126 J- 0. SCHULTZ ON THE 



thunder storms or frights. A rag or shoe of a European hung about their children instils 

 into them some portion of European skill and ability. They are particularly anxious to 

 have an European blow upon them. When they set out to the whale fishery they must not 

 only be neatly dressed, but the lamps in their tents must be extinguished, that the shy 

 whale may not be frightened. Tbe boat's bow must be adorned with a fox's head and the 

 harpoon with an eagle's beak. In the reindeer chase they throw away a piece of the flesh 

 for the ravens, and the heads of their seals must not be fractured or thrown into the sea, but 

 piled up before the door of the house, lest the souls of the seals be incensed and they drive 

 away the rest. This superstition, however, is probably due to their own vanity, which is 

 gratified by these trophies of their valour. The kayack is frequently adorned with a small 

 model of a kayack containing a miniature image of a man bearing a sword ; sometimes with 

 a dead sparrow or snipe, a stone, a piece of wood, feathers or hair, to ward ofl" danger. But 

 it is observed that those who chiefly make use of these charms are in general the most 

 unfortunate, since they are unskilled, and therefore timid, or else so secure in their 

 superstition that they needlessly run into danger. 



The description given by the angekoks of a future state is hazy indeed, this world being 

 supported on pillars, and bearing, also on pillars, the upper world beyond the firmament. 

 To the nether one the souls of the good go, and to the upper go the souls of the bad 

 Eskimo. There the climate is bitterly cold, and hunger is the fiend which pursues them. 

 The Aurora is simply these spirits playing bowls for the double purpose, we may imagine, of 

 dodging the fiends and warming their shivering, ill-clad souls. Some angekoks, however, 

 teach almost the reverse of the foregoing ; the place of bliss being the moon, where warmth 

 and verdure await them around the rim of a great lake, wherein are seals and whales, 

 walrus and narwhal, and around its grassy shores reindeer in vast numbers, all of which are 

 to be had for the asking, or at least for the spearing, and when this lake overflows there is 

 rain upon the earth, and, should the rim break, a deliige. Departed good spirits, however, 

 do not make an immediate entrance to this blessed abode ; they must first, for five days or 

 more, slide down a steep rock slippery with blood. The relations and friends of the 

 deceased in consequence abstain for five days from all active work, except the necessary 

 capture of seals, that the spirit may not be disturbed or lost upon its dangerous road. On 

 the other hand, the souls of the bad go down to a place of punishment, a gloomy subter- 

 ranean place filled with horror and anguish. 



Different angekoks give diflîerent versions, and those on the eastern borders of their 

 extensive habitat vary somewhat from that of the middle and western, and the idea of the 

 first of these regarding the resurrection, of which they have a very vague idea, may be 

 interesting. Of the end of the world and the resurrection of the dead they have generally 

 scarcely any idea. Some of them, however, aftirm that the souls loiter near the graves of 

 the bodies they inhabited for five days, and who then rise again to pursue the same course 

 of life in another world ; therefore they always laid the hunting implements of a deceased 

 person near his grave. This opinion, however, is ridiculed by the more observant Eskimos, 

 who perceive that the deceased and his weapons remain unmoved and go into corruption 

 together. The following idea seems to bear more evident marks of a tradition relative to 

 the resurrection, and is the more remarkable, as it involves belief in a superior being. They 

 say that after the death of the whole hunnm race the solid mass of the earth will be 

 shattered into small fragments, whicli will be cleansed by a mighty deluge from the blood of 



