BOAS] ORIGIN OF WALRUS AND REINDEER. 587 



turning around; then, having safely passed a boiling kettle with 

 seals in it, he arrived at the house, in front of which watch was kept 

 by terrible animals, sometimes described as seals, sometimes as dogs; 

 and, lastly, within tlic limisr' passage itself, he had to cross an abyss 

 by means of a brid^'' as n.ii rtj\r as a knife edge. 



About the same tali' is W mnd among the Baffin Land tribes ; accord- 

 ing to Captain Spicer. of Groton, Conn., she is called Nanoquagsaq 

 by the Akuliarmiut. She is visited by the angakut, who liberate 

 the sea animals by subduing her or rather by depriving her of a 

 charm by which she restrains the animals. 



I am inclined to think that the form in which Lyon gives this tra- 

 dition is not quite correct, but is a mixture of the Sedna myth and 

 that of the angakoq's visit to Arnaquagsaq. This seems the more 

 l^robable from a Greenland tale which Dr. Rink kindly communicated 

 to me, in which it is related that tlie grandfather of Arnaquagsaq 

 cut off her fingers, which were changed into sea animals. 



For this reason it is most probable that Arnaquagsaq, Sedna, and 

 Nuliajoq proceed from the same myth, tiiough the traditions differ 

 from one another as they are related by the travelers. In the my- 

 tliology of the central tribes this character has a much more decided 

 influence upon their religious belief than the Arnaquagsaq of the 

 Greenlanders seems to have had. 



The myth of Sedna is confused with another which treats of the 

 origin of tlie Europeans and of the Adlet (see jj. 037). The legends 

 are in part almost identical. Sedna orders her dog to gnaw oft" her 

 father's feet; Uinigumisuitung's children maim their grandfather in 

 the same way; and, besides, Sedna's st^cond name is also Uinigumi- 

 suitung. In both tales the fathci' is lallcil Savirqong. In Lyon's 

 Private Journal (p. 363) an inipurtant statement is found to the 

 effect that the dog which protects Nuliajoq's dwelling is by some 

 natives called her husband, by others merely her dog, but that he 

 is generally considcri'd the father of Erqigdlit (identical with Adlet, 

 p. 637) and Qadluiiait (Klurdpfans). 



Finally, I must rocni'd tlie legend of the origin of the walrus and the 

 reindeer, which is closely related to the Sedna tradition. I could 

 never learn any other reason why the use of sea animals and reindeer 

 at the same i)ei-ind should be forbidden, except tlie fear df dfTending 

 Sedna. She is repres.Mile.l as disliking the d<...r. wiiieli a.'cui-.lingly 

 are not found in hei- Imuse. Any reason for this dislike is nul given. 

 The Akuliarmiut, however, have a tradition that a woman, most 

 probably Sedna herself, created the walrus and the reindeer during a 

 famine. She opened her belly and took out a small piece of fat 

 which she carried up the hills where it was transformed by a magic 

 spell into a reindeer. As soon as she saw the animal she became 

 frightened and ordered it to run away, but the deer turned upon her 

 and would not go; then she became angry and knocked out its teeth. 



