THE SAMOYEDS OF KOLGUEV — 383 
When a younger son desires to marry, his father gives him a certain 
number of reindeer. This number is not constant. It is the result of 
bargaining between the parents; and is determined by such considera- 
tions as the advantages of the match, by the amount of property which 
has previously been asked to the family by this son’s hunting, and by 
other such points. The girl also brings with her a dowry. In the case 
of Uano’s daughter, Ustynia, it was, as I have said, five young bulls. 
All Samoyeds are compulsonly affiliated to the Greek Catholic Church. 
The priest quoted before (#. supra) has told us how he went to Kolguev 
to baptize. But it is many years now since any priest was there. None 
the less the yearly visits of the Russian traders (who, though they demora- 
lise these poor people with vodki, yet put them to religious exercises), 
added to the vague sense of a compelling, though distant, control in the 
Archangel Government, serve to keep alive in them a thin thread of 
the Christian idea. 
Possibly because of the isolation of their home the Kolguev 
Samoyeds may lean to their own old faith more than those of the 
mainland, though this I do not know. On Kolguev, at any rate, there 
is but one family, that of On Tipa, who consistently keep the shona 
on view in the choom. The remainder carry the bolvans—or, as they 
call them sya-déy—which represent the God Num or Philibyam- 
bierchi. 
I remember to have read somewhere of a ceremony followed when 
carrying the dead man out of the choom, but the Samoyeds’ traditional 
treatment of their dying, according to Uano, was that of laying the 
dying man on the moss of the tundra. He was not abandoned till 
dead. Only towards his last gasp he was brought out and laid there. 
As soon as he was dead he was stretched straight out on his back with 
his hands at his side, the attitude in which these people sleep. But 
now the dead are buried, and although the broken sleigh and certain 
domestic utensils of the dead man are still taken to the Holy Hill of 
Nim, yet a cross is set up over his grave. So is there a kind of dual 
regard. Nordenskidld suggests that this practice has reference to the 
future needs of the dead man. But, closely as I questioned the 
Samoyeds, I could not extract from them any explanation but this, 
namely, that the sleigh was broken to show the man was dead; though 
