417 
The nearest to public officials were the shamans, men and women 
who claimed, through the aid of their familiar spirits, to diagnose 
the causes of misfortune and sickness, to see what was happening far 
away, and to intervene between the lay Eskimo aiul the supernatural 
world. Home trained for this j^rofession by ap])renticing themselves 
to recognized practitioners who would transfer to them one or more 
of their familiars. Others adduced their authority from sudden calls 
or visitations that came to them unheralded when they were wander- 
ing alone over their hunting-grounds. Sometimes they performed 
juggling tricks similar to those of Indian medicine-men, and divined 
by “weighing” the head or foot of a patient; but their usual practice 
was to induce in themselves a kind of temporary dementia (Arctic 
hysteria, as the phenomenon is called in Siberia), and in that con- 
dition to give utterance to more or less incoherent ravings which 
the laity inter])reted as oracles. Though all Eskimo could bandage 
a wound, and set in splints a fractured limb, they were as ignorant 
of herbal remerlies as their Athapaskan neighbours. Like the latter, 
they ascribed all sickness and misfortune to magical causes, to the 
violation of a taboo, the enmity of a sorcerer, the ill-will of malevolent 
spirits, or the separation of the soul fium the body. The shaman’s 
methods of treatment correspoiuled with these diagnoses; they 
attempted to withdraw from the jiatients’ bodies splinters of bone 
or wood that were presumably implanted there l)y sorcery, to pro- 
pitiate or deter the malevolent spirits, and to capture and restore 
the errant souls. Not only were they the physicians of the com- 
munities, but its priests, for it was tluyy who interceded with the 
supernatural world when caribou and fish seemed lacking, storms 
prevented the hunters from cajituring seals, and the people were 
threatened with starvation. 
41ie religion of the Eskimo brought them little comfort. They 
visioned a numberless host of supernatural l)eings around them, 
many of them harmless, perhaps, a few on rare occasions lielpful, 
but all of them ]U‘egnant with i)ower for ill. The being that the 
majority of the Eskimo dreaded most was a sea-goddess i'e]:)uted 
to control the weather and to regulate the supply of seals. With 
unremitting care, too, they conciliated the souls of animals, which 
would surely take offence if the people failed to observe the time- 
honoured j'ituals and taboos, esjiecially those that relatefl to game. 
