There is a real groundwork of sense about the ceremony of visiting each house in turn, and the scramble for presents. In the first place, it is a symbol of goodwill and plenty. Each householder is expected to keep up appearances by doing this sort of thing, and he uses every effort to gain the wherewithal to meet the obligation. This militates against laziness and any tendency to hoard—great crimes in the Eskimo estimation of things. The hunter strains every nerve to provide the things his neighbours scramble for, and the women of the village do their utmost, so far as attractiveness and domesticity go, [[221]]to attach such men as husbands. Again, by a general scramble, the poorer and less lucky folk get a good many windfalls otherwise unobtainable.
The roysterers flock off in a body, to make the round of the encampment, stopping at every man’s house in turn. The owner goes inside, makes a selection of all sorts of unconsidered trifles—generally bits of sealskin used for the legs of boots, with different kinds of sewing sinew attached—and, returning to the vociferous crowd waiting outside, scatters these things broadcast. There is a grand commotion and no end of noise, as the oddments are battled for. As this performance is repeated at every house in the village it necessarily takes some time.
Little information is obtainable as to the significance of these games or ceremonies, or whatever the Eskimo themselves may consider them. The annual pairing off doubtless serves to keep up the numbers of the tribe. Women are always in excess of men, owing to hunting fatalities among the latter, and other causes; and some of these, although married, may be childless. The Sedna proceedings tend to remedy this state of things to a satisfactory extent. The writer’s own idea is that, in addition to the main responsibilities of the festival, which rest on the shoulders of the Kiluktetok, the doings of the lesser lights of the order of conjurors are designed more or less to keep things going merrily and to establish themselves firmly in the good-will of the community.
The main idea of the frequent acknowledgment of [[222]]breaches of village law is undoubtedly to keep the social life intact, to ensure that no secrecies and plottings shall break it up, and no hoarding of supplies lead to quarrels and injustices. Another feature of the Sedna day is a general “confessing” of all these “sins.” Another lesser luminary, called a Noonageeksaktoot, dresses himself up in a medley of garments and dons a close-fitting cap made from the skull of a ground seal. This cap has a peak, to represent a bird’s bill. He binds upon his feet some of the sticks used for beating snow from clothes, so that they resemble a raven’s, and hops about in imitation of that bird. As often as the people come up and accuse themselves of wrongdoing, he betakes himself to the beach, to tell Sedna, and returns with forgiveness.
It will be readily understood that it is of great value in the hard fight for existence in the arctic that a spirit of hope and cheerfulness should be maintained. No one knows this better than the commander of an arctic or antarctic expedition, or than the head of a trading station! It is quite essential that the Eskimo village should make itself a centre of jollity and comfort to the returning hunters, and to travellers on the trail. There are sound economic principles underneath the queer trappings of some of all this barbaric custom, and even sound hygienic laws governing some of the regulations and taboos of daily life. That one, for instance, which forbids a woman in childbirth to eat any food not provided by her husband, [[223]]probably acts quite beneficially. Eskimo food is very rich and often consumed in the raw state, so that a glut of it, as would result from a shower of benefactions, would upset the new-made mother.
The Sedna ceremony has been carefully studied by the best ethnologists, like Dr. Boas, who have travelled for the sake of science among the arctic tribes; but it may be hazarded that the raison d’être of much of it could only dawn on an observer who had actually lived for a very considerable time in close personal and linguistic touch with the people.
The writer offers his interpretations with all diffidence, but believes they constitute something original to the descriptions of other writers. Those who easily dismiss the whole subject as fantastic savagery, much of which is unfit for publication, seem singularly to have failed in any real grasp of the character of these benighted, but in many ways cheery and genuine, children of the sternest wild in the world. [[224]]