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In sickness, the sufferer is thought to be possessed by an evil 

 spirit, and it is the business of the angekok to drive it out of him 

 with the assistance of his powerful familiar spirits. The method 

 is much the same as observed in the seances, but usually accom- 

 panied by a thumping of the individual over the diseased part, 

 or blistering it by sucking out the trouble through a hollow tube. 

 Quite often the faith of the patient makes him whole. The 

 doctor always takes his payment in advance, but is obliged to 

 relinquish it in case of failure. The angekok is always ready with 

 some trifling excuse for a miscarriage of his art, which never fails 

 to convince the Eskimo. 



The performances of the shaman include not only the seances 

 described, but some very clever ventriloquistic work and not 

 unskilful juggling. This art is acquired by the novice after a 

 long training as an assistant to the angekok. On the other hand, 

 the assistant is sometimes very useful to the angekok in helping 

 him out of difficulties. During my stay in an Alaskan village, 

 an angekok had himself hanged to gain greater power. His 

 relatives despaired of his recovery, but his assistant revived him. 

 Inasmuch as foreign spirits are commonly supposed to possess 

 greater virtues, the spirits of the angekok often talk in a foreign 

 tongue. (I am not referring to the angekok language, which is 

 made up of descriptive and obsolete Eskimo words.) I heard 

 an Alaskan shaman once whose tungak was supposed to be talking 

 a dialect of Asiatic Eskimo, but an Eskimo friend in the audience 

 who came from that district afterwards told me that the spirit 

 "talked it very badly." Among the Western Eskimo, a shaman 

 has a set of masks representing his spirit familiars, and he puts 

 them on as they appear, changing his voice and attitude for each. 

 This does not seem to be the case among the Labrador Eskimo 

 angekut, who do not seem to aspire to more than one to'rngak. 

 Among the Alaskan Eskimo the soul of the sick who die under his 

 ministrations is thought to be acquired by the shaman and 

 compelled to serve him with his other familiar spirits. I heard 

 of no such belief among the Labrador Eskimo. 



Some of the most common sleight of hand tricks of the 

 angekok are: allowing themselves to be bound and getting free, 

 stabbing themselves with knives (when a concealed bladder 



