The whole stock-in-trade indeed of the Eskimo conjuror is a certain very demonstrable, acquired, occult power. Besides this, he has a good memory, an immense amount of shrewdness and cunning, an intimate knowledge of animals and their habits, of weather conditions and seasons, and, above all, of course, a capacity to judge of his fellow men.
It is after the period of training is over that the [[203]]conjuror becomes the bestial, sensual creature, full of cupidity and trickery, he is so often represented to be. After graduating in the guild, no further prohibitions and denials are observed. He marries, indeed; but no woman of the community is safe from him. Under one professional pretext or another, he may have his way with each and every one of them, with or without her own particular man’s consent. This, however, is seldom withheld. On the whole, monogamy is the rule among the Eskimo, although there are plenty of exceptions. The writer has known a conjuror with three wives, two of whom were sisters.
When a wife is childless it is a great grief both to her and her husband. The conjuror is called in for professional advice and to find out why she is not favoured by the spirits. He resorts to his incantations, but takes an obvious advantage of the situation (quite as much for his own ends as for the satisfaction of the would-be parents), and all is satisfactorily arranged. Again, when a man is very ill and has been performed over by the conjuror, one of the things demanded by the latter is that the patient’s coat shall be brought to his house in the evening by the man’s wife, and not taken home again until next day.
Eskimo life is full of this sort of thing, and the crudities of relationships entering into any of their typical folk-stories make these a little hard to reproduce in a manner acceptable to better taste. But there is certainly some distinction to be drawn between [[204]]the primitive doings of a people struggling numerically against the cruellest conditions of life nature can impose, (who moreover have no conception of the ethical idea of morality), and mere promiscuity and vice as practised for their own sakes by the “civilised” peoples of far more favoured lands.
One of the commonest occasions of calling in the aid of the conjuror is during bad weather. The days have been dark and stormy, with bitter gales and snowstorms, so that the hunters have been unable to go afield. The witch doctor arms himself with a whip—either an ordinary dog whip or one made from sea-weed—and a knife, and rushes out to join the howling elements. He slashes the wind and shouts down the gale. “Taba! Taba! Namuktok!” (Stop! Stop! It is enough!).
And presently the wind drops, and the accustomed death-like stillness of the frozen world supervenes upon the uproar.
The conjuror of course could read the signs of the weather even more astutely than the practised hunters, and awaited the moment when the gale had spent itself for the exhibition of his influence.
After the death of anyone looked upon as more or less of a criminal, the conjuror is called upon to drive the evil-intentioned spirit of the departed away from his old home. He does this by shading his eyes carefully in the effort to perceive the spirit. Then, with a knife or spear he rushes about, yelling and shouting, and stabbing as if at his invisible foe, calling upon [[205]]it to depart and go to its own place below. At length he vanquishes the spirit, and announces that it is to be dreaded no more; by their belief in him he removes their fears and restores tranquility of mind and body; whereupon he receives his dues and the perturbed and anxious relatives recover their poise and cheerfulness.
In order to grasp how seriously the Eskimo believe their lives, and every adventure of their lives, to be beset by unseen influences, it must be remarked that the main idea of their uncouth religion is that, not only man, but all things, animate or inanimate, have souls. Rocks, wood, earth, water, sun, moon, stars, fire, fog, icebergs, plants, all animals, all creeping things, and even hunting implements, have spirits which never die. The Tarnuk, or soul of a man, has the shape of a man, but is about one inch in height, and is to be discovered in the hand of a conjuror or in that of a new-born babe. The soul of a bear is like a bear; that of a walrus like a walrus; but the soul of a deer resembles a spider, and that of a salmon, a man! The souls of rocks are like sturdy, thickset men; the soul of the earth looks like a piece of liver. Animals’ souls are black and hairless, but those of some inanimate objects are clothed in deerskin. It would indeed take a great deal of study to determine how and why the people should have arrived at these fantastic notions and distinctions. Perhaps it would never be given to the mind of the modern white man to fathom the workings of such primitive intelligence, building up for itself a monstrous, nightmare [[206]]scheme of things, on foundations of the blackest ignorance.
For sheer phantasy, the writer is aware of course that the beliefs of the Eskimos are paralleled by those of many other uncivilised peoples. It may be that along lines of comparative savage mythology some generalisations might emerge which would throw light upon the whole subject. Here, however, would lie the study of a lifetime.