The Central Eskimo Part 22

According to Klutschak (p. 154), the natives of Hudson Bay avoid staying a long time on the salt water ice near the grave of a relative.

On the fourth day after death the relatives may go for the first time upon the ice, but the men are not allowed to hunt; on the next day they must go sealing, but without dogs and sledge, walking to the hunting ground and dragging the seal home. On the sixth day they are at liberty to use their dogs again. For a whole year they must not join in any festival and are not allowed to sing certain songs.

If a married woman dies the widower is not permitted to keep any part of the first seal he catches after her death except the flesh. Skin, blubber, bones, and entrails must be sunk in the sea.

All the relatives must have new suits of clothes made and before the others are cast away they are not allowed to enter a hut without having asked and obtained permission. (See Appendix, Note 7.)

Lyon (p. 368) makes the following statement on the mourning ceremonies in Iglulik:

Widows are forbidden for six months to taste of unboiled flesh; they wear no * * * pigtails, and cut off a portion of their long hair in token of grief, while the remaining locks hang in loose disorder about their shoulders. * * * After six months, the disconsolate ladies are at liberty to eat raw meat, to dress their pigtails and to marry as fast as they please; while in the meantime they either cohabit with their future husbands, if they have one, or distribute their favors more generally. A widower and his children remain during three days within the hut where his wife died, after which it is customary to remove to another. He is not allowed to fish or hunt for a whole season, or in that period to marry again. During the three days of lamentation all the relatives of the deceased are quite careless of their dress; their hair hangs wildly about, and, if possible, they are more than usually dirty in their persons. All visitors to a mourning family consider it as indispensably necessary to howl at their first entry.

I may add here that suicide is not of rare occurrence, as according to the religious ideas of the Eskimo the souls of those who die by violence go to Qudlivun, the happy land. For the same reason it is considered lawful for a man to kill his aged parents. In suicide death is generally brought about by hanging.

TALES AND TRADITIONS.

It.i.tAUJANG.

A long, long time ago, a young man, whose name was It.i.taujang, lived in a village with many of his friends. When he became grown he wished to take a wife and went to a hut in which he knew an orphan girl was living. However, as he was bashful and was afraid to speak to the young girl himself, he called her little brother, who was playing before the hut, and said, "Go to your sister and ask her if she will marry me." The boy ran to his sister and delivered the message. The young girl sent him back and bade him ask the name of her suitor. When she heard that his name was It.i.taujang she told him to go away and look for another wife, as she was not willing to marry a man with such an ugly name.[9] But It.i.taujang did not submit and sent the boy once more to his sister.

"Tell her that Nettirsuaqdjung is my other name," said he. The boy, however, said upon entering, "It.i.taujang is standing before the doorway and wants to marry you." Again the sister said "I will not have a man with that ugly name." When the boy returned to It.i.taujang and repeated his sister's speech, he sent him back once more and said, "Tell her that Nettirsuaqdjung is my other name." Again the boy entered and said, "It.i.taujang is standing before the doorway and wants to marry you." The sister answered, "I will not have a man with that ugly name." When the boy returned to It.i.taujang and told him to go away, he was sent in the third time on the same commission, but to no better effect. Again the young girl declined his offer, and upon that It.i.taujang went away in great anger. He did not care for any other girl of his tribe, but left the country altogether and wandered over hills and through valleys up the country many days and many nights.

[Footnote 9: It.i.taujang means "similar to the a.n.u.s." This tradition is curtailed, as some parts were considered inappropriate for this publication. The full text will be found in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, Berlin, 1888.]

At last he arrived in the land of the birds and saw a lakelet in which many geese were swimming. On the sh.o.r.e he saw a great number of boots; cautiously he crept nearer and stole as many as he could get hold of.

A short time after the birds left the water and finding the boots gone became greatly alarmed and flew away. Only one of the flock remained behind, crying, "I want to have my boots; I want to have my boots."

It.i.taujang came forth now and answered, "I will give you your boots if you will become my wife." She objected, but when It.i.taujang turned round to go away with the boots she agreed, though rather reluctantly.

Having put on the boots she was transformed into a woman and they wandered down to the seaside, where they settled in a large village.

Here they lived together for some years and had a son. In time It.i.taujang became a highly respected man, as he was by far the best whaler among the Inuit.

Once upon a time the Inuit had killed a whale and were busy cutting it up and carrying the meat and the blubber to their huts. Though It.i.taujang was hard at work his wife stood lazily by. When he called her and asked her to help as the other women did she objected, crying, "My food is not from the sea; my food is from the land; I will not eat the meat of a whale; I will not help."

It.i.taujang answered, "You must eat of the whale; that will fill your stomach." Then she began crying and exclaimed, "I will not eat it; I will not soil my nice white clothing."

She descended to the beach, eagerly looking for birds' feathers. Having found a few she put them between her fingers and between those of her child; both were transformed into geese and flew away.

When the Inuit saw this they called out, "It.i.taujang, your wife is flying away." It.i.taujang became very sad; he cried for his wife and did not care for the abundance of meat and blubber, nor for the whales spouting near the sh.o.r.e. He followed his wife and ascended the land in search of her.

After having traveled for many weary months he came to a river. There he saw a man who was busy chopping chips from a piece of wood with a large hatchet. As soon as the chips fell off he polished them neatly and they were transformed into salmon, becoming so slippery that they glided from his hands and fell into the river, which they descended to a large lake near by. The name of the man was E?aluqdjung (the little salmon).

On approaching, It.i.taujang was frightened almost to death, for he saw that the back of this man was altogether hollow and that he could look from behind right through his mouth. Cautiously he crept back and by a circuitous way approached him from the opposite direction.

When E?aluqdjung saw him coming he stopped chopping and asked, "Which way did you approach me?" It.i.taujang, pointing in the direction he had come last and from which he could not see the hollow back of E?aluqdjung, answered, "It is there I have come from." E?aluqdjung, on hearing this, said, "That is lucky for you. If you had come from the other side and had seen my back I should have immediately killed you with my hatchet." It.i.taujang was very glad that he had turned back and thus deceived the salmon maker. He asked him, "Have you not seen my wife, who has left me, coming this way?" E?aluqdjung had seen her and said, "Do you see yon little island in the large lake? There she lives now and has taken another husband."

When It.i.taujang heard this report he almost despaired, as he did not know how to reach the island; but E?aluqdjung kindly promised to help him. They descended to the beach; E?aluqdjung gave him the backbone of a salmon and said, "Now shut your eyes. The backbone will turn into a kayak and carry you safely to the island. But mind you do not open your eyes, else the boat will upset."

It.i.taujang promised to obey. He shut his eyes, the backbone became a kayak, and away he went over the lake. As he did not hear any splashing of water, he was anxious to see whether the boat moved on, and opened his eyes just a little. But he had scarcely taken a short glimpse when the kayak began to swing violently and he felt that it became a backbone again. He quickly shut his eyes, the boat went steadily on, and a short time after he was landed on the island.

There he saw the hut and his son playing on the beach near it. The boy on looking up saw It.i.taujang and ran to his mother crying, "Mother, father is here and is coming to our hut." The mother answered, "Go, play on; your father is far away and cannot find us." The child obeyed; but as he saw It.i.taujang approaching he re-entered the hut and said, "Mother, father is here and is coming to our hut." Again the mother sent him away, but he returned very soon, saying that It.i.taujang was quite near.

Scarcely had the boy said so when It.i.taujang opened the door. When the new husband saw him he told his wife to open a box which was in a corner of the hut. She did so, and many feathers flew out of it and stuck to them. The woman, her new husband, and the child were thus again transformed into geese. The hut disappeared; but when It.i.taujang saw them about to fly away he got furious and cut open the belly of his wife before she could escape. Then many eggs fell down.

THE EMIGRATION OF THE SAGDLIRMIUT.

In the beginning all the Inuit lived near Ussualung, in Tiniqdjuarbing (c.u.mberland Sound). The Igdlumiut, the Nugumiut, and the Talirpingmiut in the south, the Aggomiut in the far north, and the Inuit, who tattoo rings round their eyes, in the far west, all once lived together. There is a tradition concerning the emigration of the Sagdlirmiut (see p. 451) who live east of Iglulik. The Akudnirmiut say that the following events did not happen in Tiniqdjuarbing, but in Aggo, a country where n.o.body lives nowadays. Ikeraping, an Akudnirmio, heard the story related by a Tununirmio, who had seen the place himself, but all the Oqomiut a.s.sert that Ussualung is the place where the events in the story happened.

An old woman, the sister of Mitiq, the angakoq, told the story as follows:

Near Ussualung there are two places, Qerniqdjuaq and E?aluqdjuaq. In each of these was a large house, in which many families lived together.

They used to keep company during the summer when they went deer hunting, but returned to their separate houses in the fall.

Once upon a time it happened that the men of Qerniqdjuaq had been very successful, while those of E?aluqdjuaq had caught scarcely any deer.

Therefore the latter got very angry and resolved to kill the other party, but they preferred to wait until the winter. Later in the season many deer were caught and put up in depots. They were to be carried down to the winter settlements by means of sledges.

One day both parties agreed upon a journey to these depots and the men of E?aluqdjuaq resolved to kill their enemies on this occasion. They set out with their dogs and sledges, and when they were fairly inland they suddenly attacked their unsuspecting companions and killed them. For fear that the wives and children of the murdered men might be suspicious if the dogs returned without their masters, they killed them too. After a short time they returned and said they had lost the other party and did not know what had happened to them.

A young man of E?aluqdjuaq was the suitor of a girl of Qerniqdjuaq and used to visit her every night. He did not stop his visits now. He was kindly received by the woman and lay down to sleep with his young wife.

Under the snow bench there was a little boy who had seen the young man of E?aluqdjuaq coming. When everybody was sleeping he heard somebody calling and soon recognized the spirits of the murdered men, who told him what had happened and asked him to kill the young man in revenge.

The boy crept from his place under the bed, took a knife, and put it into the young man's breast. As he was a small boy and very weak, the knife glided from the ribs and entered deep into the heart, thus killing the young man.

Then he roused the other inhabitants of the hut and told them that the spirits of the dead men had come to him, that they had told him of their murder, and had ordered him to kill the young man. The women and children got very much frightened and did not know what to do. At last they resolved to follow the advice of an old woman and to flee from their cruel neighbors. As their dogs were killed, the sledges were of no use, but by chance a b.i.t.c.h with pups was in the hut and the old woman, who was a great angakoq, ordered them to go and whip the young dogs, which would thus grow up quickly. They did so and in a short time the pups were large and strong. They harnessed them and set off as quickly as possible. In order to deceive their neighbors they left everything behind and did not even extinguish their lamps, that they might not excite suspicion.

The next morning the men of E?aluqdjuaq wondered why their companion had not returned and went to the hut in Qernirtung. They peeped through the spy hole in the window and saw the lamps burning, but n.o.body inside. At last they discovered the body of the young man, and, finding the tracks of the sledges, they hurriedly put their sledges in order and pursued the fugitives.

Though the latter had journeyed rapidly their pursuers followed still more rapidly and seemed likely to overtake them in a short time. They therefore became very much frightened, fearing the revenge of their pursuers.

When the sledge of the men drew near and the women saw that they were unable to escape, a young woman asked the old angakoq: "Don't you know how to cut the ice?" The matron answered in the affirmative and slowly drew a line over the ice with her first finger across the path of their pursuers. The ice gave a loud crack. Once more she drew the line, when a crack opened and quickly widened as she pa.s.sed on. The floe began moving and when the men arrived they could not cross over the wide s.p.a.ce of water. Thus the party were saved by the art of their angakoq.

For many days they drifted to and fro, but finally they landed on the island of Sagdlirn, where they took up their abode and became the mothers of the Sagdlirmiut.

KALOPALING.

Kalopaling is a fabulous being that lives in the sea. His body is like that of a human being and he wears clothing made of eider ducks' skins.

Therefore he is sometimes called Mitiling (with eider ducks). As these birds have a black back and a white belly, his gown looked speckled all over. His jacket has an enormous hood, which is an object of fear to the Inuit. If a kayak capsizes and the boatman is drowned Kalopaling puts him into this hood. He cannot speak, but can only cry, "Be, be! Be, be!"

His feet are very large and look like inflated sealskin floats.

The Inuit believe that in olden times there were a great number of Kalopalit, but gradually their number diminished and there are now very few left. They may be seen from the land swimming very rapidly under the water and sometimes rising to the surface. While swimming they make a great noise by splashing with arms and legs. In summer they like to bask on rocks and in winter they sometimes sit on the ice near cracks or at the edge of drifting floes. As they pursue the hunters the most daring men try to kill them whenever they can get near them. Cautiously they approach the sleeping Kalopaling, and as soon as they come near enough they throw the walrus harpoon at him. They must shut their eyes immediately until the Kalopaling is dead, else he will capsize the boat and kill the hunters. The flesh of the Kalopaling is said to be poisonous, but good enough for dog's food.

An old tradition is handed down which refers to a Kalopaling:

An old woman lived with her grandson in a small hut. As they had no kinsmen they were very poor. A few Inuit only took pity on them and brought them seal's meat and blubber for their lamps. Once upon a time they were very hungry and the boy cried. The grandmother told him to be quiet, but as he did not obey she became angry and called Kalopaling to come and take him away. He entered at once and the woman put the boy into the large hood, in which he disappeared almost immediately.

Later on the Inuit were more successful in sealing and they had an abundance of meat. Then the grandmother was sorry that she had so rashly given the boy to Kalopaling and wished to see him back again. She lamented about it to the Inuit, and at length a man and his wife promised to help her.