274 BELIEF IN SPIRITS. 



spirits. The most curious ceremony that came under observation 

 was performed at the village in the course of the last winter, when 

 food had become very scarce in consequence of the ice continuing 

 very close from a long continuance of north-westerly winds. On 

 the sea beach, close to one of the dance-houses, a small space was 

 cleared, and a fire of wood made, round which the men formed a 

 ring and chanted for some time, without dancing or the usual accom- 

 paniment of the tambourine. One of the old men then stepped 

 towards the fire, and in a coaxing voice tried to persuade the evil 

 genius, from whose baleful influence the people were suffering, to 

 come under the fire to warm himself. When he was supposed to 

 have arrived, a vessel of water, to which each man present had 

 contributed, was thrown upon the fire by the old man, and im- 

 mediately a number of arrows sped from the bows of the others into 

 the earth where the fire had been, in the full belief that no turn'- 

 gak would stop at a place where he received such bad treatment, 

 but would soon depart to some other region, from which, on being 

 detected, he would be driven away in a similar manner. To render 

 the effect still greater, three guns were fired in different directions, 

 to alarm the spirits of the air, and make them change the wind. 

 For the same object they several times requested the ship's guns, 

 eighteen-pounders, to be fired against the wind. 



When our poor friend O-mis-yu-a'-a-run, commonly called the 

 water-chief, from having accused us of stealing the water from the 

 village, was carried away with two others on the ice to near Cape 

 Lisburne, in the beginning of the winter, his wife had a thin thong 

 of seal-skin stretched in four or five turns round the walls of the 

 ig-lu, and anxiously watched it night and day until she heard of her 

 husband's fate. They believe that so long as the person watched foi- 

 ls alive and moves about, his turn'-gak causes the cord to vibrate, 

 and when at length it hangs slack and vibrates no longer, he 

 is supposed to be dead. Having heard something of the hourly 

 observations of the movements of a magnet suspended by a thread 

 in the observator} T , the old dame sent Erk-sin'-ra to see if its move- 

 ments had any connection with her husband's case. 



Thunder is a rare occurrence at Point Barrow, but not altogether 

 unknown to its inhabitants, and they sa} r the sound of it is caused by 

 a man spirit, who dwells with his family in a tent far away to the 

 north. This Eskimo representative of Jupiter Tonans is an ill- 

 natured fellow who sleeps most of his time ; and when he wakes up 

 he calls to his children to go out and make thunder and lightning 

 by shaking inflated seal-skins and waving torches, which they do 

 with great glee until he goes to sleep again. 



