This is built of rough poles of drift wood covered with seal skins. It is large enough for a family of six.

The writer has collected an immense mass of notes on the Eskimo deities, as they were described to him [[209]]by the most creditable of the conjurors. He believes that his list is unique, and offers the student of such matters entirely original material. In it are enumerated no less than fifty of these tutelary spirits, with their personal descriptions (generally uncouth and imaginative to a degree), their supposed habitat—earth, air, or water—and their characteristic activities or patronages.

There is Keekut, for instance, a being who lives on the land, in appearance is like a dog without hair, and who works in a more or less maleficent manner. There is Segook, a spirit with a head like a crow, a body like that of a human being, and who is black. It has wings. It is a benefactor to the tribesfolk, and brings them meat in its beak. It is fabled to exist upon the eyes of deer and seals. The list is monotonously fabulous, and could only be wearisome to the general reader.

Ataksok lives in the sky. He is like a ball, and has the means of bringing joy to his beholders as often as he may be invoked by the conjurors. Akseloak is the spirit of rocking stones. When called upon, he arrives rolling, and falls flat upon his face at the witch doctor’s feet. Ooyarraksakju is a female spirit, and lives in the rocks and boulders; is beneficent in her activities.

So the list goes on. It would doubtless have a value all its own for the student of primitive imagery or fable, and form an addition to ethnographical researches on the Eskimo; but to give it here in extenso would perhaps serve little or no purpose. [[210]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER XV

The Sedna Ceremony

At the end of the arctic summer, before the young ice begins to form again along the shores, there comes a spell of tempestuous weather, with frequent storms and high, rough tides. Food grows more and more scarce as sealing increases in risk and difficulty. Those intrepid hunters who do venture out, return empty-handed day after day, and it grows high time for something to be done. The goddess Sedna is supposed to be causing these storms and all this dirty weather at sea, to prevent her animals being killed. And so a conjuration has to be performed to liberate the seals.

This is the occasion of the most elaborate festival in the Eskimo calendar.