Sickness, Death and Burial 177 



Although there is a universal belief among these natives in an existence 

 after death, their conception of that existence is very vague and indefinite. 

 The names of the dead are not tabooed, though a cettain natural reluctance is 

 felt in pronouncing them. The soul, nappan, apparently ceases to exist alto- 

 gether, but the shade, tarrak, is believed to linger for a time round the place 

 where the body was laid.' Thus the spot where Haviron was buried was always 

 spoken of afterwards as "Haviron's place," and the context often implied that 

 his shade still existed in that locality. Ikpakhuak's eldest brother died in the 

 Colville hills in 1912, and his body was laid on a ridge-top. Three years later, 

 when passing near the place, Ikpakhuak began to mourn aloud, and all the natives 

 in our pa^ty wept in sympathy. A few days later, at the end of a long day's 

 fishing, he went to visit the grave, accompanied by Avranna and Milukkattak. 

 Higilak, in camp, wept all the time they were absent, and Milukkattak would 

 only speak of their visit afterwards in hushed tones. They seemed to think 

 that the shade of the dead man still hovered round his remains despite the 

 ravages the foxes had committed on them. 



Direct questions as to the fate of the individual after death invariably 

 received the answer nauna "I don't know". Occasionally, when pressed more 

 closely, a native would say, "Perhaps he is still alive in some other place, we 

 have no knowledge." One woman told me that the dead sometimes go to the 

 moon. Higilak once asked me whether I had ever seen her first husband Nerialak 

 among the western Eskimos; he had been dead for several years, she said, but 

 she had been told (by some shaman probably) that he was still living over in 

 the west. On another occasion she asked me whether I had heard that her father 

 was dwelling among the Kanghiryuarmiut. Many summers before he had 

 gone out hunting and had neither returned to camp nor left any traces to show 

 what had become of him. Finally a shaman discovered that the malignant 

 shades of some white men had carried him off to the country of the Kanghir- 

 yuarmiut. Nowhere, however, could I find any trace of the belief (existing 

 more or less vaguely at Barrow and elsewhere)^ that the souls of the dead are 

 reincarnated in their descendants, or in the children of friends and relatives. 



Known graves, even those of relatives, are usually avoided by Eskimos 

 travelling alone, even when death was due to natural causes. Very few natives 

 will voluntarily visit alone the place where a man was killed by violence; they 

 are afraid lest his shade that still hovers in the vicinity may wreak its vengeance 

 on his survivors. When the two Roman Catholic priests were killed near the 

 mouth of the Coppermine river in 1913 the murderers ate small pieces of their 

 livers, believing that this would prevent their shades from taking revenge.' 

 An Eskimo broke into two caches belonging to Uloksak and another man, and 

 stole a number of their skins; afterwards the thief hung himself, fearing the 

 owner's revenge, and his corpse was laid out on the ground about a mile from 

 the settlement. The natives hoped that the animals would quickly devour it, 

 and. Uloksak set some fox-traps near by. Instead of two foxes, however, he 

 caught two wolves, but one of them gnawed off its foot and limped away. 

 Uloksak, following its track, could see it running in the distance. Suddenly it 

 changed to a man and waved a hand to him, beckoning him to follow, then 

 instantly reverted to a wolf again. He chased it up a cliff and shot it, but the 

 moment the bullet struck its body the wolf gasped "ah", and a voice from inside 

 the cliff cried, "You too shall die and many of your people." Uloksak cut off 



'The word tarrak has at least three meanings: (1) a low ridge that offers cover to the hunter, and so 

 generally any low ridge; (2) the shadow of any object cast by the sun or the moon; (3) the "shade'' of 

 a dead animal or human be^ng. 



=Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 363 ct scq.; Crantz, Vol. I, p. 201. 



'The same belief existed in Greenland. See Rink, p. 45; Rasmussei, Pe:ple cf the Polar North 

 p. 297, 300; Ct. also Nelson, p. 328. 



23335—12 



