ETHNOLOGY. 19 



posed of first, and then the younger people engage in various games, 

 while the older ones gather around some aged crone, who excitedly 

 recounts the hunts of her girlhood dayg, plentifully intermixing stray 

 portions of the old sagas and legends with which her memory is replete. 

 Thus they live from day to day, the men hunting and the women stretch- 

 ing the skins, till the season comes around when they must return to 

 the coast. Happy, contented, vagabond race ! no thoughts of the mor- 

 row disturb the tranquillity of their minds. 



When a deer is killed any distance from camp, the meat is cached, 

 with the intention of returning after it in winter; but with what the 

 wolves and foxes devour and what the Eskimo never can find again, 

 very little is brought back. 



Many have now firearms of some pattern or other ; and though they 

 will hunt for a ball that has missed its mark for half a day, they do not 

 hesitate to fire at any useless creature that comes in their way. Those 

 that have no guns use bows and arrows made from reindeer antlers. 

 Sometimes the deer are driven into ponds, and even into the salt water, 

 and captured in kyacks with harpoons. 



They have an interesting custom or superstition, namely, the killing 

 of the evil spirit of the deer; some time during the winter or early in 

 spring, at any rate before they can go deer-hunting, they congregpte 

 together and dispose of this imaginary evil. The chief ancoot, angeJcoJc, 

 or medicine-man, is the main performer. He goes through a number of 

 gyrations and contortions, constantly hallooing and calling, till suddenly 

 the imaginary deer is among them. ]STow begins a lively time. Every 

 one is screaming, running, jumping, spearing, and stabbing at the imag- 

 inary deer, till one would think a whole mad-house was let loose. Often 

 this deer proves very agile, and must be hard to kill, for I have known 

 them to keep this performance up for days; in fact, till they were com- 

 pletely exhausted. 



During one of these performances an old man speared the deer, another 

 knocked out an eye, a third stabbed him, and so on till he was dead. 

 Those who are able or fortunate enough to inflict some injury on this 

 bad deer, especially he who inflicts the death-blow, is considered ex- 

 tremely lucky, as he wil) have no difficulty in procuring as many deer 

 as he wants, for there is no longer an evil spirit to turn his bullets or 

 arrows from their course. 



They seldom kill a deer after the regular hunting season is over, till 

 this performance has been gone through with, even though a very good 

 opportunity presents itself. 



