Songs of the Copper Eskimos 15 



An incantation of any kind is called by the Copper Eskimo& aqeun, by the 

 Eskimos of the Mackenzie river delta, where they are equally common, erinaq; 

 their name in northern Alaska is unknown. No incantations were recorded 

 outside of the Copper Eskimo area. A Mackenzie delta woman remembered 

 hearing in her childhood an incantation for caribou, and another for brown 

 bears, but she could not recall the words. 



Language of Songs. 



The language of the songs, and the influence exerted by the music on the 

 words, are subjects for a specialist. Only a few remarks can be offered here. 



The vocabulary of the songs is rather striking. As in shamanistic stances, 

 the common names for many everyday objects are often avoided and replaced 

 by other words, generally of a descriptive character. A caribou is the "one with 

 branching antlers," or the "animal with warble-flies"; the seal is "the blubbery 

 one", or the "animal that supplies hot broth." In some cases these epithets 

 coincide with the so-called angakok or shamanistic words used in Baffin island 

 and Greenland'; but among the Copper Eskimos they form the poetic vocabulary 

 of the language and their use by shamans is of secondary importance. 



There is a. strong tendency among the Copper Eskimos to spirantize hard 

 stops like k and q or to assimilate them to succeeding consonants; but in their 

 songs the process is carried much farther than in ordinary speech^. Furthermore, 

 the stops that form the terminations of many words are continually replaced by 

 soft vocalic syllables like yo, yo and -rji. By these means a rich, musical quality 

 is obtained in a language that normally sounds rather harsh. 



The ordinary accents of words seem fairly well maintained in the songs, 

 and the crushing together of weak syllables not as frequent as might be expected. 

 One gathers the impression that the words have generally proved more inflexible 

 than the music ; but this point, with many others of equal interest, must be left 

 for a specialist to determine. 



Phonetic System 



• Cf. Itomwuah p«nffwia:l"caribou, dog" (Greenland) and komaruaq, punngoq (Copper Eskimo). 

 ' Thus i>7, q>y, fot>i;», fl>XX. 



