NELsox] BLADDER FESTIVAL 391 



the hunters had treated them badly and had not offered them sufficient 

 food. He added that the shades of the bladders swam faster this year 

 than the year before, making it more difficult to overtake them. 



During- this account the names of the hunters were mentioned and 

 the shaman represented the bladder shades as criticising very harshly 

 the prominent faults of some of them, which seemed to chagrin the 

 victims of this criticism considerably. After this was ended two 

 buckets of water were placed in front of the exit hole in the floor and 

 a man lay down on each side of it. At midnight everyone in the 

 kashim arose and stripped to the skin, the floor was removed, and a great 

 fire made m the pit. When the wood burned down, leaving a bed of 

 glowing coals, the heat became intense, so that the men were in a 

 scorching atmosphere with the perspiration rolling down their bodies. 

 While in this condition all bathed in urine, which had been retained in 

 the woodeu buckets. This was said to render them clean from any evil 

 influence that might follow from the recent presence of the shades in their 

 midst, and ended the observances connected with the festival. Until 

 this bath had been taken no one was permitted to leave the kashim, nor 

 during the course of the festival was anyone permitted to hunt or fish. 



At this village there were two kashims side by side, half of the vil- 

 lage belonging to ea?h. During the time that the feast just described 

 was being observed in one of these houses a similar festival was going 

 on in the other. I was unable to learn anything about the ceremonies 

 conducted there, as my attention was fully occupied in the one where I 

 stopped, but a hastj' visit showed that the arrangement of the interior 

 was exactly the same as iu the one described, except that in place of a 

 gull's image suspended iu the middle of the roof there was a rude 

 wooden image of a man wrapped in the skin of an eider duck. 



I was informed here that the bladders were kept in the kashim for 

 seventeen days, with a different set of ceremonies for each day. 



Two days after leaving Kushunuk, at the end of the festival, I 

 arrived at the large village of Kaialigamut, situated in the same dis- 

 trict, and learned that the bladders had on that morning been pat into 

 a small lake near by. In front of the kashim stood a row of four kaiak 

 paddles, their blades planted in the snow, showing that at least some 

 of the observances here were identical with those at Kushunuk. 



When I entered the kashim and began to stamp the snow from my 

 feet a chorus of eider-duck sounds was raised by the men, showing 

 that a loud noise was tabooed here also. On noticing this I at once 

 ceased and went to one side of the. room to sit down, when one of the 

 old men came over and brushed the snow from my fur clothing, at the 

 same time pointing to an inflated sealskin that hung over my head, 

 and asked me to change to another part of the room. 



These people seemed much more strict in their observances than those 

 at Kushunuk, to judge by the excessive caution used to avoid making 



