ve asked the Eskimo to repeat
to me the words of Tornarsuk, up there on the cliff, and I would not
dream of laughing at my faithful friends at such a time; the messages of
Tornarsuk I receive with a respectful gravity.

There are no chiefs among these people, no men in authority; but there
are medicine men who have some influence. The angakok is generally not
loved--he knows too many unpleasant things that are going to happen, so
he says. The business of the angakok is mainly singing incantations and
going into trances, for he has no medicines. If a person is sick, he may
prescribe abstinence from certain foods for a certain number of moons;
for instance, the patient must not eat seal meat, or deer meat, but only
the flesh of the walrus. Monotonous incantations take the place of the
white man's drugs. The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite
impressive--if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The
chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by
sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus
stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another
piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt
at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the angakok--a
combination of the gifts of the fortune teller, the mental healer, and
the psalmodist, one might say.

Once, years ago, my little brown people got tired of an angakok, one
Kyoahpahdo, who had predicted too many deaths; and they lured him out on
a hunting expedition from which he never returned. But these executions
for the peace of the community are rare.

Their burial customs are rather interesting. When an Eskimo dies, there
is no delay about removing the body. Just as soon as possible it is
wrapped, fully clothed, in the skins which formed the bed, and some
extra garments are added to insure the comfort of the spirit. Then a
strong line is tied round the body, and it is removed, always head
first, from the tent or igloo, and dragged head first over the snow or
ground to the nearest place where there are enough loose stones to cover
it. The Eskimos do not like to touch a dead body, and it is therefore
dragged as a sledge would be. Arrived at the place selected for the
grave, they cover the corpse with loose stones, to protect it from the
dogs, foxes, and ravens, and the burial is complete.

According to Eskimo ideas, the after-world is a distin