440 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
grua. The natives have a great dread, apparently superstitious, of 
these bees and the large gadflies (CEstens tarandi), one of which IT 
have seen scatter half a dozen people. A man one day caught one of 
these, and whittled out a little 
box of wood, in which he shut 
the insect up and tied it up 
with a shred of sinew, telling 
Capt. Herendeen that it was 
“tuenamun,” for “ tuena.” 
A small lump of indurated 
gravel (No. 56725) [273] was 
Fig. 428.—Box of dried bees—amulet. one day brought over from 
Utkiavwin, with the story that it was a “‘medicine” for driving away 
the ice. The man who uses this charm stands on the high bank at the 
village, and breaking off grains of the gravel throws them seaward. 
This will cause the ice to move off from the shore. 
The essential identity of the amulets of the Point Barrow natives 
with those used by the Eskimo elsewhere is shown by the following 
passages from other writers. Egede says:! 
A Superstition very common among them is to load themselves with Amulets or 
Pomanders, dangling about their Necks and Arms, which consist in some Pieces of 
old Wood, Stones or Bones, Bills and Claws of Birds, or Anything else which their 
Fancy suggests to them. 
Crantz says: 
They are so different in the amulets or charms they hang on people, that one laughs 
at another’s. These powerful preventives consist in a bit of old wood hung around 
their necks, or a stone, or a bone, or a beak or claw of a bird, or else a leather strap 
tied round their forehead, breast, or arm. 
Parry speaks* of what he supposes were amulets at Iglulik, consist- 
ing of teeth of the fox, wolf, and musk-ox, bones of the ‘‘kablééarioo” 
(supposed to be the wolverine), and foxes’ noses. Kumilien says * that 
at Cumberland Gulf, “among the many superstitious notions, the wear- 
ing of charms about the person is one of the most curious. These are 
zalled angoouk or amusit, and may be nothing but pieces of bone or 
wood, birds’ bills or claws, or an animal’s teeth or skin.” <A little 
girl “ had a small envelope of sealskin that was worn on the back of her 
inside jacket” containing two small stones. 
Such little pockets of skin sewed to the inner jacket are very com- 
mon at Point Barrow, but we did not succeed in any case in learning 
their contents. At Kotzebue Sound, Beechey saw ravens’ skins on 
which the natives set a high value, while the beaks and claws of these 
birds were attached to their belts and headbands.’ Petitot describes® 
the amulets used in the Mackenzie district, in the passage already quoted, 
as “(défroques empaillées de corbeau, de faucon ou @hermine.” It is 
'Greenland, p. 194. 4Contributions, p. 45. 
* History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 216. 5 Voyage, p. 333. 
3Second voyage, p. 497. ®Monographie, ete., p. xv. 
