434 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [ETH. ANN. 18 
the kind of wood used for the fire, or some other necessary observance 
had been neglected. This was known from the fact that after he had 
been burned his body reappeared unharmed except for a small burn on 
one shoulder, but he failed to become alive. The body was placed over 
the pyre and a cone of upright drift logs raised over it to mark the spot. 
My informant added that when people passed this spot they always 
made small offerings of food and other things to propitiate the shade 
of the shaman. 
The following description of burning a shaman is from a village 
south of the Yukon mouth, and was obtained from a fur trader who . 
knew the circumstances: The shaman gathered all the villagers into 
the kashim and, after putting on his fur coat, told them that he wished 
to be burned and return to them in order that he might be of greater 
service to the village. He directed that a crib of drift logs should be 
built waist high, in the form of a square, with an open space in the 
center, where he could stand. He chose two assistants, whom he paid 
liberally to attend to the fire and aid himin other ways. His hands 
and feet were bound and a large mask, covering his face and body to 
the waist, was put on him, Then the people carried him out and set 
him inside the crib, after which everyone except the assistants returned 
to the kashim and the assistants set fire to the pyre in front. Smoke 
and flames rose from the logs so that the inside of the crib was ren- 
dered slightly indistinet; the assistants called out the people, who, 
when they saw the mask as they had left it, facing them through the 
smoke, were satisfied. After they had seen it they were ordered to 
remain within doors until the next morning upon pain of calling down 
upon them the anger of the tunghét. 
Immediately after the people went inside the assistants unbound the 
shaman and substituted a log of wood behind the mask, while the 
shaman concealed himself near by until the next morning. Mean- 
while, the mask and the crib burned to the ground. At daybreak 
the shaman returned and, taking a couple of firebrands from the smol- 
dering pyre, mounted very quietly on the roof of the kashim and 
sat by the smoke hole. The gut-skin cover to this outlet was raised 
and bulging, as usual, from the heat within; over this translucent cover 
the shaman waved his spark scattering firebrand, at the same time 
moving his feet about on its surface. The people inside could distin- 
guish the fire and the faint outlines of the feet and said, ‘He is walk- 
ing in the air over the window.” When he was satisfied that he had 
created sufficient sensation, he descended, entered the kashim, and was 
ever afterward considered to be a great shaman. I was told that this 
ordeal of fire was supposed to endow the person enduring it with the 
power to cast off or assume the bodily form at will and to greatly 
increase his power in other ways. 
In addition to other supernatural aids that are invoked, amulets and 
fetiches of wood, stone, bone, or in fact almost anything else will serve. 
