126 



huge white bear when he appears to angekok novices. He 

 devours them limb for limb, and then spews them out again, 

 when they become endowed with superhuman power. It will 

 be noticed that Turner says that Tornga'rsoak controls the spirits 

 of every deer which is "slain or dies," implying that he is master 

 of the spirit world rather than the living deer, which does not 

 conflict with the idea that Supergu'ksoak controls the latter. 

 Tornga'rsoak also controls the future supply. Consequently 

 none of the foetal deer are allowed to be eaten by dogs (Turner, 

 ibid., page 201). The same idea occurs at Point Barrow, Alaska. 1 

 In Alaska the idea of the connexion of the shade of the animal 

 with the future supply is marked and finds expression in the 

 religious ceremonies. 2 The belief in Sedna, prominent among 

 the Baffin-islanders, is not unknown in northern Labrador. 

 At Cape Chidley, an Eskimo informant spoke of an old woman 

 whose home was at the bottom of the sea. Sometimes she 

 came up to breathe across the strait, near the shores of Resolution 

 island (Tutjarluk). She controls everything that swims in 

 the sea; the fish, the seals, and especially the polar bear. She 

 must be appeased, else she would drive the polar bears north- 

 ward to Tutjarluk (Resolution island) where there are no hunters, 

 or she might send a shark to eat their seals and cut up their nets, 

 or make the codfish refuse to bite. The Cape Chidley Eskimo 

 used to throw their broken knives, worn-out harpoon-heads, 

 and pieces of meat and bone into the sea as an offering to the 

 old woman. 



The Cape Chidley (Killinek) people were evidently much 

 more afraid of Tornga'rsoak than the Old-woman-who-lived-in- 

 the-sea, and, whenever anything went wrong, the angekut and 

 sometimes a chosen body of men would visit the cave where 

 Tornga'rsoak was thought to reside and make due offerings of 

 reindeer fat and tobacco. 



It appears to me that the belief of the original stock of 

 Eskimo must have included both a male and female deity, 

 holding sway over the land and sea-animals. The Sedna 



1 See Murdoch, The Point Barrow Eskimo, 9th Annual Rep. B.A.E., Washington, p. 267 

 See Hawkes, The Inviting-In Feast of the Alaskan Eskimo, Memoir 45, Anthropological 

 Series No. 3, Geological Survey, Canada, p. 3. 



