408 W. THALBITZER. 
[ay] No. 218. Niwaaniaq (or Niwaayiaq, Niwagiag). 
Mitsuarniayna A. Marhre B.@ 
Among the Eskimo legends of origin this occupies a special place. In 
its complete form which is retained in Alaska, it is nothing less than a myth 
about the genesis of Eskimo culture. 1 
Geographically it extends over just as wide a territory as the other 
myths of origin, — f. ex. the ones about the sun and the moon, the woman 
married to a dog (which tells of the origin of the peoples of the world), the 
goddess of the sea, the mistress of the sea-animals, — for these are found 
among all the Eskimo tribes from Davis Strait to the shores of Bering Strait. 
However, in the forms which are preserved in Greenland and along the other 
shores of the East Eskimo, we now find but the pale, faded glory of the 
original splendour and greatness of the myth. 
From Baffins Land and Hudson Bay only incomplete and effaced ver- 
sions are known, and the names of the transmigrating people are not men- 
tioned. ? 
Holm’s record, 1884—85, has brought knowledge of the myth from Am- 
massalik, and we find it again in Knud Rasmussen’s record from Cape York 
(Smith Sound). In the former the person is named Navagijak, in the latter, 
Avovang. Rink gives only a short summary of the myth from West Green- 
land, and here the principal characters (as in one of Boas’ versions) is ге- 
ferred to as a woman, possibly due to a translator’s error. In Rink’s account 
her name is Avigiatsiak, which might be a garbled form of Navagijaq, with 
the suffix ‘middling’ or ‘little’ (-{siag) added. — In the two versions which I 
noted from Mitsuarnianna’s and Marhre’s dictation, the principal character 
is a man whose name is pronounced as given above. I presume that the 
form given by Holm with a instead of i is influenced by the West Green- 
landic (through the interpreter). In the original myth from the districts of 
the west is again another name, and it is elsewhere found that among the 
Eskimo the mythological beings, or divinities, have no fixed consistent names, 
often none at all. Their names are an entirely subordinate element in relation 
to the epic structure of the myth. 
The continuity between the Greenlandic and Alaskan myth is certain, 
even though the exposition and conclusion of the content of both differs 
considerably in the two variants. Not only is the idea of a soul transmi- 
grating through various beings the same in both places, but many details 
concur. A very striking agreement is seen in the touch that the soul dwells 
for a time in a blade of grass. This touch forms the point of departure for 
the Alaskan variant, in which the soul lives first in a blade of grass on 
the tundra near the Yukon River, and its name is found to be Chunuluk 
‘yellow or green. In the East Greenland variant the soul migrates into a 
blade of grass after having lived first in a Greenland seal.? Niwaaniaq, — 
the name might perhaps designate a sea-animal with a powerful swinging 
"1 Е. W. Nelson (1899) р. 505. 
2 F. Boas (1901) р. 232, no. 48 and р. 321, no. 23. 
3 Holm gives these words as: ‘a female grass’ and ‘a female Greenland-seal.’ 
In the original text, however, is the verb arnayiarpog or arnap'oq which does 
