit of the weather or of the universe.

Aningât or Tarqeq, the general name for the moon; in this connection however, it is through Aningâp inua or Tarqiup inua, the moon's man or the moon spirit, that the various functions of the moon are exercised.

Of these three powers, Takánakapsâluk plays by far the most important part in everyday life, and is, if one may use such an expression, the principal deity, with power in some respects over both Sila and Tarqeq, these latter acting as agents to see that her will is obeyed. ​Her supreme power lies in the fact that all the food of all mankind is under her command, and this, it will readily be seen, is a point of importance in a land where the struggle for existence is more acute and merciless than in other regions of the world. Food is only to be obtained under certain definite conditions. The strict rules of the taboo system must be punctiliously kept, and all the wise ordinances of former generations must be obeyed. When any transgression takes place in regard to these, which are expressly laid down as essential to success in hunting, the spirit of the sea intervenes. The moon spirit helps her to see that the rules of life are duly observed, and comes hurrying down to earth to punish any instance of neglect. And both sea spirit and moon spirit employ Sila to execute all punishments in any way connected with the weather.

There was once a little girl who would not have a husband. No one was good enough. At last her father grew angry and said:

"Then may she have my dog!"

And then one evening, when they were going to rest, a strange man came in. No one knew who he was. He had the fangs of a dog hanging down on either side of his chest as an amulet. This man lay down beside the girl and took her to wife. It was the father's dog in human form, and thus the threat was carried out. But when the girl was with child and about to bring forth, her father rowed her across to a small island near by. This island was Qiqertârjuk, close to Iglulik. But the dog swam after them and lived with the girl on the island. It used to swim in to the village for meat, which was set out for it in a pack saddle of the kind used by dogs when carrying loads up country in summer. Thus the girl and the dog lived together. But the time came when the girl was to bring forth, and she gave birth to a whole litter, some as dogs and some in right human form. The dogs were most, there were five of them, and they lived together, the girl and the dog and her young out on the little island. At last the girl's father began to feel sorry for his child, he wished he had not spoken those words, and one day, when the dog swam in to fetch meat, he laid stones and sand at the bottom of the load, but covered it with meat on top, so that the dog did not notice anything strange. But when it swam out to sea, the load was too heavy, and dragged it down to the bottom and it was drowned. But the girl was angry with her father for having caused the death of the dog, and she said one day to her dog-children: "atago alupiusaɳ·uᴀrᵈlugo tikip·​at qaja· nᴇriniᴀripse" "When your grandfather comes out here, pretend you want to lick the blood from his kayak and tear the kayak in pieces".

Their grandfather came out as usual, bringing some meat, and the dog-children, pretending they only meant to lick the blood from the kayak, tore the skin of the kayak. But the old man managed nevertheless to escape and got safely to shore, and after that he never dared to go out again in his kayak.

Now the girl and her young often suffered want. At last she decided to send her children away; she laid all the dog-children in the sole of a kamik, and setting three straws in it for masts, said:

"sᴀ·rqutikʃäpsin·ik sanavaguma·rpuse" "You shall be skilful in the making of weapons".

And then they drifted out to sea.

It is said that the white men are descended from these dog-children. But those of her children that were born in right human form she placed on an alᴀq: a piece of sole leather that goes under the sole of the kamik proper, and these she sent drifting over to land. From these, it is said, are descended all the itqili·t, the Chipewyan. When the girl had thus sent away her young ones, she returned home to her father and mother and lived with them once more. But one day when her father was out hunting, there came a kayak and made fast close to the village, and the man in it called up to the house:

"taina uʷinigumasuic·ɔq qaile" "Let the girl who does not want to be married come down here".

"That must be me, I suppose" said the girl, and she took her ikpiᴀrjuk, a sewing bag made from the membrane of a walrus' kidney, and went down to the stranger in the kayak. He seemed to be a fine big man, for he looked tall sitting down, but he had spectacles on, covering his eyes.

"ᴀquᵛnut ik·i·t" "Sit up here in the stern of my kayak". And sat up behind him in the kayak and he rowed away with her.

When they had rowed some distance, he laid the kayak alongside an icefloe, and stepping out, thrust his great spectacles aside and said:

"igja·k·a takuᵛigit iʲᴀʀᴀ-ʀᴀʀa! ikɔrfak·a takuᵛigit iʲᴀʀ-ʀᴀ-ʀa!" "Can you see my spectacles, ha, ha, ha; can you see the stool I was sitting on, ha, ha, ha!"

And now for the first time the girl saw that his eyes were red and ugly, and that he was a little puny figure of a man. He had looked tall sitting in the kayak, but that was because he had made a high seat to sit on. The girl was so disappointed at this that she burst out crying, but the man only laughed:

​"iʲᴀʀ-ʀᴀ-ʀa": "Ha, ha, ha!" and rowed off with her again.

The man who had thus carried her off was a qᴀqugluk: a stormy petrel in human form. He rowed home with her to his own place, and led her into a nice little tent, light and comfortable inside and made entirely from the skins of young fjord seals. And the girl lived with him there and had a child.

But her father mourned for her, and went off with his wife in a boat to look for her. He found their dwelling, and rowed away with his daughter while her husband was out hunting. But when the husband came home and discovered that his wife had been carried off, he started out in pursuit of the fugitives, taking the shape of a stormy petrel once more. In this way he soon overtook their boat, and flew round it, crying:

"aggᴀ·rzɔqute·k·a takulᴀrᵈlak·a!" "Let me but look at those dear hands that belong to me."

This he said because the girl lay covered up with skins in the middle of the boat, and no part of her could be seen. But the girl's father answered scornfully: "taimaitut-qai aggᴀ·rzɔqutᴇqᴀrpaktut ikɔrfainait, iksainait": "How can one who is only tall with a stool to sit on, one whose face is covered by spectacles, how can such an one ever have sweet little hands belonging to him?"

At this the stormy petrel grew angry and flew over the boat; it made first some powerful movements with its wings, and then sailed in over the boat, so that a storm arose from the beating of its wings: the waves rose, and the water began to come in over one side. Then again the stormy petrel cried:

"Only her hands, the dear little hands that belong to me: you must let me see them."

But the girl's father took no heed of his crying, and then the bird flew once more furiously round the boat, and gliding over it on stiffly outstretched wings, it sent up such a storm that the boat nearly upset. Then at last the girl's father began to be frightened, and he threw his daughter out into the sea, so that her husband could take her himself. But the girl clung to the side of the boat, and as she would not let go, her father hacked off the top joints of her fingers, and the finger tips fell into the sea, and seals came bobbing up all round the boat. Her finger tips became seals. But again she grasped at the side of the boat, and clung on with the stumps of her hands, and again her father struck at her and cut off the next joints, and the pieces fell into the water, and bearded seals came bobbing up all round; the bearded seals are from the middle joints of her hands. But still she clung to the side of the boat with the stumps of her hands, and then her father struck again, being afraid lest the boat should ​upset, for the water was now coming in on both sides. This time, ther last joints of her hands fell into the sea, and walrus came up all round; the last joints of her hands had turned into walrus. But the girl herself could no longer hold on, the slipped away from the side of the boat and sank down to the bottom of the sea, and there she became a spirit, and we call her Takánâluk arnâluk.

The girl's father rowed home sorrowfully, and so deeply did he mourn for the fate of his daughter that he laid himself down by the water's edge, covered only by a skin, and when the flood tide came and the water rose, the waves bore him away, and so he came down to the bottom of the sea, where his daughter was. And he lived there, and now he is called Takatumâlûp angutialua: the Father of the Woman of the Deep.

And so at last the whole family were gathered together at the bottom of the sea: the dog that was drowned, the girl who sank to the bottom, and the father who was borne away by the waves. They turned into spirits after death. The Mother of the Sea Beasts has a house at the bottom of the sea. In the passage lies the dog that was once her husband; it lies so as to bar the entrance to the house completely, and acts as her watchdog. Only great shamans who fear nothing can pass by it.

But the girl's father lies inside on the bench, covered by a skin, just as he lay when the tide came in and the waves bore him away. He is dangerous, and always in a bad temper, and snaps and strikes at all who enter. We call him Takánâlûp angutialua, the father of the sea spirit; the Netsilingmiut have a special name for him, which perhaps was his name in the days when he lived among men, and that is Isarrataitsoq. Everyone is very much afraid of him, and it is he who mercilessly punishes all those who have trangressed the old rules of life and more especially those who have been guilty of sinful love. Only in his place can they be purified, and must do penance for their sins for a whole year before they are allowed to pass into the land of the dead at the bottom of the sea, which is called Qimiujarmiut. Not far from this land, in the same "underworld" lies the sea spirit's house. All this however, will be dealt with at greater length in the section on shamans.

This is the story of how all the beasts of the sea were formed from the fingers and hands of Takánâluk. She is so fond of them, as being parts of herself, and demands so great respect from mankind for the sacred food, that she will not suffer unclean women to come in contact with them. Hence the strict taboo to be observed if men are to live happily and find seal and other game when they go hunting.

​All the beasts of the sea have their place on the right of her lamp when she calls them together; that place is called kaɳia, and is on the right of the lamp when one sits on the bench in the housewife's place facing the passage. Here she assembles and keeps the beasts of the sea when they are to be withheld from mankind. Only the sharks have a special place to themselves; they live in her urine vessel, and that is why the flesh of sharks tastes of urine.

Some old folk believe that the mother of the sea beasts rules over all the animals we hunt, the caribou as well. But others hold a different view. They declare that there were no caribou at the time when Takánâluk lived on earth; and therefore she hates the caribou, and they have another mother, "atianik ikvᴇqᴀrput": "they have another with whom they are". In the days when Takánâluk lived on earth, men wore clothes made from eider duck and fox, and did not use skins of caribou at all.

This is what is told of the Mother of the Caribou, of "tuktut ikviat": "the one with whom the caribou are":

It is said that at the time when the sea beasts were first made, there were no caribou on the earth; but then an old woman went up inland and made them. Their skins she made from her breeches, so that the lie of the hair followed the same pattern as her breeches. But the caribou was given teeth like other animals; at first it had tusks as well. It was a dangerous beast, and it was not long before a man was killed while hunting. Then the old woman grew frightened, and went up inland again and gathered together the caribou she had made. The tusks she changed into antlers, the teeth in the front of the jaw she knocked out, and when she had done this, she said to them:

"Land beasts such as you must keep away from men, and be shy and easily frightened."

And then she gave them a kick on the forehead, and it was that which made the hollow one can see now in the forehead of all caribou. The animals dashed away, and were very shy thereafter. But then it was found that they were too swift; no man could come up with them, and once more the old woman had to call them all together. This time she changed the fashion of the hair, so that all did not lie the same way. The hair of the belly, under the throat and flanks, was made to lie in different directions, and then the animals were let loose once more. The caribou were still swift runners, but they could not cleave the air as rapidly as before, because the hair stood in the way, and men could now overtake them and kill them when they used certain tricks. Afterwards, the old woman went to ​live among the caribou: she stayed with them and never returned to the haunts of men, and now she is called, the Mother of the Caribou, "tuktut ikviat" or "the one with whom the caribou are".

Orulo was, of all the Iglulingmint I met, the most faithful storyteller and the most patient in answering all my questions. This was partly due to the fact that she was one of those who knew most about the old traditions. I was therefore surprised of find that the myth of the Sea Spirit, as she related it, differed from the versions I had heard elsewhere. Orulo makes the girl who married a dog and the girl who had a stormy petrel for a husband, one and the same woman. In most other places, these two myths are distinct, and regarded as two separate explanations of how the spirit of the sea originated. In both cases, the woman goes down to the bottom of the sea, and the story is content to assert, as its decisive feature, that the woman who was afterwards to obtain such extraordinary and determinative influence on human life, had once been married to an animal in human form, and was changed into a spirit after a violent death.

When I pointed out to Orulo the discrepancy between her description and those I had heard from others, she firmly maintained that hers was the correct one. Another thing I pointed out to her in this connection made not the slightest impression; and as her standpoint here is so characteristic of the Eskimo attitude generally towards myths which are actually of fundamental importance in their religious ideas, I will give our conversation as it took place.

I said to Orulo, that according to her account, all sea beasts originated frem Takánakapsâluk. They were made from her fingers, and it was because she was their mother that human beings had to observe all the numerous and difficult rules of taboo, the purpose of which was to ensure that the thoughts and hands of unclean human beings should never come in contact with the "sacred" food. In a Greenland variant of the story, as I now told Orulo, the Mother of the Sea Beasts could only be the same as the girl who was married to a dog. In the story I knew, the girl let her offspring lick the blood from her father's kayak, with the result that the dog-children at last fell upon the girl's father and tore him to pieces. Their mother had asked them to do so. For she could not forget that it was her father who had degraded her by marriage with a dog, and therefore she wished that the very children of that marriage should themselves be the cause of her father's death. Thus she would be avenged. and her children bit her father to death. The body was thrown into the ​sea, but afterwards, the girl regretted that she had killed her own father. So great was her feeling of shame at what she had done that she could not bear to live any longer; so she sent her children out into the world, and flung herself into the sea where her father had been cast. She sank down to the bottom, and became a sea spirit, afterwards ruling over all the beasts of the sea.

"But where did the seals come from?" asked Orulo, "If the same girl was not married to a stormy petrel and thrown overboard when her husband was pursuing her, then that could never have taken place which led to the cutting off of her fingers while she clung to the side of the boat. And if that had not happened, the beasts of the sea would never have been made at all."

To this I observed that in that case I also could not understand where the seals came from that lived in the sea long before the Mother of the Sea Beasts ever existed. For in the story Orulo herself had told me, the stormy petrel lived solely on young fjord seals.

At this Orulo laughed, and said:

"Too much thought only leads to trouble. All this that we are talking about now happened in a time so far back that there was no time at all. We Eskimos do not concern ourselves with solving all riddles. We repeat the old stories in the way they were told to us and with the words we ourselves remember. And if there should then seem to be a lack of reason in the story as a whole, there is yet enough remaining in the way of incomprehensible happenings, which our thought cannot grasp. If it were but everyday ordinary things, there would be nothing to believe in. How came all the living ereatures on earth from the beginning? Can anyone explain that?"

And then, after having thought for a moment, she added the following, which shows in a striking fashion how little the actual logical sequence counts with the Eskimos in their mythology:

"You talk about the storey petrel calching seals before there were any seals. But even if we managed to settle this point so that all worked out as it should, there would still be more than enough remaining which we cannot explain. Can you tell me where the mother of the caribou got her breeches from; breeches made of caribou skin before she had made any caribou? You always want these supernatural things to make sense, but we do not bother about that. We are content not to understand.

"I did not tell you all the story before, when I was talking about the mother of the caribou, but now, since you ask such a lot, you may as well have the whole of it.

"At the time when Takánakapsâluk had fashioned the great and meat-giving beasts of the sea, there was an old woman who thought ​the land ought also to have special animals of its own. So she went up inland, far, far up country, away from the dwellings of men, and here she began uttering magic words to create a kind of animal which might be useful to mankind. By means of strange words and their magic power she gave life to something, the body of which became a caribou. But this caribou was nothing but flesh and blood and bones. It had no hide, no skin. So she could find no better way out of the difficulty than by taking her old breeches, which were made of caribou skin, and over these she worked magic in such a fashion that the caribou got their skins from those breeches. This is why we say that the lie of the hair on a caribou skin is just like woman's breeches of caribou skin. If you take a pair of women's breeches and hold them out in front of you, then you will see they are cut to a special pattern, and the skin used is taken from particular parts of the animal's hide. The upper part of the breeches, over the hips, is taken from that part of the skin which we call niuata qaniɳita — that is, the part near where the legs begin; the hair here is light, though not white. Next to this comes that part of the breeches which has to be darkest. This is taken from the qimᴇrlua; the upper part of the back; and then comes the part which is every woman's pride if it is gleaming white. It is taken from pukᴇq, the white skin under the belly; below this, according to the pattern, there must be a piece that is dark though not so dark as the almost black part above pukᴇq, this is taken from the sanᴇrᴀq or the side of the caribou; and then finally, there is the front part, covering the stomach and lap, which is taken from the quɳasᴇq, or the neck of the caribou, where the hair is longer than on other parts of the body. This is related, perhaps, because people once wanted an explanation of why the caribou had so many colours and patterns in its skin; and then it was said that it was because the caribou got its skin from an old woman's breeches of caribou skin. As to where the woman who afterwards became the mother of all caribou got the caribou skin her breeches were made of — nobody bothered about that".

The whole nature of the Sea Spirit, her functions and manner of ruling and punishing mankind will be further dealt with later under shamans. For the most part, she is regarded by the Eskimos here generally as one with the Mother of the Caribou, so that despite the myths, she appears chiefly as the one ruling over all animals hunted either by land or sea. She is the "food deity" most clearly personified among the Polar Eskimos of the Thule district, who call her Nerrivigssuaq, or "the great meat dish". One of the most oft-repeated accounts of how the Sea Spirit in particular punishes all breaches of taboo, including offences against the caribou, is as follows:

​There was once a family that had moved out on to the sea ice to hunt seal. It was early in the winter, and they had just come from those parts of the country inland where they had been hunting caribou since the beginning of autumn. When a family comes down from the interior, they are strictly forbidden to sew new caribou skins on the ice, for all sewing must be done with while they are still on land, in the first snow huts of the autumn. But these people who had now moved out on to the ice failed to observe this important rule, and the wife set about sewing a dress of young caribou calf skins for her son. On the same day, a hurricane burst on them, the ice broke up just behind their snow hut, though it remained firm farther in, where other seal hunters had built their huts; and through the first cracks made by the storm in the ice could be seen a young caribou calf and a marmot swimming about among the breaking pieces. Thus the Sea Spirit made it clear to men that the land animals had been offended by the action of men out on the sea ice. This was her way of showing it, by letting a caribou calf and a little marmot swim about in the rough sea. All the people from the huts near by saw them, and then they disappeared as mysteriously as they had come; but the moment they vanished, the snow hut in which the offence had been committed fell into the sea and was swallowed up, with all who dwelt therein. They were drowned, and their souls went down to Takánakapsâluk, who thus took vengeance upon those that scornfully disregarded the ancient rules of life laid down by their forefathers.

Sila is the great, dangerous and divine spirit that lives somewhere "up in the air", out in the universe, between sky and sea, hovering over earth; from there it threatens mankind through the mighty powers of nature, wind and sea, fog, rain and snowstorm. Among the Iglulingmiut and the Aivilingmiut this spirit is regarded more than all else as a personification of the weather, and therefore, instead of sila, the term pᴇrsɔq is used, meaning snowstorm, or even anɔre, the wind.

Inugpasugjuk, an immigrant Netsilingmio, related the following story of the storm spirit Nârtsuk, which was supposed to be silap inua, or the spirit of the air.

There was once a man who was out on a great plain. Here he found a little human being, a child lying on the ground. He thought ​of killing it, but when the child realised what the man was about to do, it found voice, and said:

"If you kill me, then the world will perish" (sila imiktukʃᴀra·luk: literally, "then Sila, the expanse of heaven, will collapse").

The man would not believe it, and said:

"Well, try to kick that great mountain over there".

The little man answered not a word, but simply lifted one leg and kicked out. And at once the steep mountain collapsed, leaving not a trace behind.

Then at last the man believed the little creature's words, for he understood that it must be possessed of great power and strength. And without a word, he ran away.

This is all that the natives in the neighbourhood of Repulse Bay can remember of the story. By way of further explanation I may add that I later, in the North-west Passage region, was given the following more comprehensive account:

Nârtsuk, also pronounced Nârshuk, was originally the child of a giant and his wife, both of whom were murdered, first the father, then the mother. The murderers left the child to its fate, close to the spot where the parents had been killed. This evildoing turned the child into a spirit, which flew up into the sky and became the lord of the weather. It is always dressed in a full costume of caribou skin — a dress with tunic and breeches made in one piece, and very wide, as worn by children generally. When Nârtsuk shakes his dress, air rushes out from all the loose spaces in his clothing, and the winds begin to blow.

When the spirit of the winds keeps on blowing and there is not peace for men to go out hunting by land or sea, then a shaman has to go up into the sky and beat him, thrash him with a whip, until he calms down and the storms subside. With regard to this, Ivaluardjuk related the following:

It happened once that the Spirit of the Wind kept on blowing, and so a shaman went off up in the air to the place where he was. And this shaman afterwards gave the following account of his visit:

As soon as he reached the spirit, he tore open its clothing and began thrashing it, so that its body shed blood. Not until then did it calm down, and the weather with it. When the spirit of the wind has been given a good sound thrashing, one must wrap its clothes tightly round it, and then the wind will not blow. It is only when ​its clothing is loose and open so as to make as it were a draught, that the wind comes forth.

The Spirit of the Wind has a face almost like that of a human being, but shamans relate that it has a very thin covering of hair, rather like that of a bear; this hair, however, is found only on the face and hands. Such is the Spirit of the Wind.

The Spirit of the Wind, however, must not be confused with Oqaloraq, as to which Ivaluardjuk states as follows:

Oqaloraq is the name given to the firm, sharp edges of a snowdrift. They have a spirit, the Snowdrift Spirit. He lives in the sharp declivities of the snowdrifts, where the wind whines and blows most fiercely. When a blizzard is raging over the country, and the driving snow makes it impossible to see, then this spirit is filled with delight, and if you listen you can hear him laughing in the storm. The wilder the gale, the happier he is and the louder he laughs. He knows that men hate him, and for that reason he persecutes them. He sends down a snowstorm upon them unawares when they are out on their sledges, or on the ice at the blowholes, or in their kayaks, and then he can be heard laughing through the storm when harm comes to the human beings that hate him. He wears close-fitting clothes, made of caribou skin, and does nothing but laugh and chuckle through the blizzard whenever men suffer harm.

Such is the Spirit of the Snowdrift.

The stories I have here given, the only ones known in this district in connection with Sila, show that this spirit here plays a surprisingly small part as an independent force. It is altogether amalgamated with the storm, or foul weather; the one that Takánakapsâluk makes use of when she is angry. Among the Iglulingmiut, it is the Spirit of the Sea which sends Sila to punish mankind. Sila is her agent; but we shall later see, when dealing with the inland folk, that Sila is doubtless the original world power, which at one time, when the Eskimos had not yet become a coastal people dependent on the sea, was the principal spirit, on which all religious ideas were based.

The Moon Spirit, Aningâp or Tarqip inua, lives with his sister Seqineq in a double house (qᴀrajare·k: a house with two apartments but one common entrance) up in the land of the dead in the sky, the same which is called Udlormiut or the Land of Day. Human beings ​who perish by drowning in the sea or in a lake, go to dwell with the moon; so also those who are killed by their fellows openly or unawares, those who take their own lives out of weariness or because they are old, and finally, all women dying in childbirth. Human beings going up into the sky enter at once into the eternal hunting grounds, and do not have to purify their minds by a year of penance, as with those who go down to the Sea Spirit. All are loth to go down to her, for fear of the ill treatment meted out to them by her father Isarrataitsoq. A few of the greater shamans can also procure special admission to the Moon Spirit for the dead; this can be done in various ways, e.g. by means of amulets. It is said that the molars of a bear, consecrated by the prayers of a great shaman, are particularly effective in this direction.

The Moon Spirit is one of the great regulating powers of the universe which is not feared. Knowing the view of the East Greenlanders, who regard the Moon Spirit as the most terrible of the punitive deities watching over the deeds of men, I enquired particularly about this point, but was everywhere informed that no one feared the Moon Spirit, only the Sea Spirit was to be feared, and especially her father. The Moon Spirit, on the other hand, is the only good and well-intentioned spirit known, and when he does intervene, it is often more for guidance than for punishment.

People in danger can often hear him calling out:

"Come, come to me! It is not painful to die. It is only a brief moment of dizziness. It does not hurt to kill yourself".

Thus the moon sometimes calls, and it is thus also regarded more particularly as the protector of those perishing by accident or suicide. His house lies midway between the houses of the dead in the Land of Day, and here he lives as a mighty hunter, always willing to share his game with his fellows. It is recognised that the Moon Man has some influence on the sea, as with the tides, and this is why he, alone of all the dwellers in the heavens, can hunt marine animals and procure sea food. All the others up there can only hunt the land fauna. He is also a mighty walrus hunter, and it is when he is out hunting that he is not to be seen in the sky.

The Moon Man has various functions to observe, but in his method of doing so we find, among the Iglulingmiut, often a guiding rather than a punitive element; it seems almost as if he wished to protect the unfortunate or imprudent against the inconsiderate and altogether merciless punishments of the Sea Spirit. He therefore regards it as one of his most important tasks to see that men do not commit any breach of taboo. There is a peephole in the floor of his house, an opening covered with the shoulderblade of a caribou. As ​soon as this cover is removed, he can look down over all the dwellings of men, and from there, they appear as if quite near, so that nothing escapes his attention. When unclean woman offend against taboo, smoke rises from their bodies. And this foul smoke pours out from the houses where they live, and attracts the notice of the Moon Spirit. This smoke gets into the Sea Spirit's eyes, or falls over her face, hair and body in a mess of dirt. And the Moon Man, loth to see men suffer dearth when the Sea Spirit is roused to anger, therefore hastens down and warns and punishes those who have done wrong.

The Moon Man is not only the moral guardian of mankind, but also the maintainer of fertility. When a woman is barren and cannot bear her husband children, it is the moon that helps her. Sometimes this is done simply by letting the full moon shine on her bare lap, but for the most part, the Moon Man himself goes down to earth driving across the Land of the Sky with his team of dogs. He races across the clear sky with great speed: the ground here is smooth ice without snow; through the clouds, progress is slower, for here there is snow underfoot. Thus driving, he comes to visit the village where the barren woman lives; sometimes he will lie with her there, and that is all, but it may also happen that he carries her off to the Land of Heaven and keeps her there, until she is with child. Any human being who visits the Moon Man must never make a secret of the fact; to keep it secret would mean death.

In another sense also, the Moon Man is the god of fruitfulness. It is he who sets the currents of the sea in motion, and thus determines the movements of the seal. This gives good hunting to all good men, as the animals are scattered along the coasts; and villages where the ancient rules of life are faithfully observed will never lack food. This is why he is so careful to see that no offence is committed, but he himself is helpless once the mighty Sea Spirit has shut up all the animals in her house.

The Moon is also the well disposed patron of all boys, all great hunters to be, and therefore they sacrifice to him; not because they are afraid of him, but in order that he may bring them luck. And all little boys who wish to become great hunters, sacrifice to the moon in the following manner:

At every new moon, they run out to a spot where the snow is clean and free from footmarks. From here they take a lump of snow, and call up to the moon:

"Give me luck in hunting!" Then they run into the house and put the snow into a water vessel. The reason for this is that the seals, who live in salt water, are always thirsty. And the snow water thus ​offered is given by the moon to the seals that are to be captured in the future. On the same principle, their mother must sprinkle water out in the direction of the moon, the first time the baby boy in her amaut sees the moon.

All this is done with a view to obtaining success in hunting. And for the same reason shamans often travel through the air to visit the Moon Man, who is always willing to give men good hunting. All hunting on sea or land is reckoned quite as much a matter of luck as of skill. And luck is granted by the Moon Man if only one visits him in his house. Therefore it happens sometimes that the Moon will himself take a hunter up to his house in the sky, out of sheer goodwill towards him. But all who go visiting the Moon must beware of another spirit which it is impossible to avoid meeting in the heavens. Some believe that this spirit lives with the Moon, others that it has its own house just close by. This spirit, which is a woman, is called Ululiarnâq ("the one with the ulo", a knife used by women) and her perculiarity is, that she is always trying to make people laugh. And if they do but smile, she will slit up their bellies and tear out the entrails. She wears a tunic that is too short for her, terminating in a pointed hood. She has tattooed her face in such odd patterns that one can hardly help laughing at that alone. The Moon Man does all he can to keep her out of his house, but nevertheless it happens sometimes that she finds an opportunity of throwing down her dish on the floor; a dish quite white at the bottom from the fat of entrails. And then she herself comes leaping in after it, dancing and hopping and twisting her body in all manner of ludicrous and sensual gestures and movements, ready to fall on any who smile, in a moment, and use her knife. So rapidly is it done, that a man's entrails are dumped down into the dish the very moment his face shows the faintest trace of a smile. Another thing which makes it more difficult to refrain is, that she has always about her a whole crowd of pale and shrunken men, who constantly burst out laughing at everything she does. These are victims whom she has already disembowelled, and who are anxious to see others suffer the same fate.

Thus the Moon Man has his evil Ululiarnâq, just as the Sea Spirit has Isarrataitsoq and the Air Spirit has Oqaloraq. There is this difference, however, that the Moon Spirit always warns people against Ululiarnâq, and turns her out of his house when she tries to do harm, whereas the two other great spirits never hinder their satellites from doing evil to men. Therefore the Moon Spirit is in nearly all respects a kindly spirit, though even he can also be merciless. In a very few cases, he may even have power over life and death. As mentioned elsewhere, there are certain persons who, by virtue of special amulets ​and spells, are able to come to life again if they happen to die by accident; but where such persons fail to observe their taboo, the Moon Spirit renders all the efforts of the shamans unavailing. Note, for instance, that Takornâq relates how her husband, Quivâpik, endeavoured to catch one such unfortunate in order to restore him to life. But the dead man's mother had made dresses of new caribou skins on Marble Island, which is holy ground, where no woman is allowed to work. Therefore the Moon Spirit rendered all the efforts of Quivâpik unavailing, and no magic sufficed to bring the dead man back to life.

The Eskimo view of the Moon Spirit is best seen through the various legends told about it; and these are also the sources to which the natives themselves refer when asked whence they have their knowledge relating to the moon.

There was once an old grandmother, who lived with her two grandchildren, a young man and a girl: the young man was named Aningât, the girl Seqineq: The young man was healthy and free from disease at first, but then suddenly he went blind.

They lived alone, poor, and almost without food; and then one day there came a bear to the place where they lived: the bear went straight up to their house and began to gnaw at the frame of the window. Then the old woman took her grandchild's bow and aimed for the blind boy, while he himself drew the bow and loosed the arrow. He struck the bear, and the bear ran away, growling and biting at the wound.

"It sounded as if my arrow had struck a beast" said Aningât.

"No, it was only the frame of the window," said his grandmother.

The grandmother and Seqineq then went out of the house, and saw a bear lying dead on the ice, and now the grandmother suddenly set about building a little house for Aningât. He was to live by himself. And then she killed a dog and let him make do with that, while she and the girl ate delicious bear's meat. But the girl often brought some of the bear's meat to her brother, hiding it in her sleeve.

The old grandmother grew suspicious, and said one day:

"I believe you are taking bear's meat to you brother; otherwise you could not eat up the meat I give you so quickly."

"I eat up so quickly because I am hungry" answered Seqineq.

One day Aningât said to his sister:

"Do you never see a loon up on the lakes here close at hand?"

"Yes, I do" answered Seqineq.

​"If only you would take me up to the lakes one day" said Aningât.

And Seqineq did so, and the blind man said: "Will you build a row of landmarks from the lake here down to our house, so that it may not be difficult for me to find my way back?"

And his sister built stone landmarks on the way back.

Now the young man stayed by the lake, listening intently until he heard a splashing of water. It was the sound of a kayak. He waited a little, and then he heard a voice say:

"Come here and sit in the kayak for a moment."

He went towards the sound and sat down in the kayak. He sat down in the kayak and was rowed out to sea, and then suddenly he was taken down under the water. When he came up again, he heard the voice say: "Did you feel dizzy?"

"No" said Aningât. And then once more he was taken down under water, and each time they remained longer and longer under water.

The young man suddenly noticed that he could as it were distinguish things a little, he could see a little, and more and more every time he had been under water.

Every time they had been down under water, the stranger asked: "Can you see anything?"

"I see nothing" answered Aningât, though he could really see a little now.

Now he was taken under water again and this time he was kept there so long that he did feel thoroughly dizzy. "Can you still see nothing?" asked the stranger, when they came up.

"Yes, now I can see" answered Aningât, and he could see even little blades of grass far far off.

After that they rowed in to land and got out of the kayak. The loon flew away, but Aningât cut a piece from his kamiks and made a sling; then he went down towards their house, throwing stones with his sling, finding his way by means of the landmarks his sister had build. Down by the house he caught sight of a bear's skin, and the skin of a dog, stretched out to dry.

"Where did that bear come from?" he asked his grandmother as he entered the house.

"Oh, that must be a skin left behind by the people who came in the umiᴀq: one passed by a little while ago" said the grandmother falsely, and Aningât said no more.

Thus the blind youth regained his sight, and was now able to go out hunting once more. It was spring, just in the time when the white whales were moving along the edge of the ice, and he often went hunting them with his sister, he harpooning them and she helping by holding the end of the harpoon line. One day the old grand​mother thought she would like to go with them. She herself would hold the line; and so they went down to the ice-edge. The white whales came swimming in quite close to the firm ice, and the old grandmother cried out: "Here comes a young whale; harpoon it, harpoon it!"

Aningât made as if to strike one of the small whales, but in casting, changed his aim on purpose so as to strike one of the very largest. The old grandmother had the harpoon line fastened round her waist, and when the great whale began to pull, she was drawn over the ice and could not resist, but went sliding out into water. For a moment it looked as if she were running on the surface of the water, then she disappeared.

The white whale remained long under water, and not until it came up again did the old grandmother reappear. And as soon as she had got her head above water, she sang to her grandchild:

Her grandchild answered:

His grandmother sang again:

— and with that she disappeared under the water.

Thus the brother and sister were left alone. But when the winter came, they left that place, and went out into the world for shame at having killed their grandmother.

The first people they came to were the kukiliqäc·iait, impish creatures with long claws. Here they built a snow hut. While they were building it, Aningât felt thirsty, and said to his sister: "I am so thirsty, go in and get me some water."

Seqineq went to a window and called in "My brother is so thirsty, give me a little water to take to him."

"Come in and fetch it yourself. But it is dripping from the roof ​in the passage, so you must pull your clothes aside over the hips and come in backwards" said those within. The girl did as they said. But as she was going in backwards, they fell upon her and began scratching her with their long, sharp nails, and Seqineq called out to her brother to come and help her. Aningât ran in at once, taking with him a tent pole, and with this he struck them down one after another: each time he struck, one fell down. Up on the bench lay an old man picking at his nails. He said: "I told you not to hurt the girl or her brother would come and avenge her."

Hardly had he finished speaking when the young man struck him with the tent pole and killed him.

They stayed long in that place, until Seqineq was well again; they then went on again in search of men. They often met with people, but did not stay with them. At last they came to the land of the Rumpless folk, and here they stopped for a time. Round about the houses lay delicious lumps of meat, breasts of caribou, and rich suet. These people could only suck the meat and draw out the juice, they could not swallow it because they had no rump to their backs. Here they stayed, and Seqineq found a husband and Aningât a wife.

These were strange people they had come to, for they had no opening in the body such as ordinary people have, they had no rump, and the women had no genitals, and Aningât could therefore never lie with his wife. One day he suddenly took a knife and made a slit in her lap, such as women usually have, and at once the woman began to sing:

Seqineq soon found she was with child, and when the time came for her to bring forth, her mother-in-law began plaiting caribou sinew, and when the birth-pangs came on, she began sharpening her knife. When Aningât saw these preparations, he said: "Wait a little, do not slit her up, she can bring forth the child by herself."

And so it turned out. The girl brought forth her child in the natural way. But hardly was the child born than the old mother-in-law began singing for joy:

With these words she took a meat fork and tried to stick it into herself behind. And all the other women did the same. If they ​hit the right spot, where the opening should be, they lived, but if they struck in the wrong place, they fell down and died.

While Seqineq lay in the birth hut, it often happened that people assembled in the feasting house to dance and sing. And Aningât often went in to visit his sister and lay with her. But when he came in, he always made haste to put out the lamp, before she could see who it was, and then he would lie with her. His sister did not know who it was, and one evening when he lay with her as usual, she blackened his face with a little soot from the lamp. When he left her, she followed him to the feasting house, and hardly had he entered there when she heard those within laughing: "Look, Aningât has soot on his face!"

But Seqineq was so ashamed at this that she ran back to her snow hut, snatched up her knife and hurried to the dancing house again, and there she hacked off one of her breasts, threw it down in front of her brother, and cried: "You are so fond of my body; eat that too!"

With these words, Seqineq ran out of the feasting house, holding in her hand a torch made of moss dipped in oil. Her brother likewise snatched up a torch and hurried after her. Outside the snow hut they began to run, Seqineq in front, Aningât after, round the hut. But Aningât fell over a block of snow, and his torch went out. Suddenly they both began to rise up from the earth, but moving all the time in a circle round the hut, and thus they rose up in the air, one in chase of the other, moving round the dome of the heavens until they came right up into the sky. And there they became sun and moon. Seqineq with her burning torch was the sun, while Aningât became the moon, with light devoid of warmth.

It has already been noted that the evil spirit which eats men's entrails, and tries to kill all human beings whom the Moon Spirit is seeking to aid, is called Ululiarnâq; the immigrant Netsilingmiut call her Aukjûk. She also, in certain cases, keeps a strict watch to see that men do not commit any breach of taboo, as the following will show. It is strictly forbidden to sleep out on the ice-edge when hunting. Every evening, the hunter must return either to land, or to the old, firm ice which lies some distance back from the open sea. The Sea Spirit does not like her creatures to smell human beings when they are not actually hunting. The following story shows the Moon Spirit and Aukjûk, and finally Aukjûk as the punitive power where men fail to observe the rules of taboo with regard to the creatures of the sea. ​

There was once a man who stood by a blowhole one night waiting for seal. It was moonlight, and he looked at the moon and suddenly it seemed to be coming nearer; growing bigger and coming nearer. Then he caught sight of a sledge driving right under the rays of the moon, and when it stopped, a little way from him, he left his weapons, and the skin he was standing on, and went up to the sledge. The stranger pointed to his sledge and told him to get in and close his eyes. He did so, and was then carried away. He heard only the sound of hard ice underfoot as they drove. Then he opened his eyes a little way to see where they were, but hastened to close them again when the driver cried: "Hei, hei, hei!" Then they drove on again a great way. All he perceived was the wind that blew in his face because they were driving so fast. Then the driver stopped, and said: "Now you may open your eyes."

He opened his eyes, and now discovered that they had come up to the moon. A great number of windows were lit up round about, and many people were running about outside and playing games. Some were boxing; and if they had been real live human beings it must surely have hurt them terribly, for they struck so hard. He would gladly have stayed watching these people, who were playing games and practising various kinds of sport, but the Moon Spirit pointed to the brightest of all the windows, and so he went with him towards it. The man had heard of Aukjûk, who slit up folk's bellies and took out their entrails, and he was prepared to meet her in the house they now came to. At the entrance lay a big live bearded seal, which they had to tread on in order to get in. They trod on the bearded seal and entered the passage, and he heard the bearded seal turn round after they had trodden on it. Then he crept in through the passage and came in to a large double house. As they came into the house, he looked into the second chamber, and such a warmth came out from there that his clothes were moist with sweat at the neck. It was the sun that lived there. A woman came in with the entrails of a caribou, all covered in fat, and invited him to eat, and he put out his hand to take some. But he missed his grasp, and fell out into the passage. He went through the passage, trod on the bearded seal, and when he heard it turn after he had trodden on it, he looked back. And there stood Aukjûk in the house with her dish and her big knife in her hand. He fled away as fast as he could, but she ran after him, and he ran a long way over level ice until suddenly he found himself floating downwards through the air. All he felt was a faint breeze in his face, and he came down at a furious pace on to the ice again, and stood once more by the blowhole where he had been ​hunting seal. He stood there a little while by the blowhole, waiting for a seal, but he was feeling frightened, and soon went home. When he got in, he ate his meal with the others in the house, saying nothing of what had happened to him, but after a little while found he could not open his mouth. A shaman was called in, and discovered what was the matter with him. He had concealed the fact that the Moon had carried him away, but as soon as this was discovered and talked about, there was no longer anything the matter with him, and he could open and close his mouth once more. But if he had eaten of the food offered him in the Moon's house, he would never again have returned to the dwellings of men.

There were once three men who went out to the ice-edge to hunt, and they decided to sleep there, although it was forbidden to do so. The oldest of the three men was a shaman.

The hunters had built a snow hut out on the ice, and while they lay there asleep, an old woman came in suddenly through the closed entrance. She got in without any sign to show that the snow block which closed the entrance had been moved. She placed herself in front of the sleeper who lay outermost, and without waking him, robbed him of his entrails. She stood there with her dish in her hand, and her knife, laid down the entrails and went on to the next, whose entrails she likewise took and laid in her dish, but when she came to the shaman, he made as it were an effort, and awoke, and waking his companions, said to them: "I just dreamed that your entrails had been stolen away."

At these words they put their hands to their bellies and discovered that all was empty within; they had no entrails. They got up at once to return to their homes. They went homewards, and the shaman was often obliged to stop and wait for the two who had lost their entrails, as they walked so slowly. The shaman at once went into his house and prepared to call up his helping spirits. The two who had lost their entrails laid their tunics on top of the covered passage to the house and went in. The men came in, and one of those who had lost his entrails said to his wife:

"Go outside and fetch my tunic, which I laid on top of the passage way. Do not be afraid of it, but take it, even though there may he teeth growing out round the neck."

​The woman went out to fetch it, but although it was only quite an ordinary garment she was nevertheless afraid of it when she saw that there were ugly teeth growing out round the neck, and she dared not take it, but went in without having accomplished her errand. She said to her husband: "Your tunic looked so dangerous and terrifying that I dared not take it."

The husband answered: "If you do not take it, then I must pass to the realm of death. Do not be afraid of it, but just go and take it." The woman went out again and tried to take the garment, but it looked so terrible that she dared not take it after all, and a second time she went in without having accomplished her errand. Then the man knew he was lost, and no one could hold him back; he went out towards the ice-edge on his way to the Land of the Dead.

The other man who had lost his entrails now spoke and said to his wife: "I shall suffer the same fate as my companion, who has now passed to the Land of the Dead, if you do not go out and fetch my tunic. Now go out and fetch it. It will not hurt you. Do not be afraid of it, but bring it in."

The woman went out, but when she saw the teeth that had grown out round the neck, she dared not take it after all, and went in again, like the other, without having accomplished her errand, and said: "I dared not take it. It looked so dreadful."

Her husband answered: "Then there is no help for me. I too must now pass to the Land of the Dead."

And then he went out, took up his tunic, and went down towards the ice-edge.

Meanwhile, the shaman had called up his helping spirits, and if only the women had brought in the garments, he could have got the men's entrails back.

After that no one ever dared to sleep on the edge of the ice, for Aukjûk, who lives in the Moon Spirit's house, always steals away the entrails of those who sleep on the edge of the ice.

As already mentioned, the Moon Spirit is particularly careful to see that unclean women do not offend the animals in any way. Women with child especially are instructed to observe the greatest possible caution in all respects, and above all else, they must never touch anything taken from a seal. They are therefore strictly forbidden to play any of the games in which the pieces are made from seals' bones, but even in such cases the Moon Spirit never appears as a cruel avenger, ​but rather indulgent, endeavouring to make people understand that they have done wrong. Often it merely seeks to ward off the disaster which would otherwise occur. The kindliness of the Moon Spirit is especially apparent in the following story, in which, without threats or ill words, it simply takes possession of a woman who might have been a danger to her fellows.

There was once a young woman whose name was Tutukatuk. She was about to have her first child, and although she was with child, she one day played with the pieces of a game made from bones of a seal.

(inuᴀrtɔq: playing with a kind of dice made from the small bones of a seal's flippers. The player takes as many pieces as he pleases, shakes them in his hand and throws them down on a flat stone, to see how many lie down and how many stand up. The game is either played for points, or used as a method of divination; for instance, if it is desired to ascertain whether a man has been successful out hunting or not, a piece may be thrown. If it lies flat, he has got nothing, if it stands erect, he has found game.)

One evening when the moon was shining, a sledge was heard approaching. The sledge stopped outside the house, and a man came up to the window and shouted: "Come outside, Tutukatuk, and bring your pieces with you."

Tutukatuk went out, taking the pieces with her, and placed herself on the sledge and drove off with the stranger.

"Now you must not open your eyes" he said. "If you do, you will fall off the sledge."

Suddenly they rose up in the air, for this was none other than the Moon Spirit who had come down to fetch Tutukatuk, and they dashed off now through space at a terrific speed, the sledge bounding every time they passed a star. Across the clear sky the sledge moved evenly, without much shaking, but rapidly. After a long journey, they halted. Now at last Tutukatuk opened her eyes and saw a great number of people playing ball, and the players stopped their game and came forward to greet them. The Moon Spirit said: "It is a live human being I have with me."

Then the others, who were all dead, went away again, and the Moon Spirit led Tutukatuk into his house and set her on the bench. On the floor over at the other side of the house lay a shoulder bone ​with no meat on. The Moon Spirit lifted it up and said: "Just look down through the opening here, and you can see all the dwellings of men." Some lay far apart, others close together, and looking down on them from the sky, it was as if they had no roofs, for one could see right into the houses. The Moon Spirit opened the peephole every morning, and then Tutukatuk could see that some of the people were asleep, others awake.

(The narrator has here omitted to note the moral of the story, assuming it to be known. The idea, however, is as follows: Pregnant women are not allowed to play with "bones". Such women are unclean and must not have anything to do with seal's bones. It was for this that the moon came and carried off this woman. From his house up above he then shows her, through a peephole, the dwellings of men, and points out all the impurity and filth that rises from a house where a woman has committed any breath of taboo. A woman who does so defiles the universe and frightens the animals away. This also is assumed to be generally known, and therefore not mentioned by the story-teller.)

When the time came for Tutukatuk to bring forth her child, the Moon Spirit brought her back to earth, but before doing so, he said to her: "You must not eat any food procured by human hands. If you do, you will die (for breaking the rules of taboo). But I will bring you food, and you will find it on the drying place above your lamp." Tutukatuk came home to her own place and gave birth to her child, and all that she needed in the way of food she found on the drying place above her lamp. The lamp itself was filled with oil from there, and joints of caribou meat were ready for her when she felt hungry and wanted something to eat.

The child was born and grew big, and at last Tutukatuk's husband said to her: "Your child is grown big now. There is no need for you to be so careful about what you eat. Why do you never eat any of the meat I bring home?"

But it was in vain that her husband urged her to eat of the meat he brought home from his hunting; she would not do so, and at last the man grew angry. Then his wife dared not refuse to eat of the meat he brought home. As soon as she had eaten of it, the child fell ill and was on the point of death, merely because the woman had broken the taboo which the Moon Spirit had decreed for her. So dangerous a thing is it to break one's taboo. But the visit to the Moon Spirit made such an impression on Tutukatuk that she always in future observed the taboo prescribed for women.

​

There was once a woman who was very unhappy with her husband. Of an evening, when she went to lie down, he would turn her out of the house, and lie with other women. At last none of the other women would lie with him, but that only made him the more cruel to his wife. He would pull all her clothes off, leaving her stark naked, and then turn her out of doors in all manner of weather.

One evening, when he had done this as usual, she determined never to go back to him any more. It was full moon, and very light. She went over to a place where there were no footprints, where no one had trodden the snow, and here she began walking backwards, very slowly, at the same time wishing for the Moon Spirit to come and carry her off.

"tᴀrqᴇq̃ piᵛʃuma·aiɳa": "Moon, you up there, fetch me" she cried. She was careful not to look up, and kept on walking backwards, very slowly. Then it seemed to her as if the moon came nearer and nearer, but she would not look up, and only kept on walking backwards. And then suddenly there was a sledge just beside her: a man with a sledge and three dogs. The man called to his dogs by name: one was called. Teriatsiaq, a white dog, Naluperitsoq, a black dog, and Miglialik. It was the Moon Spirit, a big man with a mighty whip in his hand. He called the woman to him, and told her to get up on the sledge. She did so, and at once the sledge rose up in the air, and they drove up to the sky. As they came near the land of the Udlormiut, the Moon Spirit said: "I live in a double house; be careful not to look into the room next to mine. The sun lives there, and she will burn you. As soon as you come in, Ululiarnâq will be after you to try to make you laugh, but keep away from her. If you feel you want to smile, then bend your head down into your collar and cover your eyes with your hands."

Thus the Moon Spirit warned the woman before they reached the house, that no harm might come to her. And she did as he said. Afterwards she lived with him, and it was not long before she was with child. She felt well and comfortable there, and he was kind to her. One day he showed her, to the right of the lamp, the shoulderbone of a caribou, which was thrust down into the snow as a lid. As soon as he took it away, they could see out over the earth right down to her home. And they could see how her neighbours there were playing the wolf game, the game in which a few are wolves and the rest human beings chased by the wolves. The only one who did not join in the game was her husband. He stood by himself over by his meat stand, sorrowful and with bowed head.

​The time came when she was ready to bring forth, and the Moon. Spirit now thought it better that she should go down to earth and give birth to the child in her own place. And so he drove her home and built a little house for her. Before leaving, he bade her particularly to remember that she must not eat any meat save of his killing, for he was the child's father. But her husband was jealous of the Moon Spirit, for having begotten a child with his barren wife, and every time the Moon Spirit brought meat, he smeared it with oil from the waste of the lamp, so that it was uneatable. Thus he forced her to eat meat that he himself had killed. And now the Moon Spirit stayed away and never came to visit her again.

This is told of the manner in which the Moon Spirit befriended a woman who was ill-treated by her husband. And he kept the woman with him until her husband repented of his cruelty and felt kindly towards her.

It has now been made clear, through these stories, from the Eskimos' own manner of explaining the position, how the Moon Spirit takes care to see that no breach of taboo takes place. In nearly all the stories here given, the Moon Spirit appears as a good and warning power. It can also show kindness to poor and ill-treated homeless children, who lead a miserable existence owing to their being without relatives. Often it is a case of boys that will not grow, and therefore never get on in the world. They have somehow accumulated in their bodies all the evil, hampering influence arising from breach of taboo on the part of the mother. Then it is that the Moon Spirit appears as a Lord of Power, purifying the outcast and miserable from all evil effects of the offence, and subsequently showing how such a person, freed from all impurity, suddenly begins to grow and becomes a great man among his fellows. This is shown in the following story, which has become almost a national myth both in Greenland and in Canada.

There was once a homeless boy, who would not grow. And for that reason all were unkind to him, and no one would give him anything to eat. The only thing he was given was long strips of thick walrus hide; this he could not swallow, but he had to chew it; and when he kept on chewing it just in the same way as women chew sole leather to soften it for the needle, it sometimes happened that he ​managed to swallow it after all, so that he got a little meat in his belly. In the same village there lived an old woman who took pity on him, and she would secretly give him small pieces, not too large for him to swallow. She also gave him a little knife, which he could hide about his person in different places, a mere splinter of flint, small enough to be hidden in his ear or under his foreskin. Thus he could always hide it away quickly when unkind people asked him how he managed to eat so quickly, and searched him to see if he had not a knife somewhere. So ill-disposed were all towards him that at last he was forced to lie out in the passage among the dogs.

One evening he was lying out in the passage, asleep, and the moon shone right down upon him. Then he was awakened by the sound of a sledge driving up outside, and he heard a man call to his team to halt, calling the dogs by name as follows: "Teriatsiaq, Kajorshuk and Naluperitsoq". The stranger came to the entrance of the passage and called in through the opening: "Come outside a little", but Kâgjagjuk answered: "I will not come out. You go out, Qaipiarigjualuk" It was one of the dogs he was speaking to. The dog answered: "No, go out yourself."

Then said the voice outside once more: "Kâgjagjuk, come outside a little". And again Kâgjagjuk answered: "No, I will not go out, you go out, Akijaorjualuk". And this time again it was a dog he was speaking to. But the dog answered: "No, go out yourself".

Then said the Moon Spirit again, for it was he: "No, come out yourself Kâgjagjuk."

Well, the end of it was, Kâgjagjuk was obliged to go himself. And hardly had the boy come out when the Moon Spirit took him by the hand and led him to a spot where there were no human footprints to be seen. And here he began beating him, thumping him with clenched fist all over his body. Every time the Moon Spirit struck him, the boy fell down in the snow, and hardly had he got on his feet again when the Moon Spirit once more knocked him down. At last Kâgjagjuk began vomiting, and brought up combings of woman's hair and fragments of skins that had been cut to make women's breeches. Thus the Moon Spirit beat all the impurities out of Kâgjagjuk.

As soon as all the impurity was out of his body, the boy began to grow, and he grew and he grew until he could no longer get into his clothes. Then said the Spirit: "Pull up that stone". It was a big stone that was frozen hard in the soil, and Kâgjagjuk pulled it up. Then the Moon Spirit chose a stone even bigger than the first, and this also Kâgjagjuk pulled up. Then the Moon Spirit took off his own outer garments, his tunic, breeches and kamiks, and gave them to ​Kâgjagjuk, and to these gifts he added also a snow beater. And when Kâgjagjuk had received all these things, the Moon Spirit spoke to him and said:

"Tomorrow I will send three bears down to your village. All you have to do is to keep in hiding and not come out until you are called. The three bears will be fierce and dangerous bears."

Morning came the next day, and lo, there came three bears, three big bears, and the people of the village went out to attack. Suddenly they missed Kâgjagjuk; they wanted him to come out that the bears might tear him to death. All looked for him, but no one could find him. At last, however, he came forth and went slowly down towards the ice. The women sang a song:

Thus the women sang, and it was always the women who were most cruel to Kâgjagjuk. But he went down without fear, and when he came out on the ice, he struck with his snow beater to show how strong he had become. And now he sang:

With this song he went forward, picking up as he went the men who would have used him as a bait for the bears, and throwing them to the beasts themselves instead, and the bears tore them in pieces. At last he attacked the bears himself and killed them. Afterwards he married the old woman who had always taken his part. That was his way of thanking her.

So the miserable Kâgjagjuk became a strong man and a great fighter, because the Moon Spirit came to him as the Lord of Power and cleansed him from his mother's breach of taboo.

​— These, then, are the powers which rule the world and the life of mankind on earth, and they are here presented and characterised just as the Eskimos themselves regard them from the point of view of the precepts laid down, these again having their origin solely in the need for some kind of religious safeguard. Finally, they are described in stories which may often, it is true, — thanks to a poorly developed art of narration — appear insignificant, but which have nevertheless, to the natives themselves, their great power and importance in the fact that they are regarded as historical documents concerning events which once took place, and which are now the source of all information regarding past ages, ancient times when there was hardly any difference between men and animals, and when both men and animals could in some inexplicable way be transformed into mighty and terrible spirits. For they were all, at one time, the Sea Spirit and her father, the Spirit of the Air and the Moon Spirit and the Sun and the Entrail Eater, quite ordinary human beings living on earth like everyone else, without any uncommon attributes whatever.

Mankind would now be altogether crushed by these mighty and unfathomable spirits which, originating from their own race, now occupy the heavens, the earth and the sea, if there were not easily accessible mediators between men and spirits. This office was filled by the angákut, or shamans. But before passing to further consideration of these, we must, in order fully to understand the power and faculties attributed to them, learn something of the manner in which the Eskimos regard that great leap from life here on earth into the vast unknown that comes after death.

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