INTRODUCTION OF DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 217 



the voice proceeded. After .some more tossing", he utiuiii took out his 

 knife. God spoke to him again: "' Your father, the chief, is a very 

 bad man, 1 give him whales and he allows the meat to become rot- 

 ten. I do not like him, but I will take you to heaven." The young 

 man then killed himself. 



B}" and by god put the young man in a box so small that he had to 

 double up, and said to him: " Your father makes the food rotten that 

 I give to him and the people suffer. I do not like this and shall make 

 you suffer." So he gave him a small piece of food — about the size of 

 a lump of sugar — and a little water and locked the lid of the box. He 

 made the young man suffer hunger and thirst on account of his father's 

 ill doing, but did not allow him to die a second death. 



The father could not sleep, worrying over the disappearance of his 

 son, when all efforts of the people and himself proved unavailing to 

 find him. A little girl whose father, mother, and grandparents were 

 dead was a "woman doctor." She sang to the chief that the 3'oung 

 man had been taken by god and was now in a box. Then god allowed 

 the chief to walk up a path (like a ladder) to heaven and told him to 

 look at his son in the box. Then the son said: " Father, I am nearly 

 dead from hunger." God told the chief: "I am angry with 3'ou for 

 making the food which I give you rotten, and I shall make your son 

 rotten." The chief asked god what he would receive from him to 

 make good the wrong. But god said that he would not want anything 

 that belonged to the chief, but that he would not lessen liis anger, and 

 would make his son rotten. Then the chief went down from heaven 

 to his house. Again after a time the chief went to heaven and asked 

 if god would accept a fine young dog. God said he would, and he let 

 the son out of the box and washed him. Then the two went home. 

 The chief was good after that, being warned to make food rotten no 

 more. 



Dejwpulation of several villages. — Formerly there were large villages 

 at South East Cape and North East Cape, numbering together possi- 

 bly 300 people, while there were smaller ones, numbering in all 150 

 inhabitants, at Cape Kuhuliak, Cape Sieperno, and a promontory east 

 of this latter one. Simultaneously, or nearly so, these several villages 

 were depopulated. From a reputable native at Gambell I learned that 

 about the same time when these villages were depopulated the a^ illage 

 at Gambell lost half of its numbers, while the death rate at South 

 West Cape was yet larger and that there was great loss of life at 

 Indian Point and generally along the Siberian coast. Starvation 

 resulted by reason of a succession of fierce blizzards, which prevented 

 hunting, and, furthermore, from an unusual scarcity of seals and wal- 

 ruses. An old woman who now resides at Gambell, having left one 

 of those villages on the north shore during the fall preceding the 

 fatality, or the previous one, asserts that the people of her village 



