392 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
noise. Any slight noise served to raise a few eider-duck notes, and 
once when a dog strayed in every one in the kashim grunted yocifer- 
ously, at which the dog slunk out abashed. 
No work was permitted here during this day, and no one was per- 
mitted to leave the village until after all had taken a bath on the mid- 
night following. Should this rule be broken they believed that some 
one would surely die before another feast. 
On a December afternoon in 1878 I arrived at Chifukhlugumut, a 
village near the Yukon, south of Andreivsky, while the people were 
celebrating the bladder feast. They were gathered in the kashim 
singing to the beating of three drums, two of which were very large 
and the other of ordinary size. The large drums were about two and 
a half feet in diameter and covered with tanned reindeer skin. The 
songs were sung in very slow time and were descriptive of the wars 
and exploits of their fathers in ancient times. 
The only decorations in the kashim consisted of a bundle of wild- 
parsnip stalks fastened horizontally to the rear end of the room by 
mneans of two wooden pegs, and layers of these stalks about six feet long 
which were fastened to the wall like screens on the sides of the room. 
The drumming and songs were repeated three times during the fol- 
lowing afternoon. One of the old men told me that, as they lived far 
from the seacoast, they had killed no seals nor walrus, so had no 
bladders to put in the water, consequently they did not burn the stalks 
of the wild parsnips but put them in the kashim to make offerings to 
them. At the end of the feast the stalks are laid on the frozen surface 
of a small river near by, where they remain until carried away by the 
ice in spring. 
Here, as in other villages, no work of any kind was permitted during 
the festival, and no wood must be eut with an iron ax, but when abso- 
lutely necessary bone wedges may be used for splitting firewood. At 
Kushunuk they used for this purpose a large pick, consisting of a 
wooden handle with a walrus tusk for the point, the use of iron axes 
being tabooed there as elsewhere in this region during the continuance 
of this festival. All loud noises are also forbidden, even out of doors. 
At a little village on the Yukon near Andreivsky, on January 17, 
1851, I found the people performing their final dance at the close of the 
bladder feast. This date is a month later than is customary. 
The bladders used in this festival are supposed to contain the shades 
or inuas of the slain animals. After an animal is killed the hunter 
carefully removes and preserves the bladder until the time approaches 
for the festival. When this time arrives songs are sung and the bladder 
is inflated and hung in the kashim; the shade of the animal to which 
the bladder belonged is supposed to remain with it and to exist in the 
inflated bladder when it is hung in the kashim. 
The feast is given for the purpose of pleasing and amusing the shades 
and thus propitiating them, after which the bladders are taken to a 
