NELSON] TALISMANS AND AMULETS 437 
Sometimes the influence of the amulet or fetich is supposed to bring 
the game to the hunter. 
Among the people of Kaviak peninsula and Kotzebue sound a body 
of the common weasel, which is said to be one of the totem animals of 
the Eskimo, is very highly prized as a fetich. The body is dried entire 
and is worn on the belt or carried in a pouch by boys and young men; 
for this purpose they are valued at the price of a marten skin. The 
possession of these weasel mummies is supposed to endow their owners 
with agility and prowess as hunters. In all cases it follows that the 
owner of a mummy of any animal or of a child carries with it power 
over its shade, which becomes the servant of the possessor. 
The hunter is believed to be able to propitiate and control to a certain 
extent the shades of sea animals which he kills by keeping them with 
their bladders and, after the ceremonies and offerings described in the 
Bladder feast, dismissing them back to the sea to reenter other animals 
of their kind and so return that he may be able to kill them again. In 
this way the hunter is believed to be able to procure more game than 
would be possible were he to allow the shades of the animals killed to 
go to the land of the dead or to wander freely. 
The same belief extends to inanimate objects. When a hunter sells 
furs it is a common custom for him to cut a small fragment from each 
skin, usually from the end of the nose, and place it carefully in a pouch. 
If he sells a seal entire he must cut off the tip of its tongue and swallow 
it, and sometimes I saw natives swallow fragments from skins they were 
selling to the traders. Fragments are even cut from garments that 
they sell, a minute portion being retained in an amulet pouch. In 
retaining these pieces it is believed that the possessor keeps the essen- 
tial essence or spirit of the entire article, and is thus certain to become 
possessed, through its agency, of another of the same kind. Should he 
neglect to do this in any of the foregoing cases the objects disposed of 
would be gone forever, and although he might get articles of the same 
kind, he would obtain fewer than if he had kept the fragment. 
In the same manner offerings of small particles of food and a little 
water from the large quantities distributed at feasts are supposed to 
convey to the shades the essence or essential parts of the entire amount. 
In two of the tales it is related that small pieces were taken from skins 
and afterward these again became full-size skins, to the benefit of their 
possessor, thus indicating the meaning of this custom. 
In the Bladder festivals seen south of the lower Yukon, whenever 
food and water were brought into the kashim a little of each was cast 
to the floor and up against the roof as offerings to the shades of the 
upper and lower worlds. 
All places, things, and the elements are supposed each to have a yu-a 
or mystery which is human or semihuman in form, but with grotesque 
features which are invisible except to shamans and others especially 
gifted. Hunters at sea and elsewhere in lonely places, when about to 
