BOAS.] APPENDIX. gg9 



Note 6. 



Page 606. The same feast was celebrated in 1886 in Umanaqtuaq, in Cumberland 

 Sound-, where aU the TaUrpingmiut had gathered. The witnesses of this festival 

 describe it exactly in the same way as I described it above. One thing ought to be 

 added, which I did not mention because it seemed to me accidental, but as it was 

 repeated in the same way in 1886 it must have some meaning. I noticed that the 

 Qailertetang, after having invoked the wind, hop about,. making a grmiting noise 

 and accosting the people. When doiag so they are attacked by the natives and 

 killed. According to the description of the whalers they imitate sometimes deer, 

 sometimes walrus. Perhaps tliis fact gave rise to Kumlien's description of the 

 "kilUng of the evil spirit of the deer." It is remarkable that in 1883 in Qeqerten 

 and in 1886 in Umanaqtuaq the festival was celebrated on exactly the same day, 

 the 10th of November. This can hardly be accidental, and does not agi-ee with the 

 idea sometimes advanced, that the festival refers to the winter solstice. Unfortu- 

 nately Hall (I, p. 538) does not give the dates of the festival in Nugumiut. On the 

 western coast of Hudson Bay a festival in which masks were used was celebrated 

 about the end of January, 1866 (Hall II, p. 219), but it is hardly possible to draw 

 conclusions from Nom-se's superficial account of Hall's observations. 



Note 7. 



Page 615. It may be of interest to learn that in 1885 and 1886 two instances of 

 this kind occm-red in Cumberland Sound. There was a very old woman in Qeqer- 

 ten by the name of Qa;t;odloaping. She was well provided for by her relatives, but 

 it seems that one of the most influential men in Qeqerten, Pakaq, whom I men- 

 tioned above (p. 668) as the executioner of a murderer, deemed it right that she 

 should die. So, although she resisted him, he took her out of her hut one day to a hiU 

 and buried her ahve under stones. Another case was that of an old woman whose 

 health had been failing for a number of years. She lived with her son, whose wife 

 died late in the autumn of 1886. According to the religious ideas of the Eskimo, the 

 young man had to throw away Iris clothing. When, later on, his mother felt as 

 though she could not Uve through the winter, she insisted upon being killed, as she 

 did not want to compel her son to cast away a second set of clothing. At last her 

 son comphed with her request. She stripped ofif her outside jacket and breeches, 

 and was conveyed on a sledge to a near island, where she was left alone to die from 

 cold and himger. The son who took her there did not use his own sledge nor any 

 other Eskimo sledge for this pui-pose, but borrowed that of the Scottish whaling 

 station. 



