Ethnological Sketch of the Angmagsalik Eskimo. 101 



it happens to touch anyone, that person is bound to die. The 

 angakok usually stabs it to death in the passage, and next morning 

 people can see the stain of blood on the spot where the tupilek 

 was killed. The angakok does not tell the ilisitsok who has made 

 the tupilek that he has killed it, in order not to disconcert him 

 (cf. tale 29). 



There are many other ways in which the ilisitsiit believe them- 

 selves to have the power of harming people, for instance, by making 

 snares of dead men's sinews, and fastening one round a knee-cap, 

 and sticking a small human rib on either side of the knee-cap. In 

 this case the ilisitsok does not even need to see the subject of his 

 wrath; he has only to name his name and pull the snare, and the 

 man will die. Pitiga took the gall of a dead man and cast it on 

 the spot where a girl had made water, as a punishment for her 

 refusal to lie with him. The girl died a short time after. 



When an ilisitsok can do nothing else to an enemy, he takes a 

 lump of blubber from his game, and repairs with it to an 

 ancient grave in which there is a lamp. When he has set the 

 blubber burning in this lamp, the man will no longer be able to hunt. 



A certain ilisitsok was so eager to make tapileks, so ran the 

 story, that when he was out hunting and a young ringed seal dived 

 down and he thought it was away too long, he had not time to 

 wait till it emerged again. ^) When the snow melted away in winter, 

 and large torrents came down the mountain sides, he would put 

 tupileks in them and send them after the people against whom he 

 had a grudge. When the people with wiiom he had a bone to pick 

 were clever hunters, and he had' no other way of doing them despite, 

 he would take a piece of flesh from a dead man and place it on 

 their harpoon in the cavity at the front of the foreshaft. The 

 harpoon which had been thus treated was rendered useless for 

 capturing seals. 



The ilisitsut have a large and miscellaneous assortment of 

 magic arts, most of which are entirely imaginary. They know, how- 

 ever, of a few expedients by which they may sometimes be able to 

 bring about the death of their enemies, e. g. by the use of the flesh 

 of corpses; it is by no means improbable that the Angmagsaliks' 

 custom of casting their dead into the sea is traceable to a dread 

 that the flesh of corpses miglit be put to evil uses.^) 



') Young seals are foolish and come to the surface quickly. 



-) Swan witnessed an instance of cremation among the Haidah Indians: it was 

 the case of a man who died in a strange land. In reply to his question, 

 one of the Indians said: "If they buried his body in a strange land, their enemies 

 would dig it up and make charms with it to destroj^ the Haidah tribe" (Swan: 

 The Haidah Indians). 



