688 W. Thalbitzer 



only one leg, one thigh, one large foot, two hands on the same arm, flat head, 

 small eyes, hardly any nose and a very small mouth, always in low-spirits (me- 

 lancholy?), that they were able to keep under the water for about an hour at 

 a time and that the Eskimo used them for fishing up fragments from the ships 

 that had been wrecked on the coast". — I am of opinion that in this description 

 two mythic figures have been mixed togehter, one being the Eskimo mythic 

 figure iLLokoq or iLLuinnaq 'the longitudinally spht person', the other the 

 type of the Inner suit 'the fire-people' who five on the rocks close to the beach 

 and are described as noseless^). 



The same Eskimo woman told further that on the northernmost parts of La- 

 brador there hved a hostile, foreign people, whose external appearance is further 

 described and who as she told "were badly armed, as they had only knives 

 and axes of stone and not of iron but were feared by the Eskimo; they used 

 snowshoes (raquettes) which also were not in use among her countrymen ^)". It 

 is a riddle to which race or nation this foreign people in the Northern Labrador 

 has really belonged. If we only consider this old description we might quite 

 as well deem it to be another Esldmo tribe than for example belonging to the 

 Indians; for in contrast to the Greenland Eskimo the western Eskimo tribes 

 use snowshoes, like the Indians living in the interior of Labrador. The story 

 of the woman about this mythical foreign people gains however in interest thereby 

 that also from later reports and from different places we hear of a people who 

 once lived in the northernmost part of Labrador or near the Hudson Straits 

 and who were at enmity with the Eskimo. Both the eastern and southern Labra- 

 dor Eskimo have till recent times preserved traditions of such a foreign and 

 hostile northern people differing from themselves in physical as well as cultural 

 respects. It is quite possible that already Nie. Tunes' description in de Poincy 

 contains a renewed observation of the same kind, for he speaks of having met 

 with two kinds of people among the Eskimo (in Baffin Land?). But this ques- 

 tion at any rate presents itself more clearly in the records, which Rink received 

 200 years later from Labrador through the resident missionaries^). In the tales 

 recorded by him from the Labrador Eskimo in ca. I860 we hear of some old- 

 time fights that have taken place between these and a foreign people, whom 

 they called Tunnit and who lived first in the same country as the first-named, 

 later further north in large stone-houses of a diflerent structure from their own; 

 the ruins of these houses consisting of immense stones were said to be still vi- 

 sible here and there in their land, especially on the islands along the coast. Se- 

 veral features agree with the old report in Charlevoix (of whom it is undoubtedly 

 independent) and new features are also given: "While Tunnit lived among 

 us, their bed-clothes consisted of seal-skin with the blubber still attached [pro- 

 bably a scornful expression about the badly prepared skins of this people] and 

 their clothes were made of the same material. Their hunting weapons were 

 made of slate and hornstone and their drilling apparatus of crystal. They were 

 very strong and awe-inspiring. The Eskimo used to make holes in their brows 

 whilst still in the living state"^). — The Tunnit population were driven away 



1) See about these in Rink (1871) pp. 188, 189 and 191; and in Holm here pp. 82 -83. 



2) Charlevoix (1744) p. 17. 



3) Rink (1860) p. 322; (1866) pp. 328 and 367; (1877) pp. 469-470. 



*) This cruelt}' or ceremony is recorded from otlier places in tlie reports about 

 this foreign people e. g. in the Haffin people's tale about Tornit tliougli liowever 

 with the variation, tiiat it was the Tornit themselves wlio used to cure a liead- 

 aclie by making holes in tlie skull of the sick person "so that blood and matter 

 came out". (lioas, 1901, p. 209 — 210). In the Ammassalik myth about Inurudsiak 

 this person also makes a hole in the Erkilik's head (here p. 267). 



