Shamanism 211 



The passage about Ukumarauta refers to a large stone of that name in a 

 country to which the dayUght never reaches. The stone is sometimes called 

 the "Big Island," sometimes "The Heavy One," ukumaura. Occasionally a 

 shaman will summon it to come and have a feast; then it falls unseen from the 

 sky and kills many people with rocks, and other shamans (Higilak was instanced 

 as an example) have to drive it back again. A shaman too will sometimes 

 make it drop on an approaching kayaker and kill him, though it is sometimes 

 affirnied that the magic stone uses a small spear to kill its victims. The stone 

 can sing like a man, and the shamans have a special incantation or invocation, 

 akeun, for it, but my informants did not know the words. A Bathurst inlet 

 shaman, the Pannaktok who has been mentioned already, uses the stone for 

 one of his familiars. In the present oracle the stone proposed to "eat" the 

 expedition when it left Bernard harbour. The final portion of the record is a 

 protestation by the familiar that it is speaking only the truth. 



The second oracle that Ilatsiak delivered was equally obscure. The first 

 part of it had reference to the thefts that some of the local natives had perpe- 

 trated on us during the period of Ilatsiak's visit. Then he spoke of his joy 

 at my promise to pay him liberally for relating some of the old traditions of 

 his people. The last portion referred to a great fish that had swallowed a 

 ship, and would swallow our schooner also unless our magic was strong enough 

 to prevail, against it. The oracle concluded, like the previous one, with an 

 asseveration by the famiUar that it spoke nothing but the truth. Ilatsiak 

 was about to step down after this, performance when he suddenly recoUecte'd 

 (or so it seemed to us) that he had omitted the usual gasps aud grunts when 

 his familiar left him; accordingly he turned back to the phonograph and 

 finished in the orthodox manner.' 



In all these stances, except those of Uloksak and Higilak, my own limited 

 knowledge of the language was supplemented by the services of an interpreter, 

 either the Mackenzie river native, Palaiyak, or the half-breed Patsy Klengen- 

 berg. In every case the familiar spirit was supposed to have entered the body 

 of the shaman and to have used the man as its medium. But there is an alto- 

 gether different type of stance, divination by lifting," of which I have already 

 given one example. I saw only one shaman, Higilak, employ this method, 

 and never had an interpreter at any of her performances. My knowledge 

 of the ordinary conversational language was very imperfect, and shamans in 

 their stances make use of old or semi-poetical expressions that greatly increase 

 the diflficulty of understanding them; a seal, for example, may be referred to 

 as "the thing that has blubber." For my interpretations in this class of stances 

 therefore I had to depend rather on my own observations at the time and the 

 subsequent explanations of the spectators or of Higilak herself. It is not at all 

 impossible that I may have missed the correct interpretation in some instances, 

 but by describing a number of these stances a fairly correct idea can perhaps 

 be gleaned of the religious notions that lie behind them. All except the last 

 one took place on Victoria island during the summer of 1915. 



On May 9, all the adults of our party gathered in Ikpakhuak's tent a 

 little before midnight. Ikpakhuak himself was sitting at the back of the sleeping 

 platform, with Higilak in front, while I sat opposite her at the outer end of 

 the platform. Higilak rolled her coat into a bundle, made a running noose 

 of her belt, and slipped it around the head of the coat. The loose end of the 

 cord, with its toggle, she kept in her left hand, while the four fingers of her 

 right hand rested on the coat under the noose, and the thumb on top of it. 

 Her famiUar spirit, in this case her atatsiak (mother's father?), was summoned 



'Cf. Boas, Bulletin A.M.N.H., Vol. XV., p. 156 et seq.; Stefansson, "My Life with the Eskimo," p. 

 291 et seg. 



=Cf. Crantz, Vol. I, p. 210 e< sfg., 214; Boas, Bulletin A.M. N.H., Vol. XV, pp. 135, 512; Stefansson, 

 Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 360 ei seq. 



23335— 14§ 



