Religious Beliefs 179 



CHAPTER XIV 



RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 



A flat unbroken expanse of land and sea-r-the earth — covered over during 

 the greater part of the year with snow and ice; of undefined limits, but stretch- 

 ing farther than any man knows; at each of its corners a pillar of wood holding 

 up another unbroken expanse, the sky^; above that, on its surface, another 

 land, abounding in caribou and other animals like our own earth; wandering 

 across this upper expanse semi-spiritual beings, the sun, the moon and the stars — 

 such is the conception that the Copper Eskimo possesses of our universe. The 

 sun and the moon are semi-human, or at least the abodes of semi-human beings, 

 the sun being a woman and the moon a man. The mountains of the moon are 

 the man's dogs, according to one account; according to another, they are a 

 woman with her dogs behind her, for once she came down to the earth and the 

 shamans tied a rope round her and hoisted her up to the sky again. The weather, 

 sila, spoken of as a man, but conceived apparently as some mighty power, 

 moves along the sky, and as he walks the sun goes down ; hence the disappearance 

 of the sun each evening. In summer the sun draws near the earth and warms 

 it, but in winter it goes far away under the sea. On the 9th of January 1915, 

 the first day of its reappearance after the winter night, the natives heard its 

 hiss as it set again in the ocean. Its face is covered with black at eclipses, 

 siriapaluk, and then the Eskimos know that it is trying to kill people and the 

 shamans have to wipe away the black. The appearance of two mock suns, 

 (parhelia) is ominous to travellers and hunters, who will be cut off by sudden 

 death and never reach their homes again.^. 



The stars were human beings or animals before they ascended into the 

 sky. The three bright stars of Orion's belt were three sealers who never 

 returned to their camp, so the Eskimos call them tupigat "The sealers", or 

 tubaryuit "The early risers"'. Long ago a polar bear was being hunted by a 

 man and his dogs. It fled into the sky, and its pursuers followed after it. We 

 can still see the bear, nannoryuk, in the sky, and behind it the hunter and his 

 dogs, always pursuing but never overtaking it*. One native pointed to the 

 Pleiades and called them the bear, while Aldebaran and some stars near it were 

 the hunter and his dogs, agleoryuit "The pursuers"; but the more usual name 

 for the Pleiades is A gietat, the meaning of which I did not discover'. Two stars 

 in the Great Bear (|3 and a faint star near it) are tuktuyuin, "The caribou", 

 while Venus is the "Big Star," uvloreahugyuk. Arcturus when high in the heavens 

 ushers in the sealing season, and hence has been given the name of sivulik "The 

 leader". Other stars which I was unable to identify are agiatsiak (perhaps the 

 same as agietat), kuttoryuk and agyuk. Falling stars are the annak (feces) of 

 larger ones, but bright meteors are called fire, ignik.^ The rainbow is aiyakutak, 

 the same name that Mr. Stefansson found for it at Barrow, where the word 

 means "The prop that keeps the sun from falling." 



iCf. Crantz, Vol. I, p. 131; Nelson, p. 498. 



2At Barrow two mock suns, one on each side of the real sun, are said to be its walking sticks, aiyopiak. 

 The sun holds them out to steady itself when a gale is imminent. Cf. Peary, Northward over the Great 

 Ice, Vol. I, p. 243. 



^ 'In Greenland they are called siekiut, "The bewildered men." (Crantz, Vol. I, p. 232, Egede, p. 209), 

 but the legend is the same. 



'At Barrow the name is tvbatsiat, which also means "The sealers." 



'At Barrow they are called sakopsakkat "The ones that close their eyes." 



•So too in the Mackenzie river delta (Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, pp 327, 

 341.) 



23335—121 



