Just so it is with the lands of the Ocean People—the Devilfish People, the Porpoise People, the Killer-Whale People, and the Black-Whale People. Of all the Ocean People the Killer-Whale People are the most powerful. They have towns scattered along the shore beneath the water, just as the Indians have their towns along the shore above the water.
When a man dies in Haida Land, he follows a trail until he reaches the shore of a bay. On the other side of the bay lies the Ghost Land. Then he calls across, and soon a person appears who pushes a raft from the farther side. This raft is made of fine cedar bark, such as is used in the rings of the secret society. Then the raft comes of itself to where the man is standing, and ferries him over.
Now in Ghost Land there are many towns, and many houses in each town. So if a man is looking for his wife there, it may take him a long time. These towns lie in numberless inlets, near the water, just as the Haida towns on earth do.
When food or grease is put into the fire in the family of a man who has just died, it comes to him at once; therefore he is not hungry. And if his family sing songs loudly when he dies, then he enters Ghost Land proudly, with his head up. It gives him a good name in that country. But if they do not, then he enters Ghost Land with his head hanging down, and people do not think so much of him. When a man enters Ghost Land there is always a dance given in his honor.
People who are drowned go to Killer-Whale Country. But first they go to The-One-in-the-Sea who gives them their fins and then they go into the houses of the other Killer Whales. When killer whales gather in front of a town, it is thought they are human beings who have been drowned and take this way of informing the people.
One man who went to the Ghost Land, after he had been there for some time, put all his property in his canoe and went to Xada, which is the second Ghost Land. Then he went on to a third one, and later to a fourth, and then came back to earth as a blue fly. Therefore when a blue fly bumps into a man on earth, he says, “This is my friend, who thus shows me that he recognizes me.”
At a place beyond the Ghost Land, and just visible from it, lives a chief called Great Moving Cloud. He owns all the dog salmon. Once when a gambler died, he went there and gambled with him. The stakes were the dog salmon, and ghosts. When Great Moving Cloud won, many ghosts came into Ghost Land. When the gambler won, there was a great run of salmon.
BELIEFS
Eastern Eskimo
No man can ever go into the Sky Land until he is dead; so all the people say. The sky that we see is a hard, blue stone, built up over the earth just as the igloo is built with snow, rounding, over the Eskimo family. But where the land and sea meet are high precipices which slope inward so that no one can climb up in the Sky Land. This blue dome is very cold, and sometimes it is covered with crystals of frost which fall as snow, and then the sky becomes clear.