Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo. 49 



they are never divided into more than five portions. Even when a 

 hunter has killed the seal by his unaided efforts, if one or more 

 other hunters join him before he has managed to get the seal 

 ready for towing home, he is obliged to give them a share of it. 

 Possibly, however, this latter custom only applies to bearded seals, 

 and the first crested seal and Greenland seal which a hunter cap- 

 tures in the spring. The first big bearded seal a man obtains in 

 the season, is literally plundered by all those present, not only by 

 the inhabitants of the place itself, but also by people from other 

 parts. The head and breast, however, is always reserved for the 

 hunter himself. 



When a man takes his first crested seal in the spring, and he 

 is living in a house, it must not be eaten till three days after, even 

 if the people are hungering. If a tent is not provided with a new 

 skin covering in spring, crested seals and Greenland seals may not 

 be taken into it till after the lapse of some days. Early in the 

 spring a man obtained a share of a crested seal. He took it 

 into his tent to cut it up and remove the sinews. The tent 

 covering was in good condition, but had been used the previous 

 autumn. It happened that crested seals afterwards became very rare, 

 and so this man was looked askance at by the others, because 'his 

 conduct had made the seals angry, and caused them to leave the 

 coast'. 



The natives did not venture to sell us a whole seal without 

 the hunter himself having taken possession of some part of it, pre- 

 ferably a bit of the snout. Several times, when we had bought a 

 seal, we were obliged to promise to throw the head of it into the 

 sea, w^hen we had eaten the body. 



I have already mentioned the connection between the manner 

 of wearing the hair, the cut of the frock, and the cutting up of 

 the captured seals. I shall therefore only give an example of this 

 custom. A boy who had recently got his kaiak and had never 

 been out hunting before, harpooned a bearded seal. The animal 

 was dragged into the tent and cut up there, whereupon the 

 boy's hair was cut for the first time, the claws of the fore and hind 

 flippers of the seal were cut off, and the hair and claws were then 

 thrown into the sea. When an old woman was about to prepare 

 the hide for boot soles and was scraping off the hair, she chanted 

 a magic charm ("z/'a, ija, I have eaten the bearded seal; yea, I have 

 eaten the greater part, ija, ija . . . ."). 



A hunter лvho brought a seal home dipped his fingers in the 

 urine tub, and smeared the head of the captured animal with 

 urine. 



XXXIX. 4 



