430 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT (ETH. ANN. 18 
fellow-villagers he is also in danger of being killed by common consent 
of the community. I heard of such men being killed in the region lying 
between the mouths of the Yukon and Kuskokwim for failing to fulfill 
their predictions and for suspected witchcraft. Observance of various 
festivals and the attendant rites are usually executed according to 
instructions of shamans, who learn by the aid of their mysterious power 
what is acceptable to the shades and the tunghdt. 
The moon is believed to be inhabited by a great man-like being, 
which controls all the animals that are found on the earth, and when 
a season of scarcity comes the shamans pretend to go up and make 
offerings to him. If they succeed in pleasing this being he gives them 
one of the kind of animals that have become scarce, whereupon the 
shaman returns with it to the earth and turns it loose, after which the 
species again becomes plentiful. It is claimed that only in this way 
can the earth be kept supplied with game, owing to the number killed 
by hunters and by disease. On one occasion at St Michael, at the 
beginning of the fall seal hunting, the old head-man of the village was 
seen to go out secretly and make food offerings to the new moon while 
he sang a long song of propitiation to the spirit supposed to live in that 
planet in order to control the supply of game. 
The shamans claim that the man who lives in the moon has a very 
bright face, so that they fear to look at him, and when they come near 
they must look downward; for this reason two usually go together, 
since one alone would be abashed. On the Yukon they claim to climb 
up to the moon, but at the head of Norton sound an old man told me that 
he used to fly up to the sky like a bird. In all this region the shamans 
claim to possess the power of visiting the moon. One winter on the 
lower Yukon, about the middle of February, there was an eclipse of the 
moon, and soon after throat disease caused the death of about a dozen 
people. Two shamans, father and son, started to visit the man in the 
moon to find out why the disease had been sent and to learn how to 
stop it. The pair were absent from the village several days, and then 
returned and reported that when they had climbed nearly to the moon 
the old man became tired and stopped for a while, but the young man 
went on. When he was near the moon the man came down to meet him 
and was very angry, asking what he wanted there; the young man 
was very much frightened, but told the reason for his approach. He 
was then told that the disease would kill several other people before it 
would stop; and the moon man was going to keep the young fellow, but 
his father begged so hard for him from below that he was permitted to 
return. 
On the lower Yukon and southward they say that there are other 
ways of getting to the moon, one of which is for a man to put a slip 
noose about his neck and have the people drag him about the interior 
of the kashim until he isdead. At one time two noted shamans on the 
Yukon did this, telling the people to watch for them as they would 
