CHAP. XII.] THE DRUM AND ITS USE. 495 



play it in our presence, and they were unwilling to part with it. 

 If time permitted it was concealed on our entrance into the 

 tent. The drum consists of the peritoneum of a seal, stretched 

 over a narrow wooden ring fixed to a short handle. The drum- 

 stick consists of a splinter of whalebone 300 to 400 millimetres 

 long, which towards the end runs into a point so fine and flexible, 

 that it forms a sort of whipcord. When the thicker part of the 

 piece of whalebone is struck against the edge of the drum-skin, 

 the other end whips against the middle, and the skin is thus struck 

 twice at the same time. The drum is commonly played by the 

 man, and the playing is accompanied by a very monotonous 

 song. We have not seen it accompanied by dancing, twisting of 

 the countenance, or any other Shaman trick. 



We did not see among the Chukches we met with any 

 Shamans. They are described by Wrangel, Hooper, and other 

 travellers. Wrangel states (vol. i. p. 284) that the Shamans in 

 the year 1814, when a severe epidemic broke out among the 

 Chukches and their reindeer at Anjui, declared that in order to 

 propitiate the spirits they must sacrifice Kotschen, one of the 

 most highly esteemed men of the tribe. He was so much 

 respected that no one would execute the sentence, but attempts 

 were made to get it altered, first by presents to the prophets, 

 and then by flogging them. But when this did not succeed, 

 as the disease continued to ravage, and no one would execute the 

 doom, Kotschen ordered his own son to do it. He was thus 

 compelled to stab his own father to death and give up the corpse 

 to the Shamans. The whole narrative conflicts absolutely with 

 the disposition and manners of the people with whom we 

 made acquaintance at'Behring's Straits sixty-five years after 

 this occurrence, and I would be disposed to dispute entirely 

 the truthfulness of the statement, had not the history of our 

 own part of the world taught us that blood has flowed in 

 streams for dogmatic hair-splittings, which no one now troubles 

 himself about. Perhaps the breath of indifferentism has reached 

 even the ice-deserts of the Polar lands. 



The drum has besides also another use, which appears to have 

 little connection with its property of Shaman psychograph or 

 church bell. When the ladies unravel and comb their long 

 black hair, this is done carefully over the drum, on whose 

 bottom the numerous beings which the comb brings with it 

 from the warm hearth of home out into the cold wide world, are 

 collected and cracked — in case they are not eaten up. They 

 taste well according to the Chukch opinion, and are exceedingly 

 good for the breast. Even gorm (the large, fully developed, fat 

 larva of the reindeer fly. Oestrus tarandi) is pressed out of 

 the skin of the reindeer and eaten ; as well as the full-grown 

 reindeer fly. 



