178 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



the wolf's legs and crushed its head to make certain that it was dead, then 

 returned to camp, leaving the carcass on the ground. The first news that 

 greeted him was that his wife was dead, and subsequently many others of his 

 party died also. 



The Copper Eskimo hardly knows the comforting doctrine that the souls 

 or shades of the dead hover round their living kinsfolk like guardian spirits and 

 protect them from every harm. The shade to them is a malignant being, at 

 least potentially, and its activities know no bounds of time and space. Some 

 remain harmless always, especially the shades of those who worked no evil in 

 their lives; others change to tornrait, and are identified more or less closely 

 with those malignant spirits that never had a normal human existence, though 

 they sometimes assume a human form. Unseen, save when of their own accord 

 they render themselves visible or are revealed to a shaman through his familiar 

 spirit, they haunt the hapless natives night and day, ever ready to seize a favour- 

 able opportunity to work them harm; the shade of a man who died in one 

 place may cause the death of another man a thousand miles away. In some 

 vague manner too these .shades control the weather and the supply of game. 

 Often a shaman will discover and name the particular shade that is responsible 

 for a man's sickness or ill-luck, or for the scarcity of caribou or seals; then it 

 will be petitioned or intimidated and made to cease its evil machinations. The 

 Eskimos try to preserve the good will of the shades in various ways. Whenever 

 a caribou is killed scraps of its liver and kidney (and sometimes of its other 

 intestinal organs as well) are thrown to them as an offering with the exclamation 

 tamaizza.^ So too when a seal is killed a small piece of blubber is left for the 

 shades on the ice.^ Dease and Simpson noticed that the Copper Eskimos 

 regularly offer an oblation at mealtimes. "(Mr. Dease) took them into his 

 tent and gave them food to eat. A small piece was first broken off, as a sacrifice 

 or oblation, and the remainder made the circuit of their faces before passing into 

 their mouths."' Before drinking, too, the native often tips his bowl and with 

 the prayer tamaizza pours out two or three drops for a libation. These offerings 

 are often omitted at mealtimes, but never in the hunting field when the game 

 is being cut up; and though sometimes the Eskimo may make them only half- 

 consciously, following a stereotyped custom, yet occasionally there does seem 

 to be some faint sense of gratitude to those unseen powers on whom he believes 

 himself dependent for his daily food. 



iCf. Crantz, Vol. 1, p. 207. 



^his was the usual interpretation of the custom. One native, however, said that it pleased the seals, 

 so that others would allow themselves to be caught. As the shades of the dead are supposed to be able 

 to control the supply of seals the two interpretations come to almost the same thing. 



'Simpson, Discoveries, p. 349. 



