Religion
General Ideas
It was exceedingly difficult to get any idea of the religious belief of the people, partly from our inability to make ourselves understood in regard to abstract ideas and partly from ignorance on our part of the proper method of conducting such inquiries. For instance, in trying to get at their ideas of a future life, we could only ask “Where does a man go when he dies?” to which we, of course, received the obvious answer, “To the cemetery!” Moreover, such a multitude of other and easier lines of investigation presented themselves for our attention that we were naturally inclined to neglect the difficult field of religion, and besides under the circumstances of our intercourse it was almost impossible to get the attention of the natives when their minds were not full of other subjects.
Nevertheless, many of the fragments of superstition and tradition that we were able to collect agree remarkably with what has been observed among the Eskimo elsewhere, so that it is highly probable that their religion is of the same general character as that of the Greenlanders, namely, a belief in a multitude of supernatural beings, who are to be exorcised or propitiated by various observances, especially by the performances of certain specially gifted people, who are something of the nature of wizards. So much has been written by many authors about these wizards or “doctors,” the angekut of the eastern Eskimo, the so-called “shamans” of Alaska and Siberia, that I need make no special reference to their writings except where they happen to throw light on our own observations. Dr. Simpson succeeded in obtaining more information concerning the religious belief of these people than our party was able to do, and his observations,610 to which ours are in some degree supplementary, tend to corroborate the conclusion at which I have arrived.
Our information in regard to the special class of wizards was rather vague. We learned that many men in the village, distinguishable from the rest by no visible characteristics, were able to heal the sick, procure good weather, favorable winds, plenty of game, and do other things by “talking” and beating the drum. We did not learn the number of these men in either village, but we heard of very many different men doing one or the other of these things, while others of our acquaintance never attempted them. Neither did we learn that any one of these men was considered superior to the rest, as appears to be the case in some regions, nor how a man could attain this power. Some of these men, who appeared to give particular attention to curing the sick, called themselves “tû´ktĕ” (“doctor”), but, probably for want of properly directed inquiries, we did not learn the Eskimo name of these people. We were definitely informed, however, that their “talk,” when treating disease or trying to obtain fair weather, etc., was addressed to “tu´ɐña,” or a supernatural being. This name, of course, differs only in dialectic form from that applied in other places to the universal familiar spirits of Eskimo superstition.
We at first supposed that “tuɐña” meant some particular individual demon, but Dr. Simpson is probably right in saying that the Point Barrow natives, like the rest of the Eskimo, recognize a host of tuɐñain, since “tuɐña” was described to us under a variety of forms. Most of the natives whom we asked if they had seen tuɐña, said that they had not, but that other men, mentioning certain “doctors,” had seen him. One man, however, said that he had seen tuɐña in the kûdyĭgĭ, when the people “talked” sitting in the dark, with their heads bowed and faces covered, and tuɐña came with a noise like a great bird.611 He had raised his head and saw tuɐña, like a man with bloodless cheeks.612 Tuɐña again was called “a bad man, dead” (apparently a ghost), sometimes as large as a man and sometimes dwarfish, sometimes a fleshless skeleton, while one man, to describe him, made the same grimace that a white man would use to indicate a hobgoblin, with staring eyes, gaping mouth, and hands outstretched like claws. Apparently “tuɐña” in conversation with us was used to designate all the various supernatural objects of their belief, ghosts as well as familiar spirits. For instance, in Greenland, according to Rink,613 a ghost “manifests himself by whistling or singing in the ears.” Now, Lieut. Ray was walking rapidly one day in the winter with an Eskimo and his wife, and the woman suddenly stopped and said she “heard tuɐña”—that he made a noise like singing in the ears.
The people generally have a great dread of “tuɐña,” who they say would kill them, and are very averse to going out alone in the dark. One of each party that came over from the village in the evening usually carried a drawn knife, preferably one of the large double-edged knives, supposed to be Siberian and already described, in his hand as defense against tuɐña, and a drawn knife was sometimes even carried in the daylight “nanumunlu tuɐñamunlu,” “for bear and demon.” Notwithstanding their apparently genuine dread of “tuɐña,” they are by no means averse to talking or even joking about him.
The knife also serves as a protection against the aurora, which most of them agree is bad, and when bright likely to kill a person by striking him in the back of the neck. However, brandishing the knife at it will keep it off. Besides, as a woman told me one night, you can drive off a “bad” aurora by throwing at it dog’s excrement and urine.614
Lieut. Ray saw in one of the houses in Utkaiwiñ, a contrivance for frightening away a “tuɐña” from the entrance to a house should he try to get in. The man had hung in the trapdoor the handle of a seal-drag by means of a thong spiked to the wall with a large knife, and told Lieut. Ray that if “tuɐña” tried to get into the house he would undoubtedly catch hold of the handle to help himself up, which would pull down the knife upon his head and frighten him off. We never had an opportunity of witnessing the ceremony of summoning “tuɐña,” nor did we ever hear of the ceremony taking place during our stay at the station, but we were fortunate enough to observe several other performances, though they do not appear to be frequent. The ceremony of healing the sick and the ceremonies connected with the whale-fishery have already been described.
On the 21st of February, 1883, Lieut. Ray and Capt. Herendeen happened to be at the village on time to see the tuɐña, who had been causing the bad weather, expelled from the village. Some of the natives said the next day that they had killed the tuɐña, but they said at the same time he had gone “a long way off.” When Lieut. Ray reached the village, women were standing at the doors of the houses armed with snow-knives and clubs with which they made passes over the entrance when the people inside called out. He entered one house and found a woman vigorously driving the tuɐña out of every corner with a knife. They then repaired to the kûdyĭgi, where there were ten or twelve people, each of whom, to quote from Lieut. Ray’s note book, “made a charge against the evil spirit, telling what injuries they had received from it.” Then they went into the open air, where a fire had been built in front of the entrance, and formed a half circle around the fire. Each then went up and made a speech, bending over the fire (according to Simpson, who describes a similar ceremony at Nuwŭk on p. 274 of his paper, coaxing the tuɐña to come under the fire to warm himself). Then they brought out a large tub full of urine, to which, Simpson says, each man present had contributed, and held it ready near the fire, while two men stood with their rifles in readiness, and a boy stood near the fire with a large stone in his hands, bracing himself firmly with his feet spread apart for a vigorous throw. Then they chanted as follows (the words of this chant were obtained afterward by the writer):
Tâk tâk tâk tohâ!
Nìju´a hâ!
He! he! he!
Haiyahe!
Yaiyahe!
Hwi!
And instantly the contents of the tub were dashed on the fire, the stone thrown into the embers, and both men discharged their rifles, one into the embers, and one into the cloud of steam as it rose. Then all brushed their clothes violently and shouted, and the tuɐña was killed. By a fortunate coincidence, the next day was the finest we had had for a long time.
Sacrifices are also occasionally made to these supernatural beings as in Greenland “gifts were offered to the inue of certain rocks, capes and ice firths, principally when traveling and passing those places.”615
Capt. Herendeen, in the fall of 1882, went to the rivers in company with one of the “doctors.” When they arrived at the river Kuaru, where the latter intended to stay for the fishing, he got out his drum and “talked” for a long time, and breaking off very small pieces of tobacco threw them into the air, crying out, “Tuɐña, tuɐña, I give you tobacco! give me plenty of fish.” When they passed the dead men at the cemetery, he gave them tobacco in the same way, asking them also for fish.616 We noticed but few other superstitious observances which have not been already described. As in Greenland and elsewhere, superstition requires certain persons to abstain from certain kinds of food. For instance, Mûñialu, and apparently many others, were not permitted to eat the burbot, another man was denied ptarmigan, and a woman617 at Nuwŭk was not allowed to eat “earth food,” that is, anything which grew upon the ground. Lieut. Ray also mentions a man who was forbidden bear’s flesh.618
We observed some traces of the superstition concerning the heads of seals and other marine animals taken in the chase, which has been noticed elsewhere. Crantz says:619 “The heads of seals must not be fractured, nor must they be thrown into the sea, but be piled in a heap before the door,620 that the souls of the seals may not be enraged and scare their brethren from the coast.” And Capt. Parry found that at Winter Island they carefully preserved the heads of all the animals killed during the winter, except two or three of the walrus which he obtained with great difficulty. The natives told him that they were to be thrown into the sea in the summer, but at Iglulik they readily sold them before the summer arrived.621
I tried very hard to get a full series of skulls from the seals taken at Utkiavwĭñ in the winter of 1882-’83, but though I frequently asked the natives to bring them over for sale, they never did so, till at last one young woman promised to bring me all I wanted at the price of half a pound of gunpowder a skull. Nevertheless, she brought over only two or three at that price. We did not observe what was done with the skulls, but frequently observed quantities of the smaller bones of the seals carefully tucked away in the crevices of the ice at some distance from the shore. We had comparatively little difficulty in obtaining skulls of the walrus, but I observed that the bottom of Tûseráru, the little pond at the edge of the village, was covered with old walrus skulls, as if they had been deposited there for years. The superstition appears to be in full force among the Chukches, who live near the place where the Vega wintered. Nordenskiöld was unable to purchase a pair of fresh walrus heads at the first village he visited, though the tusks were offered for sale the next day622 and at Pitlekaj.623 “Some prejudice * * * prevented the Chukches from parting with the heads of the seal, though * * * we offered a high price for them. ‘Irgatti’ (to-morrow) was the usual answer. But the promise was never kept.”
Amulets
Like the Greenlanders624 and other Eskimos, they place great reliance on amulets or talismans, which are carried on the person, in the boat, or even inserted in weapons, each apparently with some specific purpose, which indeed we learned in the case of some of those in the collection. Like the amulets of the Greenlanders, they appear to be625 “certain animals or things which had belonged to or been in contact with certain persons (e.g., the people of ancient times, or fortunate hunters) or supernatural beings,” and “objects which merely by their appearance recalled the effect expected from the amulet, such as figures of various objects.” To the latter class belong the rudely flaked flint images of whales, already mentioned, and probably many of the other small images of men and animals already described, especially those fitted with holes for strings to hang them up by.
The flint whale is a very common amulet, intended, as we understood, to give good luck, in whaling, and is worn habitually by many of the men and boys under the clothes, suspended around the neck by a string. The captain and harpooner of a whaling crew also wear them as pendants on the fillets already described, and on the breast of the jacket. We obtained five of these objects, all of very nearly the same shape, but of different materials and varying somewhat in size. Fig. 421 represents one of these (No. 56703 [208] from Utkiavwĭñ) made of a piece of hard colorless glass, probably a fragment of a ship’s “deadlight.” It is rather roughly flaked into a figure of a “bowhead” whale, 3.4 inches long, as seen from above and very much flattened with exaggerated flukes. The flippers were rudely indicated in the outline, but the left one is broken off.
No. 89613 [771] from Utkiavwĭñ is a very similar image, 2.4 inches long, which perhaps is of the same material, though it may be made of rock crystal. No. 56707 [159] from Utkiavwĭñ is a very small whale (1.4 inches long), chipped in large flakes out of a water-worn pebble of smoky quartz, while No. 89577 [939] Fig. 422, from the same village, which is a trifle larger (2 inches long), is made of dark crimson jasper. The large black flint whale, No. 56683 [61], also from Utkiavwĭñ, which is 3.9 inches long, is the rudest of all the figures of the whales. It is precisely the shape of the blade of a skin scraper, except for the roughly indicated flukes.
Fig. 423 (No. 89524 [1299] from Utkiavwĭñ) is a rude wooden image of the same animal, 3½ inches long, very broad and flat-bellied. It is smoothly carved and has a fragment of sky-blue glass inlaid to represent the left eye and a bit of iron pyrites for the right. The flukes have been split wholly off and fastened on with a lashing of narrow whalebone passing through a vertical hole in the “small” and round the edge of the flukes. The flukes themselves have been split across and appear to have been doweled together. This shows that the owner attached considerable value to the object, or he would not have taken the trouble to mend it when another could have been so easily whittled out. In the middle of the belly is an oblong cavity, containing something which probably adds greater power to the charm. What this is can not be seen, as a band of sealskin with the hair shaved off has been shrunk on round the hinder half of the body and secured by a seam on the right side. A double turn of sinew braid is knotted round the middle of the body, leaving two ends which are tied together in a loop, showing that this object was meant to be attached somewhere about the person.
To this class also probably belong the skins or pieces of animals worn as amulets, probably with a view of obtaining the powers of the particular animal, as in so many cases in the stories related in Rink’s Tales and Traditions. We frequently saw men wearing at the belt bunches of the claws of the bear or wolverine, or the metacarpal bones of the wolf.626 The head or beak of the gull or raven627 is also a common personal amulet, and one man wore a small dried flounder.628
We collected a number of these animal amulets to be worn on the person, but only succeeded in learning the special purpose of one of them, No. 89532 [1307], from Utkiavwĭñ, which was said to be intended to give good luck in deer hunting. It is a young unbranched antler of a reindeer, 6 inches long, and apparently separated from the skull at the “bur,” with the “velvet” skin still adhering, though most of the hair is worn off except at the tip. A bit of sinew is tied round the base.
No. 89522 [1573], from Utkiavwĭñ, is an amulet consisting of the last three joints of the foot of a reindeer fawn, with the skin and hoof and about 1½ inches of tendon attached behind, through a hole in the end of which is knotted about 3 inches of seal thong. No. 89525 [1314] from the same village, is a precisely similar charm. No. 89699 [779] from Utkiavwĭñ, is the subfossil incisor tooth of some ruminant with a hole drilled through the root for a string to hang it up by. It was said to be the tooth of the “ug’ru´nû,” a large animal, long extinct. As the natives said, “Here on the land are none, only the bones remain.” No. 89743 [1110], from Utkiavwĭñ, is a molar tooth of the same animal, probably, weathered and old, with a hole freshly drilled through one root and a long piece of sinew braid with the ends knotted together looped into it. There are also in the collection two very old teeth which probably were inclosed in little sacks of skin and worn as amulets.
No. 89698 [1580], from Utkiavwĭñ, is the tusk of a very young walrus, only 2½ inches long, and No. 89452 [1148] from Utkiavwĭñ, is the canine tooth of a polar bear. No. 56547 [656], from the same village, is a similar tooth.629
The only amulet attached to a weapon, which we collected, is the tern’s bill, already alluded to, placed under the whalebone lashing on the seal-spear, No. 89910 [1694]. Perhaps the idea of this charm is that the spear should plunge down upon the seal with as sure an aim as the tern does upon its prey.630
A number of amulets of this class are always carried in the whaling-umiak. I have already mentioned the wolf-skulls, stuffed ravens and eagles, fox-tails631 and bunches of feathers used for this purpose. Most of these charms are parts of some rapacious animal or bird, but parts of other animals seem to have some virtue on these occasions.
For instance, I noticed the axis vertebra of a seal in one whaling-umiak, and we collected a rudely stuffed skin of a godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri), which, we were informed, was “for whales.” This specimen (No. 89526 [1328], Fig. 424, from Utkiavwĭñ) is soiled and ragged, and has a stick thrust through the neck to hold it out. The neck is wrapped around with a narrow strip of whalebone and some coarse thread, part of which serves to lash on a slip of wood, apparently to splice the stick inside. A bit of white man’s string is passed around the body and tied in a loop to hang it up by. This charm is perhaps to keep the boat from capsizing, since Crantz says that the Greenlanders “like to fasten to their kajak a model of it * * * or only a dead sparrow or snipe, or a bit of wood, stone, some feathers or hair, that they may not overset” (vol. 1, p. 216), and perhaps the bone of a marine animal, like the seal, is to protect the crew from drowning should the boat upset, after all.
No. 89529 [1150] from Utkiavwĭñ is a bunch of feathers to be carried in the boat. It consists of nine wing feathers of the golden eagle, four tied in a bunch with a bit of sinew round the quills, four tied up with one end of the short bit of seal thong which serves to tie the whole bundle together, one of which has all the light-colored parts of the feather stained with red ocher, and a single feather shaft carefully wrapped up in a piece of entrail and wound spirally with a piece of sinew braid.
No. 89527-8 [1327] from Utkiavwĭñ is the charm which will secure good success in deerhunting if it is hung up outside of the snow house in which the family is encamped. It consists of two roughly stuffed skins of the black bellied plover (Charadrius squatarola), each with a stick run through the body so that one end supports the neck and the other the tail, and the necks wound with sinew. One has no head. A string of sinew braid is tied around the body of each, so as to leave a free end at the back, to which is fastened a little cross piece of bone, by which it may be secured to a becket. Like the rest of the amulets in the collection this has evidently seen service, being very old, worn, and faded.
The other class of amulets, namely objects which have belonged to or been in contact with certain persons or supernatural beings, or I may add apparently certain localities, is represented by a number of specimens. To the custom of using such things as amulets, we undoubtedly owe the preservation of most of the ancient weapons and other implements, especially those made of wood, bone, or other perishable substances, like the ancient harpoon heads already described, one of which, No. 89544 [1419], is still attached to the belt on which it was worn.
Fig. 425, No. 56668 [308], from Utkiavwĭñ is one of the ancient black jade adzes 5.1 inches, slung with thong and whalebone, making a becket by which it can be hung up. We did not learn the history of this amulet, which at the time of collecting it was supposed to be a net sinker. There would, however, be no reason for using so valuable an object for such a purpose, when a common beach pebble would do just as well, unless it was intended as a charm to insure success in fishing. It may even have been carried as a charm on the person, since we afterwards saw a still more bulky object used for such a purpose.
Such an object seems rather heavy to be carried on the person, but a well known man in Utkiavwĭñ always carried with him when he went sealing a large pear-shaped stone, which must have weighed upwards of two pounds, suspended somewhere about his person. It is not unlikely that this stone acquired its virtue as an amulet from having been a sinker used by some lucky fisherman in former time or in a distant country. Mr. H. W. Henshaw has already referred to the resemblance of this amulet to the plummet-like “medicine stones” of some of our Indians.632
Fig. 426, (No. 89534 [1306] from Utkiavwĭñ) is an amulet for success in whaling. It consists of three little irregular water-worn fragments of amber carefully wrapped in a bit of parchment and inclosed in a little wooden box 1½ inches long, made of two semicylindrical bits of cottonwood, with the flat faces hollowed out and put together and fastened up by three turns of sinew braid round the middle, tied in a loose knot. The box is old and brown from age and handling. We heard of other pieces of amber and earth (“nuna”) worn as amulets, wrapped up in bits of leather and hung on the belt.
No. 89533 [1247], from Utkiavwĭñ, is simply a nearly square pebble, 1.4 inches long, of dark red jasper, slung in a bit of sinew braid so that it can be hung on the belt. Fig. 427 (No. 89525 [1308] from Utkiavwĭñ) is some small object, placed in the center of the grain side of a square bit of white sealskin, the edges of which are folded up around it and tied tightly round with deer sinew, so as to make a little round knob. I collected this amulet, and was particularly informed how it was to be used. If it be fastened on the right shoulder it will insure success in taking ducks with the “bolas.” Fig. 428 (No. 89535 [1244] from Utkiavwĭñ) is an amulet whose history we did not learn. It is a little oblong box 3.3 inches long, carved from a block of cottonwood, with a flat cover tied on with nine turns of sinew braid, and contains twenty-one dried humble-bees, which it was said came from the river Kulugrua. The natives have a great dread, apparently superstitious, of these bees and the large gadflies (Œstens tarandi), one of which I have seen scatter half a dozen people. A man one day caught one of these, and whittled out a little box of wood, in which he shut the insect up and tied it up with a shred of sinew, telling Capt. Herendeen that it was “tuɐñamun,” for “tuɐña.”
A small lump of indurated gravel (No. 56725) [273] was one day brought over from Utkiavwĭñ, with the story that it was a “medicine” for driving away the ice. The man who uses this charm stands on the high bank at the village, and breaking off grains of the gravel throws them seaward. This will cause the ice to move off from the shore.
The essential identity of the amulets of the Point Barrow natives with those used by the Eskimo elsewhere is shown by the following passages from other writers. Egede says:633
A Superstition very common among them is to load themselves with Amulets or Pomanders, dangling about their Necks and Arms, which consist in some Pieces of old Wood, Stones or Bones, Bills and Claws of Birds, or Anything else which their Fancy suggests to them.
Crantz says:634
They are so different in the amulets or charms they hang on people, that one laughs at another’s. These powerful preventives consist in a bit of old wood hung around their necks, or a stone, or a bone, or a beak or claw of a bird, or else a leather strap tied round their forehead, breast, or arm.
Parry speaks635 of what he supposes were amulets at Iglulik, consisting of teeth of the fox, wolf, and musk-ox, bones of the “kablĕĕarioo” (supposed to be the wolverine), and foxes’ noses. Kumlien says636 that at Cumberland Gulf, “among the many superstitious notions, the wearing of charms about the person is one of the most curious. These are called angoouk or amusit, and may be nothing but pieces of bone or wood, birds’ bills or claws, or an animal’s teeth or skin.” A little girl “had a small envelope of sealskin that was worn on the back of her inside jacket” containing two small stones.
Such little pockets of skin sewed to the inner jacket are very common at Point Barrow, but we did not succeed in any case in learning their contents. At Kotzebue Sound, Beechey saw ravens’ skins on which the natives set a high value, while the beaks and claws of these birds were attached to their belts and headbands.637 Petitot describes638 the amulets used in the Mackenzie district, in the passage already quoted, as “défroques empaillées de corbeau, de faucon ou d’hermine.” It is not likely that the use of these is confined to the women, as his words, “Elles y portent,” would seem to imply. Among the sedentary Chukches of Siberia amulets were seen consisting of wooden forks and wood or ivory carvings.639 A wolf’s skull, hung up by a thong; the skin, together with the whole cartilaginous portion of a wolf’s nose, and a flat stone, are also mentioned.640 Capt. Holm also found wonderfully similar customs among the East Greenlanders. He says,641 “bære alle Folk Amuletter af de mest forskjelligartede Ting” to guard against sickness and to insure long life, and also for specific purposes. The men wear them slung round the neck or tied round the upper arm, the women in their knot of hair or “i Snippen foran paa Pelsen.”