“SAMOYED LOVE OF COLOR”
IN THE POSSESSION OF THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND
“People who naïvely believe that the Samoyeds are no longer heathen are greatly mistaken,” says Borissoff. “Notwithstanding their being nominally Christians, they still worship their Hyes and Siadeys no less fervently than in old times. Recent bloodstains on the idols testified to recent visits; but it was only when we were about to take our departure that I learned that this was not the chief shrine at all!”
Borissoff insisting, Ireena reluctantly guided him to it, three or four versts down the coast, to the east.
“Now we passed far greater mounds of axes, knives, and other valuable offerings,” he says. “The idols stood like an army around two enormous elevated, round clay altars at the very top of the mountain, cut off by a deep chasm bridged by a stone archway; but the number of bones was less than I had expected to find.”
Ireena explained.
“This is the dwelling-place of Hye, the god, not that of Siadey, the devil,” she said. “Hye wants for sacrifice the head of a human being or of a white bear, or at least of a wild deer. Now that white bears are harder to kill and wild deer are scarcer, it’s no good for people to come here—unless in great stress. But Siadey takes anything, even domestic deer!”
“In great stress” had a grim significance. One of the skulls was obviously that of a man of Aryan race.
Further on they came on one of the sledges habitually used by the Samoyeds for the conveyance of their gods. Opening its box, Borissoff found two human-shaped idols, one of wood and the other of stone, and the images of a bear and a wolf in wood. These must have been brought out of the tundra by some sorceress, to keep real bears and wolves from some locality. As long as these objects remained at Hye’s shrine, there would be no danger to the pious offerer’s herds. Near by lay another curiosity. It was a piece of boulder wrapped up in red cloth. It was “sickness,” removed from the tundra, beyond the sea, so as never to return to the dwellers of the Tchoom!