From photograph loaned by the Smithsonian Institution
“The Land of the Dead”—Graveyard at Rasboinsky
THE LAND OF THE DEAD
Eskimo (Lower Yukon)
A YOUNG woman on the Lower Yukon died. When she died she went to sleep for a while. Then some one shook her arm and said, “Get up. Do not sleep. You are dead.” Then she saw she was in her grave box and the shade of her grandfather was shaking her. Then she went with her grandfather back to the village, but the country she knew had disappeared. In its place was a strange village which reached as far as the eye could see.
As she entered the village, the old man told her to go into one of the houses. As soon as she entered it, a woman picked up a stick of wood and raised it to strike her. The woman said, “What do you want here?”
So the young woman ran out, crying to her grandfather. He said, “This is the village of the dog shades. Now you see how living dogs feel when beaten by people.”