Shamanism 191 



CHAPTER XV 



SHAMANISM 



The mediators and intercessors between the living Eskimos and the super- 

 natural world of shades and spirits are the shamans, angatkut. Mr. Stefansson 

 has given an admirable account of their methods among the Mackenzie river 

 Eskimos, and much that he says of the natives there applies also to the Copper 

 Eskimos.' But the ideas and practices of the eastern natives are much less 

 definite and precise, just as their religious beliefs are far more hazy and indeter- 

 minate. Accordingly, despite some necessary repetitions of Mr. Stefansson's 

 remarks, it will be better to give a full description of shamanism as it is known 

 and practised in the regions around Coronation gulf. 



A shaman's powers are due to the control he presumably exercises over 

 certain spirits, which are either the spirits (the shades?) of certain animals or 

 the shades of the Eskimo dead. One or two shamans were reputed to .control 

 also certain white men, but whether it was their shades or their living powers 

 was never stated; in any case they were remote enough to count as dead. The 

 familiar spirit is called either tornrak or tupilek, usually the former; the word 

 keyugak, which is the usual term in the Mackenzie delta, seems to be unknown, 

 and even tupilek may be a borrowed word, although I hardly think so. A 

 shaman inspired or possessed by his familiar is said to onipkaktok (which farther 

 west means "to tell a story") or tornraktok. The Copper Eskimo makes no 

 sharp and definite destinction between the shades -of the dead, the spirits that 

 have never been men or animals, and the spirits that the shamans control; 

 there are separate names for both the first and last; but all alike may be, and 

 usually are, called tornrait. 



Control over any familiar may be obtained by purchase, as I have men" 

 tioned elsewhere; Uloksak, for example, bought his power from a shaman 

 in Bathurst inlet. This statement, however, is only partly true, for all that 

 the owner can impart is his good-will, and a knowledge of how to approach 

 and summon the particular spirit that he has sold; the rest depends on the 

 spirit itself. The aspirant must go out to some lonely place and summon the 

 spirit, which may or may not appear. Sometimes, however, a spirit will come 

 to a man without being invoked, and tell him that henceforth it will accompany 

 him everywhere and place its powers at his disposal. Thus Uloksak, after his 

 purchase of certain spirits, used to go hunting all alone and summon them to 

 come to him. For a time none came, then one day when he was alone on an 

 island several appeared one after the other. They forbade him to eat any part 

 of the stomach of the caribou, but to eat plenty of its brains; if he obeyed them 

 in this respect they promised to attend him and bestow on him magical powers. 

 After giving him these injunctions they knocked him roughly about and changed 

 him into a white man. In this condition he returned to camp, where other 

 shamans held a stance over him and restored him to his proper form. He 

 then became one of the most noted shamans in the country. 



The case of the old man Ilatsiak was very similar. He was fishing for tom- 

 cod, ail alone, when a spirit first appeared to him. It resembled a young man 

 in appearance, and was accompanied by other spirits, but these Ilatsiak could 

 not see. He was terrified when it approached him, and asked it whether he was 

 going to die, but the spirit answered that he would live for many winters and 

 reach old age before he died. It caught a tom-cod and made him eat it, and the 



'My Life with the Eskimo, Ch. XXVI; Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. 1, p. 126 ei passim 



