430 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH.AXX. 18 



fellow-villagers he is also in danger of being killed by common consent 

 of tlie community. I lieard of such men being killed in the region lying 

 between the mouths of the Yukon and Kuskokwim for failing to fulfill 

 their predictions and for suspected witchcraft. Observance of various 

 festivals and the attendant rites are usually executed according to 

 instructions of shamans, who learn by the aid of their mysterious power 

 what is acceptable to the shades and the tunghdt. 



The moon is believed to be inhabited by a great man-like being, 

 which controls all the animals that are found on the earth, and when 

 u season of scarcity comes the shamans pretend to go up and make 

 offerings to him. If they succeed in pleasing this being he gives them 

 one of the kind of animals that have become scarce, whereupon the 

 shaman returns with it to the earth and turns it loose, after which the 

 species again becomes plentiful. It is claimed that only in this way 

 can the earth be kept supplied with game, owing to the number killed 

 by hunters and by disease. On one occasion at St Michael, at the 

 beginning of the fall seal hunting, the old head-man of the village was 

 seen to go out secretly and make food offerings to the new moon while 

 he sang a long song of propitiation to the spirit supposed to live in that 

 planet in order to control the supply of game. 



The shamans claim that the man who lives in the moon has a very 

 bright face, so that they fear to look at him, and when they come near 

 they must look downward; for this reason two usually go together, 

 since one alone would be abashed. On the Yukon they claim to climb 

 up to the moon, but at the head of Norton sound an old man told me that 

 he used to fly up to the sky like a bird. In all this region the shamans 

 claim to possess the power -of visiting the moon. One winter on the 

 lower Yukon, about the middle of February, there was an eclipse of the 

 moon, and soon after throat disease caused the death of about a dozen 

 people. Two shamans, father and son, started to visit the man in the 

 moon to find out why the disease had been sent and to learn how to 

 stop it. The pair were absent from the village several days, and then 

 returned and reported that when they had climbed nearly to the moon 

 the old man became tired and stopped for a while, but the young man 

 went on. When he was near the moon the man came down to meet him 

 and was very angry, asking what he wanted there; the young man 

 was very much frightened, but told- the reason for his approach. He 

 was then told that the disease would kill several other people before it 

 would stop; and the moon man Avas going- to keep the young fellow, but 

 his father begged so hard for him from, below that he was permitted to 

 return. 



On the lower Yukon and southward they say that there are other 

 ways of getting to the moon, one of which is for a man to put a slip 

 noose about his neck and have the people drag him about the interior 

 of the kashim until he is dead. At one time two noted shamans on the 

 Yukon did this, telling the people to watch for them as they would 



