424 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
eustoms concerning the dead. The few observations we were able to 
make agree in the main with those made elsewhere. For instance, we 
learned with tolerable certainty that the relatives of the dead, at least, 
must abstain from working on wood with an ax or hammer for a certain 
period—I believe, four or five days. According to Dall,' in the region 
about Norton Sound the men can not cut wood with an ax for five days 
after a death has occurred. In Greenland the household of the de- 
ceased were obliged to abstain for a while from certain kinds of food and 
work.’ 
A woman from Utkiavwin, who came over to the station one day in 
the autumn of 1881, declined to sew on clothing, even at our house, 
because, as she told Lieut. Ray, there was a dead man in the village 
who had not yet been carried out to the cemetery and ‘he would see 
her.” After consulting with her husband, however, she concluded she 
could protect herself from him by tracing a circle about her on the floor 
with a snow-knife. In this cirele she did the sewing required, and was 
careful to keep all her work inside of it. 
One of the natives informed me that when a man died his labrets were 
taken out and thrown away. Iremember, however, seeing a young man 
wearing a plug labret of syenite, which he said had belonged to an old 
man who died early in the winter of 188182. It was perhaps removed 
before he actually died. 
Manner of disposing of the dead.—The corpse is wrapped up in a piece 
of saileloth (deerskin was formerly used), laid upon a flat sled, and 
dragged out bya small party of people—perhaps theimmediate relatives 
of the deceased, though we never happened to see one of these funeral 
processions except from a distance—to the cemetery, the place where 
“they sleep on the ground.” This place at Utkiavwin is arising ground 
about a mile and a half east of the village, near the head of the south- 
west branch of the Isitkwa lagoon. At Nuwittk the main cemetery is 
at “‘ Nexeura,” between the village and Pernyt. The bodies are laid out 
upon the ground without any regular arrangement apparently, though 
it is difficult to be sure of this, as most of the remains have been broken 
up and scattered by dogs and foxes. Witha freshly wrapped body it is 
almost impossible to tell which is the head and which the feet. We 
unfortunately never noticed whether the heads were laid toward any 
particular point of the compass, as has been observed in other localities. 
Dr. Simpson says that the head is laid to the east at Point Barrow. 
Various implements belonging to the deceased are broken and laid be- 
side the corpse, and the sled is sometimes broken and laid over it. Some- 
times, however, the latter is withdrawn a short distance from the cemetery 
and left on the tundra for one moon, after which it is brought back to 
the village. Most people do not seem to be troubled at having the 
' Alaska, p. 146. 
2Egede, Greenland, p. 150. 
