The Tinneh, that great people stretching north of the fifty-fifth parallel nearly to the Arctic Ocean and to the Pacific, do not seem in any of their various tribes to have a single expressed idea with regard to a supreme power. The Loucheux branch recognize a certain personage, resident in the moon, whom they supplicate for success in starting on a hunting expedition. This being once lived among them as a poor ragged boy that an old woman had found and was bringing up; and who made himself ridiculous to his fellows by making a pair of very large snow-shoes; for the people could not see what a starveling like him should want with shoes of such unusual size. Times of great scarcity troubled the hunters, and they would often have fared badly had they not invariably on such occasions come across a new broad trail that led to a head or two of freshly killed game. They were glad enough to get the game and without scruples as to its appropriation; still they felt curious as to whence it came and how. Suspicion at last pointing to the boy and his great shoes, as being in some way implicated in the affair, he was watched. It soon became evident that he was indeed the benefactor of the Loucheux, and the secret hunter whose quarry had so often replenished their empty pots; yet the people were far from being adequately grateful, and continued to treat him with little kindness or respect. On one occasion they refused him a certain piece of fat—him who had so often saved their lives by his timely bounty! That night the lad disappeared, leaving only his clothes behind, hanging on a tree. He returned to them in a month, however, appearing as a man and dressed as a man. He told them that he had taken up his home in the moon; that he would always look down with a kindly eye to their success in hunting; but he added, that as a punishment for their shameless greed and ingratitude in refusing him the piece of fat, all animals should be lean the long winter through, and fat only in summer; as has since been the case.
SPIRITS WITH THE KONIAGAS AND TINNEH.
According to Hearne, the Tinneh believe in a kind of spirits, or fairies, called nantena, which people the earth, the sea, and the air, and are instrumental for both good and evil. Some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihugun, 'my old friend,' supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon; they have also a bad spirit, Chutsain, apparently only a personification of death, and for this reason called bad.
They have no regular order of shamáns; any one when the spirit moves him may take upon himself their duties and pretensions, though some by happy chances, or peculiar cunning, are much more highly esteemed in this regard than others, and are supported by voluntary contributions. The conjurer often shuts himself in his tent and abstains from food for days till his earthly grossness thins away, and the spirits and things unseen are constrained to appear at his behest. The younger Tinneh care for none of these things; the strong limb and the keen eye, holding their own well in the jostle of life, mock at the terrors of the invisible; but as the pulses dwindle with disease or age, and the knees strike together in the shadow of impending death, the shamán is hired to expel the evil things of which the patient is possessed. Among the Tacullies, a confession is often resorted to at this stage, on the truth and accuracy of which depend the chances of a recovery. As Harmon says, "the crimes which they most frequently confess discover something of their moral character and therefore deserve to be mentioned;" but in truth I cannot mention them; both with women and with men a filthiness and bestiality worse than the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah defy the stomach of description. The same thing is true of the tedious and disgusting rites performed by the Tinneh shamáns over the sick and at various other emergencies. They blow on the invalid, leap about him or upon him, shriek, sing, groan, gesticulate, and foam at the mouth, with other details of hocus-pocus varying indefinitely with tribe and locality. The existence of a soul is for the most part denied, and the spirits with whom dealings are had are not spirits that were ever in or of men; neither are they regarded by men with any sentiment of love or kindly respect; fear and self-interest are the bonds—where any bonds exist—that link the Tinneh with powers supernal or infernal.[V-2]
The Koniagas have the usual legion of spirits haunting water, earth, and air, whose wrath is only to be appeased by offerings to the shamáns; and sometimes, though very rarely, by human sacrifices of slaves. They have also a chief deity or spirit, called Shljam Schoá, and a power for evil called Eyak.[V-3]
Of the Aleuts, it is said that their rites showed a much higher religious development than was to be found among any of their neighbors; the labors of the Russian priests have, however, been successful enough among them to obliterate all remembrance of aught but the outlines of their ancient cult. They recognize a creator-god, but without worshiping him; he had made the world, but he did not guide it; men had nothing to do any longer with him, but only with the lesser kugans, or spirits, to whom the direction and care of earthly affairs have been committed. The stars and the sun and the moon were worshiped, or the spirits of them among others, and avenged themselves on those that adored them not. The offended sun smote the eyes of a scoffer with blindness, the moon stoned him to death, and the stars constrained him to count their number—hopeless task that always left the victim a staring maniac. The shamáns do not seem to have enjoyed that distinction among the Aleuts that their monopoly of mediation between man and the invisible world gave them among other nations. They were generally very poor, living in want and dying in misery; they had no part nor lot in the joys or sorrows of social life; never at feast, at wedding, or at a funeral was their face seen. They lived and wandered men forbid, driven to and fro by phantoms that were their masters and not their slaves. The Aleuts had no permanent idols, nor any worshiping-places built with hands; near every village was some sanctified high place or rock, sacred as a Sinai against the foot of woman or youth, and whoever profaned it became immediately mad or sick to death. Only the men and the old men visited the place leaving there their offerings of skins or feathers with unknown mysterious ceremonies.
The use of amulets was universal; and more than shield or spear to the warrior going to battle was a belt of sea-weed woven in magic knots. What a philosopher's stone was to a Roger Bacon or a Paracelsus, was the tkhimkee, a marvelous pebble thrown up at rare intervals by the sea, to the Aleutian hunter. No beast could resist its attraction; he that carried it had no need to chase his prey, he had only to wait and strike as the animal walked up to its death. Another potent charm was grease taken from a dead man's body; the spearhead touched with this was sure to reach a mortal spot in the whale at which it was hurled.
ALEUTIAN MYSTERY-DANCE.
There are dim Aleutian traditions of certain religious night dances held in the month of December. Wooden idols, or figures of some kind, were made for the occasion and carried from island to island with many esoteric ceremonies. Then was to be seen a marvelous sight. The men and women were put far apart; in the middle of each party a wooden figure was set up; certain great wooden masks or blinders were put on each person, so contrived that the wearer could see nothing outside a little circle round his feet. Then every one stripped, and there upon the snow, under the moonlight, in the bitter Arctic night, danced naked before the image—say rather before the god, for as they danced a kugan descended and entered into the wooden figure. Woe to him or to her whose drift-wood mask fell, or was lifted, in the whirl of that awful dance; the stare of the Gorgon was not more fatal than a glance of the demon that possessed the idol; and for any one to look on one of the opposite sex, however it came about, he might be even counted as one dead. When the dance was over, the idols and the masks were broken and cast away. It may be added that such masks as this were needed, even by prophets in their interviews with the great spirits that know all mortal consequences; and that when a man died such a mask was put over his eyes—O naked and shivering soul, face to face with the darkest kugan of all we will shelter thee what we can.[V-4]