182 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



Nature has ordained that certain animals shall live in the sea and others 

 on the land. The Eskimo therefore must follow the same distinction, and keep 

 the products of the two regions separate. He is a little vague as to who enforces 

 the taboo. Sometimes he says that the animals themselves would be offended 

 and avenge themselves on the trangressors, who would then die of starvation; 

 sometimes that the shades of the Eskimo dead would take offence, and wreak 

 their vengeance by sending terrible storms or a plague of sickness and death, 

 especially when the natives are living on the sea ice; at other times again it 

 is a deity who dwells at the bottom of the sea and controls the supply of seals, 

 or another living in the sky, or one of the many spirits that dwell in cliffs and 

 tide-cracks and similar places, in so far as they have any fixed abode. But 

 whatever the manner in which he thinks the taboo will be enforced, — and the 

 same Eskimo will believe in every one of them — there is no doubt whatever in 

 his mind that punishment will inevitably follow disobedience. Woe betide the 

 Eskimos if they fail .to observe the due restrictions; sooner or later misfortune 

 will overtake them in some form or another, and then the sin, however secret, 

 is sure to come to light. Even if the wrong-doer does not confess immediately, 

 as often happens, yet the shamans will soon discover his transgression when they 

 invoke their familiar spirits and enquire into the cause of their misfortunes. 

 Long ago certain people broke the taboo against cooking deer-meat on the ice, 

 and the ice cracked up and every one was drowned. Such a result may happen 

 again if the taboo be broken. 



The caribou and the seal are the two most important factors in the economic 

 life of the natives. The one lives on land, the other in the sea, so the doctrine 

 that the products of the two regions should be kept separate ought to apply 

 more strictly to these two animals than to any others. As a matter of fact 

 even in their case it is only partially observed. Thus seal-meat, raw, frozen or 

 cooked, may be eaten at any time of the year, whether on the land or on the 

 sea ice. In summer, of course, when the Eskimos are usually wandering inland, 

 practically no seals at all are caught, but many are secured in the spring and 

 autumn while the natives are living on the sea-shore; most of the meat is consumed 

 at once on the coast, but a little is often taken inland. Caribou meat again 

 may be eaten, raw or frozen, at any season and in any place; but it must not be 

 cooked on the sea-ice. The natives may cook it on shore at any time, even on 

 the very edge of the ice; some of them did not hesitate to cook it at the Liston 

 and Sutton islands during the winter, though the shamans reproved them for 

 it and attributed a series of blizzards to their violation of the taboo. The prohi- 

 bition applies only to caribou killed in the previous summer and autumn, not to 

 those that are secured in the winter, or. in the early spring when the animals 

 are migrating northward. , It is hard to find any reason for this distinction. 

 If the caribou migrating north across the ice in the spring are to be regarded as 

 sea-animals for the time being, they should equally be so regarded in the autumn 

 when they are migrating south again; but the natives of west Coronation gulf 

 and of Dolphin and Union strait observe the taboo in the one instance, and not 

 in the other. Some of the people, however, were more scrupulous than others, 

 for I noticed one family that would not cook fresh deer-meat on the ice in spring, 

 though other families were doing it in the same camp. This particular family 

 did not condemn the others; on the contrary, it thought it was probably quite 

 legitimate to cook the meat, though it preferred to be on the safe side itself. 

 Some Bathurst inlet natives said that the only deer-meat they refrained from 

 cooking on the ice was meat that had been cached in stone cairns on the land; 

 if meat of this kind were cooked, the cold stones, for some not very evident 

 reason, would make the weather cold. 



There is one taboo, however, that is universal in its application, and must 

 not be broken on any account. Products of the land and of the sea must never 

 be cooked in the same pot at the same time. Accordingly, when the natives are 



