Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo. 75 



None but the one or two nearest relatives attend to the attiring 

 and dragging out of the body; for those who have touched a 

 dead body have to go through a long period of enforced absti- 

 nence from many things. They perform this task in great 

 haste. So great is their dread of touching a corpse, that in the 

 case of an accident there is no question of handling or assisting 

 the injured person from the moment they conclude that hope is 

 over. Suiarkak capsized one day at the beginning of April when 

 he was about to land on the ice-foot. He scrambled out of his 

 kaiak, but sank almost immediately. His father and several others 

 who were present on the ice-foot when the accident occurred and 

 had immediately hastened in their kaiaks to his assistance, made 

 no attempt to rescue him wMien he sank, although he could be 

 easily seen and an oar might easily have been reached out to him. 



We have heard of people who have been on the point of death 

 having cast themselves into the sea in order thus to obtain what 

 they consider a form of burial, for if they are not buried by one 

 of the relations, no one else will be found willing to undertake the 

 task. In deserted houses which have been the scenes of famine, we 

 have seen skeletons lying on the very spot where death took place. 



If, as is doubtless always the case, one of the ancestors has 

 perished in a kaiak, the dead man's body is cast into the sea or 

 laid on the sea-shore at low water, in order that it may be swept 

 away at high tide^); if there is ice, it is lowered through a hole 

 in the ice. One can often quite distinctly perceive the dead body 

 lying in the sea close outside the house for days afterwards. Occa- 

 sionally, at least in former times, the bodies were also buried on 

 the rocks and covered over with loose stones. In order to econo- 

 mise stones, the body was often doubled up, and several bodies 

 laid in the same grave. The dead man is always given his prin- 

 cipal implements to take with him, not only Avhen he is buried on 

 the rock, but even when the body is thrown into the sea. The 

 implements are deposited in a crevice of the rocks and are covered 

 up with stones. If the body is thrown into the sea, only the kaiak 

 is sunk there ^). 



'^) This custom has perhaps existed among other Eskimo; cfr. the tradition as 

 to Sedna (Boas: The Central Eskimo, p. 585). 



-) Nothing has come to our notice of the custom spoken of by Egede in "Grøn- 

 lands Perlustration" of depositing the head of a dog in the graves of small 

 children ''with the notion that, babies being without reason, the dog will 

 follow the scent and show them the way to the land of souls''. Eberlin 

 came across the skull of a dog in a separate chamber of a child's grave in 

 Kekertarsugsuk (on the southernmost part of the East coast), but, according to 

 what the Greenlanders sa}^ it has never been the rule to place a dog's head 



