one THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
everyone broke his fast. After the food was disposed of, songs of invi- 
tation were sung to the dead and a dance was performed exactly like 
that of the previous day. When this was ended, the feast givers 
brought in about a ton of fine dried salmon, and each sat down behind 
his or her pile. Then a man came in and the same style of word play 
was engaged in as on the day before, after which the feast givers dis- 
tributed their salmon, the trader and myself getting about 200 pounds 
each. This was followed by an interval of about an hour, when the 
dance Was repeated. Following this more salmon and a quantity 
of cranberries were distributed; then another interval’ ensued, lasting 
until just before dark, and the dance given in the morning was again 
repeated, but with a different ending. 
As the dance concluded the central drummer, an old man, arose, and, 
holding the drum and stick overhead, called out, ‘Turn now as light (of 
day) goes,” and, with a loud, hissing noise, he turned slowly a quarter of 
a circle with the sun, from left to right, and stopped; after a short pause 
he turned another quarter of a circle and stopped again, and so on 
until the circle was completed. At the same time all the dancers turned, 
stopped, and started again with the drummer, making the same hissing 
noise; when the circle was completed the dancers stamped their feet 
and slapped their thighs to make themselves clean, and all went out- 
side. About half of the dancers then stood in front of the kashim and 
began to dance, while most of the others went among the graves, which 
were just behind the building, and danced before the grave boxes of 
those in whose honor the feast was given. At the same time four inen 
who had lost relatives by drowning went to the ice of the Yukon, 
where they danced. The old drummer stood on the top of the kashim 
beating his drum for those dancing before the door; the dancers among 
the graves had time beaten for them by an old man striking the end of 
a log projecting from the wall of a house near by, and those who went 
, to the river danced to time beaten on a piece of wood carried by one of 
- the old men. 
The reason given for the dance by the graves was that the shades of 
the dead were believed to have returned from their place of abode in 
the other world in response to the invitations and to be occupying their 
grave boxes when not in the kashim, and by the dance the shades were 
shown that their relatives were taking part in the festival. At the 
close of this dance the children of the village, to the number of seventy 
or eighty, gathered in the kashim, occupying the center of the room in 
a square body, each child having a small wooden dish and a grass bag 
in its hands, and shouting in deafening chorus, “ Wi-hlw!” (me, too) 
& Wi-hlul” % Wi-hlu!l” 
The women had come in, meanwhile, bringing bags of berries, which 
they put by handfals into the dishes of the children, who immediately 
emptied the dishes into the bags and held them out again, crying for 
