XII.] THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE CIIUKCHES. 493 



Chukclies. Their standing appeared to be so inferior that we 

 took them for slaves, although mistakenly, at least with respect 

 to one of them — Yettiigin. He afterwards boasted that he 

 owned a much larger reindeer-herd than Menka's, and talked 

 readily, with a certain scorn, of Menka's chieftain pretensions. 

 According to Russian authors there are actual slaves, probably 

 the descendants of former j)risoners of war, among the Chukches 

 in the interior of the country. Among the dwellers on the 

 coast, on the contrary, there is the most complete equality. We 

 could never discover the smallest trace of any man exercising 

 the least authority beyond his own family or his own tent. 



The coast Chukches are not only heathens, but are also, so 

 f;ir as we could observe, devoid of every conception of higher 

 beings. There are, however, superstitions. Thus most of them 

 wear round the neck leather straps, to which small wooden tongs, 

 or wooden carvings, are fixed. These are not parted with, and 

 are not readily shown to foreigners. A boy had a band of beads 

 sewed to his hood, and in front there was fastened an ivory 

 carving, probably intended to represent a bear's head (fig. 6, on 

 p. -4:85). It was so small, and so inartistically cut, that a 

 man could undoubtedly make a dozen of them in a day. I, how- 

 ever, offered the father unsuccessfully a clasp-knife and tobacco 

 for it, but the boy himself, having heard our bargaining, 

 exchanged it soon after for a piece of sugar. When the father 

 knew this he laughed good-naturedly, without making any 

 attempt to get the bargain undone. 



To certain tools small wooden images are affixed, as to the 

 scraper figured above (fig. 3, p. 486), and similar images are 

 found in large numbers in the lumber-room of the tent, where 

 pieces of ivory, bits of agate and scrap iron, are preserved. A 

 selection froDi the large collection of such images which I made 

 is here reproduced in woodcuts. If, also, these carvings may, in 

 fact, be considered as representations of higher beings, the 

 religious ideas which are connected with them, even judged 

 from the Shaman standpoint, are exceedingly indistinct, less a 

 consciousness, which still lives among the people, than a re- 

 miniscence from former times. Most of the figures bear an 

 evident stamp of the present dress and mode of life of the 

 people. It appears to me to be remarkable, that in all the 

 bone or wood carvings I have met with, the face has been cut 

 flatter than it is in reality in this race of men. Some of the 

 carvings appear to remind me of an ancient Buddhist image. 



The drum, or more correctly, tambourine, so common among 

 most of the Polar peoples, European, Asiatic, and American ; 

 among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and the Eskim(j 

 (see drawing on p. 415), is found in every Chukch tent. A 

 certain superstition is also attached to it. They did not willingly 



