194 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



We were living at Lake Numikhoin, in the Colville hills, and had been 

 considering the advisability of travelling to Lake Tahir3Tiak to look for the 

 Prince Albert sound natives. Higilak accordingly gave a stance to discover 

 whether we could safely make the journey there and back by sled before the snow 

 melted. The stance was held about midnight (it was at the end of May, when 

 the sun never sets below the horizon), and all the Eskimos save the little children 

 gathered inside the tent. Higilak was sitting at the back, in a corner, and her 

 husband Ikpakhuak was slightly in front of her, while I was sitting in the corner 

 opposite Higilak. She began by delivering a long speech setting forward the whole 

 question at issue. Suddenly she uttered cries of pain and covered her face in 

 her hands. Dead silence followed for a few minutes, a silence that was only 

 broken by an occasional remark uttered in a low tone by some one in the audience. 

 Presently Higilak began to howl and growl like a wolf, then as suddenly ceased 

 and raised her head, when, behold, two canine teeth, evidently a wolf's, were 

 protruding one from each corner of her mouth. She leaned over to Avranna 

 and pretended to gnaw his head, then began to utter broken remarks which 

 her audience caught up and discussed, though very little of them could be 

 interpreted. Every now and then she had to put her hand up to her mouth to keep 

 the teeth from falling out, and once she slyly pushed them right inside out of 

 sight, pushing them out again a few minutes later. After about a quarter of 

 an hour spent in this manner she suddenly broke out into cries of pain again 

 and concealed her face in her hands behind Ikpakhuak's back. Then I saw her 

 carefully drop one hand towards her long boot, into which she apparently 

 slipped the teeth, for a moment later her face reappeared without them. This 

 was the critical moment, the moment when the wolf's spirit inside her body 

 gave its answer to the question at issue. A few broken words issued from her, 

 uttered in a feeble falsetto voice that was almost inaudible. Her audience 

 was bending eagerly forward drinking in every syllable. In about two minutes 

 it was all over, and Higilak, after a few more cries of pain (the familiar was 

 leaving her) followed by two or three gasps, resumed her normal bearing. The 

 stance was now concluded, but some of the natives lingered for a few minutes 

 to discuss the oracle that had been delivered to them. Higilak herself professed 

 to be ignorant of it, for a shaman should not be conscious of utterances given 

 under the inspiration of a familiar; accordingly she had to question some of the 

 bystanders to find out what she had said. In speaking of this stance some time 

 afterwards the natives stated as an incontestable fact that Higilak had been 

 transformed into a wolf. 



To a critical and unsympathetic outsider it may seem that a stance of 

 this type is simply a case of palpable fraud on the part of the shaman, and of 

 a,hnost unbelievable stupidity and credulity on the part of the audience. A 

 little very amateurish ventriloquism, a feeble attempt at impersonation, and a 

 childish and grotesque blending of the human and the animal, all performed 

 in full daylight before an audience incapable of distinguishing between fact 

 and fancy, between things seen and things imagined, or at least so mentally 

 unbalanced that it reacted to the slightest suggestion and hypnotised itself 

 into believing the most impossible things — that perhaps is all there may seem 

 to be in Eskimo shamanism. But let us examine its functions a little more 

 closely and consider a number of other stances before we give our final judgment. 



In the first place the Copper Eskimo shaman, whether man or woman, 

 has no distinctive mark or dress of any kind, not even during the stances.* 

 There is absolutely nothing in his appearance that would suggest to a stranger 

 the possession of special powers or functions. The shamans are not priests 

 in any ordinary sense of the word. They may be of either sex, are self-appointed 

 and act separately without forming a distinctive class or caste; further, they 



'They differ from Mackenzie river shamans in this respect. See Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M. 

 N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 366. 



