" NELSON] / MORTUARY CUSTOMS Sills 
and the people had brought it out there and abandoned it without any 
attendant observances. 
Among the Unalit the graveyard is usually quite close to one side of 
the village, generally behind it or on a small adjacent knoll. The 
illustration (figure 100) from a photograph taken near St Michael, will 
show the method of disposing of the dead in that vicinity. 
During my residence at St Michael a shaman died, and the following 
notes were made on the observances that followed: 
Fic. 100—Method of disposing of the dead at St Michael. 
In consideration of the fact that the deceased had been a shaman, 
no one did any work in the village for three days following his death. 
The body, however, had been prepared and placed in the grave box 
on the morning that he died. The night following, when the people 
prepared to retire, each man in the village took his urine tub and 
poured a little of its contents upon the ground before the door, saying, 
“This is our water; drink”—believing that should the shade return 
during the night and try to enter, it would taste this water and, finding 
it bad, would go away. 
