Next comes the extraordinary performance already described, when the conjuror is speared through the chest.
After this, the principal Angakok prepares to give battle to Sedna. The goddess can be killed; but as she subsequently comes to life again, this killing has to take place every year. The whole performance is a representation of seal-spearing on the ice. The conjuror coils a rope on the floor of a large hut, and leaves a little opening at the top to represent the blow hole. Two assistants stand on either side, armed respectively with harpoon and spear. A third chants incantations at the back of the dwelling. Sedna is supposed to be lured from the underworld, and when she comes to the hole, is transfixed at once. She sinks away again, dragging the harpoon with her, [[215]]wounded and incensed. The conjurors haul on the line for all they are worth, and recover the weapon.
Then the chief Angakut squats upon the floor, with his arms and legs bound by a length of light hide line. The lamps are pressed down to burn so dimly that it is all but dark. The rest of the folk also sit about the floor with their heads bowed, so that none may stare at the conjuror’s face. He begins his incantations, rocking to and fro and uttering sounds that seem incredible for a human throat to compass. He works himself into a state of insensibility (but not before his familiar spirit has undone the knots and released him from his bonds.) It is this trance which makes such an impression on the tribesfolk. They believe that the witch doctor’s spirit has left his body and their midst, and has really gone to meet and despatch the powerful figment of their myth, to kill her and liberate the seals.
The hardening of the weather soon after this ceremony, when the prospects of the sealers naturally improve, seems to the Eskimo mind a clear demonstration of cause and effect. Probably the conjuror quite believes it, too, and although he has done nothing but hypnotise himself and strike awe thereby into the onlookers, this assumption of all that he accomplishes in the meantime is as real to him as to the others.
After the Kiluktetak—the chief of the whole conjuring band—has concluded this séance, he proceeds to make good hunters. Those who are ambitious to [[216]]make a name for themselves in this respect, and greatly desire the skins and trappings that come of abundant catches, pay the conjuror a walrus hide line; whereupon he resorts again to his incantations, and his Tougak causes the soul of a seal to enter the body or mind of the young man in question. The whole business may perhaps have some result, perforce of suggestion, and the sealer who had hitherto doubted his own judgment or prowess, who had felt discouraged by ill success, or who had failed perhaps in skill or patience, picks up a fortuitous confidence in himself and really has better luck afterwards.
It is impossible to believe that these beliefs and ceremonies would be so widespread among the people and carry so much weight, were no sort of explanation to be sought for them. These folk are trained and accomplished hunters; they attribute their success to junketings of this description, and by no means wholly to the obvious care they take to ensure it. If the ceremonies had no value and proved by experience to have no bearing on all these vital matters, even the primitive mind would scarcely perpetuate them for their own sakes pure and simple.
In the meantime, while the Kiluktetak has his hands full in the underworld, all sorts of other things are taking place, all sorts of games going on, in the village above.
There is a tug of war with a rope of walrus hide or white whale hide, a contest provocative of uproarious fun, watched by a keen, delighted crowd. One end of [[217]]the rope is manned by the “Ptarmigans” (those born in the winter time) and the other by the “Ducks” (those born in summer.) If the former yield to the latter, it is taken as an augury of good weather for the ensuing season.
After this a curious game is played. One of the lesser conjurors is fantastically got up in a number of garments, and in a pair of trousers with very narrow legs. The trousers seem to tickle the Eskimo sense of the ludicrous in exactly the same way as Charlie Chaplin’s baggy ones and his “caterpillar” boots tickle ours. He takes a piece of wood in one hand, a skin scraper in the other, and starts capering off, calling on all and sundry to follow him and assemble in the “Kagge,” or singing house.
The ceremony in the Kagge was performed in the past but now only the Sedna ceremony is performed, minus the Kagge.