“Now,” said Okiok, “Angut may speak. There are none but safe tongues here. My boys are good, but their tongues wag too freely.”
“Yes, they wag too freely,” echoed Mrs Okiok, with a nod.
Thus freed from the danger of being misreported, Angut turned to the seaman, and said—
“I deny that I am an angekok, because angekoks are deceivers. They deceive foolish men and women. Some of them are wicked, and only people-deceivers. They do not believe what they teach. Some of them are self-deceivers. They are good enough men, and believe what they teach, though it is false. These men puzzle me. I cannot understand them.”
The Eskimo became meditative at this point, as if his mind were running on the abstract idea of self-delusion. Indeed he said as much. Rooney admitted that it was somewhat puzzling.
“I suppose,” resumed the Eskimo, “that Kablunets never deceive themselves or others; they are too wise. Is it so?”
“Well, now you put the question,” said Rooney, “I rather fear that some of us do, occasionally; an’ there’s not a few who have a decided tendency to deceive others. And so that is the reason you won’t be an angekok, is it? Well, it does you credit. But what sort o’ things do they believe, in these northern regions, that you can’t go in with? Much the same, I fancy, that the southern Eskimos believe?”
“I know not what the southern Eskimos believe, for I have met them seldom. But our angekoks believe in torngaks, familiar spirits, which they say meet and talk with them. There is no torngak. It is a lie.”
“But you believe in one great and good Spirit, don’t you?” asked the seaman, with a serious look.
“Yes; I believe in One,” returned the Eskimo in a low voice, “One who made me, and all things, and who must be good.”