Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/242
themselves learned to know quite a lot about these matters and I give it here.
When a man has died, there must be no hunting for six days; during the first three days the corpse must lie in the house and is then carried through a hole in the rear wall and buried; during the last three days the relatives must howl at the grave. After the death of a woman there must be no hunting for ten days (5 + 5). The dead person's possessions in the house are taken by a childless woman and laid by the side of the grave. As a rule the burial takes place in the following manner: the corpse is shrouded in caribou skin and laid in the snow some distance from the settlement, snow being piled over it; in most cases the corpse is then torn to pieces and eaten by dogs, wolves or foxes (according to the Eskimos at Repulse Bay). In summer, stones are sometimes piled over, the grave thereby assuming the appearance of an irregular heap of stones.
Freuchen relates of the death of an old woman. Pauti, at Repulse Bay: When she was dead, a hole was made in the tent to allow the soul to escape; a bier was knocked together out of two planks, the corpse was sewn into all the skins in the tent, a large hole was made in the rear wall and the corpse was drawn through it. Four men carried the corpse and two women walked at the sides to see that it did not fall off. They went up over the hills and returned two hours later, the women with the hoods drawn over their heads. The grave was built of stones with turf between them; at one end three stones were placed together for the howlers; the bier lay at the side of the grave. Nobody went hunting during the next few days and the women had not to sew; the mittens and boots used at the burial were thrown away. The two grown-up sons of the deceased wept and howled at the grave, as also did the women in the tent.
It is the exception, however, that a stone grave is made. At Tulugkan. Ponds Inlet, I saw the grave of a little girl, which could not have been very old; no stones at all had been used and the bones, which still had the pellicle on them, lay spread about, while there were only small pieces and some hair of the caribou skin in which the body had been shrouded. In a crack in the cliff close by were the grave goods: a small, square cooking pot of sheet iron containing: an enamelled cup, iron spoon, two small wooden dolls, a small ulo, little bead necklace, small cardboard box, a fragment of newspaper, small piece of pencil, a safety pin and a match.
A rather older grave of a man at Moffet Inlet. in Admiralty Inlet, examined by Freuchen, contained: A flat harpoon head with iron blade, two spurs, no barbs; three rests for the ice-hunting harpoon; six pieces of composite bows of antler: a marline spike: five arrow