390 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH.AXX.IS 



During this day all work was prohibited in the village. Even the 

 fur trader and myself were requested to do none, it being explained 

 that to work on this day would cause some of the people to die, since 

 it would offend the shades of the animals, We were also asked to be 

 very careful not to make any noise in the kashim. Every time any 

 sudden noise was accidentally made all of the men present united in a 

 chorus of cries, imitating the notes of the eider duck, so that the 

 shades of seals and other animals whose bladders had been suspended 

 in the room should attribute the noise to those birds rather than to the 

 people. In the afternoon a dance was performed by these men, in time 

 to drums and singing. It consisted of leaping and jumping movements 

 like those already described in the dance to the bladders. That even 

 ing the head shaman, stripped to the skin, sat on the straw mat in front 

 of the exit hole in the floor with a fur hood over his head. Some men 

 then bound his hands and feet with rawhide cords and a long cord was 

 fastened to his neck by a slipping noose. 



Two assistants then carried him down through the hole and placed 

 him on a grass mat in the tire pit. Another cord was then passed 

 around his hands and knees and bound at the back of his neck, being 

 drawn so tight that his face was brought down between his knees, and 

 in this position he was made fast. One of the assistants went out to 

 guard the outer door of the passageway, while the other came back 

 into the room and, after drawing tight the line fastened to the shaman s 

 neck, spread a grass mat over the hole in the floor. This line held by 

 the assistant now began to run out, then slacken up, then run out again, 

 as though something was traveling away with it below the floor. 



This was continued for some time,- meanwhile the drumming and 

 singing of the men in the kashiin were kept up. Finally a kind of 

 groaning was heard from the shaman and several men ran to the hole 

 with the light, and found him bound as he had been at first, but about 

 five feet from the point where he had been placed. 



During the performance the cord fastened to the shaman s neck, one 

 end of which was held by his assistant in the kashim, had been pulled 

 down under the floor for ten or fifteen yards, which must have been 

 done by the assistant outside, as the shaman was bound too securely 

 to do more than hitch a little along the ground, but the people in the 

 kashim believed that the drawing out of the cord had been done by the 

 shaman himself, indicating that he had traveled far away. 



When he was unbound he came back into the kashim and sat down 

 before the exit hole. After sitting quietly for a moment he began to 

 tell a long story describing the journey he had just made into the sea, 

 following the shades of the seal bladders. He said that he had talked 

 with all but two of the shades and had seen some shades of the blad 

 ders he owned playing together in the water ; that some of the shades 

 told him they were very much pleased with the men who had taken 

 them and given them such a fine festival; others complained that 



