A oe eS See gor 
MURDOCH.] DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD. 425 
bodies of their relatives disturbed by the dogs or other animals,’ but 
we know of one case where the parents of two children who died very 
nearly at the same time, finding that the dogs were getting at the 
bodies, raised them on stages of driftwood about 4 or 5 feet high. 
Similar stages were observed by Hooper at Plover Bay ;? but this method 
of disposing of the dead appears to have gone out of use at the present 
day, since Dall* describes the ordinary Siberian method of laying out 
the dead in ovals of stone as in use at Plover Bay at the time of his 
visit. 
The cemetery at Utkiavwin is not confined to the spot I have men- 
tioned, though most of the bodies are exposed there. A few bodies 
are also exposed on the other side of the lagoon, and one body, that of 
aman, was laid out at the edge of the higher tundra, about a mile due 
east from the station. The body was covered with canvas, staked 
down all round with broken paddles, and over it was laid a flat sledge 
with one runner broken. At one end of the body lay a wooden dish, 
and under the edge of the canvas were broken seal-darts and other 
spears. The body lay in an east and west line, but we could not tell 
which end was the head. All sorts of objects were scattered round the 
cemetery—tools, dishes, and even afew guns—though we saw none that 
appeared to have been serviceable when exposed, except one Snider 
rifle. If, as is the case among Eskimo in a good many other places, 
all the personal property of the deceased is supposed to become unclean 
and must be exposed with him, it is probable that his friends manage 
to remove the more valuable articles before he is actually dead.* 
The method of disposing of the dead varies slightly among the 
Eskimo in different localities, but the weapons or other implements 
belonging to the deceased are always laid beside the corpse. The cus- 
tom at Smith Sound, as described by Bessels,° is remarkably like that 
at Point Barrow. The corpse was wrapped in furs, placed on a sledge, 
and dragged out and buried in the snow with the face to the west. The 
sledge was laid over the body and the weapons of the deceased were de- 
posited besideit. Unlike the Point Barrow natives, however, they usually 
cover the body with stones. In the same passage Dr. Bessels describes 
a peculiar symbol of mourning, not employed, so far as I can learn, 
elsewhere. The male mourners plugged up the right nostril with hay 
and the females the left, and these plugs were worn for several days. 
1 Compare Lyon, Journal, p. 269. 
2 Tents, etc., p. 88. 
3 Alaska, p. 382. 
4Compare Samoyed grave described and figured by Nordenskiéld (Vega, vol. 1, p. 98), where a broken 
sledge was laid upside down by the grave. 
§ Compare Holm, Geogratisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, p. 98: “kun Kostbarheder, saasom Knive eller lignende 
Jernsager beholde den afdedes efterladte.” —East Greenland. 
6 Naturalist, vol. 18, pt. 9, p. 877. 
