Religious Beliejs 185 



The Eskimos must be just as careful in their conduct when the caribou are 

 migrating south in the fall as when the salmon are migrating up stream in the 

 spring. Higilak checked me from throwing a marrow bone to a dog one day, 

 saying that it was tabooed in the place where the deer had been killed. I saw 

 Ikpakhuak do the same thing a few days later, and when I told him of Higilak's 

 objection he said that the bones he had given his dog were from caribou killed a 

 long way off (actually it was about five miles), and that only the bones of caribou 

 killed in the immediate vicinity were under the ban. In skinning such caribou 

 it is forbidden to cut off the ears at the roots, as is done at other seasons of the year; 

 the skin must be pulled off them. None of the contents of the stomach, again, 

 must be allowed to escape and taint the ground in the path ihe caribou are 

 taking, kalgini, otherwise the shades of the dead Eskimos, it was said, would be 

 offended and keep the deer away. For the same reason Higilak would not 

 make me a deerskin dog harness at this period, but waited until the migration 

 was over. Ikpakhuak had bad luck in hunting one day, and Higilak discovered , 

 through her familiar spirit that she had been sewing too much deerskin clothing, 

 while Ikpakhuak had also been at fault by hammering too much on the stones 

 when loosening them for caches, neither of which things should be done to 

 excess on the path of the migration.' 



Mr. Stefansson's western Eskimos were responsible for the introduction of 

 a new custom in 1910. They told the Copper Eskimos that if they did not 

 cut off a fragment from every skin they sold to the white men to be taken out 

 of the country, the animals would follow the skins and leave the country also. 

 This applied particularly to the caribou; the natives said, which for this reason 

 had almost disappeared from Alaska and the Mackenzie river delta. Hence 

 some of the Copper Eskimos now cut a corner from each deerskin garment 

 and an ear from each skin that they sell to the white men, lest their country 

 too should be denuded of its game. 



Mr. Stefansson says that in Coronation gulf every man, woman and child 

 is forbidden to eat the muskrat. In another place he says that "the AkuUia- 

 kattangmiut and others kill a few muskrats, but they use neither the skins nor 

 meat, but only use the tails for charms."^ The only place where muskrats are 

 found is in the vicinity of Great Bear lake, and even there it is probably only 

 within recent years that they have made their appearance; I very much doubt 

 therefore whether the Copper Eskimos have any real taboo in regard to them. 



Mr. Stefansson's discussion of aglirktok, again, the condition wherein an 

 individual labours under a taboo with regard to certain things, is much more 

 applicable to the Alaskan and Mackenzie river Eskimos than to those of Coro- 

 nation gulf. I hardly know what the word would imply to the Copper Eskimos, 

 for I never heard them use it. Its derivative, aglenaktok, however, is almost 

 daily in their mouths, and there can be no doubt as to its meaning. It is a 

 prohibition against doing something, for example against cooking salmon on 

 the sea ice. If they disobey, the supernatural powers which surround them — 

 the shades of the dead, inyuin tarrait, or the spirits, iornrait — will surely be 

 wroth and punish them. How the prohibitions arose in the first case they do 

 not know, but they are binding nevertheless on every human being. Taboos 

 binding on particular individuals are common enough, but they are only tem- 

 porary restrictions due to special circumstances; a sick man, for example, will 

 be prohibited from eating certain foods. They are weaker taboos that issue as 

 a rule from the injunctions of some shaman, and last no longer than the patient's 

 illness, and not always as long as that; sometimes, indeed, a native will disregard 

 theni altogether. They really have more resemblance to the "taboos" of our 

 medical men when they forbid their patients certain foods. Thus the shamans 



'I do not know whether any of these taboos are observed in the spring while the caribou are migrating 

 north. 



''Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, pp. 244 and 59. 



