INNTTIT LIFE AND LAND. 389 



They have no ear for music ; they are not fond of it like the 

 Aleutes, yet they keep perfect time to cultivated tunes and melo- 

 dies of our own order. The song of an Innuit is essentially like 

 that of his Sitkan relative : it is usually a weird dirge, monotonous, 

 and long-drawn out, accompanied by a regular and rhythmic beat- 

 ing of a rude drum, or a dry stick, or resonant bag. Some of the 

 native Innuit chantings, when rendered intelligible to us, have a 

 plaintive pathos running through them which is attractive and are 

 simple in composition ; but such ballads are very, very rare. The 

 majority are tedious and boastful recitations of a singer's achieve- 

 ments on land or water when engaged in hunting or fishing. Their 

 mythology is the rudest and the least ornate of all savage races, un- 

 less it be that perfect vacuum of the Australasians and Terra del 

 Fuegians. 



These savages respect the dead, but they fear the sick. When 

 death invades an Innuit family, taking the husband, or the wife, or 

 a child, the survivors eat nothing, after the decease of the relative, 

 but sour or last year's food, and refrain from going out or from 

 work of any sort for a period of twenty days. They seat themselves 

 in one corner of the hut, or " kahsime," with their backs toward 

 the door. Every five days they wash themselves, otherwise death 

 would promptly come to them again. The body of the dead native 

 is composed in a sitting position, with its knees drawn up to the 

 stomach and its arms clasped around them. It is placed in one 

 corner, with its head against the wall. The inhabitants of that vil- 

 lage where the dead man has lived voluntarily bring to the hut 

 dresses of reindeer-skin, in one of which the corpse is shrouded. 

 A coffin, or box, is prepared at some selected spot outside of the 

 village, set up a few feet from the ground, on four stoutly driven 

 posts, and in it the body is deposited. Near by is planted a square 

 board or smoothly hewn plank, upon which rude figures are painted 

 of the animals that the deceased was most fond of hunting, such as 

 a beaver, a deer, a fish, or seal. A few of his most cherished be- 

 longings are laid in the coffin with him, but the balance of his prop- 

 erty is divided among his family.* 



* The Indians, or Koltchanes, of the Alaskan interior burn their dead. If 

 anyone dies in the winter, the relatives carry that corpse everywhere with 

 them, use it at night in the place of a pillow, and only burn it at the com- 

 mencement of warm weather. 



