Sickness, Death and Burial 171 



CHAPTER XIII 



SICKNESS, DEATH AND BURIAL 



Melancholy thoughts of death seem to be always hovering in the penumbra 

 of the Eskimos' minds. Especially is this true of the older people, for the 

 young, here as elsewhere, are little troubled by its imminence. During the 

 summer of 1915, when the natives were formulating their plans for the future, 

 even though it might be for but a month ahead, Ikpakhuak or Higilak would 

 often say "Granting that we are still alive," and add "Evil shades are constantly 

 assailing us." Not infrequently, too, some such expression as "People are 

 continually dying here" would fall from their lips. Yet in their minds there 

 seemed to be no anxious dread of death weighing them down, no passionate 

 clinging to life, only a profound resignation and melancholy calmness in the 

 face of the inevitable issue. Generally they lowered the voice and assumed 

 a mournful tone when speaking of dead relatives or friends, though occasionally 

 one heard the remark, half jest, half earnest, that "The foxes have eaten so- 

 and-so," or "So-and-so's remains retained no semblance of a man." They 

 seldom mentioned the dead by name, but seemed rather to try to forget them, 

 as though they would fain banish every unpleasant memory from their minds. 



For the forerunners of death, accidents and sickness, the Eskimo knows 

 of only one cause, the malignant activities of evil spirits or of the shades of the 

 dead. Many of Higilak's stances in Victoria island were held for the purpose 

 of propitiating or intimidating these shades and dispelling their influence. The 

 natives have no knowledge whatever of medicine, and very little of surgery. 

 A head-ache is sometimes cured by bleeding, broken limbs are set in splints 

 and frozen members are amputated. Aksiatak, for example, dislocated his 

 ankle while wrestling in the dance-house; he pulled it back into place, covered 

 it with a long deerskin sock and laid three splints around it, one on each side 

 and one at the back, keeping them firmly in place by means of a raw-hide lashing; 

 a second cord running from his hand to the sole of his foot enabled him to raise 

 his leg without bending it. A year later his son Nakitok fell from the roof and broke 

 his thigh; the Eskimos set his leg in splints also. Both accidents were ascribed 

 to the machinations of evil spirits and the shamans were asked to appease them. 

 A painful swelling on the arm of the old shaman Ilatsiak was cured by lancing. 

 For snow-blindness the natives use counter-irritants, flooding the eyes with 

 the smoke of burning heather or of the Dryas integrifolia, or tying a louse to a 

 thread and letting it scratch the sclerotis. Complaints that are considered 

 magical in their origin, however, flnd their surest remedies in counter-magic, 

 so a shaman is usually called in at once to diagnose the cause and prescribe a 

 cure. In most cases he discovers that some taboo has been broken, or that 

 the patient has committed some action which offended a certain dead person's 

 shade. The latter was the interpretation given to the illness of the Noahognik 

 Eskimo Hitkok, who killed his dog in a fit of anger because it refused to follow 

 him to the sealing ground ; in this case the resentful shade was the dead relative 

 after whom the dog was named.' 



In most cases of sickness the diagnosis alone is considered sufficient to 

 arrest the evil, especially if it is reinforced by an abstinence from such articles 

 of food as the shaman may ordain. Even if it fails no discredit falls on the 

 shaman, for the forces of evil are many and great, and his powers after all are 

 limited. 



'There was no conception of the dead man's soul residing in the dog; Hitkok had merely shown dis- 

 respect to him by killing his namesake. 



