Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 331 



HISTORY AND ANCESTORS OF THE AMMASSALIMMIUT. 



Their own traditions. — The Ammassalikers believe, that the 

 world was formed where they live and that all those events in 

 their earlier history, to which several of their tales seem to refer, 

 have taken place on the same coasts, which they themselves or their 

 immediate ancestors have seen. 



They have no inherited knowledge of their land's "geographj^", 

 only a fable-like idea, that they live on a large island and that 

 'land's end' (niina isua) lies far north on their coast, (see the Uiarteq 

 tale ^). A second tale ("The Girl who went across the inland ice to 

 the west coast" ^), shows, that they have an approximately correct 

 idea of the situation of the coasts relative to one another. On the 

 other hand, they have no notion of the true directions of the com- 

 pass; for the same words, which on the east coast mean north and 

 south, east and west, signify to the West Greenlanders south and 

 north, west and east (cf. p. 214). This means practically, that these 

 M'ords only indicate local directions ('up and down' or 'to the right 

 and left'(?); 'in and out' on the coast where they live). — They have 

 no distinct feeling, that they compose a tribe, a unit; thus we cannot 

 expect any report among them about their first settlement or the 

 history of their ancestors as a whole. 



They call themselves Eewin (from iniwin, East Greenlandic for 

 inuit, plural of inuk 'native, person') or Taawin (plural of taaq 'a 

 shade'). Although they often move to new hunting places, they yet 

 speak of certain families as 'people who belong to the Sermilik 

 Fjord', others as 'natives of Ammassalik', just as they feel the 

 'Southerners' of the coast as foreigners. The latter have a different 

 dialect and small peculiarities in their fashions and manners. This 

 fact is displayed in one of the interesting drum-songs, which H. Rink 

 obtained from the east coast already in the 18-sixties^). In an 

 episode of a juridical song duel between the eastlanders Saudlat and 

 Pulangitsissoq, the former who seems to have lived further north 

 than his opponent, attacks the latter in the following manner: 



"The south, the south, down there! 



When I settled halfway there, I saw Pulangitsissoq, 



Who had become fat from halibut. 



The people halfway do not know how to speak. 



They are ashamed of their own language — 



1) Holm in this volume pp. 108, 110—111, 242—243 and 312. 



^) Id. ibid. pp. 274— 275. Cf. Rink (1866), tale No. 44 about a journey from West 



Greenland right over to the east coast. 

 3) Rink (1871) No. 137 p. 143. 



