Religious Beliefs 183 



living on the land and have stocks of both deer-meat and seal-meat, one is cooked 

 in the morning and the other at night. Nevertheless, both kinds of food may be 

 eaten at the same time; in fact the normal evening meal in the early part of 

 the winter consists of boiled seal-meat and frozen venison. Mr. Stefansson 

 states that "some families said that caribou and seal-meat should not be cooked 

 in the same pot unless the pot were suspended over the lamp by a fresh cord 

 when the caribou meat was to be cooked; but most people paid no attention 

 to even this prohibition."' 



The polar bear is a sea animal, tarreomiutak, and must be treated like a 

 seal. I wanted to fry some caribou liver on the same fire on which Higilak was 

 boiling some bear-meat. She was not at all sure whether it was right to cook 

 the two at the same time, the bear being a denizen of the sea and the caribou of 

 the land. She asked her older brother Tusayok, but he did not know either. 

 Finally I told her that as we had killed the bear on the land, it was plainly, in 

 summer at least, a land animal; further, that I was a white man, and in conse- 

 quence Eskimo taboos did not apply to me. The arguments seemed to satisfy 

 her, for she raised no further objection. 



Similar taboos, based on the same general principles, apply to the cooking 

 of other animals and to fish. Thus tom-cod which are caught in the sea, may 

 be cooked, like seals, on either land or ice; but fresh-water fish, even salmon 



Fig. 56. Pegging out caribou-skins to dry in the sun, Bernard harbour 



migrating from the sea, must be cooked only on land. Some natives will not 

 use driftwood thrown up by the sea for cooking either caribou or fish, but others 

 pay no attention to this and use whatever fuel is most available. Mr. Stefansson 

 says that seal blood is used for splicing arrows', but the natives told me that this 

 was strictly tabooed, and whenever I saw them making or mending arrows they 

 invariably used caribou blood, if they used blood at all. However, seal blood 

 might be employed by a hunter who intended to use his arrows for shooting 

 seals on the ice. It is only the blood of the seal that is tabooed in this connection, 

 for the skin is always used for the back bracings of the bow. 



Sewing as well as cooking is subject to the same general prohibitions. Thus 

 sealskin may not be sewn at the fishing creeks while the salmon are running. 

 I wanted a woman to sew up the ends of a sealskin dog-pack to make it water- 

 proof. She was uncertain whether it was right to do it while the salmon were 

 still migrating up the creek near which the natives were encamped, and on 



lAnthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 48; Cf. My Life with the Eskimo, p. 266. 

 ^Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 92. 



