Religious Beliefs 187 



for this reason that the natives prefer to go about in company. Higilak became 

 quite alarmed one day because I was absent from camp for about twelve hours, 

 hunting in the Colville hills; she was afraid lest a spirit that was known to live 

 in the vicinity had carried me off, just as one had carried off her father many 

 years before. The Eskimos declare that long ago the ice suddenly cracked off 

 Cockburn point and caused the drowning of a number of people who were 

 encamped there. Then a spirit, a tornrak named Kalyutaryun, appeared in 

 the crack — ^it was he who had caused the disaster. A man named Asiranna — 

 the being to whom the Eskimos now ascribe the lightning — attacked the spirit 

 with his harpoon, but Kalyutaryun disappeared beneath the ice again. In the 

 winter of 1915-16 the natives told my interpreter Patsy that there were spirits 

 in the rough ice near their settlement ; Patsy said he would like to see a tornrak, 

 and suggested that they should all go oyer and look for them, but the natives 

 were horrified at the mere thought of it. Not a month later one of them saw 

 a spirit issuing from a hole in the wall of an abandoned dance-house; he rushed 

 for his rifle and fired a shot into the house, while the children fled in terror to 

 their huts. 



I was told that in Bathurst inlet the opening of the sealing season is marked 

 by a pitched battle between the shamans and the many little tornrait that live 

 on the ice. The shamans, it was said, hold a stance in the dance-house and 

 summon their familiars; then with their snow-dusters they pursue the spirits, 

 fighting them like dogs, so that often both the mouths of the men and the ends 

 of the snow-dusters are covered with blood. The spirits of course are always 

 defeated ; but unless they were got rid of in this manner they would drive away 

 all the seals, and the Eskimos would starve during the winter. 



From generation to generation, from inyuit sivulingni, "Men of the first 

 times," as the natives say,, various incantations, akeutit, have been handed down 

 to appease or drive away the malignant spirits. The incantation is usually 

 sung by all the people, with one of their shamans standing in the centre of the 

 ring; and as they sing their bodies sway from side to side, though their feet 

 remain stationary. At the conclusion of the refrain the shaman invokes his 

 familiars, and with their aid produces the desired result. Children are generally 

 excluded from these performances. Many of the incantations are very old 

 and have lost whatever meaning they had originally; but this does not lessen 

 their potency. I heard one sung during a snow-storm in the late summer of 

 1915. Tusayok and Kesullik had no tent, so they improvised a rude shelter 

 by stretching some skins between two crags; but since in spite of this they were 

 very cold and uncomfortable, Tusayok chanted an incantation and repeated it 

 over and over again for about an hour. There were only about half a dozen 

 words in it, and each taken by itself was intelligible enough, but no one had any 

 clear idea of what the whole song meant. Tusayok thought, however, that the 

 mere singing of this incantation, even though he was not himself a shaman, 

 might have the effect of driving away the evil shades or spirits who were causing 

 the storm and produce fine weather again. Literally translated the song ran:— 



I come again, I, again. 



I come again, I , again. Do you not know? 



I come again, I, again. ^ 

 About an hour after this had happened Kesullik tied a cord round his face 

 so that it wrinkled up his nose and distorted his features, giving him a most 

 grotesque appearance. He then sallied forth with a knife in his hand and defied 

 the weather. Almost the same thing had occurred a month or two earlier when 

 Ikpakhuak and a hunting party were lost for three days in a fog. Higilak 

 distorted her features with a cord and confronted the fog, brandishing a knife 

 in one hand and a set fox-trap in the other; ilanakhotin "You are angry", she 



'A spirit is supposed to be speaking all through. 



