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THE AMMASSALIK ESKIMO

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ETHNOLOGY OF
THE EAST GREENLAND NATIVES

BY

WILLIAM THALBITZER

IN TWO PARTS

SECOND PART

SECOND HALF-VOLUME

PUBLISHED AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CARLSBERG FOND

a

KOBENHAVN
Cc. A. REITZELS FORLAG

BIANCO LUNOS BOGTRYKKERI AjS

1941

Pris: Kr. 10.00.

MEDDELELSER OM GRONLAND
UDGIVNE AF
KOMMISSIONEN FOR VIDENSKABELIGE UNDERSOGELSER I GRONLAND
Bp. 40

THE AMMASSALIK ESKIMO

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ETHNOLOGY OF
THE EAST GREENLAND NATIVES

BY

WILLIAM THALBITZER

IN TWO PARTS

SECOND PART

SECOND HALF-VOLUME

PUBLISHED AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CARLSBERG FOND

KOBENHAVN
CrVA REITZELS FOREAG

BIANCO LUNOS BOGTRYKKERI A/S

1941

THE AMMASSALIK ESKIMO

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ETHNOLOGY OF THE EAST GREENLAND NATIVES

SECOND PART

SECOND HALF-VOLUME

NR. 4. WILLIAM THALBITZER: SOCIAL CUSTOMS
AND MUTUAL AID

nel U “<y

i cay) ao a ae

| “at 3 e 4
Be 3) ee
a Ome: Cm

Fig. 152. The drum singer Nakeelor Kooitse, the great hunter dancing,
singing, drumming against his enemy. (Cf. Frontispiece of the first half-
volume).

Statuette (bronze) made in plastelina on the spot by Mrs. E. Locher Thalbitzer
in the spring 1906.

PREFACE
OF THE SECOND HALF-VOLUME
Habent sua fata libelli.

Nea a pause of 18 years this work is now continued. It is 35
years since I collected my material on the East Coast of
Greenland among the natives of the Ammattalik Fjord. The old
folks, my sources, are now long since dead. Our patience was put
to a severe test.

In the mean time I have extended the scope of my studies
of the Arctic peoples. I have revisited West Greenland several
times. When the great war broke out in 1914 I was at Sammissoq
near Cape Farewell. In 1924 I travelled by motor boat up the
coast, calling at many settlements on the stretch between the main
colonies Godthab and Godhayn to gather fresh information. Since
1930 I have spent another four summers on up and down trips
between Julianehab in the south and Tasiussaq north of Uperna-
wik (72°N.). Again and again I had the pleasure of meeting old
acquaintances in whose huts I had lived long ago on my first
journey through North Greenland (1900—1901)—at a time when
Greenland was very different, a land steeped in old traditions.

All these journeys have contributed to throw light on my
material. Once each fjord had its own style; I recollect special
variants of dialects and customs, of belief and behaviour, now
much mixed, on the west coast, with European usage, yet of a
modern Greenlandish kind. I have seen the past on both coasts,
and also what is called modern progress up there.

So far [ have been able to publish about half of my east coast
material, see First Half-Volume. Late, though not too late, this

Second Half-Volume will now gradually appear, grown slowly to
maturity.

As a matter of fact, the first six chapters were finished twenty
years ago, but I postponed the printing of them then, because
I wished them to form part of a larger whole which is now
finally maturing. So as to bring these very old parts up to date I
have added postscripts to some of them.

I wonder whether I shall be fortunate enough to be able to
publish the rest of my material before my death. When I was
young I was prepared for a quick publication. My work should
have been completed in 1914. The Great War put a bar to that.
Or maybe just as much, certain resistances I had to meet in my
own inner world. Life is one long chain of delays.

Now this result will appear as a much retarded explosion.
That my work is revived is not only a proof that I exist, but
what is more, that the friends of my work and not its enemies

have had their way. May it prosper!

To the Carlsberg Foundation, which has always supported
my studies and my journeys in the service of research, I feel an
unbounded gratitude. Next I recall the many kind people who by
their hospitality and interest helped on my work both in Green-
land and in Denmark. I have already mentioned most of them
in my earlier preface dated 1923.

Captain Gustav Holm, Dr. phil. h.c., died in March 1940, aged
91 years. He was the founder of a Danish branch of modern
ethnology in continuation of Rink’s Eskimo researches. He seemed
to me like one of the progenitors of my own work. Honoured be
his memory!

The English translation of the earlier parts to follow (chapt.
I—VI) as well as of most of The First Half-Volume was done
by Norman Heath Beale (who died in 1927); the translation of the
preface, the introduction, the postscripts and the parts added later
has been done by Miss Annie I. Fausboll, M. A.

Gurre, January 1941.

W.. Le

Sailing in.

|i in August 1905 we rounded Cape Farvel (Farewell) and fought
our way against gales and currents into Danmark Strait between
Iceland and Greenland, bound for the Angmagssalik Colony.

We had arrived from Denmark two months earlier via the colony
Egedesminde, having crossed the Atlantic in the steamer “‘Hans Egede’”’
belonging to “Den Kgl. Gronlandske Handel’ (The Royal Greenland
Trading Department), and it was the vessel's first journey to Green-
land. In Disco Bay we had waited for over a month for the arrival
of the small coastal steamer from the south which was to take us round
to the promised land of the east coast. At Egedesminde we spent some
days in the company of Knup Rasmussen and a still longer time with
Mr. DauGAARD-JENSEN, then inspector of North Greenland. But they
were bound for other parts. Only we—my wife and myself—were on
our way to the east coast to winter among the heathens. On the west
coast, at Egedesminde and Iginiarfik, we prepared for our task and
our journey, dressed in Eskimo furs, skin clothes, kamiks, and so forth.

“Godthab” (‘Good Hope’) was the name of the schooner which
was to take us on board. A few West Greenlanders were among the
passengers, a mother with her three boys, and our servant Abigael
Brandt a young native of Egedesminde. The Godthab had been built
as a sailing vessel, only small in size, but in its old age it had been
fitted with a propeller and a steam engine of some few horse power.
Even with all sails set and the engine at full speed the schooner oaly
made small headway, unless the wind was quite favourable, for she
was no good at beating up against the wind; and unfortunately we
had mostly contrary gales in the Danmark Strait.

The pack ice along the east coast proved to be unusually trouble-
some for the season. At long last, however, we had reached the parallel
of our destination, but the worst part remained: the entry through the
belt of ice. In clear weather we could just see from the deck the edge
of the pack stretching for miles along the coast; a swarming belt of
broken pieces coming in an endless stream from the north, drifting

x

x]
w

W. THALBITZER.

southward along this coast. They are the huge ice masses from the
pole itself which are carried down this way to their destruction
(figs. 34—35). The litthe schooner went full steam ahead, fighting
against the strong current like a swimming ice-bear.

The captain was a farmer from the island of Leso in the Kattegat.
Like the vikings of old he sailed to Greenland in the summer leaving
his wife to look after the land. Captain S. was now for the first time
to take a vessel through the pack-ice. On the east coast you are in
perilous waters compared with the west coast. The dangerous white
enemy continually blocking this coast seemed to him invincible; it
surprised him and made him melancholy and uneasy.

One day our Captain had finally made up his mind to attempt
to force the outer belt; the ice was a little more scattered than usual,
and from the mast-head, it was said, open water could be sighted near
land. But our poor vessel was immediately caught between a couple
of heavy floes and for a while lay captured in the teeth of the icy
current like a prisoner with no will of her own. The pack churned
round and round, and the ship went round with it. The propeller was
exposed to the risk of being smashed. It was too dangerous to sail
here. The vessel was steered back into the open sea. Again we retreated
miles away from the edge of the pack.

Nine days had gradually passed while we had drifted about out
there. Onboard hope was at a low ebb and patience strained to the
breaking point. The only passengers besides ourselves were the Green-
landish family, the wife of the missionary and her children. The
missionary was a native of West Greenland, Pastor CHrisTIAN ROSING,
who had been trained at the college of Godthab on the west coast
where he had been appointed the year before to take the place of the
first missionary of the station (RUrreL). Rosing was now on land
awaiting the arrival of his wife and children. They were coming to
their new home, and from the ship I could see my future field of study.
In there the Danish manager of the colony, JoHAN PETERSEN, and his
wife were every day gazing out to sea, no less impatient than we were
outside, both longing equally for their countrymen and for fresh sup-
plies and news.

In those days wireless was not known. There were no signal
stations, nor lighthouses or sea-marks to get one’s bearings by, only
the snowy mountain peaks behind the drift ice which seemed never to
separate and open a way in. Our undertaking bid fair to turn out a
failure. The captain had orders only to attempt entry for a certain
time. He might soon be obliged to return to Europe without having
been at the colony. Then, to be sure, the colony would receive no
supplies that year, but that had happened once before.—Only one ship

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. by (5)

comes to this place every year. It is one of the most isolated spots in
the world.

The next day the air was so hazy that the mountains ashore could
not be seen, only the outer edge of the pack-ice was visible. On board
we could hear in the distance the droning and hissing of the ice frag-
ments as they crept by, it was like a faint murmur, or rather like a
soft laughter.

But at the gray of dawn something like a miracle happened. From
an invisible gate, through a hidden channel in the ice, five kaiaks shot
out and approached us rapidly and silently, their paddles going up
and down like see-saws!. Soon they were alongside. One after another
they were hauled on board, man and boat all in one, with a noose
round the stem and stern. At last five kaiaks were lying on the deck
like wet sea animals, with spears, harpoons, and bladders, and five
resolute hunters clad in furs stood looking at us and laughing at each
other. Only one of the pastor’s sons understood what they were saying.
Their dialect was strange, at that time I myself only knew West Green-
landish. The captain had a meal served to them and let them rest.
They stayed the night on board and were given a Danish letter to the
Manager on land. Early the next morning they returned.

But a couple of hours later the next act began. This time it was
only a single kaiak-man who came out of the pack. He, too, was hauled
on board and his eyes shone with disdain; he had the air of a being
who could turn the wind. He proved to be one of their angakkut, his
name was Ajukutoog, one of the mighty ones. He was also noted for
having repeatedly been pilot to the ship when it was to enter the har-
bour. Now he had passed the other kaiak-men in the pack, they were
still on their way to the shore. He himself had hurried out to the ship
in virtue of his office. He calmly went up to the captain and standing
before him, looking him up and down, he flung at him in his East
Greenland dialect: “What sort of a captain are you? Here we come
out to you in our small wretched kaiaks made of skin, manceuvring
through the pack, while you with your big ship dare not approach
land. You are no great captain!”’ The captain I am sure did not under-
stand what Ajukutooq was saying to him, but the boy soon translated
it. In the meanwhile the angakok lost no time in mounting the bridge
(fig. 153). He at once took command of everything, the captain, the
sailors, the passengers, the pack. And lo, a marvel! The ice opened,
we found a lane, ten miles long, through the drifting pack, and near
land there was plenty of open water. At noon the Godthab cast anchor

1 Illustrations of these kaiaking ice breakers, scenes from our waiting time out-
side the entrance to our destination are seen in fig.14 (p. 155), figs. 34—35
(p. 222), and fig. 44 (p. 244).

574 W. THALBITzeR.

in a small round inlet forming a natural harbour and named Taseelaq
(W. Gr. Tisiussaq), ‘the lake-like bay’.

This was the safe harbour where the colony was established in
1894; now it is the centre of trade and human traffic on this coast.

Ajukutoog received his fee for his services as pilot, and had besides
established more firmly his reputation as a great angakok?.

He was soon to become one of my best sources in my study of
his countrymen’s faith, traditions, and customs.

* Illustrations fig. 13 (p.154), fig.83 (p. 339), same as Atakak. First Part fig.17 (p.31).

Fig. 153. The angakok Ajukulooqg on the bridge piloting our ship to the colony
through the drifting pack. (Cf. figs. 14, 43—44 and 34—35. September 7, 1905.
W. Thalbitzer phot.)

Fig. 154. The “Godthab”, the only ship visiting the colony every year, which took

us to the place in 1905. Here seen riding at anchor in the harbour. (September 8,
1905. W. Thalbitzer phot.).

Fig. 155. The colony Angmagssalik (pronounced in WGr. Ammassalik, EGr. Am-
mattalik), as it was twelwe years after its foundation. The timber church, which
is seen below the house of the manager, had just been sent up in the ship, was
still unpainted and was not consecrated until the year after our return from East

Greenland. (November 5, 1905. W. T. phot.).

156. The river falling into the harbour just frozen. It supplied the inhabitants

with water all the year round, under a cover of deep snow in the winter.—Yellow
dandelion and dark blue violets grew on its grassy slopes in the summer. (No-
vember 14, 1905. W-.T. phot.).

Fig. 157. The house of the catechist, Henrik Lund and his wife are seen at the

entrance. (November 1906. W.T. phot.).

Fig. 158. Our house covered with snow after a winter storm. Old Ukulliaq
in the foreground (seen as a young man in First Part, fig. 40). (April 9,
1906. W. T. phot.).

“(youd “LM ‘COG SPL 4equioAoN) paoly bessoasey, pur Auopoo ayy Jo MOA “GET “SI

INTRODUCTION. CULTURE WAVES

Since 1923, when the First Half-Volume of this book appeared,
our knowledge of the Eskimos, as well as of the other arctic peoples
of the globe, has been to some extent enlarged. More light has been
thrown on the language and culture of the Finnish-Ugrian peoples;
with increasing clearness we see a connection between the northern
Eurasian cultures and the Oriental-Siberian peoples, consisting especi-
ally in ethnographic and religio-ideal parallels which in many instances
can be traced southward and westward into Asia, partly along the
Pacific coast, partly to the very heart of the continent. But below these
manifestations of a wide coherence, due especially to the migration of
technical loans and ideas, lie, deeper down, the physico-anthropological
and linguistic distinctions between the groups.

For purposes of comparison these peoples: Samoyede, Yakut
(Turkish branch), Tunguse, Yukaghir, Chukchi, Koryak, Itelm, Gilyak,
Ainu, and several Amur River groups must on geographical grounds
be considered in connection with the northern American peoples:
Eskimo, Aleut, Tinné, Eyak, and Thlingit ete. All these groups, linked
together in their present geographical situation, speak each its own
language, and Eskimo does not seem to be nearly related to any of
them. The attempts occasionally made to show closer affinities between
Eskimo and one or the other of these tongues have not resulted in the
final establishment of any true relationship, except perhaps on one
point. The Aleut language without doubt contains a substratum of
Eskimo, but it only appears distinctly in some few details, especially
in certain morphological criteria; the dual and plural endings, certain
case-endings, and a small number of words. The great remainder of
the Aleut language seems to be unconnected with Eskimo. These
languages may be likened to a pair of children, each of its own root,
that have been brought together. Hence the resemblance between
Eskimo and Aleut is rather superficial, and the idea of an original
relationship does not appear to be confirmed on closer study.

There is more of it between Koryak and Eskimo. These peoples

576 W. THALBITZER.

have a great many myths and a few cult customs in common, for
instance the cult of the deity Big-Raven', though perhaps this was a
late transfer to the Alaskan Eskimos, the Chukchi being the inter-
mediate link. But certain elements in the language testify to an earlier
fairly intimate contact.

In Koryak a large number of verbs end in -pok, -vok, or -tok
according to Ignac Radlinsky*, e. g. apavok ‘haurire’, akagipok ‘fati-
gare’, alvapok ‘claudere’, aitatok ‘sequi, expellere’, endings showing a
striking resemblance to Eskimo verbs. Many nouns, too, have a curious
Eskimo character in Koryak, e. g. motkon ‘adeps’ (blubber), aggagkok
‘ad deum, deo’, evik ‘liltum Kamtschaticum’ (cf. Eskimo ivik ‘leaf of
grass’), yayarit ‘tympanum’ cf. the Eskimo iayak or iajak (P. Egede
and Fabricius)’, E. Greenl. jajaq “drum (tambourin)’ in the holy
language of the angakok. In the latter cases we may be concerned
with old loan words from Koryak to Eskimo. In Esk. niviaq (rare)
denotes an unmarried woman, from which is derived niviarsiag (com-
mon) ‘virgin’, literally an ‘acquired or raped (-siaq) niviaq’; in Koryak
nevek is a term for ‘daughter’, navajpok ‘virgo adulta’; neve(k) is a
word also known in Samoyede. Niviag, however, is most likely an
original Eskimo word, since it is comparable to primitive verbal stems
in Eskimo.

Radlinsky’s Vocabulary, however, leaves an impression very dif-
ferent from Steller’s earlier and Bogoras’ later specimens of Koryak.
According to Bogoras this language consists of four branches and his
description is chiefly based on the western branch near the Penshina
Bay, in part also on the Kamchatka branch. But Radlinsky’s vocabulary
is designated as NE Koryak, i. e. probably from the Maritime Koryaks
who are called Kerek and inhabit the coast north of Kamchatka between
Cape Anannon and Cape Navarin. This group reaches northward up
to the vicinity of the Asiatic Eskimos on Bering Strait and might be of
much interest by way of comparison but unfortunately Bogoras has
taken very little notice of the Kerek dialect in his grammatical sketch
of the NE Siberian languages. His own comparisons have led him to
the conclusion that the languages of the Chukchi, the Koryak and the
Kamchadals are but members of one great linguistic family. Only the
Kerek dialect is stamped by a lot of Eskimo-like traits in its words

‘ See especially Waldemar Jochelson, The Mythology of the Koryak (AA.n.s. vol. 6)
1904, and The Koryak (New York 1908).

Ignacy Radlinsky: Slowniki Narzeczy Ludéw Kamezackich, ze zbiordw Prof.
B. Dybowskiego (no. V, Koryaké6w) w Krakowic 1891—1894. I cite from his Latin

re

translations.
Paul Egede, Diclionarium Grenlandico-Danico-Latinum, Hafnia 1750 (p. 34); Otto
Fabricius, Den Grenlandske Ordbog, Kjobenhavyn 1804 (p. 88).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 577

and word-endings, but all the same I have not succeeded in discovering
more than two or three pairs which show an apparent Kerek-Eskimo
congruity. Nearly all of the seemingly parallel forms (e.g. pivok) bear
greatly deviating meanings. I think I have made a careful investigation
but without finding any proofs of a genetic connection.

I append a small selection of samples from my comparative
research work which will show both resemblances and discrepancies.

And if it is difficult to find as much as two or three pairs of stems
which might reveal a relationship the same is true of the Koryak and
Chukchi grammars compared with Eskimo: there are only a very few
indications of an old connection. But a few such there are. E. g.
Bogoras states that in Chukchi a subjective form of the noun is found
as against an absolute one and that it is used not only as a genitive,
but as the subject of an actually transitive verb! (in Esk. Peelip
takuwaa P. sees him). And further the absolute form of the noun is
used to express the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of
a transitive one. Exactly as in Eskimo. In Koryak, too, some of the
Imperative and “‘Subjunctive’”’ (i. e. Optative) endings bear a certain
resemblance to the Eskimo Imperative (Optative) suffixes, e.g. the
2. per. plur. endings in -ldtik (object ‘you’)* remind one of several
endings in the Eskimo Imperative-Optative (-ittk, -lavtik, -lata). It
would seem as if this formative la- also were the same in both systems,
but Bogoras considers the Kor. -la- as a plural mark whereas the Esk.
has decidedly an optional meaning. Examples:

Koryak imperative Eskimo imperative

(BoGoras) Alaska (Barnum) Greenland

sing. gimlawe dance! | 2.p. pe do! qiligit dance!
» qgdlqathigoaway. || ,, ye [a‘ji] go! peril go (sing.) away!
plur. gantotik go ye out- | plur. peche you do! perilse (you) go away!
side. dual. pelak you two do!
» qalgalalik go away. » ptkkahtakdoquick- | peritik you (two) go
l ly! away!
1.p. minilqalamik let us | 1. p. pikkalhta letus do! | pe'rianuk let us (two) go!
go! | 3.p. pilet let them do! pe'riata let us go!

The plural of nouns is often formed by -f in Chukchi (and, partially
at least, in southern Kamchatka-Kamchadal)* as in Eskimo where the
rule is without any exception. In Koryak the plural mark is either -t
or -u (nawakku daughters).

1 Bogoras, Chukchee (in Handbook pp. 686, 697 and 779—780).
® Plural and dual in -fik, Bogoras pp. 742 and 753
® Bogoras pp. 694—696.

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TER] Ulfseg ‘ayonuds uayosipupjuosb sap yryoWUYIH YpruUyos

ul

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(laejouns yoy,)pfoa)
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snudoyxe ‘snuolpe 1bun)
OSSIABDDIS yoandy}
aieo01s yoandod
orvusnd ‘aae}t99 yoapnyl
snuevdd¢9 ‘oreu fnur

pbanafijr “\d
stped eyuryd wihfin
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Joqie ‘ynojn
balou “|d
suow faufou

eITy Yyaaau
sntoxn ulaau
41OXn upaIU

580 W. THALBITZER.

All in all, there is only a minimum of evidence for a relationship
between Eskimo and these East Siberian languages. There is a very
distant connection if any. The Eskimoid traits in the Kerek words
(especially verb endings) leave an enigmatical impression and may
testify to an ethnic hybridism, of very uncertain date.

The most recent attempts to draw parallels between Eskimo and
Finnish-Ugrian, by A. Sauvaceor, and between Eskimo and Indo-
European, by C. C. UnHLENBECcK, do not seem to me convincing. Both
authors appear to fail in their knowledge of the etymology of Eskimo
vocables. Nevertheless, I must admit that there remain some few
examples for the sake of which there might be good reason to devote
some attention and interest to the possibilities brought to light.

If we disregard the relationship of the languages, which is still
obscure, it is clear enough that these North-Asiatic-Amerind peoples
are upholders of a common shamanism, which has presumably spread
to them, or has followed them on their migrations from more southerly
regions. In this cult-form I see a type which posits a Supreme Being
above, in the sky or air, usually also another or some few below, in
the interior of the earth or the ocean, but which leaves the worship of
these supreme powers to well-trained priests endowed with a visionary
faculty. These shaman priests are each of them assisted by familiar
spirits, with whom they commune in secret or more often at religious
festivals, using the shaman drum, amidst singing and dancing by the
congregation present. Shamanism further implies a system recognising
a soul (or rather: souls) within each human being, spirits in nature,
in rivers, rocks, human-like stones etc., and tabu in the community.
Thus the possibility emerges of an interplay between the individual
and the spiritual community within the larger world of nature, an inter-
action which it is to the interest of the Supreme Deity to uphold. Sickness
and distress in the world originate from individuals infringing this
order by the breach of tabus, or of custom and usage, or they are
caused by the arbitrary use of hostile magie, which brings down evil
on one or many in the neighbourhood. These and several similar
conceptions are peculiar to the Siberian form of shamanism which
has been transmitted to the Eskimos and the northern Indian tribes.
I conjecture that it is derived from Central Asia, e. g. from Mongols
or Turks (to mention well-known peoples), having probably arisen
under the influence of still more southerly forms of belief and cult in
the vicinity of Tibet, India, or perhaps even Mesopotamia. The origin
of Asiatic shamanism must date back to remote ages. Some of the
earliest and nearest representatives of this world-embracing cult are
probably to be found in the cave dwellers of western Europe, some of
the later in the vélvur, seidkonur and seid-men of the vikings (called

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 581

witches and sorcerers in the Middle Ages), and the noietes (also, but
inaccurately, written noaide) of the Lapps.

This form of cult, shamanism, is no doubt a secondary historical
phenomenon among all these people — secondary to a pre-shamanistic
state of matters. We know shamanism best in the Eskimo angakok
form. I have treated the subject in papers written in Danish, German,
and English; and in the German edition! I have intimated that the
Eskimo angakkoq’s familiar spirit, called in West Eskimo (in the
north) ¢ungra, in Greenlandish torngaq or tornaq, in South-Alaskan
tunera-, perhaps has its name directly from one of the well-known
sky- or fire-deities in Siberia; indeed, it may be recognised as far as
Europe in the name of our thunder or sky god. Yakut Tanara, Mongol-
Buryat Tengeri, Old Turkish Tengri are evidently variants of the same
migrant god-name which in O. English obtained the form Thunar, in
O. German Thonar, O. Keltic Tanarus, in the Scandinavian North con-
tracted to Thorr, an old sky god who produces the thunder (Thérs
dyn) when he travels over the sky*. There is nothing unlikely in this
conjecture; it is a hypothesis which is fairly probable if we consider
that shamanism in the just described form has left traces in Old Seand-
inavian, perhaps even throughout Ancient European culture, spreading
world-wide, like other earlier or later religions ®.

Among the Eskimos shamanism may have been introduced from
Asia in early times*. I imagine that it met and absorbed an earlier,

* Die kultischen Gottheiten der Eskimos. Archiv fir Religionswissenschaft. XXVI
(Leipzig, Berlin 1928). In Danish, Copenhagen 1926; briefly mentioned in English
at the 12th Americanist Congress at Rome 1926 (printed Roma 1928).

Cf. my paper, German edition (only in this), pp. 422—423. — A remarkable
parallel is mentioned by G. Sandschejew in his paper, Weltanschauung und
Schamanismus der Alaren-Burjaten (Anthropos, 1928). These Mongol Buryat be-
lieve in a deity of heaven called Tengri, who was originally identical with the blue
sky itself, but further deified as Esege-Malay-Tengri. In the course of time he
has become the lord of a great many tengris; thus the westerly heaven is the
abode of 55 “white” tengris. He has also nine sons and nine daughters. Jasal-
Sagan-Tengri is a great hunter of evil spirits, such as persecute the souls of
men. He slays his victims with fiery arrows while driving in a huge car, the
rattling of which we hear as thunder (leyri-in dun), see 1.c. pp. 974—976.

I find support for the Central and Southern Asiatic influence referred to above
both in the NE and the SW, in the following facts. Tokharic uses the word
shaman about ‘a monk’ (translated from the Sanskr. bhikshis); Sumerian has
Dingir about their god (for this information I am indebted to Professor Holger
Pedersen) and the Buryat have their name Tengri from Sogdic, see G. Sandsche-
jew, in Anthropos, vol. 23 (Wien 1928) p. 976.

Cc)

* J. Stadling, Shamanismen i Norra Asien (1912). — M. A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal
Siberia (1914). — V.Gronbech, Primiliv Religion (1915, and 1919). — A. Irving
Hallowell, Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere (1926). — Waldemar

Jochelson, Peoples of Asiatic Russia (1928). — A. Gahs, Kopf-, Schddel- und Lang-
knochenopfer bet Rentiervélkern (1928).
XL. 38

582 W. THALBITZER.

more primitive cult, congenial with the habits of roaming hunters and
associated with the belief in: an interrelationship or comradeship with
the animals hunted; in magic prayers, a lot of which have the effect
of attracting or propitiating the dangerous wild animals; in sacrifices
to the dead animals, especially the bear and the large seals; in amulets
and fetishes, serving partly to ensure security from the perils of life,
partly to attack one’s enemies. A good deal more might be said about
this primitive pre-shamanistic faith, but I shall refrain from doing so
here. I think it likely that the Eskimo sila idea, Sila the deity of the
air and the weather (and in addition “‘the spirit of personal strength’’)
as well as the Eskimo qila idea, associated with the more primitive
form of invocation of an unknown nature spirit, both belong to the
pre-shamanistic stage. | have previously developed this idea in more
detail in a lecture I delivered at Oslo (Norway) in 1916, and with
some additions in English at the Americanist Congress at Rio Janeiro
in 1922. Qila is an underground spirit (a spirit of ‘expectation’ ?)
privately attached to the expert, most often female, who solicits the
answers of the spirit by lifting (i. e. weighing) the head of a medium.
Sila is an ancient air god peculiar to the Eskimos and common to all
of them—from those living in the extreme southwest on Kadiak Island
to the east coast of Greenland, worshipped everywhere in a living faith,
but especially known from the primitive Central Eskimos west of
Hudson Bayt. In the later shamanistic period, when two new deities
occupied the Eskimo mind, Sila fell somewhat into the background.

The two new deities were the Moon-god and the Sea-woman,
presumably both introduced from Asia across Bering Strait, but each
from its own part of the world. And it must not be imagined that the
two deities know each other or that they have anything to do with
-ach other. They function independently of each other in Eskimo
mythology. The idea of the sea-woman, the world house-wife, who
lives in her large house at the bottom of the sea, recurs, though in
an obscured form, in Chukchi mythology, and in a still vaguer form
among the maritime Koryak; but it is fairly clear on the coast of
northern Siberia among the Samoyedes near the mouth of the river
Obj. There she is called the ruling spirit of the sea, who is attached
according to Donner*—she rules over

to the navel of the earth; there

On Sila in these regions see Jennes, Copper Eskimos (1922) pp. 179 and 189;
‘and Knud Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Caribou Eskimos (1930) pp. 48—
52, 56; — of the Hudson Bay Eskimos (1930) pp. 71—72: — of the Copper
Eskimos (1932) pp. 22—23; 31—23; 35—37; The Netsilik Eskimos (1931) pp. 229—
230. Cf. Pat. W. Schmidt, Ursprung der Goltesidee vol. II] (1931) pp. 496—509;
vol. VI (1935) pp. 561—564.
’ K. Donner, Bei den Samojeden, Stuttgart 1926.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 583

the water spirits, and controls human births and deaths. But as the
Greenlanders’ ideas of their shamans’ spirit flight to the sea-woman
and their business with her—to offer sacrifice and propitiate her—
coincides still more closely with the Turkish Altai Siberian people’s
gam (or kam)’s journeys to Erlik, the god of the underworld, according
to Potanin’s description, I infer that the common origin of this cult
is in Central Asia. The Eskimos have evidently received it directly
from the heart of Asia. The Greenland Eskimo’s many particulars of
the angakkuts’ journeys to the mistress of the sea, of the obstacles
encountered on the way, the deity’s body-guard of dogs, the hair-thin
bridge and the ever-rolling wheel the angakkoq has to pass before he
can come into the presence of the wrathful sea-woman, show a striking
agreement with the beliefs of the Altai people. The idea of the wheel
especially is remarkable among the Eskimos, even though it is ever
so rudely conceived without spokes or a ring, since every form of a
wheel-like element was otherwise quite foreign to the people.

Sila (Silam tnua “‘the air its spirit’) is probably the earliest Eskimo
form of a supreme god, a power raised above the numerous spirits
inhabiting nature. She (or he) is strongly reminiscent of the weather
god Num of the Samoyedes! and of the supreme deity Pon of the
Yukaghir’. To the Reindeer Eskimos her power consists in controlling
men’s treatment of the killed reindeer and punishing transgressions of
the rules of tabu’. In early Greenland, as late as the period depicted
to us by Hans Egede and his son (the 18th century), the air god Sila
was regarded as the stern controller who punishes human. trans-
gressions, and amongst other things is offended at presumptuous noises,
hammer-strokes or any other loud noise, on the holy days following
a death. “The air is angered” (qinarpoqg) and raises a gale. In the
Greenlandish myth Sila is also invoked as “‘the lord of strength’. The
orphan boy (Kaasashsuk) goes into the mountain deserts and calls on
the god to help him to acquire the strength of a giant. Among the
Kaniagmiut of southern Alaska, according to Pinart*, the kaiak-man,
when in distress at sea, calls upon the ancient deity named in the

Cf. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia (Oxford 1914) p. 289. W. Jochelson, The Yukaghir
(JN Pacif. Exp. Vol. 9, no. 2, p. 140, Leiden 1924).

See Jochelson. I may add that “air and wind gods” are also mentioned from the
Iroquian Indians (Onondaga, cf. I. N.B. Hewitt in RBAE vol. 45, pp. 4 and 6),
the Mexicans and other Indian peoples. Knud Rasmussen, /ntfellectual Culture
of the Copper Eskimos (1930) p. 36; Fra Grenland til Stillehavet (1925) vol. I,
pp- 177—178; Rasmussens Thulefart. Zwei Jahre im Schlitten durch unerforschtes
Eskimoland (Frankfurt a. M. 1926) p. 142. — Sila und Pinga seem to mean the
same (spirit of the air); pinga is a demonstrative pronoun., “the one up there”.
Knud Rasmussen (1930) p. 50.

‘ A.L. Pinart (Paris 1873).

re)

38*

584 W. THALBITZER.

local dialect hlam-tshua, two words identical with Central Eskimo
hilam-inua. Hilam corresponds to Greenlandish silap (-p genetive) and
tshua is called yua about Bering Strait, corresponding to Greenlandish
inua “its spirit’, from inuk, man or spirit. Thus Gr. silap inua = Alaska
hlam tshua. But in southern Alaska the Eskimos are influenced by
the mythology of the neighbouring Thlingit, whose chief deity is Big-
Raven; and the same native Kaniagmio (of Eskimo nationality) who
when in distress at sea calls upon the Hla (Sila) of the weather and
the air, will in daily life invoke Big Raven. The name of the latter
in the Thlingit language is Kanhlaxpak, from kanhlak ‘raven’ and -pak’.

The whole Eskimo population of Alaska has in the course of time
not only acquired a knowledge of Big-Raven as the heavengod, or
rather as the son of an older heavenly being, but also worship him at
periodical festivals. Big-Raven, Esk. Tulukaugoq, is to be regarded as
the cultural hero, descended from heaven, who institutes all benefits,
game animals and institutions which mankind is proud to possess and
on which their existence depends. This cult is common to the Thlingit
people south of Alaska, the Chukchi, and the Koryak in the extreme
north-east of Asia.

Asiatic shamanism reaches its climax in this Raven mythology
and cult. To the Koryak Big-Raven is “‘the first man’’. He was sent
down by their “Supreme Being” (also called The One-on-High, or
Dawn), in the shape of a superhuman shaman to reorganise the human
community. After carrying out his important task in life, Big-Raven
returned to “‘his abode in the zenith’’*. To the Chukchi he was the
companion and assistant of the creator of the world, the “‘mighty grand-
father’. To the Alaskan Eskimos he was the same. The latter possess
a detailed cosmogony, noted down at the close of last century by
E. W. Nelson®. According to the Eskimo Bible the Raven was the
creator of the first heaven-folk, as well as of the animals and men
(inuit) of this world. Sacrifice is still offered to the raven in the tundras
of Alaska, the worshipper expecting in return fine weather for the hunt.
The heavenly galaxy is called “‘the trail of the Raven’s snow-shoes’’?.
According to the myth all ravens were originally white.

A Greenlandish song tells us how the raven was painted black by
an Arctic loon. All knowledge of the Raven mythology and Raven cult,
however, comes—eastwards—to an end at Mackenzie River. The eastern
Eskimos did not worship the raven as a deity.

* kanhlak might be identical with Eskimo (Greenl.) kagdleq (kaLteq), which means
thunder. Kanhlak, Big-Raven, would then mean the Big Thunderer.

* W. Jochelson, The Mythology of the Koryak (1904).

* E,W. Nelson, The Eskimo about Bering Strait (1899) p. 452 ff.

* F. Barnum (1901) p. 369. Nelson, l.c. pp. 449 and 499, foot-note.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 585

Big Raven is doubtless the latest element in the religious history
of the Inuit people. They adopted it as it filtered in from their neigh-
bours on the Pacific coast and in Siberia. The common Eskimo ideas
of a moon-god and the sea-woman must be of earlier date than the
belief in the raven. Both these supreme gods are worshipped by the
Eskimos from East Greenland to Bering Strait, although the cult of
the sea-woman seems to be obscured in Alaska where the moon appears
to have partially taken over her functions. Both decidedly belong to
shamanism. In this connection several problems arise, as for instance:
By what route has the cult of the moon reached the Inuit (Eskimos)?
Where has the old myth taken shape which refers to the moon and
the sun as a brother and sister who met each other in the dark during
a light-extinguishing game in the men’s house or festival house (qashse)+?
And how is the same myth connected with the Thlingit myth about
Jelkh, their name for Big-Raven (Kanhlaxpak), who in their opinion
too is a brother of the sun, that is to say, himself identical with the
moon? According to the Thlingit belief the moon is a thunder god
who rose out of the sea and chased his sister down into it, where she
became the ruler of the sea animals forever. Jelkh, the raven, who
had hitherto been white, then turned black?.

The Inuit people, whose rationalistic sense often appears, have
several etiological myths whose explanations point in other directions
than the corresponding ones among the neighbouring groups. The flight
of the sun into the sky is explained by them in their national winter
cult in the gashse. During the flight her brother, or rather ‘‘elder
brother’’ as the name of the moon means, became her lover and
pursued her into the sky with the sooty marks of her fingers on his
body—both holding high in their hands torches of flaming moss like
that used at the lighting of the lamps in the huts. This is the adaptation
of the myth to Arctic conditions.—The origin of the sea-woman and
the marine animals is also explained in a peculiar and characteristic
way by the Eskimos*. Another and probably older chapter concerns
the transmigration through animals of a human soul, which is at last
reborn in his mother and receives his original name at birth; among
the eastern Greenlanders this is the subject of the myth about Niwaaniaq
(the name denotes the beat of the seal’s tail as it dives down from
the surface), in its fundamental idea identical with similar myths

A similar myth about the sun and moon is recorded from Australia. Martin P.
Nilsson, Primitiv Religion (1911) p. 194.

2 A. Krause (1885) p-. 268, cf. 259 and 261.

The myths in question are to be found in the First Half-Volume of this work
pp- 296—403.

586 W. THALBITZER.

recorded from Cape York, Baffin Land, and Alaskat. Among the
Alaskan Eskimos this motive has the character of a myth explaining
the origin of their culture. The idea of the migrating soul is ancient
and known from distant regions, but here it has been naturalised, i. e.
Eskimoicised. In Greenland especially it has assumed a didactic form
showing the migration of the human soul and the Eskimo name through
the world of nature (i. e. the animals) before the soul and the name
reach their common final abode in the child of a human mother.
One of the earliest myths of the Inuit is doubtless that of the origin
of their own and the other nations by the marriage of Woman and the
Dog’. I have called attention to the wide diffusion of this myth, amongst
others the Ainu have a similar legend of their own origin. But there
is a conspicuous difference. In the Eskimo myth the woman who
becomes the first ancestress of the “‘puppies’’, lives in the same house
as her mighty father, and in her arrogance refuses all suitors until at
length she has to yield to her angry father’s will and marry the dog
coming from outside. In the Ainu myth, on the other hand, a high-
born woman comes sailing to their land and there finds the swimming
dog. If inuk (plur. inuit) is conceived to be derived from Japanese
inu ‘a dog’, more especially ‘a bitch’, the name ainu might be formed
after Japanese oinu ‘a he-dog’. As is well known, the Ainu came from
Japan and were driven northward by the Japanese*. The Eskimos,
if we consider that they are born with the “Mongolian spot” (of pig-
ment) like the Japanese, might be supposed to have obtained a name
from the language of the Japanese which denoted their original position
within (or without?) the Japanese realm. Jnuit “the bitches’??? Whether
these names of people are primary or secondary in relation to the
Japanese words is another matter. This theme: a woman married to
a dog (or some other animal) as the first ancestress of a litter of puppies
(or other animals) and of various nations has, as we know from
Koppers’ and Freda Kretschmar’s later investigations, proved to be so
remarkably widely diffused in almost all parts of the world that it
must belong to the earliest ideas and conceptions of mankind con-

* Ibid. pp. 408—413. Cf. concerning all the myths mentioned here my Kullischen
Gottheilen (1928) pp. 393, 411, 419, 426.

First Half-Vol. p. 389 ff. The subject has later been taken up for fuller treatment
by Wilh. Koppers (1930) and by Freda Kretschmar (1938). Koppers already has

re)

been able to place this “dog-theme” in a larger connection within the Eastern
‘ Asiatic and Amerind area.
G. Montandon (La Civilisation Ainou et les cultures arcliques. Paris 1937, p. 10)
thinks himself justified in maintaining that Ainou (thus spelled by him) originally
meant ‘human beings’, but that the Japanese when they drove them out of

Japan, called them aino ‘sons of dog’, more fully explained as ‘fils de croisement

de la femme et du chien’.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 587

cerning “‘the first men’’. If the Japanese called the Eskimos dogs (or
bitches), it may have been a term of abuse or a reminiscence of an
ancient belief or myth. The expelled and despised people may have
adopted this name for themselves without really understanding the
meaning of it, but how? The word has a deep and wide meaning in
Eskimo: it forms the stem not only of the word inuk “human being’,
especially Eskimo, but of the verb ‘to live’ (to be tnuk: tnouwoq), and
of a number of its derivates (nouns and verbs). Thus the problem is
still rather complicated. Is the resemblance referred to due to accident?
Or is the people’s name derived from the Japanese word tnu? Or
the Japanese word inu ‘dog’ derived from the Eskimo? The question
must be left open.—Among not a few peoples we find the same tale
with the variation that the woman marries a bear or a tiger (this latter
among the Golds, of the Amur river, their offspring being birds, human
beings, spirits, who spread all over the world)’.

Since 1916 the excavation of ruins and graves has been carried
on by many different archaeologists, Danish as well as American, The
distribution of the Eskimos in earlier times as recorded by travellers,
is seen on my map of 19012; but further insight has been added to
our knowledge of the Eskimo settlements on the Northern continent
since then. In some parts of the vast area the excavations have been
pretty thorough, in Greenland especially they have been systematically
planned to include the supposed ancient main settlements. At Point
Barrow, too, as also on St. Lawrence and other islands near Bering
Strait, the excavations have been carried down to the deeper strata
though locally rather limited. But everywhere these scattered excava-
tions, viewed in relation to the large areas not yet investigated, have
the character of random samples. As yet they far from exhaust the
possibilities of fresh surprises in the intermediate areas. A deficiency
from which they all suffer is the small attention paid to festival- and
assembly-houses (gashse). No archaeologist seems to have given a
thought to these accessories of the setthements, although they are (or
were) peculiar in an architectural respect and socially of signal impor-
tance. They are often mentioned in the works of travelling ethno-
graphers. I have myself pointed out some few examples hitherto
unknown in Greenland (in what follows in chapt. IV).

As far as the common habitations are concerned we are in need
of a general view of the grouping and the local distribution of the

1 W. Grube, “Das Schamanentum bei den Golden”. — Globus, Vol. 71 (No. 6.
legend 4).
> MoG 31 (1904), end of the book.

588 W. THALBITZER.

types. We must reckon with large lacunae on account of the rises and
subsidences of the land on these northern coasts, not to speak of the
violent climatic changes which destroy much.

A mere accident gave Couiins the clue to the deepest and oldest
strata at Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. From inner criteria of the
uncovered layers he was able to point out a plausible series of stages
in the local development of the Old Bering Sea Culture. We may
perhaps infer the age of the deepest layer when we consider that this
culture must be regarded as older than the Thule culture, the ruins
of which are situated farther north. The Bering Sea Culture population,
who judging by the nature of their implements must have been the
same kind of people as the propagators of the Thule culture, may
easily have flourished 2000 years ago’. Therkel Mathiassen has demon-
strated traces of the Thule culture from the north-east coast of the
Chukchi Peninsula (in the west) right over to northeastern Greenland,
the northernmost chain of ruins found on the globe. He explains the
route of the Thule Eskimos from Bering Strait, perhaps even from
Koliushin Bay, to Smith Sound, where the Inuit kalaalhlit |kalaawvit],
the ancestors of the Greenland Eskimos, may be supposed to have
crossed over to Greenland about a thousand years ago. The migration to
this place from Bering Strait need not have taken long for a people
accustomed to travelling, but there is no reason to believe that the
Inuit hurried. These northern tracts were uninhabited, and for that
reason all the more rich in game. H. P. Steensby surmised that the
Eskimos on the islands north of Hudson Bay (from Melville Peninsula)
had discovered Greenland by hunting musk oxen and following the
routes of these animals northward. The musk oxen no doubt discovered
Greenland before man did.

On the other hand, Greenland is, as TH. MATHIASSEN says, a cul-
de-sac. The migrations of the people in the interior of Greenland and
the local adaptation of the Eskimo culture will hardly be of importance
for the history of the Eskimos outside Greenland, though this is not
entirely excluded. At any rate, some excavation results from Point
Barrow (the Birnik harpoon type in the Van Valin Collection) have
induced Collins to suggest that a reflux might have taken place of
objects belonging to the Thule culture from the eastern regions (hence
possibly from Greenland) to Point Barrow. For on the coast round
this point and on the islands (Prince of Wales, Diomede) traces have
been ‘found (especially by Jenness) of Thule culture types of rather
a late character*. Collins therefore assigns an eastern provenance

" Th. Mathiassen, MoG 118 (1936) p. 128. D. Jenness (1933) p. 387.
* After the appearance of this possibility of an ancient reflux in the direction
east—west, I of course retract my doubts of 1909 (MoG 28) p. 336 concerning the

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 589

to these types, while Mathiassen points to an immigration from
Siberia.

Th. Mathiassen has succeeded in giving us a summary of the trans-
formation of the technical culture of the arctic immigrants during their
slow southward movement along the coasts of Greenland. The chief
data are:

Immigration across Smith Sound about the year 900 A.D.

The first Greenland Eskimos stayed for a long time in the Cape
York district near Thule. This is evidenced by Comer’s Midden, one
of the most considerable ruined setthements in Greenland (first ran-
sacked by Wissler!). This formation is typical of the Thule culture.

1200—1300 A.D. Farther south on the west coast, the Inugsuk
culture (Upernawik), a slightly modified Thule culture.

1300—1400 A.D. Far to the south, down in the Norsemen’s colonies
(the Godthaab and Julianehaab districts), Thule culture with not a
few modifications.

1350—1500 A.D. Immediately after the Norsemen’s colonies had
been overrun, a group of Eskimos rounded Cape Farewell and wan-
dered up along the east coast which gradually became populated as
far as Ammattalik, and even farther north.

1600—1700 A.D. West coast culture propagated from the south
along the east coast as far as Clavering Island (74° N.), perhaps even
right up to the region of Danmarkshavn. This immigration up along
the east coast seems to have taken place in two stages: according to
Helge Larsen’s excavations on Clavering Island the first stage, an almost
pure Inugsuk culture, was in the 16th century, the second stage about
1650—1850. The last stage is a mixed culture, Inugsuk from the south,
Thule from the north; the latter group “immigrated north about
Greenland”.

1600—1700 A.D. Immigration eastward round the north of Green-
land which has left traces in some few winter houses and considerably
more tent places on the northern side, and a fair number of house
ruins in the northernmost part of the east coast. This high-arctic and
north-eastern colonization in East Greenland (now extinct) presents
itself with an admixture of many local innovations.

The northern route to the east coast—the shortest stretch of the

correspondences previously noted by Ryder between certain forms of implements
from the ruins in Scoresby Sound, E. Greenland, and from Pt. Barrow in Alaska.
These correspondences already then conjectured (cf. Ryder 1895) may now even
be said to be interesting and plausible.

Clark Wissler, Archaeology of the Polar Eskimo, AMNH, 22, N.Y. 1918.
Mathiassen (1936) pp. 122—123. Helge Larsen, Dedemandsbuglen, An Eskimo
Settlement on Clavering Island (1934).

ry

590 W. THALBITZER.

Eskimo emigration via Smith Sound or northward from Kane Basin
to Independence Fjord and the Nordostrunding—could only be proved
by archaeological findings, that is to say, by the discovery of the northern-
most regions of Greenland and of ruins north or south of Peary Land?.
But already in the last century both Rink and Holm had had this
idea, giving proofs of another kind?. After my examination of the
Amdrup Collection from the east coast I arrived at the same result
and formed my theory of a “‘north-easterly group” of Eskimos in
Greenland®. For several reasons I cannot quite abandon the idea that
both language and technique (implements, methods of hunting, folklore
and so forth) of the Ammassalik Eskimos contain elements from this
north-eastern culture which give evidence of a direct immigration from
the north. When even the most recent archaeologists consider it proved
that the ancestors of the Ammassalik people have been able to travel
northward along this coast right up to 74° N., I cannot see why it
should not have been possible too for them to travel the same way
Finally, as regards the date
of the first settlement of Greenland by Eskimos, it would seem strange

southward, which is the easier course.

that the archaeological criteria cannot fix this settlement at an earlier
date than the 16th century, seeing that several ancient writers mention
a certain part of Greenland’s east coast as inhabited, e.g. Bjorn
Einarson Jorsalafari in the 14th century, and Pining and Potthorst in
the 15th century.

Collins inclines to the inference that the earliest Eskimo culture
on American soil is found in Alaska; that ethnographically, if we take
into account the most typical implements, its earliest roots are to be
found in the Old World. Harpoon types closely resembling the oldest
Eskimo types are recorded from northern Norway, the Kola Peninsula
—and from the stone age of Japan*. Collins, too, accepts without
reserve the North Siberian origin of the Eskimo culture.

As will be seen, recent archaeological discoveries in all essentials
confirm my conclusions in the First Part of this work (1914), p. 717:

“ec

.... that the common Eskimo mother-group has at one time lived
to the west at the Bering Strait, coming originally from the coasts of
Siberia’.

‘ See also Th. Kornerup, Oversigt over Meddelelser om Granland 1876—1926 (Copen-
hagen 1926) pp. 75—77.

> G. Holm in MoG 10 (1888) pp. 153—154. See also First Part 711—712.

’ See my arguments in MoG (1909) pp. 337—343 and First Part (MoG 39) pp. 713—
714, ef. 730—732. See also GSAa (Gronlandske Selskabs arsskrift) for 1935 pp. 192—
194. Finally | may also refer to the new finds made in NE Greenland by Eigil
Knuth, see MoG vol. 127, no. 1.

* Th. Mathiassen, MoG 118, p. 129.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 591

My conclusion was then a result of an ethnographical investigation
occasioned by my publications on and of G. Holm’s and G. Amdrup’s
ethnographical collections from East Greenland. And the comparisons
I drew were especially induced by my study of Bogoras’, Jochelson’s,
Sirelius’, Solberg’s, and Stadling’s works as well as others!. The above-
cited passage from my argumentation has unfortunately been wrongly
quoted on several occasions—an error which has crept in from the
English translation of Steensby’s work?. Both Collins and Mathiassen
have taken the erroneous quotation from Steensby instead of quoting
correctly from the source itself, my work (see above). What I have
said and still maintain is this: I have had in mind the Siberian coast
just opposite Alaska as a way, a station on the way, which the earliest
Eskimos once followed, but without indicating whether they came by
the northern, eastern, western, or southern route. I have temporarily
stopped at the Asiatic side of Bering Strait without fixing on just that
coast as the first home of the Eskimos. We do not as yet know whether
their route ran from remoter regions in the direction south—north,
east—north, or east—west.

Collins’ comparative investigations have thrown fresh light on the
specific culture forms of the Eskimos. He arrives at the result that
the Old Bering Sea Culture has been one of several old coastal cultures
in northern Eurasia. He supposes the Eskimo culture to have originated
from a similar one which characterised the peoples who first followed
the rivers to the arctic coasts, and who in some place between the
Kara Sea and Bering Strait developed a culture which possessed the
same general features as that of the Eskimos. The unknown mother
culture originally came into existence between the mouths of Anadyr
and Kolyma. So far Collins.

The whole area around Bering Strait and the Okhotsk Sea shows
a kaleidoscopic picture of peoples which in the course of time have
penetrated to or gathered in these regions, perhaps first attracted by
the hunting there: the Chukchi, Yukaghir, Koryak, Itelm, Ainu—and
in the New World just opposite them the Eskimo, Aleut, Tinné (= Atha-
pask), Eyak, Thlingit. Nowadays not only the Bering Strait is taken
into account as a passage from Asia to America, but also the Aleutian
Islands are considered as a bridge between the continents. If the
Eskimos alone crossed the Bering Strait—and so far no archaeological

* Cf. also Murdoch, “On the Siberian Origin of some Customs of the Western
Eskimos’. Am. Anthropologist I, 1888.

* This error occurs in Steensby, The Origin of the Eskimo Culture. MoG 53
(Copenhagen 1916) pp. 59—60. He cites from a non-existent p. 917 (should be
p- 717): “to the west of the Bering Strait”, but I had “to the west ai the
Bering Strait” (etc.).

592 W. THALBITZER.

traces of other peoples have been found up here—it seems most reason-
able to suppose that the immigration of the Northern Indians took
place from the coast of Kamschatka via the Aleutian Islandst.—
Further, it is the fashion to designate the first-mentioned peoples as
paleasiatic, a rather unmeaning term, seeing that we know nothing
else about them except that their cultures resemble each other in certain
peculiarities as opposed to those of the Turkish Yakuts, Tunguse,
Mongols, Manchus, Japanese etc. If the first-mentioned palzarctic
peoples, e.g. the Chukchi, have expelled the Ancient Eskimos from
the outermost arctic peninsula, the Eskimos must be termed a pale-
asiatic people.

The science dealing with the rise of a new group of people
is as yet not greatly developed; we know virtually nothing. A
certain school has begun to graduate culture circles according to
age, a proceeding which has presumably only value as an experi-
ment. So far no one has succeeded in producing the formula of
the origin of any people, much less a general formula for use in
comparisons. Since nothing is known of the origin of the Eskimos
nor about the “beginnings” of other peoples, it is hazy talk to speak
of their age.

We can speak of certain periods or phases in the cultural mani-
festations of a people. The Eskimos may have had a pre-shamanistic
past before they obtained their angakkut and their supreme gods. We
are under the impression that the part of Asia that is most free from
shamanism and where pre-shamanistic conditions have survived the
longest is to be found on a line from the Kuriles to Formosa (to mention
only two points on a longer line). It strikes us that the idea of a “‘trans-
migration of souls” (the soul of Chunguthluk, the same elsewhere
called Awowang, Nawagijaq etc.) may have followed a northward
route not very far from the line above referred to; further, that the
belief in the moon-god belongs to a wide Central Asiatic belt
stretching from the south-west to the north-east; and that the idea of

a heaven-god of fire and light has run parallel with that of a “prince”
of the underworld, spreading fanlike northward to the west and
the east from a Central Asiatic group. Among the Eskimos the heaven
god cannot have been the sun, but must have been the moon-man.
His influence on the Eskimo mind out at the Bering Strait, on the
Asiatic side, was so great that he absorbed the image and functions
of the specifically N.O.Asiatic Big-Raven (Koryak?). But even before

this latter notion penetrated it, the Eskimo mind was no doubt fixed

Another possibility is that N. America may have been populated from the
south (the Gulf and Mexico) or partly via one or several landing-places on the
Pacific coast.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 593

in the belief in a sea goddess, the same that we hear about from the
Chukchi as their walrus mother and the wife of Keretkun; among the
Eskimo called “the woman of the deep sea’? (Sedna), “the holy
ancestress”’ of the Greenlanders (Arnaquassaaq) or, as she is called
by the Polar Eskimos, “‘the food trough” (Nerhriwik).

Among the Eskimos the belief in Sila, the deity of the air and
the weather, seems to be most exclusively and tenaciously maintained
among the southernmost groups in Alaska, among the central inland
Eskimos, and on the sub-arctic coasts of Greenland. This being the
case, I believe that an archaic feature has been preserved in these
areas which marks the southern limits of the Inuit. Nearly allied to
Sila is presumably in some way or other the Eskimo rain god Asiaq,
known from East Greenland and the Copper Eskimos, and apparently
still worshipped too among the Koryak. However, the rain god, of
importance to the Eskimos as the snow-melter who provides good going
for the hunters, more probably belongs to the shamanistic phase,
whereas Sila may be a pre-shamanistic deity?.

The idea of tornag (or tornagq), plur. tornat (or tornat), the familiar
spirit of the angakok, which I have derived from Alaskan Esk. tuyra
and compared with Old Turkish fengri ete. and thus pointed out as
a loan word in Eskimo, I must then, in accordance with the preceding
considerations, ascribe to Asiatic shamanism as transferred to Eskimo
thought. Here, however, I must emphasise the same dualism in the
development as Stadling points out for the corresponding Asiatic
notion; among the Mongols tengri denoted ‘spirits’ as a collective
term for all kinds of spirit powers; among other peoples (e. g. the
Turks), on the other hand, it denoted the heaven-god (only in the
singular)?. Among the Eskimos, similarly to the Mongols, tornat
is not a nomen proprium, but an appellative used about familiar
spirits, namely the nature spirits acquired by the angakok, or spirits
from Indian peoples or from a mythic historical people, which are
called tornit.

Tornit are the inhabitants of the interior, according to the East
Greenlanders’ view; sometimes called Tunerit, an obsolete form of
the name, in the singular Tuneq; a word common to southern Green-
land and Labrador’. I suppose that this word has been adopted in
the cult by a pristine Eskimo shamanism in close contact with that
of the Mongols. But already then the Eskimos must have been familiar
with the notion of nature spirits under another name, an earlier word

Cf. my paper Die kultischen Goltheiten (1928) p. 414.

Stadling (1912) p. 20. Cf. here p.581.—I may remind the reader of the Old
Turkish Teyri on the Orkhon inscription.

See First Part p. 690 (cf. p 700).

re

Co

594 W. THALBITZER.

of their own language, namely inuk ‘human being’ with a possessive
suffix -a added, thus inua literally “his or its inwk’, e. g. that (inua)
of the stone, the river, the rock etc.; the same in the plural inuat ‘their
spirits’, thus an old terminus technicus for the same thing (a human
being), and still used everywhere.

The two terms inuat and tornat are by no means equivalent. They
reflect the revolution in Eskimo thought from the earlier animistic to
the later shamanistic belief in spirits. And pre-shamanistic animism
did not of course disappear; no, it was continued in the form of
animism which came in with the shamans from Asia. In this way I
would explain the Eskimos’ own sublimation of the tornaqg idea to a
semi-supreme god, attached to the angakok’s staff of familiar spirits.
The Eskimos seem to have undergone a similar development to that
of the Asiatic peoples. Their first shamans got their familiar spirits
from the foreign tornit (tungrit); the shaman’s familiar spirit is called
his torna (or tungra). His strength grew when he secured several such
tornit (tungrit) as familiar spirits, five, ten, or more. As supreme master
of this flock he needed a leading spirit, a general figure of the same
kind. Thus followed the development within Eskimo culture of tor-
naarssuk, the shaman’s special oracular spirit. This ““Supreme’”’ Deity
is a sublimation of the concept torna(q) “‘his, i. e. one of the shaman’s
spirits’’, to which is added the ending -arssuk ‘the special, the prominent
and characteristic’ (an obsolete, but common suffix used especially in
place-names or pet-names). In this selective use of the foreign word,
in this limitation of the name from an appellative to a nomen pro-
prium, the Eskimo language thus reflects a reformation of a similar
kind to the Asiatic step from the Mongolian crowd of spirits (tengrt)
to the supreme deity and heaven-god of the same name.

Postcript. Americanistics is the name given to a branch of study
which is the younger sister of Orientalism. While the elder sister is
concerned with the languages and literature of which the East has
had plenty from the earliest times, the younger has united with modern
science in a certain empirical method. Here the literary material
available is the living language of the peoples, the orally transmitted
traditions. Only among the Incas and some Mexican peoples is there
a script, but their literature is not comparable to that of the Oriental
peoples. Further, Americanistics early took into her service archeology
and material ethnology, and most recently has gone into such subjects
as “‘origins’’ (Rivet, Collins, the Danish school); anthropology (Hrdli-
cka, E. M. Weyer); folklore (Jenness, Knud Rasmussen) “‘Kulturkrei-
sen’, and the origin of the idea of God (W. Schmidt).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 595

Culture waves come from the remote unknown. They carry new
forms and elements to the peoples in their abodes. Sweeping over
them they renew the communities, destroying old forms and making
room for new ones. We note their destructive as well as their con-
structive effect in the ethnic complexes.

We have viewed in retrospect the western regions of the Jnuit
race. From Asia culture waves swept over the northern peoples of
America. What did the Inuit people gain thereby? Gain and loss are
words which science prefers to disregard. Archzeologists have dis-
covered that Eskimo ornamentation was at its height in the earliest
times at Bering Strait. Indeed, it seems increasingly clear that already
in ancient times a change of religion took place among the Eskimos;
shamanism came to them as a spiritual enrichment (it is to be hoped).
We have pointed out a change in style. New temples, forms of houses,
vehicles, and new forms of implements were carried eastward across
Bering Strait; some few things were perhaps first invented in the
eastern regions where intelligence flourished. One culture superseded
another at the same time as the tribal groups were divided up’).
The northern and southern Greenlanders met for drum matches every
summer on Perutussut Island; the East Greenlanders were regarded
as an alien tribe, an object of suspicion.—The interior and the islands
developed several variants in character, provincial types became
established. The dialects give us a variegated picture of these ethno-
logical groups or tribes among the Eskimos from southern Alaska
as far as East Greenland.

The culture waves of modern arctic science bear witness to the
interest taken by the Aryan race in the peoples on the northernmost
fringe of the populated world (Randvélker), and among them in the
first place the Inuit. What had been started in the previous centuries
by men like the two Egedes, the Danish and Norwegian missionaries,
the German preachers of the United Brethren who preached the
gospel in Greenland and Labrador, the Frenchman Petitot, the Russian
Veniaminow, the Danes H.C. Glahn, O. Fabricius, Rink etc., was
carried on in our own century by more and more exact and com-
prehensive investigations.

M. Mauss (and Beuchat) wrote the modern sociological mono-

1 Cf. First Part, pp.359—364, and 716 ff. Thalbitzer: Etnografiske paralleler indenfor
Polarfolkene (16. Skandinav. Naturforskermode, Kristiania 1916). Idem: Parallels
within the Culture of the Arctic Peoples (20. Congresso Internacional do Ameri-
canistas, vol. I, p. 283 ff. with four plates) Rio Janeiro 1922; and Gudmund Hatt:
North American and Eurasian Culture Connections (Fifth Pacific Science Congress,
Proceedings, vol. 4) Toronto 1933.

596 W. THALBITZER.

graph on the Eskimos (1905). L&vy-Brunt included them in his
world-embracing and weighty comparative investigation of the men-
tality of the primitive peoples (Naturvolker).

But from quite another angle the searchlight was thrown on the
Inuit people from the Scandinavian countries. In his work “Jn Northern
Mists’ (1911) Friptsor Nansen described in the light of history the
first discoveries in the north and west in the Middle Ages, the landnam
of the Norsemen, the chartings and beginnings of modern geography.
When the first settlers nearly 1000 years ago discovered the natives of
Wineland and Greenland, the Icelandic historians described them by
the name of Skrelinger and brought back the first specimens of their
language (names), thus foreshadowing the later Americanistic studies.
Knud Rasmussen carried on Nansen’s work in a modern Saga of
Polar Exploration in 1982.

In the field of physical anthropology Americanistics is hardly
so old, though it has blossomed earlier than Hrpiicka seems to know
in his learned work!). In his book Fauna Groenlandica appearing in
1780 Otho Fabricius gives Homo Grenlandus as the first of Greenland’s
468 species of animals (followed directly by walrus, seal, and the
rest of the mammals), and—be it noted—among the synonyms of
the “‘species’’ he mentions Homo Americanus, quoting Linné, and
Esquimaux, quoting Ellis. In this way the Greenlanders and with
them the rest of the Eskimos are for the first time designated as a
special race belonging to the American “‘species’’. His diagnosis runs
as follows: Homo sapiens, diurnus, sordide rufus, pilis nigris, rectis,
crassis, mento subimberbi, to which he adds a further “‘descriptio”
with information of the customs and manners of the Greenlanders, all
in the Linnean lapidary style-—Hrdlicka’s work, however, sums up all
later hypotheses about the origin and first migrations of the Eskimos,
and carries research in physical anthropology down to 1930.

In the ethnological field KNup Rasmussen and his scientific co-
workers have no doubt procured costly material, matchless in our
day. It constitutes a splendid supplement to what had been previously
obtained by VitHsALMUR STEFANSSON and his men by their large
collections from the west central regions. Knud Rasmussen’s voca-
bularies of east and south Central Eskimo dialects (including Birket-
Smith’s Five Hundred Eskimo Words. Copenhagen 1928) is of the
same high standard as Diamond JENNESS’ copious and useful Com-
parative Vocabulary of the Western Eskimo Dialects, Ottawa 1928. This
idea had been tried once before, namely in Rink’s Comparative Voca-
bulary of the Eskimo Dialects, constituting the main part of his book of

* Alex. Hrdlicka: Anthropological Survey in Alaska (ARBAE 46. Washington 1930,
p. 333).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 597

1887—91 (The Eskimo Tribes, a work which is now perhaps some-
what out of date, though it still contains valuable material)!). Jenness’
comparative work denotes progress as to exactitude and consistent
spelling. But Knud Rasmussen’s contribution contains a lot of original
new matter, the fruit of a more intimate contact, and with a better
phonetic transcription than the material collected by Jenness.

Knud Rasmussen’s ethnological and linguistic contributions from
East and West Greenland, beginning with his book ‘“‘Nye Mennesker’’
(The People of the Polar North, London 1908), and continued especially
in his seven Thule Expeditions, the fifth of which, the most famous
one, took him to Bering Strait through the whole of the Eskimo world,
embrace and contain the whole Eskimo soul as it were, in one deep
and deep-seeing human consciousness. His great harvest on his long
journey through the world of the Eskimos has not yet been fully
sifted and utilised. His trawl gathered in light and heavy, new and
old plankton in these vast waters. I am thinking especially of his
numerous investigations and statements gathered in from place to
place, about myths and beliefs in spirits and magic agencies, tabu
and rites, social customs, peculiar notions and usages, folk tales and
poems, legendary reminiscences, individual conceptions ete. Some of
Knud Rasmussen’s finds give the impression of being fragments, some
of being local developments, but they rarely strike one as dispensable
or irrelevant. Of special value are the autobiographical statements
of certain old persons (Aua etc.). In all these records Knud Ras-
mussen has looked into the depths of the soul and traditions of the
people and saved from destruction what would otherwise have been
transient and irreplaceable. These traditions would hardly have sur-
vived locally beyond our day, for the steam-roller of modern technique
obliterates all spiritual traditions of the primitive peoples.

In America modern Eskimology was especially developed by
Franz Boas, Murdoch, and E.W. Nelson 40 years ago, later carried
on by D. Jenness and Collins; several other names should perhaps be
mentioned. The large expeditions have acted as stimulants. The same
applies to the Reports and Bulletins sent out by scientific institutions
in the service of the Governments, such as the American Museum
of Natural History; the Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian
Institution); the Department of Mines, Geological Survey (Ottawa).
They have saved from extinction the material from America’s primeval
ages and promoted research on the American Indians. This research
also flourished in the well-known ethnological and folkloristic period-
icals and the large handbooks on similar themes; it is superfluous
to quote them.

‘ H. Rink; The Eskimo Tribes 1—II. M.o.G. vol. 11 (Copenhagen 1891).
XL. 39

598 W. THALBITZER.

By my presence at the international Americanist congresses | had the
good fortune to learn how important is an exchange of ideas at these
meetings, the mutual competition and criticism, but also the mutual
help. A single lecture, a brief remark, may strike and illuminate like
a ray of sunlight, calling forth new ideas. What a debt of gratitude
I myself owe to men whom I met there! such as the Russians
W. Bocoras, LEO STERNBERG, and last not least FRaANz Boas, the
investigator of the Baffinlanders. The ways may be multitudinous,
but there is only one goal. Below all the stir of scientific life one
common will is at work, the love of truth.

The Danish school to which I belong has, I hope, contributed to
the results of Eskimology as they appear in our era. It builds on an
old foundation. We have recently published new editions of the jour-
nals of the pioneers. Dr. Louis Bose has done excellent service by
admirably annotated editions of H. and P. Egede’s Gronlandske Rela-
lioner as well as those of Lars Dalager; and by his Diplomatarium
Groenlandicum (1936) with introductory surveys of the History of the
Greenland Mission and of the Greenland Trade. Similar modern work
has been done by the Rev. H. OSTERMANN in his new edition of H. C.
Glahn’s interesting journals, a continuation of Egede’s “Relations” ete.
Go to these men with any question as to the colonisation, topography,
or history of Greenland, place-names, personal names, genealogy ete.
and they will rarely fail you. Dr. A. BERTHELSEN has completed a
large Greenland Nosography (1940), “30 years’ experience as a pract-
iioner in Greenland’, often giving folkloristic contributions as well.
Linguistic works are Rey. ScuHuLTz-LORENTZEN’s Dictionary of the
West Greenland Eskimo Language (1927); and Dr. Louris HAMMERICH’s
Personalendungen und Verbalsystem tm Eskimoischen (1936).

On the problem of Eskimo immigration into America many will
be glad to turn to Dr. GupMuNpD Harr’s ingenious researches. His mind
is open to other criteria than harpoon points. The ecology of the Arctics
is to him the field on which to focus attention. Comparative ethnology
must collect all kinds of criteria and select the most essential and typical’.

Alles Vergangliche
ist nur ein Gleichnis —
(as Goethe has it)

and the spectrum of ethnology has not yet been fully cleared up. Who

€

shall say what will be our future outlook on life?

' Cf. p. 595 (note). Other examples are E. vy. Hornbostel: Uber ein akustisches Kri-
lerium fiir Kulturzusammenhdnge (ZfE 1911). H. Konig: Das Recht der Polarvilker
Anthropos 1929). W. Bogoras: Early Migralions of the Eskimo (ete.) 21st. Int.
Congr. Americanists (Géteborg 1924).

Fig. 160. Mother and son. Her name was 7al'°taqujuk Usoorge, the son’s name
was Tammultarajik. (June 28, 1906. W.T. phot.).

Fig. 161. The game of pulling arms. Two West Greenland boys, photographed by
Jon Moller at the colony of Godthab. The game is also well known on the east
coast of Greenland.

—

Fig. 162. Family life out of doors. Mildtleeq and his wife with their child.
(July 10, 1906. W.'T. phot.).

CHAPTER I
PARENTS AND CHILDREN

The child’s cradle is the hood, or amaut (ama‘'’t) of the mother’s
anorak, and this hood is nothing else than an entire seal-skin, which
is sewn on to the anorak in such a way that it forms the characteristic
bag-like back of this. It widens from the hips upwards, but is con-
tracted at the top into the form of a pointed cap, which, in bad weather,
can receive and protect the child’s head. The seal’s head turns upwards,
the snout just forming the point of the hood, so that the eye-holes,
which are sewn up, are about on a level with the child’s eyes when
the latter puts its head into the cap.

Thus the Eskimo infant spends its early days in the slough of a
seal. The child’s head is in the seal’s head, and its back in the seal’s
back. A juvenile and primeval friendship exists between the people
and this animal.

When the mother wishes to lull her child to sleep, she sets the
upper part of her body rocking, whether sitting on the platform or
standing in the open air', and croons the long-drawn, monotonous
lullaby (ara ‘she sings a lulling tune’)*. I still hear it whenever I
think of the small Eskimo huts in East Greenland where I spent my
days many years ago. By these primitive notes, sung by a mother’s
voice, the life of every genuine Eskimo is inaugurated; by them his
first sorrows are soothed and by them his first dreams are evoked.
A father or grandfather may also take the child and lull it to sleep,
placing it in his arms and rocking it backwards and forwards while
he sings over it (ma'’csarpa’, W Gr. mavsarpa’, cf. pp. 162, cf.243). This
custom has a magic character, and it is repeated whenever the child
gets a new costume, or a new kaiak and new weapons. The song is
a magic song, which shall endow the child with the qualities of an
efficient hunter. Ajukutooq’s father used to sing over Mitsuarnianna’s
son. When he died, Mitsuarnianya himself, holding the boy in his

* See figs. 8 and 9 (ef. First Part, fig. 303 and pp. 580 sqq.).
* Literally ‘she sings ah ...’ with a certain melodious pitch. I recorded the melody
(only two tones) on my phonogram. See Melodies no. 12, here p. 65 (Cf. p.161)-.
39%

600 W. THALBITZER.

arms, continued this singing over it, to ensure strength, health, and a
long life (etsa‘nik pitino)’. This custom is observed until a child is
between 8 and 9 years old. The custom continues until the boy for
the first time gets a large kaiak and a harpoon of an adult.—Doubtless
many of the children’s songs and petting songs which I recorded on
the east coast have been composed for this use, and some of the nursery
rhymes which I recorded in 1901 on the northern west coast come
within the same category. In 1914, in the district of Cape Farewell,
I recorded a number of petting songs for children, pertaining to the
same kind of poetry (pp. 184—206, cf. 497—503).

At an early age children are trained by games, especially trials of
strength, wrestling, and pulling with the arms to become strong.
Umeerinneq said to one of his pupils: I shall make you strong as I
formerly trained Quninne in becoming strong (kum‘arsarniarpagit,
sanersa'raluarpara Quninne). A favourite trial of strength consisted in
lifting a great stone. Anutinyuag relates in Hansérak’s journal that as
a youth he practised himself in lifting large pieces of rock*. The same
sport is mentioned in the sagas about strong heroes, Kaashashuk
and Kunuk for example (see First Part p. 240).

The Eskimo does not punish his child*. At its baptism the child
gets the name of some deceased person, and, with this, inherits the
soul of the deceased (or, more correctly, one of the souls). To scold
the child, or to punish it, would in most cases be equivalent to pro-
voking the deceased, the child’s namesake. It would be an act of pro-
fanity, and might cause one of the souls to leave the child in anger,
and so bring sickness to the child.

But exceptions were mentioned. My authorities (Ajukutooq, Mit-
suarniayya) were able to mention certain women who were known
not only to have severely scolded their naughty children but also to
have beaten them. Here, of course, a good deal depends on the tempera-
ment of the women concerned, but how nearly related the child’s
deceased namesake was to the mother does not seem to be quite without
importance. It is inconceivable that a mother should chastise, or even
scold, her child if it is named after one of her former brothers or sisters.

A mother thus scolded her tormenting and weeping child (recorded
on my phonograph):

in'a sudteqa“yn! sua'rniarparama-ila’ nana‘nertiwa‘joanik utorqa’-
raluartiwa'toanik. utorgaraluarin’arniarin, sulortoa itina!

“How that there (the child) is naughty! One (1) would become

‘In WGr. intinigssénik pivdlugo.

* Hansérak’s Dagbog, ed. 1933, p. 139.

* €. Saabye (1816) p. 120. G. Holm (1888) p. 92 (First Part, p. 63). V. Stefansson
(1913) p. 397.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 601

desirous of scolding him, indeed, for his naughty obstinacy, because
he does not know what he wants. He (indeed) ought to be old enough.
—Now kindly try to behave like a grown uppers on (do, please), what
is the matter! what a manner to behave for such a little person!”

As an expedient for the quieting of naughty or continuously crying
children, it was formerly the custom to frighten them with wooden
masks representing deceased, or still living, persons'. One of the
grown-ups would then go out into the passage, secretly taking the mask
with him, in order, a little later, to return with it on his face. “‘It is
the mask (ke’apak)”’ says the mother, or “‘it is the spirit of the passage’’.
When, later, the mother says: “The mask will come in’’, the child
stops crying (cilalilérser).

That in East Greenland, also, the Eskimos used to kill the destitute
infant out of charity, e. g. by placing it out in the grave with the dead
mother, or in other ways, has been mentioned previously. I was told,
for instance, that a mother had given birth to twins, of which the one
died. As, by her child’s death, all rich food was taboo for her, she
lacked milk for the surviving child, which was therefore buried along
with the dead one.

The most general means of protection for the child against sickness
and danger is its amulets. They are placed in the double straps hanging
on the shoulders of the naked body (qit'uta‘t), which cross each other
in front and behind, with one small pocket in the cross over the chest
and another in the corresponding cross of the back. In each of these
pockets is hidden an amulet, generally a small flat wooden doll (e’‘lor)
(See illustration, First Part fig. 348).

A special means for insuring life, best known from East Greenland,
is to make the child a “‘piaarqusiaq’’, a word probably connected with
the verb pia‘ra’og ‘he does something purposely’; pia‘rqusiaq then,
literally means ‘a child who demands determined and vigilant treatment
or who requires to be well taken care of’, i. e. who is ‘destined for a
privileged position in life, sacrosanct’*. The word signified a person
distinguished and protected by being dressed in a costume which in
some way or another differs from the prevalent costume*. The child

Illustrations in First Part, figs. 357—358.

G. Holm in First Part p. 62. Cf. Mylius Erichsen, Greenland, p. 324: “The mother
then placed a strap round the little boy’s neck and strangled him. ‘And this
was good for the child’ said Arnarfik”’.

The word occurs apparently. although in a varied form, in one of the West-
Greenland legends in which an orphan boy who had no kaiak, “trained himself

oo

in becoming a piaarqusaaq” (“pijarusaursarnialerpok”. Kalatdlit okalukt. 1863.
IV, pp. 42—43).
Dalager (ed. Bobé, pp. 62—63) mentions, from West Greenland, similar peculiar-

-

ities of costume as a magic means of protection for the angakok pupil. After

602 W. THALBITZER.

is brought up to wear a loose hood of a particular cut (illustrated in
First Part, fig. 313) instead of one sewn fast, somewhat resembling a
helmet and closing tightly round the neck and shoulders'. The intention
most probably is to make the child undistinguishable to the hostile
spirit which pursues it to steal its soul. The costume is given to children
who are born after the first-born brother or sister has died in infancy.
Besides by the loose hood mentioned, the piaarqusiaq is characterized
by one or two other features, which vary somewhat according to the
taste or traditions of the parents, e. g., by a dog’s tail being sewed at
the back of the anorak?, or by the anorak being cut open in front
throughout its entire length, and being provided with a row of closely
placed buttons, and by the one boot being sewed from hairless skin
while the other is hairy on the outside. These individual peculiarities
in the costume, which are carried out by the parents from the child’s
earliest years, are maintained by the same individual during the whole
of his life and probably are considered by the nearest relations as a
religious mark of distinction, whereas strangers who have not seen
them before will find them ridiculous®. It would be interesting to know
whether there is any connection between the piaarqusiaq costume and
the peculiarities in the cut of the hair and in the flaps of their frocks
as previously mentioned by Holm?. Another fact is indicated by
Rosing, who relates that piaarqusidt are met with, who, though they
are women, wear male attire®. This reminds me of a case of a con-

having first related that such a pupil is destined for the office of angakok ‘from
the womb’, he describes the outer appearance of the young person. “The same
is also distinguished in costume from others thus: that ever since birth he has
worn trousers and boots in one piece. On the other hand, the hood is separated
from the jacket, contrary to the usual fashion. “Without doubt Dalager here
describes a piaarqusiaq.

Here compare with the previously mentioned mourning hood for the use of a
mother who has lost her child, a kind of high calotte (skull-cap) sewed together
with dark and white strips of skin, or otherwise ornamented (See First Part,
pp. 31 and 590, and fig. 51). This is also a hood with magic significance.

w

G. Holm mentions a fox’s tail hanging loosely down behind, from the back of
the men’s ordinary summer caps. First Part, p. 31.

A number of these details are found in Rosing (1906) p. 80.

-

Cf. Holm, First Part, p. 32, and ibid. p. 49 where the author talks of a certain
kind of initiation for beginning sealers of boy-hood age. This initiation, which
is distinctive for certain individuals, is combined with the offering to the sea
of the boy’s cut-off hair and the paws of the first caught seal. Possibly it is
limited to piaarqusidt children who are destined from birth for this exceptional
position in life.

Rosing (1906), p.80. — I wonder whether the women mentioned by Holm from
the southern part of the east coast, who had trained like men to row the kaiak
and hunt seals were piaarqusiat? See Holm in this work First Part, p. 67 footnote,
M. 0. G., vol. 9 (1889), pp. 86—87.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 603

verse kind, viz., where a young man, whom I often saw at Ammassalik,
whose hair was cut short and whose costume was somewhat odd was
known to be clever at all kinds of woman’s work (sewing etc.). He
was in the employ of the missionary as a cook. This was not a unique
instance. Mitsuarnianna had in his mind two men, both skilful sealers,
who were clever at doing woman’s work. The one was called Taajee,
he used to sew soles on his boots; the other was Nuliakkaatuar
NaaWnilar.

Possibly the remains of an old custom is hidden in these sub-
stitutions (vicariates) of sex, which are also known from other people
verging on the Eskimos!.—Unfortunately our information on this point
is very deficient as regards Greenland.

The earlier presence of piaarqusiait in West Greenland is, as it
seems, confirmed by Cranz as he reports that some of the young men
who were trained for future angakut were distinguished by an odd
child’s-dress, which enabled them more easily to perfect themselves
in the art of an angakog?. I myself, in Southern West Greenland,
made enquiries in 1914 as to the reminiscence of piaarqusiat there.
I met Aawtaaritaa who had immigrated to the west coast, and who
corroborated the earlier custom of clothing a newly born child, after
the death of its brothers and sisters, in a special dress, to be worn
during the whole youth of the child; sometimes, indeed, retaining the
same special cut and the same peculiarity in dress during its whole
life. The anorak, for example, is made from a whole skin, which is
cut and sewn together in a special way, being cut off below without the
usual flap, or even provided with a tail-like extension (no‘dtsiaraq).
The hood is sewn from the skin of a seal’s stomach, and separated
from the anorak like a helmet (though it is sometimes sewn fast, as
usual), and is often provided on the top with an okusuk (okucuk)
‘a projecting patch or lap, a beak of skin’ characteristic only of people
with such a hood.

The significance of these pious endeavours is probably that with

1 Cf. the tale about Ukuamaagq, the unnatural mother-in law, reported from Southern
East Greenland. First Part pp. 511—515 (no. 260).

A sex-transformation is frequently mentioned from some of the peoples near
Bering Strait, e.g, among the inhabitants of the Aliaska Peninsular and Kadiak
Island. On this Dall writes (Alaska, p. 402): “The most revolting of the ancient
customs of the Kaniaqmiut (also common to the Aleuts) was that of keeping
shtipans, or men who were dressed and brought up like females and supplied
their places”. From the Chuckchees and Koryaks in North-east Siberia, Bogoras
and Jochelson report a similar substitution of the sexes, so far as regards the
shamans (Jochelson, The Koryak, 1906, pp. 52—53). The topic is further dealt
with by Stadling (1912) and Czaplicka (1914).

? Cranz (1770), Ill, p. 269.

604 W. THALBITZER.

this particular dress the piaarqusiaq is thought to be unrecognizable
to the spirits, or the souls of the dead, who wish to pursue and take
possession of him. In any case we are faced with some proved sym-
bology or formalism; the change in the cut and form of the dress is
to be understood as just so palpable and solid a precaution as the
provision of amulets, exorcisms, and petting songs. A new and touching
proof is here given of the parents’ concern for a child’s life which seems
exposed to a previously tried and constantly threatening risk.

The onset of puberty (kapisulerser ‘he or she comes to feel ashamed’.
e'rip'oqg ‘is mature’) at the age of 15—16 years evinces itself, as formerly
mentioned, only by the adopting of short trousers (na‘tse’n or na‘tsin)},
which are of two distinct forms, one for boys and one for girls. In
addition, the girls adopt a toupee (their hair in a tuft), tatooing having
generally been performed at an earlier age. This change does not take
place from any extraneous prompting, the children themselves taking
the initiative; and according to their wishes their mother or elder sister
sews the trousers for them. No other ceremony takes place on the
occasion of the commencement of puberty.

As a rule it is not long before the young man selects his future
wife, without, however, there being anything openly noticeable about
either of them. The declaration is of a sudden character, and the
Eskimo wedding takes the form of a rape, an abduction. Sometimes
a young man will select as his bride a girl who is not yet so grown
up that she has put up her hair in a tuft, but she adopts this style
when she gets married. They kiss each other by rubbing noses: kunit’er
‘one who kisses’, kunin’eq ‘a kiss’ < kunip‘ut ‘to kiss each other’; the
word properly means ‘to smell each other by rubbing noses’.

Foster-children (qiternarsi@n) are not unusual. Mitsuarnianya had
had at least four adopted children or foster-children, e. g., one foster-
son (ernersiaqg) who was his cousin Quttuiaain, and three foster-
daughters (panisidn), of whom one was his cousin-german, another a
daughter of his second cousin, and the third unrelated to him?. They
speak of ittersia’ ‘his adopted cousin’ and awiarsia’ ‘his adopted
second cousin’. In later life, good foster-children will return by gifts
and services the goodness of their foster-parents.

* Former authors called them natit, as G. Holm, in First Part, p. 64, cf. (1888) p. 93,
(1889), p. 91. Kleinschmidt gives the word the West Greenland form naitsut,
from the verb ndipog ‘is short’ (a pair of short trousers, in particular woman’s
drawers). According to Holm natit is used on the east coast both about men’s
and women’s short trousers. The form fs, instead of f, as given above by me,
is more correct.

According to Glahn (1771) p. 243, foster-children in West Greenland were con-
sidered near relations of the family, and it would be a disgrace for them to
enter into marriage with the foster-parents’ children.

te

Fig. 163. Ajukutooq’s two wifes, Lekeelcuk (left) and Igimarajik (right).

Between them his youngest son Nijaawa with his amulet case hanging

on his breast fastened to skin corns round his neck and body. On the
right, behind him, Ukuttiaq’s daughter. (July 20, 1906. W.T. phot.).

Fig. 164. Teemiartissaq drawn by Mrs. Ellen Locher Thalbitzer in
1906 (ef. First Part fig. 53). Also as a young woman photographed
by Knutsen, 1884.

ee Se

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 605

The eldest son inherits (keornuta‘te'wa’) his father’s sledge and
dogs, his umiak, tent, and the house timber, and sometimes, also,
some of his hunting weapons (the lance and birdspear). The dead
father himself keeps (ndc’arpa’) literally ‘he takes it along with him’
all his garments, his kaiak and oar, his harpoon, and the rest of his
hunting weapons, including throwing stick, harpoon-line, buoy and
hunting-knife, which articles are supplied him in his grave’.

As regards the lance, the bird-dart, and the haft of the harpoon
(e'ma’), it is a matter for doubt whether these are deposited in the
grave, or not. Only the greatest piety on the part of the heir will induce
him to relinquish these things. (I owe this information to Mitsuarniaya).
In the graves in East Greenland, as everywhere else where these customs
prevailed, one very often finds, as is well known, only miniature
facsimiles of the articles in place of the articles used.

Besides these material goods the’ eldest son likewise inherits
(according to Mitsuarniayya) his father’s name, which he possesses
until his first child is born.

1 According to Dalager (1752), p. 63, the foster-son in a family where there were
no sons becomes the lawful and only heir to his foster-father. The house timber
goes with the inheritance, see Holm (1889), p. 97.

CHAPTER I

EDUCATION. PROPAGATION OF THE
TRADITIONS

The traditions, ability, learning and art of the people were pro-
pagated in two ways, partly by spontaneous imitation and conception,
and partly by direct instruction. Neither schools nor written literature
were known, but there were plenty of teachers and pupils.

Every hunter could give me information regarding his teachers in
kaiaking, in the hunting of the various seals, in the use of his weapons,
and the magic expedients necessary to secure a successful catch; and
if in his youth a man had had angakoq training (anakicsarneq) he
generally would mention several older angakoks as his teachers in the
subject. Instruction took place amongst old and young in Uliseeneq
(knowledge of cunning magic, e. g. with the aim of procuring helpful
expedients against the plots of enemies), in the subject of gilaneg (the
more primitive ways of treating illness, abstract form of the verb
qilawoq ‘executes the art of a qilaleq’), and in all sorts of witchcraft
which might benefit the perpetrator and harm his enemies. While the
instruction in hunting more or less corresponded with what we, with
our idea of culture, would require for ordinary, practical (e. g., indus-
trial or agrarian) training, and the instruction in magic expedients
(magic prayers and amulets) contained elements of a specialized
sociology and of dietetics, the Greenland angakogq and qilaleq instruction
(anakicsarneq and qilaneq) was understood to be a sort of academical
training in theological and medical knowledge. The time occupied by
the angakog disciple for his training varied from 5—12 years, and he
often had had half a score of professors for his teachers, viz., the
completed old angakut in the neighbourhood where he had grown up.

For almost all kind of instruction and “good advice” payment,
sometimes very dear payment, was given, as will be seen from the
following examples; only the practical and elementary training in
kaiaking and hunting given to the son by his father, was gratis.

One day the angakog Ajukutoogq visited me in my tent accompanied

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 607

by his one wife and his favourite son, a small, chubby, big-bellied,
six year old boy with clever eyes and the dignified manners of a great
hunter. The father proudly informed me that one day the boy would
be the supporter of his two sisters and his old mother, and for this
reason was the only one to get meat during the famine in the winter,
when all the others starved. As yet he had not got a kaiak, but Ajukutooq
had begun to instruct him in the use of the kaiak paddle, which he
practised while sitting on a stone on land; the next year he was to
have a kaiak and learn to use the paddle in the water. Ajukutoog had
also begun to instruct him in the use of the gun, viz., to aim at the
emerging animal, and had shown him how to adjust the sight in order
to give accuracy to the weapon.

In the education of the boys for their practical work in life, all
kinds of models of boats, sledges and weapons play a great role, while
in that of the girls the dolls and the ulo-models naturally have a similar
significance. The children early become accustomed to the use of their
small instruments (see First Part p. 63). They learn, in addition, to
sing and recite short verses and stories for children; and, in their
play, often imitate the life of the grown-ups by building houses and
tents of stones, by beating the drum while singing and dancing, and
by holding drumming contests, etc.'

Once when we met, Umeerinneq reckoned up the number of
young men whom he in his time had instructed in kaiaking and
hunting. He had taught them, in particular, how to right themselves
and come on an even keel when the kaiak capsized, the art of which
can be performed in several different ways, whether by the aid of the
paddle or the throwing-board (First Part, p. 382). He had, for example,
instructed Teemiartissaq’s two sons in this art, and for the youngest
of them, Kattuaree, had himself made a kaiak. He had, furthermore,
instructed his wife’s two brothers, as also Qilertaanalik and two
deceased friends. By way of payment his pupils were in the habit of
frequently presenting him with a share of their catch. In his youth,
when he lived in the South at Umeewik, Umeerinneq himself had
received instruction in kaiaking and all sorts of hunting, viz., in bear-
hunting from Qilertaanalik’s father, in walrus-hunting from Kookiaat,
and in white-whale-hunting from his father’s cousin Qaasiaarter, who
also instructed him in the catching of the ringed seal and the bearded
seal (‘for he was very conversant with this’’).—Umeerineg classified
the matter of instruction under seven heads in all, each with various
subdivisions. He used to say: artarserna’ra’ “it is usual to give

1 As regards the West Greenlanders compare Dalager (1752), pp. 4—6; Cranz
(1770), vol. 1, pp. 214—215 and 230—231, Glahn (1771), pp. 240—242, Saabye
(1816), pp. 119—120.

608 W. THALBITZER.

instruction (or give advice) in the following subjects’ —and he men-
tioned them in the following order. (1) saqisikin ‘in the use of kaiaks’;
(2) san‘ersartino’ ‘in trials of strength, exercises’ e. g. by wrestling,
running races, or lifting stones (nun'e'rsa'rtit); (3) tw'e’mik ‘in drum-
contest singing’; (4) ser‘amik ‘in magic prayers’; (5) ilise’ne’mik ‘in
witchcraft’ (e. g. spells to harm one’s enemies or protect oneself against
them); (6) anine’mik ‘in hunting’; (7) anak‘e'lisa‘nik ‘in the subject
of angakoq arts (the means of exercising one’s profession as an
angakoq)’. Hunting he classified in five subsubjects, according to the
various kinds of animals: seal-hunting (which again is subdivided in
accordance with the different kinds of seals), bear-hunting, white-
whale-hunting, walrus-hunting, and the hunting of large whales.

The old wise woman Teemiartissaq had in her youth studied for
angakog, but without completing the training (cf. pag. 454 ff.), and
she enumerated some of the subjects which she had learnt during that
time. Besides her father one of her teachers was Pikkinnor, who,
when alone with her out in the mountains (pag. 465), in one or two
days initiated her in the mysteries of “‘angakokism” (the angakoqg
craft or art). Another day he took her out to teach her spells, and on
a third occasion to teach her tales (of two kinds: ogalua‘liit and ogqalii-
tokadt). As far as the instruction in angakoq training was concerned
it was a question of initiation in this profession (ajake’siia’me a‘'’tdsa’-
nik, the initiation in the profession of angakoq).

Besides these subjects, the following one is mentioned as a special
subject by Qiwinataaq (and others): atina‘nint artarsera’ i. e. he
instructed her in the customs of taboo, which is extensively used on
the death of a near relation. Part of this is that the father (or mother)
informs his children of those things which they shall refrain from
eating, in order not to provoke the spirits and the animals when the
time comes for them to mourn their parents.

Two facts are noticeable about this transmission of traditions.
Firstly that the elders are concerned about the instruction, as it is they
who address themselves to the juniors with a view to teaching these,
though for this honour and service the juniors pay their elders, buying
the knowledge of the latter with a quite concrete payment. Secondly
that the instruction is given in deep secrecy, only the two concerned,
the teacher and the pupil, knowing about it. This applies to the
instruction in the subjects of angakooneq and iliseeneg, and in magic
spells and the knowledge of amulets. When an old hunter or woman
desires to instruct a child in the setthkement in one of these subjects,
the two walk away together to some spot in the neighbourhood—a lake,
river or valley, or the foot of some steep cliff—where they are alone,

“= WGr. attiganik < atrerpa. (agdlerpa).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 609

and where no one else can listen to their words. Sometimes the teacher
holds the pupil’s hand while he instructs him. The boy gets his spells
at that particular time when he first goes fishing, and the girl when
she first puts up her hair in a tuft—at the commencement of
puberty.

As an example in the instruction of magic knowledge and religious
activity I shall mention the angakoq Mitsuarnianya’s description of
his training. From it will be seen the number of the teachers from
whom he drew his knowledge, what he paid for it, and of what the
payment consisted. I shall not enter into further details as to his
angakog training, which will be described in the section on religion.

It was decided early that Mitsuarnianyna should become an
angakoq, because his father died while he was yet a child, so that he
had to be helped along by higher powers. He was quite a poor child
when the old angakoq Qatik Imaalikuteuk, who was then settled on
the island of Kulusuk at the mouth of the Ammattalik Fjord, became
interested in him and said: “Come along! I will initiate you in the
fundamentals of angakoq’’. The boy followed the old man, who first
ordered him to fetch the green sea-weed on the beach and clean his
whole body with it. Thereupon they climbed the inner fell of the
island, where lay the little lake and nearby the magic rubbing-stone
of the angakoq, under the mountain Saaleqitaa. Here Mitsuarnianya
got instruction in the details of the initiation (apake'lisdt), or, rather,
his practical consecration to the profession of angakog. By reason of
his poverty, he at that time had nothing wherewith to pay Imaalikutcuk,
so obtained his instruction gratis; but he paid all his subsequent
teachers, his payment steadily improving. By degrees he became a
great hunter, who could afford to pay well. This will be evident from
the following summary.

Mitsuarniania’s teachers in the profession of angakoq and iliseeneq,
arranged chronologically:

Name of teacher Subject Payment
Imaalikutcuk angakoq-science (free).

(angakoq)
Peqitaq iliseeneq repairing of a harpoon-head.
Putcaanaq iliseeneq harpoon-head of walrus ivory.

Point of a narwhal tooth carved
for the plaiting of sinew-threads
(for the use of Putcaanagq’s wife).
Takin’ nalikitseq | angakogq-science a large bearskin.
(angakoq)

610

W. THALBITZER.

Name of teacher Subject Payment

Perqeetsaq iliseeneq bone of a bear’s thigh for the keel
of a sledge.

Séoisaaq angakoq-science? ?

Ooidn (angakog) making of tupilak oar for a kaiak, a piece of bear-
skin, and a thong with harpoon-

head attached.

Upparanitseq ? ?

Suttuilseq % g

Aartuaartik iy p

Arqarsaaq iliseeneq a knife, and a hammer with iron
head.

Aawtaaiteq 2 ?

Takin nalikitseq iliseeneq a harpoon line and a buoy.

(see above)

Qilonuluk iliseeneq the skins of two young ringed
seals and of three older ones
(for trousers).

Qaartuattak ? two sealskins, a bag filled with
blood of seal, a thong, and a
lance of walrus-ivory.

Pérgitaaq 2 a sledge and a dog.

This education extended over many years, but scarcely lasted very
long at a time. Mitsuarnianna told me that Imaalikutcuk, his first
teacher, had taught him during the winter; after which Putcaanaq,
Imaalikuteuk’s son, instructed him in the course of the next summer.
In the ensuing winter he received no instruction, but then Takinnali-
kitseq was his instructor during that summer, Perqeetsaq during the
next summer, and Ooian during the following summer, when he
taught him to make a tupilak.

His first two instructors in the observances which insure good
sealing were his father’s brother Qanappik, and Milatteeq. Their
instruction certainly took place in his early youth, as can be judged
from what he paid them. These magic measures naturally constitute
an important element in the education of every finished Eskimo sealer;
similar measures have previously been mentioned (by G. Holm, see
First Part, pp. 48—49). We should characterize these observances as
being of a religious nature, but in the Eskimo’s own consciousness
they probably rank with the natural and practical preparations which

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 611

a provident farmer in our countries would make in the spring to make
sure of a good harvest. With sealing, to be sure, the measures are not
deemed to be real iliseeneq, but verging on this science, as it were a
sort of veterinary science along with the academical culture. Here are
a couple of examples.

For use when hunting the crested seal Qanappik taught him the
following observance.

man tlerqa'rnerse‘ta’ ‘initiation-rule in the spring, on the occasion
of the first seal being caught’. This rule was said to be a means of
catching seven crested seals in the course of the summer.

sagi’tutit neniarteg pila ri’k't, umidta tla’ taq’a'’nin may ik’'uma'-
rpal. manilerqa’rnerseisdn'tk puilip pup isa nik man ilernerme aniniar-
tiwarte’*ma‘rin.

“When you are out in a kaiak and get a crested seal, you must

« 5 .
place one of the bristles of its beard in under the cross-straps on the
kaiak. By the aid of this observance on your first spring-hunting for
the purpose of effecting’ the seal’s emergence you shall be in the
oo) 5 .
position to procure abundant profit from your hunting in the beginning
summer.”

Milatteeq gave him the following advice, whereby he could get
five bearded seals in the course of the summer.

sagi’tutit, awaldtertutit an'eq puip'at na'liikike, tim'uka tiiiak’e,
umidta ila tanera'n pertono at'ame'rtarima'rin. me’ ternerse lisdat,
anernin aniniartiwa lisdt.

“Tf, when you are kaiaking and standing off-shore, a bearded seal
emerges, and you harpoon it and begin to tow in towards land, you
must cut off its longest bristle and, on landing, lay it on the dunghill
(in front of the house) for the spirits of the dunghill. This shall be
your helper in noticing the undulating circles which are formed round
the emerging seal, and your means of getting an abundant catch of
bearded seals.”

The following examples appertain to the subject of tiseenegq, 1. e.,
the doctrine of social magic, and magic measures for getting along
amongst other people.

Mitsuarnianna, as already mentioned, had had a succession of
teachers in this subject, and it may perhaps be instructive to gather
together his particulars regarding it, as a contribution to a representation
of the public education of the Eskimos before the arrival of the Euro-
peans. This is perhaps the most typical kind of knowledge of this

612 W. THALBITZER.

people. From time immemorial these doctrines have been transmitted
from generation to generation by oral tradition, and at secret meetings
between teacher and pupil alone.

“Many of our people are considered unreliable, and full of scandal
and evil, and their wicked words and thoughts can harm my soul.
Iliseeneq is, therefore, essentially the doctrine of how I can take care
of my spiritual hygiene by magic means (observances). These partly
protect me against the plots of my enemies (their evil thoughts), and
are partly used by me to persecute and hurt them.”

Ilise'nilisa’t. (produced iliseeneq) indicates the performance of
iliseeneq, the means and the results of this art; iliseetsog the human
being (man or woman) who produces the means (iliseet) or executes
the art.

Every angakoq has received ample instruction about such means;
he is a physician who has plenty of these kinds of prescriptions. But
also the majority of laymen in the country, especially the old men and
women, generally have on hand a good share of such advice, which
they have learnt in the course of a long life, and if one will only pay
the price, one can always by applying to them procure a supply for
insuring one’s life.

Mitsuarnianya was not yet grown up when he got instruction in
iliseeneq from Peqitaq (Saka’s father), who at that time lived at Ser-
milik Fjord, but I will begin by quoting the iliseeneq instruction which
he received not long afterwards from the angakoq Takin" nalikitseq.
Mitsuarnianya’s report to me on this curriculum in magic knowledge
reads as follows.

o'ma sa'pan'a: ajegerse'litcawa’k'in. — akiwara: kisimina? — na‘t-
seramin. tawame e™ ata ta’maia'rpatin akenimarpat toqonalip
amoajanik iterata saiane ilenima'rpat na‘ 'tseraliisanik po'saqtk’-
ima'rpat togonalip isiwane awalerpiane ile’ma‘rin tumartalin ...()
evsiidta kipidt'a'liisa‘nik k;pidtaluipage" toquyuma‘rter taman‘a_ pit’-
ute“wa. — kise pitcawe'n? — nanerq'’amin tuniwara. tawa.

“He said to me ‘I will give you instruction’.”’ “‘In what?” I asked.
“In death-germs. Well, then. If another person offends you in words
(abuses you), you shall revenge yourself thus. You shall lay a dead
man’s intestines on the fore part of your enemy’s sleeping-place on
the platform!. These are his death-germs, which you must wrap up
in a bag, formed from the extreme tip of the dead man’s hood. You
must stuff them into his house-box (chest), or into the drying frame,

‘ Therefore under or close by his head when he lies down; as one sleeps with
one’s head in towards the room and one’s feet pointing towards the wall.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 613

both in front of his place on the platform?. When you have stuffed
them in, they will become the cause of his death.’’ — ‘‘What are you
to have for this? said I. —I gave him a bearskin.’’ — Mitsuarnianna
himself regarded this payment as expensive. His teacher, when formerly
he bought the advice, had paid for it with a buoy and a thong.
Takin“nalikitseq provided Mitsuarniana with the following advice.

sapa'ra: ajegerse'litcawa"k in. — kisimina? —akim’in, anit'’awin
ak‘is‘isa’nik, anit'’at piniana''p'at anita’ akenima'rpat. anit’a'ta a’ ma-
qaidta qgilin‘era® po'rtono ilian® o'narqila’rpat, ata’ne pusit'ik'uma‘rpat
pusitik'i’ke anienen ajtilerima'rteq i’tin an eiia'wi, at'amun a'’k’-
uip'e'n stk'anima'ra’ sik'artino ani’tat og()userima‘rin a’’tdtsa'rtine.

“He said to me: ‘I will give you instruction’. ‘In what?’ ‘In magic
reprisals, or counteracting expedients for use against your supporter
(e. g., your father). If your supporter catches too much you shall try
to counteract his catch. You shall wrap up a small lap? of blubber
from one of his captured seals, and put it in the fire. When it has
crinkled from the heat*® you shall jam it under him (on the platform
under his pillows) with the concave side downward and the convex
side upwards. When you have placed it thus, his catch will begin to
fall off. If your elder sister conducts the distribution of the seal-meat
to the others, she must ‘slip away’ from him?*. By her thus ‘slipping
away’ from him, you will procure for yourself a lee side and a sheltered
place, inasmuch as he will cease to go hunting.”

For this advice Mitsuarniayya paid with his lance and a large
beautiful swivel of walrus ivory.

Ooian taught Mitsuarniaynya to make a tupilak’®.

sa‘pa'na: kajersiwe'nia'n timia ‘me sit'arme'tamite na‘liwiarte’p
qarnata cia'nin isiwanit'e pe'rsenima’rputin; pe'rseniwin takiliik’ima’-

‘ The intestines are to be hidden under his compartment on the platform, or

above him in the drying frame, which hangs under the ceiling. — House chests
are seen in the First Part, figs. 288—289, a drying frame in fig. 260 (cf. 66—68).
qilineq really ‘a hangnail’. The torn off or loosely cut piece of blubber has

frayed or lobate edges, and such a “lap” is in question here.

iliay resembles the word which means needle-eye (ilia); but the above word
should rather be connected with ilip'oq ‘has come too near the fire, is burnt or
singed’ and ilijawog ‘is curly or crinkled’, Kleinschmidt’s iligpoq and ilingawoq

ce

respectively.

The end of the piece cannot with certainty be interpreted because I lack in-
formation as to the meaning of sik’animara’ sik iartino; cf. the West Greenland
“sivkarpa’’’ ‘he glides off that which he was supporting himself onto, with his
hand or foot”. It seems to refer to a movement or sudden gesture at the dis-

»

tribution of the meat.
An illustration of such a tupilak with the body of a sandpiper and a man’s

wn

head is seen in First Part, fig. 365 a.
XL. 40

614 W. THALBITZER.

rputin. periak'ut takiltip'ak'a. sa’p'a‘ra: arqise'liiteawdn im ‘ik'e'rtome’-
tiqun nunamun at‘amun nunatin”ermun piwugun. uja"tutujokajim’un
enartitiwa atamun talit'ino sa’nun iliwak‘a, qile'liis'aranit at qile’-
liisa’nik torsoa'rpon. qile'liisa’ isimame'n tikip'on tikik’'ame te wara.
puilim nukeriwa pulamaliwa, a'rqiseliiqa’’k’o, nipinarna makic’tia”r-
pon sutuartertino ilale’sitiarpon. earak’o ut uinarsiarpara arekun
o'maleiarpara o’masimat qimap'arpoyn ut'un pinace't’’a’ne ornerqeiar-
parput. tawa milititciwara, pudtarserciwara. eaqatina orarpon: e'ge
pudatarsdcanilat, ace’agin podatarsataler. tdt'an'a pit‘isaiako, anvun
a’taie tarpon ona rt'’avaqali'*ne tima’ na‘liwiartik up'ata’k sit‘ame'tor
ilik‘ortuneqa'n. anak'e'stila*ma.

“He said to me: ‘Realize the object of your longing (Do what
you long to!). Get a gull and a redshank and take from a little child’s
mouth the eye-teeth and end-teeth?. The thus extracted and special
pieces you shall hide!’ I hid them under the tent-stones*. He said to
me further: “Now you must put them together!’ We crossed the island
to another place, Nunatin‘’neq (it lay to the West at the mouth of the
Ammiattalik Fjord). I leant against the large boulder and supported
my elbows on another. I laid the pieces loose before me. He called
the winding-band. The band appeared of its own accord (by the action
of his thoughts). When it had come, I took it. It was the tensor sinew
of a seal (a sinew stretching inwards, and one of the second best kind).
I put it to rights, whereby its appendage (a sinew of medium width
and perhaps a lap of the first) rose up in the air. When blown upon
it bent right down. I occupied myself with it during the whole day,
in order to put it in its right position. Soon afterwards I began to make
it living (as if for a tupilak). When it had become living, we left it.
Three days afterwards we returned, and then I wanted to make it
suck, and to swell up. My companion said ‘No, you shall not let it
swell up; it is of that kind one makes swell up from the other side’ ®.
From that moment I stopped. We went together down to the water
(and came) to the interior behind our native place in the country, on
the other side of the island. There on the shore lay the thighs of a

* I suppose that here there is talk of the teeth from a child’s cranium—a dead
child. isiwa signifies ‘the top or the furthest end’ possibly meaning the fore-
teeth, as I do not perceive how it would be possible to fix molars in a doll’s
wooden head.

* This information is elucidated in an interesting way from a find of ruins in
northern East Greenland. B. Thostrup (Geogr. Tidsskr. 1912, p. 182) reports from
the Denmark Expedition that, under the stones for the tent-rings, bits of wood
and whalebone were found at times; once a new harpoon-head of slate under
a large tent-stone, and on another occasion a severed lock of human hair.

* aceagin < *ase used about ‘the cther world’, i.e. ‘the hereafter’.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 615

little child, they made a strong impression on me; then I began to
have an inclination to become an angakoq.”’

Qaartuattak gave Mitsuarnianna instruction in two means apper-
taining to the spiritual hygiene.

(1) “If, by chance, you enter a strange house, where the air-hole
in the ceiling (qiya’q) is open, you shall moisten your finger with saliva
and smear this on your crown. Because by this way the human’s soul
is accustomed to depart and leave the house. A house without an air-
hole’, therefore, has no sick occupants, or if one of them happens
to get ill, he does not die easily.”’

The soul, consequently, is supposed to move out through the
air-hole in the ceiling, not through the window or the passage.

(2) “If you come into a strange house and a dirty drinking ladle
(imerta’'’t) is passed to you, you shall take care not to use it. Because
the dirt will cause your kaiak to lose some of its speed, and you,
consequently, some of your skill as a hunter. You revenge his malice
thus. You must give him the neck-part of a ringed seal, or harbour
seal (with the bones in it), then (if he eats it) his neck will swell up,
the result being that he will become sick. This is the reward for his
water-ladle.”’

Qilonguluk taught Mitsuarnianna ‘‘a recipe for the use of the drum-
stick” (katime’saq)?.

“Thus shall you use the drum-stick during the juridical singing
duel. If your singing opponent thrusts his drum-stick into your mouth
in order to suffocate you, you shall revenge this by providing the
extreme end of your own drum-stick with a small sea-snail (of a
certain kind, pusinalua‘rtik). When you then thrust this into his mouth,
in order to distend the gap, it will become impossible for him to
continue his singing, because he will lose his voice by suffocation.”

Pergitaaq gave him a regular iliseeneq remedy against evil
thoughts. If any person in the house slandered him he should revenge
the slander (therefore annul the effect) in the following manner.

‘From the sea you shall fetch a small animal (fish?) of the species
qut‘a'naq*, read a magic prayer over it, and inspire it with an evil
thought. Then, on a favourable occasion, you shall secretly set it fast
in the anorak of your calumniator, and his (her) throat will become
affected, and he (she) will be incapable of speaking.”

‘ The air hole is called iztup qina’, ‘the nostril of the house’. It is a small hole
in the roof through which the heat is let out when it becomes too warm inside
the house.

* <WGr. katumigpog ‘works with the kato (drum-stick)’.

* According to Kleinschmidt’s dictionary the WGr. quiwssaunaq is ‘a small narrow
fish with sharp scales on the belly (of the blenny family?)’. The above qut'a’naq
is the East Greenland form of the same word, and exactly corresponds.

40*

616 W. THALBITZER.

Mitsuarniayya gave a sledge and a dog for this advice. The good
payment shows what great importance he placed upon it, and upon
his now being an independent and well-to-do man.

All this pertains to the subject of iliseeneg, and it is only a part
of what Mitsuarniayya learnt in this subject. His training had carried
him further, and he had long been an angakogq of high standing when,
in 1894, the missionaries reached this place and began their under-
mining of the inherited ideas of the nation about the world and life.
Mitsuarnianya was the first ayakoq who allowed himself to be baptised.
His motive was the usual one over there: “We are baptised in order
that our soul may be saved when the heavens are about to fall.”
I often betook myself to him during the year that I travelled about
there, because he was full of heathen knowledge, a peculiar mixture
of the old time before the discovery and the imported Christianity.
At his baptism he had received the name Andreas (Andrew), which
he could only pronounce as Ahntereease {a‘ntere’ase|. The gleams of
the doctrine of Christianity which he had apprehended had taken shape
in his perspective of the future, but had in no way ousted his belief
that he had been a great angakog in the past and had known the
truth about the world. His “‘familiar spirits’”’ had really existed, though
only in the past. He himself really had made the journey to the moon.
He was a taciturn and reserved man, highly gifted, and with a strong
belief in a future world, brooding over the unseen powers, and searching
for the truest and most genuine expedients which would enable him
to be on good terms with them as regards the life of the hereafter;
first the Eskimo expedients, and later those of the Europeans.

I have not much to say about Mitsuarniaynya’s own work as a
teacher. I know that he had had two disciples in iliseeneq (artarstiina
“my disciple’). From the one he had received in payment a dog and
a woollen shirt; and from the other a harpoon-head, a bird-spear,
a buoy (sealing bladder), and a piece of bearskin to sit on in the kaiak.
He had probably had several more pupils, both in iliseeneq and in
other subjects. Mitsuarnianna died in 1910, poor and crippled. As
early as 1906 one of his legs had become stiff, and he could no longer
go kaiaking (port. in fig. 164)?.

I have here spoken mostly about the spiritual subjects, and those
which are propagated directly by conscious instruction. But how much
knowledge and how many accomplishments are there not, which, in
addition, are propagated by imitation? It is through the conversation
of others, through the language, and through the manners and gestures

Other portraits of Mitsuarnianna are seen in figs. 21 (p. 165) and 51 (p. 283).

Fig. 165. Mitsuarniaynya as a baptised angakkoq
(cf. figs. 21 and 51) (W.T. phot. 1906).

’
4

Fig. 166. Umeerinnegq, the far-travelled, who in his youth

visited the south of Greenland and then returned to his

native place on the east coast in the company of G. Holm.

(In 1884, see Holm & Garde, Konebaadsexpeditionen,
pp. 164 and 199—200).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 617

of their elders that the children are influenced, and it is in this way
that the younger generation becomes imbued with the inherited con-
ceptions regarding the world, orientation, primitive geography, and
natural history.

In some respects the Eskimos have become specialists, and are,
no doubt, on an average and relatively, better informed as regards
the knowledge of animal life and of many natural phenomena than
are our own children after their school training is finished. How much
more, for example, does not the growing Eskimo girl know about the
anatomy of seals and other game! Hundreds of times she has seen
the old women of the house quartering these animals and has, thereby,
already almost learnt to perform the same task, which will some day
become her own. The men, of course, are equally well informed in
the subject. The Eskimo is not only an excellent anatomist but also
a surgeon. When a fracture is in question, he possesses remarkable
appreciation as to the nature of the injury, and, on the strength of his
exact anatomical knowledge understands how to set the injured part;
and for the same reason the old women are skilful midwives.

CHAPTER III
THE ESKIMO COMMUNITY IN GREENLAND

The real Eskimo community approximates a condition of com-
munistic anarchy. It knows neither lawfully recognized chiefs nor
representative institutions. Only as an exception have there existed
Eskimo chiefs, of whom tradition relates. It was a temporary occur-
rence, not hereditary conditions, which produced a “‘liberator’”’ like
Kunuk, a hero in South Greenland tradition’. There does not really
exist any Eskimo word which answers to our word chief: the WGr.
naalagaq ‘master’ (inspector, director, chief, Lord etc.) literally means
only ‘the obeyed one, the one one listens to’, and is a genuine Eskimo
word which has been given several modern meanings introduced by
the whites——From the western Eskimo districts (Alaska) there is
mention of the headmen of the village as those who divide and distribute
the presents among their fellow townsmen, being their representatives
when foreign guests have to be honoured?. Individual examples of
real chiefs are also recorded, who, though only for a short period,
have gathered a following and forced on the people a mastery based
on fear and subtlety.

‘As a rule the hunter is head only of his own family, and has
no authority over the other families in the village. Custom, however,
gives the oldest sealer in the village, or in the house, a certain degree
of patriarchal authority, but this does not extend beyond the boundary
of the village*. In W. Greenland he is called ittog (with suffix ittua’t
‘their patriarch” = EGr. ittiwa’n), and his authority is unshaken so
long as he maintains his skill in sealing, and in storing away abundant

* Rink, Tales and Tradilions, pp. 132—143. See also my “Grénlandske Sagn” (1913),
pp. 62—63. Eskimo “chiefs’’ are mentioned in De Poincy’s (and Nicolas Tunes’)
reports on the Davis Straits (1658), see First Part, p. 684; their supposed “kings”
are mentioned even earlier, see p. 686. But our information regarding such
things as observed by the early pioneers (who did not understand the Eskimo
language) is very uncertain.

* E. W. Nelson, pp. 286—287 and 296—297.

* Cf. also Mauss and Beuchat, p. 109.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 619

supplies for the winter. The son with his family lives in his father’s
house, and in the summer moves with him and his tent!. _ )

After the father’s death, the grown up sons often continue for the
time being to live with his widow, their mother.

At Ammassalik, for example, during the year we wintered there,
parents lived with their married children in the same house, as follows:

Sijataaq had his married son in his house and his tent.

Maratté had two married sons in his house and his tent.

Umeerinneq had one married son with him, and his son-in-law
Okucuk.

Marhré had two married sons in his house.

Kooitse’s mother had her four sons, all married, in her house
and tent.

Teemiartissaq had her two married sons in her house.

When Attiartertoq’s daughter, Tupaaja, parted from her husband,
Perqitaq, who disowned her, she moved from his tent back to her
father’s.

In the house (and tent) each family has its fixed place on the
platform.

As an example I give the following family apportionment in some
of the houses near Ammassalik. I also do it to show the personal
names of the inmates. They are all named after a considerable number
of the dead but the names of the dead must not be mentioned—except
at the moment of baptism—so these names are not in everyday use
(they were confided to me in whispers). Every person therefore has
an epithet or nickname for everyday use, and further they are as a
rule named variously elder brother, elder sister, uncle, aunt etc.

Five inhabited Houses in the Ammattalik and Sermilik Fjords.

Names of the Inmates and their Distribution in the Houses.
Five ground plans (houses nos. VI, VII, VIII, X, XI) see fig. 167.

The numbers of the houses (top, left) correspond to those used
in the list of ““Measurements of the Interior of Eleven Inhabited Houses”’,
see First Part pp. 356—357.

The Roman numerals seen on the platforms along the back and
front walls indicate adult inmates, Arabic numerals (placed as ex-
ponents) denote children.

The names of the inmates are here numbered according to their
places on the platforms. No. I on the extreme left is as a rule the place
of the master of the house.

? First Part, pp. 347—349.

620 W. THALBITZER.

The length of the back and side walls and the breadth of the
passage are given in metres.

w on the front wall means window.

Statistic particulars of the East Greenlanders about the years
1884—85 have been given by Holm in the First Part, pp. 183—187,
cf. 26—27.

Physical anthropology by Soren Hansen, First Part pp. 149—180.

In the ground plans the main platform (itter(7)) is seen against
the back wall, and the window platforms (eepe) against the front wall.
Here are the windows between which the long house passage (iseeia)
is situated, and its inner opening and ascent (katak) are marked. The
inner part of the main platform (marked a in no. XI) is called the
kile of the platform (WGr. kilo) and is the sleeping-place of the young
children, except the babies who lie with their mothers. Adolescents
and all unmarried inmates sleep on the window platforms where guests
also are given places. The vertical lines on the main platforms indicate
the skin partitions (falin) between the special places of the families, their
“beds, stalls’ (eaa, plur. eaan, possessive form of ee = WGr. ine ‘the
bed, the nest, etc.’). These are the nightly sleeping-places of the parents.

Adult inmates sleep with their heads turned towards the edge of
the platform, resting on a pillow consisting of a rolled up skin coat,
their feet pointing towards the back wall. For cover there was a seal
skin often with an edging of bear skin (qipe). The underlying layer
(mattress) for the most part consisted of some larger seal skins (Green-
land seal or hooded seal) with the hairy side turned up towards the
body; as in WGreenland this layer is called gaaqg.—The space between
the floor and the platform is called qaaneq. In the day-time the “bed”
is the woman's working-place where she will sit for hours in the oriental
way with her legs crossed under her, sewing, cutting, winding sinews,
cooking meat etc.

At the front edge of the platform the props for the ceiling (pillars
bearing the roof) are marked by small circles, and outside them are
seen the lamp platforms, e. g. in no. XI, marked b, while c denotes
the window platforms, d the katak entrance.—The side or end walls
of the house are called udn; often a narrow shelf or platform runs
along them, a little lower than the main platform. Here implements,
boxes, lamps etc. are kept. For more details see First Part, pp. 352 ff.

Personal Names.
(Cf. Hanserak’s list of names from 1884—85, First Part, pp. 189—202.)

Each person has several names, most of them being the names
of dead people after whom they have been called, which, accordingly,
are never used and therefore must never be mentioned aloud.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 621

6.06 m. No.VIl te
a
: 1-6 7 3 41 1243) 7495
ss = I-1) Il IV-V |VI-VII VIN |IX-X
Si =
a, cS = é 4 d 6
2 (er aes
< S
aren “N a
4 3 -
< =
s
me

9 ea
A

IX-X

5.65 m,

WIA ON

EN
a XIX
ML-LL OL

0.81

Fig. 167. Groundplans of five houses, nos. VI, VII, VIII, X, XI, see explanations on
opposite pages.

622 W. THALBITZER.

Many persons were unwilling to tell me their names; others would
only tell me some of them. Most of the names originally had a meaning
in the language, and for many of them it is possible to catch a glimpse
of the etymology.

* denotes the name usually employed; it may be a pet-name or
a nickname. See also the special section on names (in a later chapter).

~ denotes “married to”’.

No. VI. The house at Sawaranaarteg.
Number of inhabitants: 28; adults 16.

I. Pinnerseen Pikkiwarnaa't Kukkarnaaq *Paa"k“annak.
Il. ~© Kiwikarnaa't Mannee®ar Qednnilik Eearaatik.
1. Uittsinne Kaa”kajé Tookat*ee Teertukko (etc.), boy.
2. Avkko Aainu Ki"tlaale Kaalué Tsippile, boy.
3. [’eciawik Kuntik Mattokataak Pagararter Uinna (or Uinnak) Teqer-
qtua@ilsiaq Mikilera Eesimaleq, girl.

Ill. Ukkaq Qeerseeq Qalizeer Ersisaar Ajo *Qaartudn.
IV. ~ Cergé Naammarter Kittarpuluk Koon"aaie Peerteesaar.
4. Aliisakkaa't Kukku Kakkaseerlog Ammora‘nnagq Paajarartudt Takituar-
narleq Torqoakitseq Peerna Umeerin’neq (or Umeen ne), boy.

V. *Imaa”ka Serneero Qinnalitton Aaloorlon Oomaasen Akeenaq Qoorgqoor.
VI. ~ Kaakaak Arqaluartaag Acceree Usuraniag (etc.).
5. Arqartsaaq Aarqeen Unalitokajee Piwaaie Cimmojoon Naanisaq Can-
nindlta Ikimaleq Nanik“aje*, boy.
6. Imma'tten Napakko Peewaain Annanneekaik (etc.), boy.

7. Apucsuk Quesuluk Tookulak (or -leq) Amaa‘nag (etc.), boy.

VII. Eege (or Eere) Pilta (etc.).
VIII. ~& Qadtterne Qittordjaq Tikkaiaat (etc.).
8. Mamarter Kunnitse Ususaag Ammalikaltak Amaartudn Keenaag (etc.),
boy.

IX. Ammuttadk (or -ldy) Saame Mikiaq Pittokaik Pudtlen *Nutaraa‘tton,
woman.

X. Nusukkaliwan Akérte (etc.).
XI. & Aageer Siwarliwaarnaaq Aawiaatitsuk Apucsuyn (etc.).
9. Amatdnner Eesimarler Aa®taatén Asee®n*or Unanilokajik Nooraik
Pullitaar, boy.
10. Napaattun Qiwidnee’kéltaain Nakkanaleq Atameeltaaiwan Nakippat-
taain Udtaain Tikkannik Eanaatik, girl.
11. Ninaa'wdan Uitsalikitseq Qinninaaq Eekilor Berta Usuroon Keewaidn
Qatlaawa, girl.
XII. Peelartiwaq Sakkeemiaq Peemaleq Ilipaan Aataaqg Tusidttin (= Iliwate)
Sippijane, boy (15 years).
XIIL. Peesue Piwalin (ete.), boy.
XIV. Uit'saa (ete.), young man.
XV. Elias Kakkaaq Cippiaq Ammanaa'‘naq.
XVI. © Dora Uttilia Piltiwakkaaie.
12. Peerar Amaartog, girl.

Ill.

LV:
_ © Neoqannilseq Innilikaik Naanujun (ete.).

VIII.
IX.

or)
iw)
ist)

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

No. VII. The house at Immikeertwaain.
Inhabitants: 24; adults 11.

. Qilertaanalik Kaakaak Aaqee Arqaluag (etc.), master of the house,
. © Eaa”naak Ooraarter Tee®ne Pe'qornia (etc.).

1. Nunaara Upeqanitseq Qeaanak Tookaatee, girl.

2. Taatuma Aatiwar Qandppik (etc.), boy.

3. Silltiiag Aqqammee.

4. Tokuttannaaq Oqootog Appaliaq.

5. Aaganne Ooruarpalukajik Paaiaa‘t Kakileerton, Qaatseqaaq, boy.
Ndlaagq (ete.), girl.

cua

Udnne Aaniwan Quatsiwinnag Annike Tannealitton (etc.), old woman.
7. Kooqaq Panerloqujuk Qaamise Timasaa Qittak Utsukkuluk Kitler-
meelog (etc.).

Iserqitog Qaaqdattooaa Maarnaake Aawiakutoowa Teekaik * Kittaararter.
8. Eree'nakajik Qernerludlsiaq, boy.

9. Napaaseetaa't Aapalutudlsiaq Aakilseq, girl.
10. Nukartaai Ujarnik Tinittuk Qacceppik, boy.

. Pisreqaaq Naqqin" annitseg Keenaq®annitseg *Ertaaaraaq.
. © Sernddro Pandllammin Nakerg'aat" (etc.).

11. Anitaannitseq Tikkannin Na‘tlaag Amaren Aninnoon.

. Pisérqaaq Aamaka), Ikkarlitsaq Ukoorajudt Miltikuju‘, old woman.

12. Koonaq Untin Upparannitsen Icsiawik.
13. Kaatuarpaase Qernerten Peematak Kaakak (etc.), girl.

. Anerg”aai Naainaaq Picsikaai.

~& Kamilerten Napa Amaamaqilaa‘t Kakkiwiaq.
14. Ujarnik Kunnitse Oorunarpaik (ete.), girl.
15. Naarteewdt Qitsén (ctc.), girl.

. Serneero Akkasin Pusiseq Oojulikaagq (etc.), old woman.

16. Eqqimaa‘tsiaaq Ameenak Attakkaain Kukuttog Misartaq, boy.

No. VIII. The house at Sarpag.

Inhabitants: 32; adults 18.

. Nudnnaarin Qilaapalik Peecsoonadk Eeniwaq.

. ~& Eerqinérteen Peqeetaq (etc.).

. Coonojon Napa Naree’kka.

. Uwiaain Naaja Tookatser Pamiattik.

. Quninne Culuko Kaaluarnaat Ilerq’aaq Cerqipatta.
. © Anneele Mittikujo Pikkinor.

1. Teerte Qiwaage Onnunnia,
2. Aa”palulludtsiaq Ammalokdattak.

. Qatsaarin Tikeqaa'tsiaq.

3. Makkak Asee®nor Timmujoon.

Tookutaqg Imerpin Argqarmeen.

~ Kee*rnakke Kootsukujoogq.

4. Qimmiartik Anitaaynpitseq.

5. Keertsaran Imaalukutsuk.

6. Qoaicaacilik Mattukataaq Tappinyaajuk.

624 W. THALBITZER.

X. Cimme Kalia Ceerqoaaitsiaq Qutturneq Qaneekitor.
XI. ~& (Louisa) Koortse Kaasuarnaagq.
7. (Osa) Sukkannitseq Cialilsuk.
8. Enilidttak.
9. Aaniseeraq Aa”palultudtsiag Aagitseq Qujaarin.
XIl. Kaa"kaje Ipaawaq Tamuqattiaq Nuniaag Arqanitsiwdn Peetsinokaje.
XIII. © Eeree Maaja Pujoor.
10. Aa*ttatta Pilikaa'tsiaq.

XIV. (Nataania) Ukkaq Peetsipalik.
11. (Peeter) Ciminaq Utorqartaa't.
12. (Dorteea) Ileekaippaat.
13. (Saamuel) Kanee”nor.
14. (Maaria) Qupaluaartik.

XV. (Elias) Kakkaaq.
XVI. © (Doora) Uttilia Qittorajaq.
15. (Bera) Paaiaa't.
XVII. Uttuanne Kittammeertog Uppakka.

XVIII. Peetaannaat Paascsuk Arqacor (etc.).

X. Iserpalukittog.
The house on the island Qeertartuattiaq.

Inhabitants: 15; adults 8.

I. Sinataaqg Inojoog, master of the house.
Il. ~ Qaarcuan Edowayn Edoran Amilsiwan.
1. Qernerter Kukkuy Kakkilurtaain.
2. Ujarneq Parattammin Ooqaatsin.
3. Naaro Ammalokdttak Nazaak Sitloraain.
4. Oojoqatién Qernertudlsiaq Aatsiiko.

Ill. Pitardy Aartaartik.

IV. Nusukkaluat Epee Pinnertser Erertaan Amaren.

V. © Qimmiartik Kiwikarnaa®t Paa®kdnndk Qajalé Ittiwan Koortse.
5. Meeta Nakipattaak.
6. Kaatuarpaase Ittiwadn Nakinitsen Qiwaaqe.

VI. Tardtse Nerqeteeron Kakkaar Sawartiwarnaaq.
VII. ~& Itseek”ai Aputsun Cippiaq Qdad'alin.

7. Kaatin Pildkaattiaq Aputstk.

8. Qil8innuaqg Aneeralualik Sittoraain.

XI. The house on the peninsula Qeertaaulaq
not far south of the Sermilik fjord.

Inhabitants: 11 (10 here); adults 5.

I. Nappartuko Qataaq Utteunnaak, master of the house.
IL. ~& Itlimaneejuk Atdamaararter (etc.). ;
1. Tikkannin Qeete Tappinnaaiuk Amattinneg Iliwaté Mattan Kanee“n“or
Augisakkaain Attaka, boy, ab. 11 years.
2. Qilee”’tin Taqiwar (etc.), girl.
3. Perqgitaan (etc.), girl, ab. 6 years.

€

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 625

III. Keersaraq Naataraq Qittorajaq Kaasuin Tookutagq (ete.), married woman.
IV. Ak”ko Aartawartik Aqqittoq, her sister.

V. Edrtiwdn, old woman without children, sister of Nappartuko (1.).
4. Ukkanaan Nannajak Inicsagq (ete.), girl, ab. 12 years.
5. Ammaraa'naq Nulidkkaakisoq (etc.), boy. ab. 10 years.

I. is the master of the house, II. his wife; 1—3 their children.

I., If. and V. have lived earlier at [kaailiag, to the north on the Amma-
ssalik fjord, in Keersagaq’s house. Three years ago they moved to Qeertaaulagq.

III. and IV. belong to the Torqularmeen people to the south from where
they arrived here last summer after one of them having become a widow.
They are not akin to the people of this house.

Eartiwdn, Nappartuko’s sister, “does not remember” the rest of her own
names.

4. and 5. are Nappartuko’s children by a former wife (now dead). '

The communistic fellowship does not by any means go so far as
to abolish individual right to property; on the contrary, every hunter
is the absolute owner of his own hunting and working implements,
and both women and children have their own possessions, which,
when they died, were buried with them in their graves!.

During the short summer the inhabitants split up in smaller
parties and move out, each family in its tent, in order to approach
the abode of the seals and whales or following the shoals from place
to place. In the summer, naturally, the Ammassalik Eskimo live more
scattered than in the winter, but on the other hand, the tent-camps
sometimes grow to a considerable size, on account of families and
parties from many different districts meeting to hunt over the common
hunting-grounds. This summer life involves the cessation of char-
acteristic forms of the winter life; for, in the summer, no communal
festivals are held, and the angakut’s official activity ceases. On the
other hand, it is preferably at this season that the secret training of
the future angakut takes place, and the same is true of the great drum-
song duels which go on near the great camping grounds preferably
in the night beneath the midnight sun while it touches the northern
horizon.

The heathen rules and customs which insured order, and cir-
cumscribed individual freedom, were upheld by the angakut and the
elders of the house, in particular, by ittoqg*, that pater-familias who,
by his skill and prudence, had attained a certain authority. What had
even greater influence in the maintenance of domestic discipline and

1 First Part, p. 524.

* ittog is a nominal participle of the verb ippog, meaning ‘the one who is (lives,
exists) there’, analogously to the Old Norse; buandi ‘the master of a farm, a
peasant’ from bia ‘to prepare; occupy; to live there’.

626 W. THALBITZER.

reverence for the transmitted customs was “public opinion’, within
the house and the settlement. This influence was due to the direction
of ilerqgog (‘customary use’) or, as the East Greenlanders say, par'’juti-
garput ‘our use and wont’, i.e. the custom of our community, really
meaning, as it seems, ‘the thing we creep on (as our base)’!, but
without the rules being formulated in real laws, by-laws, or even
proverbs. No moral code has ever been formulated, but certain myths
and tales contain indications thereof.

This conservative “creeping” of the community in the old moral
traces demanded, without lenity, the co-operation of every grown man
and woman in acquiring a livelihood during the whole year. It
demanded, moreover, the possession of certain Eskimo virtues, of
mutual regard, politeness, and helpfulness; it also called for a virtue
which is far rarer amongst the Eskimo, namely moral courage. Only
occasionally, however, did the individual venture to complain of his
neighbour’s violation of the customs, e.g. if he violated the rules of
taboo or the boundary for honesty and uprightness. In cases where
indignation accumulated, the offended one or the guardian of the
morals often preferred to expend his wrath in circulating an evil
rumour by means of scandal, or by secret persecution with the aid
of magic means. Only in cases of open scandal or hostility the offended
person had recourse to open persecution before the national court of
assize, viz., by the juridical drum-singing.

But the inmost, intimate motive for ranging themselves under the
social “‘creeping’’ was religious awe and resignation; because any
infringement of the rules of taboo involved inconvenience for the whole
of the small community, and was kept in check through the activity
and witcheraft of the angakog. He who was stamped with the guilt
of infringing one of the many religious injunctions which encompassed
life was sorely hit by the priestly condemnation’.

Offences against secular laws (especially if a man outraged the
privileges of marriage or the vital property of his neighbour) were
punished by the person transgressed against publicly reviling the
accused by drum-singing and -dancing before him. This took place
at his house or his tent, in the presence of a large gathering, which,
by its expressions of approval or disapproval, acted as a kind of court
of assize’.

* Cf. par“nutiqa’ ‘he has it for the object (or ground) of his creeping’. The ex-
pression seems to be based on the idea that we creep in the foot-steps of our

ancestors, sujulivut paornutiqt narpavul (cf. my book Kaldleg, Nungme 1932, p. 43).

Many examples are found in the tales, see First Part pp. 283—286, nos. 30 and
31: “The Moon sees that mourning rites are kept up” (Holm); and here p. 419
(end of no. 219) and pp. 450—453 (no. 229).

* Compare H. Rink, Om Grenlenderne (1882) pp. 8—11.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 627

This juridical drum-singing is known chiefly from the southern
districts of Greenland, and best from the east coast; whereas it does
not seem to have had any foothold outside Greenland.

There is another feature in the social life of the Greenlanders
which is more strongly defined in the reports from the Western Eskimos;
while, in the older reports from Greenland, it seems to be veiled, so
that its original meaning can only be conjectured. The reason for this
is not that the eighteenth century authors lacked an eye for it, but
rather that during the time which had elapsed since the Eskimos
populated the coast of Greenland a change in the original Eskimo
community had gradually taken place, at any rate in the south of
the country.

I have already drawn attention to the fact that while the qashset,
the common meeting and festival house, was closely connected with
the social arrangement of every Eskimo settlement outside of Green-
land, this institution had nearly disappeared from Greenland itself.
On the southern East coast as in South West Greenland it seems to
have been replaced by the “long house’’, which, there, had engulfed
the entire settlement, combining the functions of a private dwelling
and festival house in one?. In all probability separate qashse-houses
existed in earlier times, both near Ammassalik and in West Greenland;
but, to judge from the lack of ruins, they must have been dispensed
with rather early. The qashse-institution seems, on the whole, to have
flourished most vigorously in Alaska, and eastwards to Hudson Bay;
but to have diminished in importance along the shores of Davis Strait.

The ‘long house’ with as many as 10 families (10 family “‘stalls”
on the platform) is known only from the south of East and West
Greenland. Northward, the Eskimos, as far as we know, have always
lived in small houses arranged for the use of two or three families®.

General and historical view.
population was found on the central and southern parts of the coast
of Alaska than was found elsewhere. It did not constitute a singlc,

In early days, a denser Eskimo

‘The qgagsse of Greenland authors is the same as the “kashim” of Alaskan
authors. Other manners of spelling it (in vocabularies ete.) are kakse, karkse
(Fabricius p. 158) Kagsse (Kleinschmidt), Kaggi- (Bourquin p. 375).

First Part, p. 721 (compare 362—363 and 636).

The largest houses in Alaska could hold as many as 25 persons: E. W. Nelson,
for example mentions one at Unaktolik of which the area measured 15 ft. by
20 ft. (Nelson 1899, p. 288, ef. p. 298). Cf. one mentioned by Jacobsen (ed. Woldt
1887, p. 225, ef. 214) which held 25 people and measured 12 ft. by 14 ft. As a

cy

rule the houses were smaller. Nelson mentions a house for three families, with
an area of 12 ft. by 12 ft., and Jacobsen (p. 246) one for six persons, hardly
5 ft. by 5 ft., and (p. 263) a hut with room for only four persons.

628 W. THALBITZER.

united nation, but was split up into tribes, which often were in warlike
opposition to one another, though closely akin in language and culture.
The tribes around the mouth of the Yukon River—Magemiut, Ikog-
miut and Unalit—are mentioned as being some of the most warlike;
but northwards, at Kotzebue Sound, the Malemiuts were specially
feared on account of their ferocity’. The cause of the feuds was most
vendetta’, practised by a member of one tribe against
a member of a neighbouring one. As in Greenland, the obligation to
practise the “‘vendetta’’ rested with the dead man’s son, or, if he had
none, with this nearest male relation (brother, father, uncle). Between
Eskimo tribes themselves, or between an Eskimo tribe and a native
Indian tribe, this obligation of vendetta spread from the relations of
the deceased to all his fellow tribesmen. Among the Unalit Eskimos the
appeal to go on the “*
one settlement to another, and from kashim to kashim in the friendly
settlements, and here delivering “‘a song of invitation’. The tribes had
no real chiefs, but each detachment followed the most esteemed hunter
in his settlement. Whenever possible, the enemy was assaulted under
cover of deceit, from ambush, and the attack was made with three
kinds of weapons, e. g., bow and arrows, spears, and warclubs.
Shields were not used, but an armour made of imbricated plates of
walrus ivory was sometimes employed?. When one of the contending

se

often a private

“<

war-path’’ was made by an emissary going from

parties desired an armistice, a furecoat was swung to and fro on one
side of a pole, as a sign of truce*. No quarter was given. The party
or settlement assailed was exterminated; the men and boys being killed
while the women were generally made slaves. It was the custom in
Alaska, as in Greenland, to extract the heart of the slain enemy and
devour a part of it. Here, naturally, there is talk of raids rather than
of war with organized armies.

The character of the assaults calls to mind the assaults of the
Skrelings (Eskimos) on the Norsemen in South Greenland, when the
Skreelings, in the fifteenth century, assailed with stratagem the last
remaining Norse settlers, burnt their houses and killed them. The local
tradition has been maintained amongst the Greenlanders until the
present day?.

In Alaska these fights took place between hostile tribes within the

* Nelson (1889), p. 301 and 327—330. Cf. Jacobsen (1887), p. 226.
° For illustration see E. W. Nelson, Pl. XCII.
This modern description from Alaska of swung “colours” calls to mind the

description in the Old Norse sagas of the inhabitants of “Hvitramannaland”
who “carried poles of small pieces of skin attached to them, and shouted
loudly”. Cf. my paper Four Skreling Words from Markland (18th Int. Congress
of Americanists, London 1912, p. 88, footnote 5).

* See First Part, pp. 698—708.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 629

Eskimo people, or between Eskimos and Tinneh-Indians, but the
traditions hereon, as recorded by Nelson, scarcely date so far back
as those from Greenland.

Even from these reports from Alaska it is evident that the Eskimos
have once been a martial and aggressive people like the Indians in
America and the Chukchis in North-east Asia. E. Petitot’s pioneer
description of the tribes between Mackenzie River and Anderson River
also partly confirms this impression; though, here, we are already in
districts where, now, the average Eskimo usually displays a more
peaceful and somewhat lazy disposition. But the impression of the
martial Eskimo is re-awakened by the 16th, 17th and 18th century
descriptions given by French emigrants and others of the Eskimos in
Southern Labrador, who formerly lived right down along the northern
coast of the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence. These French accounts support
the Icelanders’ yet older ones of conflicts with the Skrelings in the
same district about A. D. 10001.

The old reports from about the same parts (Labrador and Baffins
Land) regarding the natives’ “‘kings’’ were also probably due to the
fact that the Eskimos here, being divided into pronounced independent
tribes inimical towards one another, were obliged to attach themselves
more closely to the bravest and most competent leaders, who, thereby,
involuntarily acquired a kind of chieftainship, and could command
their countrymen. E. W. Netson confirms the existence of such leaders
or chiefs (chiefs without fixed authority) among the Alaska Eskimos?®,
discriminating between (1) “chiefs” ayjaiyukaak (cf. Greenl. anajo-
‘elder brother or sister’; also ‘elders’, ‘parents’), (I1) “‘headmen”’
ndskok < *najqoq, cf. Greenl. niaqog (< *najaqoq) ‘head’, and (IIT)
“rich men’’, fuku- ‘rich’ or umialik ‘owner of an umiaq’®.

Even more surprising than this trait of former chieftaincies and
a martial spirit among the Eskimos is Nelson’s indication that an organ-
ization of gens and totem has existed in a rather pronounced degree
among the Alaska tribes, namely from Kuskokwim River northward
to Kotzebue Sound. Undoubtedly this organization did not involve any
essential change in the communistic social order of these Eskimos;
but, nevertheless, I think that we must ascribe actual significance to
this evidence as to totem marks and gens or rather “‘clan’’ organization
among the Alaska Eskimos, as it explains certain customs and remini-
scenses among the Eastern Eskimos, as, for instance, their masks and
religious games.

* See First Part, pp. 684 (683)—688 and my paper Four Skreling Words from
Markland (cited ibidem p. 740, footnote).

* Nelson (1899), pp. 303—304. — Cf. also First Part, 684 (686).

® Nelson (1899), pp. 304—306; sundry glossaries in Barnum, Schultze and Jacobsen.

LX. 41

630 W. THALBITZER.

According to Franz Boas, the Cumberland Sound Eskimos (in
Baffin Land) divided themselves at the Autumn Festival in honour
of the sea-goddess (Sedna) into two parties, the “‘ptarmigans”’ and the
““ducks’’. These parties represented the children of the summer and
the winter, and the idea of designating them as birds and dressing
them accordingly reminds us of the totem customs of the West Eskimos
and actually might seem to be an imitation of such customs’.

The tradition of the Eskimo people’s descent from a woman and
a dog, which is well known everywhere among the Eskimo, even in
East Greenland, might also be referred to in this connection, and the
nursery songs and fables about the raven which have been recorded
in Greenland, and probably indicate the raven as a raven-god as
with the Eskimos’ neighbours on the Pacific?, also point in the same
direction. Further, the mark of proprietorship in Alaska—the three-
forked figure known as the raven totem—seems to be found again in
the Y-shaped patterns for ornamentation (on bone implements, e. g.,
needle-cases) and in the patterns for tatooing of the Hudson Bay
Eskimos*. In Greenland itself, however, no trace of any mark of
proprietorship is to be found on the Eskimo implements?*.

Further evidence of an organization resembling “‘gens’’ amongst
the Eskimo, or of a feature which might contain the germ of such a
social organization, might be seen in their angakoq institution, and,
particularly, in the very word angdkog. This representative of the
religion is, to be sure, without real secular power in the Eskimo com-
munity, but the name indicates that his position once was apprehended
from the social point of view, in that, on the strength of his position
in the family as the oldest maternal uncle, he has been its religious
head®. This fact is in accordance with Nelson’s statement that the

* Boas (1888) p. 605.

* Cf. here pp. 208—216 and 385, and my paper Two Old Greenland Poems in

“Vilhelm Thomsen Festskrift (1912), p. 126, and “Gronlandske sagn om Eski-

moernes fortid” (1913), pp. 80—81—P.S. Now also my Die kultische Gottheiten

der Eskimos (1928), p. 411, ef. 413—414 and 426.

Compare First Part, p. 624 (with footnote).

* On the other hand such marks of proprietorship are found scratched on many

articles originating from the ancient Norse colonization in South Greenland.

I may call to mind, in addition that a couple of Eskimo implements have been

found on the northern part of the Greenland east coast, viz., a comb and a needle-

case of ivory ornamented with crosses scratched on the sides, ef. my Ethnological

Description of the Amdrup Collection (1909) pp. 467—472 and 476, but these

adornments have, I suppose, no connection with the original Eskimo culture.

° It seems that the word ungdkoq must be closely related to the word for
maternal uncle (Greenl. anak). In Alaska the stem of this word signifies (according
to F. Barnum, 323) both “uncle’’ and “chief”, which implies that the maternal
uncle originally was regarded as the headman of the family group.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 631

Alaskan Eskimos designate their gentes with the word ujohtik', which
must answer to the Greenland ujoruk ‘sister’s child’. From this it
appears that with the original people in the west the Eskimo “gens”
came into existence through a matrimonial formation of clans with
descent through the female line (the sisters).

While Nelson emphasizes the occurrence of clans and totems with
the Alaskan tribes, he also reports that no confederation exists between
them, as amongst the Indians (e. g., the Iroquois), nor any headmen
of clans. Therefore no chieftaincies, or political structure in the proper
sense of the word. No clan-names or councils of clan or tribe. It is
as if clan-organization with the Western Eskimos has only been in
an embryo state.

These are the surmised remains of the Eskimo gens- or clan-
organization (or the germs of such which have never quite developed?).
They might seem to give the impression that the ancestors of the
Eskimos lived as neighbours of people with whom clans and totems
occurred as an integral part of the organization of the community,
rather than that the Eskimos themselves originally had such an orga-
nization. Together with many features in the ethnography and language
of the Greenlanders they bear witness that this people has at one
time continued its migration from the Bering Straits, slowly altering
its culture while wandering eastward to the coasts of the Davis
Straits.

Furthermore, if these Greenland features are derived from the
Alaskan culture and influenced by the neighbouring peoples inland?,
the conclusion seems obyious that the branch of the Eskimo people
which finally reached Greenland began its emigration from Alaska
sometime after the influence of the inland Indians of Alaska had
commenced. How, otherwise, could these reminders of the social
culture of the Indians have reached right across to East Greenland?

If this is correct, the Eskimo people must have immigrated to
America later than the Indians, and have taken possession of the
northern coasts at a period when the Indian culture of the North-West
Territory had already developed the social organization once found
there.

Postscript—Since the above was written the archeologists have
been at work. Notably Diamond Jenness, Collins, Van Valin, and
Geist have excavated many evidences of an ancient Eskimo culture

a

Nelson (1899), p. 322.
* Just as the form and ornamentation of the oldfashioned knives and spoons in
Greenland are influenced by the goods sold by the Tinneh Indians to the
Eskimos in Northern Alaska. See First Part p. 730.

41*

632 W. THALBITZER.

in several different places in the west. Wissler and Therkel Mathiassen
in the east. Hrdlicka has collected skulls and bones in Alaska.

The deepest strata of the Old Bering Sea culture are traced at
least 2000 years back by the archeologistst. This culture is especially
represented in the finds from St. Lawrence island south of Bering
Strait, whose former population presumably came from the Asiatic
side. The finds hitherto made show us a special prototype of the
Eskimo culture which Nelson was the first to make known in “‘The
Eskimo about Bering Strait’ (1899). Since it has not so far been
possible to find the traces of other peoples on the Alaskan coast opposite
the northwestern part of Asia, the inference is that the Eskimos must
have been the first human beings to occupy these shores, the first and
the only ones. It remains an enigma which way the North American
Indians farther south have come to the regions they inhabit. They
must no doubt have immigrated earlier than the Eskimos.

Another question is when the Aleutian Islands were populated,
and whether the pioneer ancestor of their inhabitants were the very
first to take the chance of crossing by “‘the stepping stones’ from some
places on the eastern coast of Kamchatka.

The Thule culture as described by Th. Mathiassen belongs to the
arctic regions and is associated with the whaling of the extreme north.
It became the lot of these people during their eastward migrations to
divide into groups according to geographical lines and environment
which, setting its mark on them, made them differ somewhat in
character.

The first inland hunters speaking the Eskimo language probably
adapted themselves to their surroundings in the interior of North Alaska
towards the water shed between Noatak river and the rivers flowing
northward to the Arctic Ocean. In there they found reindeer and
mountain sheep. In there too Knud Rasmussen found the sources for
his collection ““Festens Gave’, a collection of highly developed myths
and legends of a genuinely Eskimo character.

Whaling is carried on right down to the mouth of the Mackenzie.
Further eastward the catching of whales was again combined with
inland hunting of reindeer, partly southward over the Barren Grounds,
partly northward on the large islands of Victoria and Banks.

There is another possibility. The old inland hunters of the Barren
Grounds may have come directly from the interior of Northern Alaska
following the head-waters eastwards.

On the Arctic sea ice and the islands to the east bear-hunting
became more and more common, and the musk-oxen in the east

* Th. Mathiassen (1936) p. 128. D. Jenness (1933) p. 387.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 633

attracted hunters northward. Greenland was reached after Southampton
Island had been occupied by the western Central Eskimos, who were
now changed into eastern Eskimos. But here again the tribes divided,
some going to the extreme north of Greenland, others wandering south-
ward along Baffin land to Labrador, then still nameless lands. The
Eskimos themselves first named them. Eskimo place names might
be used to record prehistoric migrations, but unfortunately they are
nearly everywhere too scantily and too inaccurately recorded.

These immigrants into the extreme north favoured dog-sledging,
but unlike the Indians of the interior they had no knowledge of snow-
shoes or ski. They liked fixed, sheltered houses in the winter; the
stone ruins of such have been recorded in fairly great numbers along
the coasts of the continent, as also in the archipelago and in Green-
land!. In the summer they always lived in their skin tents, easy to
move, so they could readily choose a new winter district, farther east-
ward. The migration from Alaska to Davis strait could have been
accomplished in less than a generation. For the Alaskan Eskimos the
discovery of Greenland may have taken less than a century.

This old Arctic culture, the northernmost and probably slightly
younger brother group of the Old Bering Sea culture, at a comparatively
late date seems (according to D. Jenness) to have been supplanted in
the central regions by an unknown Eskimo-speaking group which
spread along the coasts and even went out on to the ice in the open
sounds or on the large calm lakes between the Barren Grounds and
Victoria island, a people living in snow houses in the winter®. The
Old Eskimos supplanted by them perhaps wandered up to northern
Greenland a thousand years ago.

The ethnographical connection between the Old Eskimos of Hudson
bay, e.g. those of Southampton island and Iglulik, and the culture
of Greenland has long since been recognised’. The prototype of the
material culture of the Greenlanders is to be found in the almost
identical culture excavated at Naujan and Mitimalik by Th. Mathiassen
on the 5th Thule Expedition. The Thule culture received its name as
a result of this expedition. In reality this implement culture whose
uniform traces are seen to extend from Greenland to Bering strait,
and even (according to Mathiassen) right over to the northern coast
of the Chukchi peninsula, had already been partially discovered at
the first excavation of Comers Midden near Cape York in Smith Sound

‘See my map in M.o.G. 31, 1904. Cf. H. G. Simmons: Eskimaernas forna och
nutida utbredning samt deras vandringsvdgar, Ymer, Stockholm 1905.

2 These are the ancestors of the same inland Eskimos which were ethnologically
investigated in this century by Knud Rasmussen and Birket-Smith.

8 Cf. First Part pp. 329—330 and 716 and Franz Boas (1909, pp. 535—536).

634 W. THALBITZER.

(ethnographical description by C. Wissler)!. Comers Midden was one of
the great discoveries farthest north which was later more exactly
determined by Th. Mathiassen’s comparative investigations.

But soon after the elucidation of the Thule, Central, and Old
Bering Sea cultures the picture of the number, distribution, and migra-
tions of the Eskimo groups became more complicated. The Van Valin
collection suggested an Arctic reflux in a western direction; and the
Cape Dorsett find in the eastern side of Hudson bay of which an
isolated trace seems to have been found high up the west coast of
Greenland north of the Polar Eskimos’ colony, has slightly shaken
the system”.

It has been suggested by Th. Mathiassen (and others?) that the
Old Eskimos from Hudson bay exiled northward might be identical
with the prehistoric Tornit who figure in the ancient myths. Their
ruined stone houses are still shown on Victoria land, and throughout
the central Eskimos refer to these legendary Tornit as particularly
primitive in certain respects. The description of their fire-places or
lamps and cooking-pots, which they used to carry to and from the hunt-
ing places on the ice, makes me believe that they were identical with
the eastern Greenlanders’ legendary people, the /galittin, W. Gr. Igalitlit,
sing. Igalilik < igaleq ‘kitchen, cooking-place’ (and -lik). This name
means ‘one that has (-lik), i. e. carries with him, a cooking-place’®.

As regards the name Tornit (sing. Tuneq) a variant of which is
Tunerit in a more primitive plural form, the Labrador Eskimos had
quite similar notions of an ancient northern people*, while as late as
the 19th century the southern Greenlanders had corresponding legends
(noted down by Rink) of local Tornit, people in the interior or at the
heads of the fjords. As a place-name Tunerit occurs in the southern-
most part of the east coast.

It would be difficult to explain the existence of these Labrador
and Greenland Tornit in the same way as those referred to in the
legends of the Central Eskimos. The supposed northward advance of
the Tornit from the Barren Grounds to northern Greenland as explained
by Th. Mathiassen cannot be reconciled with the South Greenland
traditions.

The only living group in Greenland which shows some very striking
parallels of dialect, myths, customs, and implements to the Western

* Clark Wissler, Archeology of the Polar Eskimo, APAMNH, vol. 22 N. York 1918.

° Th. Mathiassen, Notes (1928) and The Present Stage of Esk. Archeology (1931).

® Cf. pp. 414—415 and 384.

* First Part pp. 690 and 700. Cf. F. Boas: The Central Eskimo p. 634—635; the
vocabularies of Erdmann, p. 335; Bourquin p. 404; Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo
144—150 (esp. 145).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 635

Eskimos are the Ammassaliks. I would call attention to the myth about
Asiaq (p. 402 and First Part p. 300) and the human soul migrating
through animals, starting from a blade of grass (pp. 408—412; First
Part 272—274); and to the uaajeerneq games and the drum process
customs. I note likewise the special, obsolete features of their imple-
ments mentioned by Mathiassen!, among which I would emphasize
the type of the sealing stool, the leister with a turnable head, the rattles,
the relief figures carved of ivory and nailed on eye-shades ete. Here
it is not enough to say with Mathiassen: these obsolete features bear
witness to an early stagnation in the eastern Greenland group, earlier
than that which we can observe in the western culture. These and
still more archaic Ammassalik features warrant the further statement
that in these items the Ammassalik culture reveals such a striking
resemblance to the western Eskimo culture in certain localities even
as far south as southern Alaska (Venjaminovy describes satirical drum
singing among the Aleuts)® that in some way or other there must be
a definite connection. An explanation is needed. We might imagine
the immigration of a special group from Alaska into Greenland, skirting
the homogeneous Greenland culture known to us from other places,
a wedge right through the Thule culture, ending on the east coast of
Greenland.

1 Th. Mathiassen, Prehistory of the Angmagssalik Eskimo. M. 0. G. 1933 pp. 124—26.
Cf. my First Part (1914, pp. 728—730), from which even more distant features
may be gathered.

2 See also H. Konig: Der Rechtbruch und sein Ausgleich bei den Eskimo (Anthropos
vol. 20, 1925, pp. 281—288); Das Recht der Polarvélker (ibid. vol. 24, 1929,
p. 661—662).

CHAPTER IV
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. ECONOMY

Division and Specialization of Work (cf. First Part, pp. 524—525).—
The man’s business is to hunt and procure food for the house. In
addition, every man is his own carpenter, joiner, and carver, making
his own weapons and other tools, his own sledge, boat, tent, etc.).
The woman’s task specially consists in preparing for further individual
use in the daily life what the man brings home, and in taking care
of the children. Every woman sews her own work-bags, skin-bags and
needle-skins and cuts out her hair-ribbon.

The two sexes help each other in manufacturing certain useful
articles. The man’s knife as well as his wife’s needle is used for the
benefit of the other party. The specialization of the tasks is not fixed
by the line between the sexes. The man, for example, makes the work-
knife (cakke; W.Greenland ulo) and scraping-board (qapiarpik) of his
wife, her bodkins, her toilet combs, and her ornaments carved from
walrus tusk, etc.

For common use in the house, the man makes the large tubs for
fresh water and urine, puts together boxes, dishes, and vessels, and
scoops out plates, dippers, cups, etc.

On the other hand, the woman cuts with her knife and sews with
her needle not only her own but also the man’s clothes and footgear,
also his boat and tent skins, his game-bag, and the harness for his
dog team.

The women help to build the houses and to pitch the tents, and
also to stretch the large skins when the framework of the umiaq or
kaiak has to be covered. The umiag is the property of the hunter,
but it is the woman’s duty to row it. The owner often leaves it to an
old woman to steer, while he himself rows at its side in his kaiak.
It is beneath a man’s dignity to row in a woman’s boat.—On the other
hand it is the man’s privilege to row the kaiak (qaidq, in plur. qdennat)
and to hunt on the sea; and it is mentioned as an extremely rare
instance of emancipation, which perhaps had aroused painful surprise,
that at one place in the southern part of the east coast it had some-

Fig. 168. Two merry wives, married to big hunters. On the left Kittaararteq’s wife
Niaqannitteq, on the right Qeqi Sileqaawa’s wife Aanoog. (W.T. phot. Aug. 1906.)

Fig. 169. Bear skin stretched on a frame of tent

poles tied together subjected to the influence of
the frosty air (a similar subject in fig. 29 and in the
First Part, fig. 221) (April 14. 1906. W.T. phot.).

Fig. 170. Old Woman, drawn by Karaale.

Fig. 171. Poor orphan boy from

Torqulaarmeen, carrying his snow

goggles in his hand (May 1906.
W.T. phot.).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 637

times come to pass that women had taken to rowing the kaiak and
hunting seals?.

Orphans in particular, when they grew up, were made use of in
the hut as servants (ta‘la‘t, WGr. kiwfat). A man has seldom more
than one servant. He (and his wife) uses him (or her), fom example,
to fetch meat or blubber from the cache outside the house, oy drinking
water from the river (in the winter frozen snow which is melted over
the lamps). The orphans are playmates with the other children, but
are often looked down on, and suffer hardship. Not until they are old
enough to catch seals do they succeed in asserting their position. For
several years, however, they will be dependent on their master, who
will procure implements and weapons for them, and whom they will
serve in return.

The specialization of work is not nearly so strongly defined as in
the European community, but certain approaches to specialization are
to be found. Thus it was by preference that individual persons cultivated
the art of making pots and lamps from the soft, grey, soap-stone, as
this material is found only at some few places*.

As a rule, there were one or two of those living nearest the soap-
stone deposit who were specially adroit at scooping out these stone
utensils, and who, by reason of their special knowledge of this industry,
were preferred by those who came to purchase such articles. Nappar-
tuko, whom I visited in his hut at Qeertaalit, had a large pot made
of soap-stone, an heirloom from his parents. The bottom had once
fallen out of it, but it had been replaced so artfully that the repair
could scarcely be noticed.

Glahn very pertinently states (as regards the West Greenlanders,
1771, p. 242) that amongst them were some who by virtue of special
ability knew how to attain reputation and wealth, although they were
bad hunters. He says “Yet one cannot say that those who cannot catch
seals are generally looked down on (as Cranz says p. 215). We are
very intimate with an old man who never catches more than two or
three seals in the year, and yet he is an esteemed man, for he is such
an excellent worker in wood that he thereby gathers for himself greater
wealth than anyone else in the district. We have known another Green-
lander who was a yet worse hunter, as he had no skill in hunting,
but he was a giant in singing drum-songs, wrestling, and pulling by
arm, etc.’’.

Ownership and Theft. Mutual Aid and Payment. Reservation and
Hospitality. (First Part pp.135—137; 141—145; 524—526). Each adult

1 See First Part, p. 46 (G. Holm, cf. M.o.G. IX, 1889, pp. 80—87). See also in this
(Sec.) Part the Tale of Okuamaaq, p. 511—515.
° First Part pp. 22, 26 and 494.

638 W. THALBITZER.

occupant of the hut has his private possessions, obtained partly by
inheritance, partly by barter or gift, and partly by reason of the owner
having manufactured them himself. It is extremely rare for anyone to
own more than he or she has absolute use for, whether it be tools,
clothes, amulets, or adornments.

Sinataaq, in Sermilik Fjord, who lived by the lonely Iserpalukitteq,
was known to be a close man; even his own son had to buy dearly
the necessaries of life from his miserly father. On the other hand, this
family often pulled through the hard times of winter better than others.
—In another place in the north, there were two young brothers,
Ootuanye and Kattuarajee, who each had two kaiaks, whereby the
advantage was gained that if one got damaged and had to be repaired
the other could be used in the meantime. Moreover these men often
earned money (payment) by hiring out the kaiak which they them-
selves were not using.

Private ownership is, then, a well known principle amongst the
East Greenlanders, and is especially relevant to those possessions
which serve to protect the individual (tents and clothes), or to increase
production (weapons, tools, boats, dogs). In the latter respect may also
be included the man’s wife and children; by which, however, it is
by no means to be inferred that the wife is the man’s slave, but he
owns her in the marriage state just as he owns his hunting holes on
the ice in the fjord. In the latter he sees the chance of seals and seal
flesh for the prolonging of his life, and in the former the chance of
offspring for increasing his family.

In Eskimo monogamy the man asserts the monopoly of possessing
his wife. But precisely in this respect the exact opposite is also
found, because at certain winter festivals this family organization is
dissolved on religious grounds, though only temporarily: during the
game of “putting out the lamps’? Eskimo communism celebrates its
triumph, inasmuch as the last barrier to individual ownership
is momentarily demolished, cf. p. 667 and in First Part, p. 69
(G. Holm).

Hunting-grounds are common property, both those on sea and
those on land. Set traps (for foxes, etc.) are, on the other hand, the
property of the individual, and what is caught in them belongs to the
owner of the trap, unless the trap has been neglected by the owner,
in which case the chance finder has a right to the animal caught in
it!. He who only discovers the bear is called the owner (e''’ta’) of the

1 Graah quotes this (1832, p. 125) and several other features of the Greenlanders’
communism or ownership from west coast authors (See, in particular, Dalager,
Bobé’s new edition 1915, pp. 17—24), and he thinks he has found confirmation
of the same customs from the east coast.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 639

bear, as it is more difficult to discover the bear than to kill it, on
account of nature’s mimicry.

The seal’s blow-hole through the ice—(or more correctly blow-
holes, as each seal has several at a short distance from one another),—
is always difficult to discover at any distance, as the hole is hidden
in a little snow-knoll on the ice, caused by the seal breathing through
the hole from below. Above, the hole is quite small, but it widens
downwards like a funnel, being formed thus by the seal itself. The
sealer who discovers the hole marks it off as his own by heaping a
low wall of snow round the knoll on the ice. Then others dare not
lurk by it for the seal; for it is considered despicable to catch secretly
at another man’s hole in the ice; and, accordingly, one does not visit
a blow-hole to which the tracks of a human being already lead. If
one passes a sealer lurking for his seal, one carefully steals away in
order not to scare the seal by the sound of footsteps. Should a sealer
by mistake catch a seal in another’s blow-hole (newly fallen snow can
cover the tracks leading to it), he pays the owner compensation.

The mention of theft, even the word itself!, is a distinct proof of
the recognition of individual ownership in the Eskimo community,
but on closer inspection there is a significant difference between the
Eskimo’s and the white man’s understanding of it. This difference is
distinctly seen in the examples of theft quoted by G. Holm in the First
Part, pp.148
thing in the Eskimo community to complain of theft, at least not when

145 of this work?. The matter is that it is not the correct

the theft is not of vital importance for the sufferer. One must put up
with this as with sickness; or, if one mentions the thief’s name to
one’s associates, the most one dares to do is to proceed to make him
appear ridiculous. Humour, making fun of the guilty, is in this as in
many other matters the Eskimos’ means of punishment. When it goes
further, a drum-song is composed, and the thief serenaded in the
midst of an assembly.

But in many, perhaps most cases one keeps silent at having been
robbed, or practises witchcraft against the guilty one in secret. For the
rest, theft amongst the inhabitants of the same place, is a somewhat

* EGr. tilipa’ = WGr. tiglikpan (Egede, Fabricius) tigdligpd (Kleinschmidt) ‘he
steals it; he cheats him; he gets it by mistake and keeps it bona fide.’ The
Eskimo tivip'a’ (EGr. tilip'a’) “steals (stole) from him” includes such cases in
which the “stealer’” may count on the person robbed acquiescing in the theft.
Therefore this expression does not always mean exactly the same as our “he
stole from him”. An East Greenlander who had “bought” a kayak very cheap,
said: tititjarm’qa°na “I stole it from him”, meaning “I got it dirt cheap” or
“he allowed me to steal it from him”.

Cf. also Saabye’s Brudstykker af en Dagbog (Fragments of a Journal) from West
Greenland 1770—1778 (ed. 1816), p. 76.

i)

640 W. THALBITZER.

rare experience. I myself have never been exposed to theft on the part
of the natives, though they were daily admitted to our house during
the winter, and we often lived amongst them in their camps.

The Eskimo and also the East Greenland conception of owner-
ship, loans, gifts, and barter differs somewhat from our European
notion. Here, as so often elsewhere, the Eskimo comprehension has
its birth in the spiritual side of existence. In the thing owned there

lives a soul, perhaps part of the owner’s soul, and in delivering his
property to another he parcels out a part of his own soul. His con-

science is stimulated by this fact, and social forms are influenced by it.

It has already been mentioned (First Part, p. 49) that the Amma-
ssalik Eskimo, when selling an entire seal, always cuts off a small piece
for himself before delivery, the snout for example. Attiartertoq only
sold us a common seal on the condition that after some days we would
throw the cranium into the sea. This wish was naturally due to piety
towards the soul of the dead animal and its community with the other
animals of the sea. The seller’s object is to save the soul of the
animal, even, possibly, to preserve control over this, in spite of his having
handed over the animal, anything to insure himself against anger on
the part of the animal’s genus, and the consequent poor haul’. In
these cases the seller’s thoughts are occupied with regard for the
animal’s soul as if his own were bound up with it.

The latter consideration—the spiritual connection with the object

himself has made, or has acquired at great cost. A person tears off a
part of himself by ridding himself of his accustomed property. This
might perhaps explain the Eskimo train of ideas which lies at the back
of the custom allowing a seller to demand that the business be can-
celled if he is dissatisfied with his bargain?.

It explains more than this. An artists _soul is inseparable. from

the work of art which bears his stamp and his name. A drum-song

* The care with which the famorasa’q- custom was observed in South Greenland

apparently points to a similar religious consideration (cf. pag. 641, note 3).
Cf. Dalager, 1758, p. 5, employed as authority by Graah 1832, p. 125: cf. also

w

Rink, 1871, p. 176. Dalager also mentions that in business the Greenlander was
not unaccustomed to give the purchaser credit until he could furnish payment,
“but if the debtor dies before this, the creditor never mentions his claim.”
These peculiarities in the Eskimo’s conception of business were naturally not
understood by the white men when trading with the natives. In W. Greenland
the mode of procedure in trade between the whale-hunters and the natives was,
according to Olearius, 1656, p. 175, as follows: “The natives select from the
foreigners’ goods what they desire, placing this to one side of them, and then
place so much of their own goods as they are willing to give in exchange on
the other side. Then each party adds to and deducts from until the bargain is
agreed on.” As regards the E. Greenlanders, also ef. First Part, p. 134 (Holm).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 641

is “owned” (pia’) by its author, and a spell is “‘“owned” by the person
who has bought it and in whose soul it is concealed?. The tools which
a man has made himself and has used during his life-time follow
him into his grave (cf. First Part, p. 524).

On the whole, the making of presents to one another was not
uncommon amongst the East Greenlanders. The donor almost always
expects a return gift, even if only a trifle’. a

They distinguish—between good people, i. e., such as often make
presents, and large presents, and bad people, i. e., miserly or suchlike
people who do not make presents. In Sermilik they laughed at
Singataaq, who was so thrifty that he disliked receiving guests, and
preferred to take his meals at night while the others slept, and who
actually let his son, just grown up, pay for the tobacco which he lent
him during the scarce times of winter. Kooitse and his brothers were
praised because they were so open-handed and extravagant that after
a lucky bear hunt, when their house was full of meat, they only let
a few days pass before they exhausted this in distributions and gifts ®.

As a matter of fact we did not get the impression that the Amma-
ssalikers were particularly calculating. When we visited them in their
houses or tents, while travelling from place to place, they entertained us
hospitably, and it was no rare thing for us to receive presents, which
were certainly meant as a sincere token of liberality, there being no
thought of a return gift at the back of the giver’s mind. In this way,
for example, the venerable, old head sealer Kittaararter came for the
first time to us in our tent, when we had arrived at Sermilik, and
brought us a fresh bear’s heart as a present. His bearing was dis-
tinguished, but taciturn, and no doubt he would have been offended
if I had understood his gift to be anything save a token of friendliness
and distinction. The same holds good as regards Qilertaanalik’s wife,
when we met her for the first time. A fine sense of nobility and
courtesy in her behaviour barred any immediate gifts in return for
those presented to us.

Compensation—_If a borrowed weapon (harpoon, etc.) is spoilt
during use, or is lost, by remaining embedded in the escaping animal

* Cf. pp. 159 (167) and 550.

° Cf. G. Holm in First Part, pp. 135—136.

3 In West Greenland, when the hunter returns with a killed seal, each child in
the settlement, even the youngest only one year old, is usually given a little
strip of the raw skin of the animal with blubber attached. This treat is called
“a chewing morsel’, NWGr. tamorassa’qg, SWGr. tamudssaq, from the verbs
tamuawoq “chews’’, tamorpa “chews it”, Cf. Glahn (1771) pp. 203, 220— 221.
Kleinschmidt Gronl. Ordbog (1871 p. 356. Knud Rasmussen (1906) pp. 118—119.—
This custom was not observed on the East Coast and, according to Johan

Petersen, has never been in vogue there.

642

W. THALBITZER.

for example, the owner has no claim for compensation. On the other

hand, the borrower has to make good the implement if the damage

is due to carelessness on his part.

Payment is made not only for material things but also for tuition,

in order to become an angakoq, for example, and for songs and spells
or amulets (see p.159 and 249 ff. e. g. nos. 49, 5455). These spiritual
equivalents are regarded as private and secret property which can be

bought and sold.

No real unit of value was known, no money, but all business

took the form of barter!. Dogs, soap-stone lamps or raw material of
skin, sinew thread or bone, ivory, drift-timber, pots, wooden tubs,

etc.

are mentioned as habitual merchandise.

The “communism” of the Eskimos only_holds good where articles

of food are in question, within the limits implied_by the fixed inherited
rules_for division. Complete communism prevails only with whale
hunting, when anyone who happens to turn up at the flensing has the
right to cut freely and devour without stint?.

The principle of mutual aid, then, is strong and vigorous in this

| community, and fraternity is vigorously active in all the conditions
of everyday life. The conditions of life, moreover, are extremely alike
to all.

one

This fact, however, has not caused the individuals to resemble
another in temperament or character; on the contrary, within this

small community the physiognomies and characters of the inhabitants

are

exceedingly varied.
The propensity to dissimulation and reservation in the East Green-

landers’ character has already been noted by Graah and Holm®.
It is presumably an old Eskimo trait which special social conditions
on the south-east coast of Greenland have only served to strengthen.

But together with this trait which, regarded from the other side,

suggests an exaggerated degree of self-restraint, intimate companionship
OSS — - ————

1

ts

The following may serve as an example of the Eskimo’s valuation of the Europeans’
goods. When the colony of Ammassalik was founded, aluminium money was
introduced as a means of credit, equivalent to the Danish currency of kroner
and ere. In the Danish shop by the harbour the Ammassalik native sold common
seal skins at 45 ore the piece, and the whole seal, the smaller kind, for kr. 1,20.
The shop prices were such that he could get a little more than two rolls of
tobacco for 45 ore, or 4 pieces of plug. This tobacco sufficed him for 3—4 days.
The common seal has about 75 Danish lbs of flesh and blubber, and a Green-
lander who lives well personally consumes 2 to 2'/2 Ibs of meat per diem.

The custom of free communal flensing holds in Greenland even today whenever
a killed whale is towed into the harbour by the public whaling vessel (p. t. the
Sonya), or if a dead whale (silo) happens to drift ashore near a settlement.

* Graah (1832) p. 126. Holm (1888) p. 182. See First Part, p. 147.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 643

has here, as everywhere amongst the Eskimos, developed a high degree
of willingness to help one another. Of this there are numerous examples,
and I need only refer again to the observations of Graah and Holm}.
Also Hansérak, the first Christian preacher in East Greenland, spoke
with admiration of the mutual assistance of “these heathen who share
all their game with one another’’*. In earlier days, the renowned
geologist K. L. Giesecke, got the same impyession when, in 1806, he
became acquainted with the East Greenlanders in the neighbourhood
of Cape Farewell. “From whence comes it, he asks in_his journal,

that the Beane or ‘the savages’ are more unselfish than be Christians ;

on the west- “coast?”
i

Rules for the Distribution of Captured Bears and Big
Seals. (Bearded Seals, Crested Seals and Greenland Seals), cf. also First
assistance at the killing of the animal special

shares are given i.e. a certain portion (nigeq) to each of the four or
five persons who first put in an appearance after the animal had been

held up, and who planted their weapons in it, or who only touched
it if it were already dead. In the event of the animal not having been
reached by more than the one hunter, or by less than five, the rest
of the animal falls to the lot of the discoverer’s and real capturer’s
family, in accordance with certain rules, and if, then, anything is left,
it falls to the remaining house-fellows. We can distinguish, therefore,
between capture shares and family shares, and the former take pre-
cedence over the latter. ~ i

With bear hunting a is a question of the one who discovers the
bear being the “owner” (e'wa, ewata’), and having the right to the
head, breast, heart, and skin; also, according to another testimony,
to the upper part of the spine. The next shares fall to those who first

See further Holm in First Part, pp. 141—142.

Hansérak'’s Dagbog (journal) ed. S. Rink (1900) pp. 51 and 86. New edition by
Thalbitzer (1933) pp. 77 and 140—141.

K. L. Giesecke’s Journal, ed. Johnstrup (1878), p. 22, and ed. Steenstrup (1910),
p- 22. Giesecke’s expression ‘wohlgebildeter’ is no doubt meant about the behaviour
(better educated’) in the same meaning of the German word as in Goethe’s Faust,
Second Part, Act II] where Phorkyas describes the chief of the barbarians as a
“kecker, wohlgebildeter .... Mann’.—Several other authors of the 18th and 19th
centuries who were familiar with the southernmost Greenlanders before they
had become influenced by the Europeans confirm Hansérak’s and Giesecke’s

Cy

impressions of them, see for instance the old missionary N. G. Wolf’s observations
published by S. Bruun in Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, ser. V, vol. III (1905—07),
p- 473.

* Dalager 1752 (ed. Bobé 1915) p. 18.

644 W. THALBITZER.

touch the bear with a weapon (knife or lance), eventually killing it,
and in the following order.

Number I gets the left hind-quarter of the bear

— Il — — right —
— III — — left fore-quarter
— IV — — right— —

If there be a fifth partaker, he gets the pelvic parts (qipinaluaq). The
two who get the hind-quarters are called mimertin (cf. Labrador
dialect mim.eq ‘thigh’). If the bear is accompanied by its offspring,
the head of the cub falls to the child of the discoverer. If the latter
has no child, the booty is his, or hers, absolutely. The discoverer of
the bear may just as well be a woman as a man. Indeed, it often
happens that a child discovers the bear, and so gets the main portion,
while it may happen that the following portions fall to women and
children.

When the bear is hunted in winter, it is generally surrounded by
the dogs, and if it is not wounded or desperate one can approach it
without much danger. Only to touch the animal with the point of a
weapon, sometimes, indeed, only to throw snow or a piece of wood
on it, is sufficient to validate a share. In the latter case it is only a
question of a ceremony which every woman or child can attempt.
Even if the bear has been killed by the hunters who arrive first, yet
their followers can claim a share merely by touching the dead animal
with their hands; again, therefore, only a ceremony.

It is evident that the fewer there are round the bear before it is
skinned or prepared to be transported home the greater the share
which accrues to the fortunate discoverer and killer. He who by himself
both discovers and shoots the bear gets the whole animal for himself
and his family.

In big-seal hunting the rules are in all essentials the same as
in bear hunting, bears being included in the sea animals. For
example, the first capturer’s portion of the bearded seal, the crested
seal, or the Greenland seal is the animal’s skin, head, breast, and
heart, while the four sealers who take part in the killing get the capture
portions of the seal which correspond with the portions in bear hunting:
the hind and fore quarters. Even if the sealers arrive only after the
animal has been killed, they can obtain a share in the animal by
touching its body with their weapons or hands, but this must be done
before it is prepared for towing home, i. e., before it has been inflated
so that it can float upon the water. If a sealer comes too late, and
the animal already floats inflated on the water, it depends only on the
chief sealer’s good heart whether he allows the other, notwithstanding

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 645

his bad fortune, to obtain a capture portion. Besides the chief sealer’s
share, there are four capture portions in all (nine ’’ldt).

With walrus hunting it is a question of the first discoverer getting
a part of the skin (in bear hunting he gets the whole skin). He who
first touches the dead animal gets the one thigh, up‘atin'erpa’ ‘he gets
a thigh of it’ (corresponding to the bear hunter’s mim'erpa’), and the
next to touch it gets the other. Nos. three and four get the fore-quarters,
tat'ik'a ‘he gets the fore limbs of it’ (faleq an arm, fore-limb, plur.
WGr. tatdlit {tdirit), EGr. tdt in).

At the catching of the smaller whales (white whales, narwhal,
etc.) there are also four portions. The first two partners get the tail
part (papeqip'a’ ‘he gets the tail of it’), the next two get the fore limbs
(tat'ik'a’). He who has first harpooned the whale is called the owner
(e""ta’), and gets the heart and the remaining entrails.

The family’s shares are cut either from the whole animal (large
seals, walrus, whale or bear) which has been killed and landed before
other chance hunters have yet had part of it, or from the remains of
the killed animal after the chance huniers have first had their capture
portions.

This family sharing evidently forms the foundation of the Eskimo_
communism. ‘Unfortunately I did not obtain sufficiently minute in-
formation as to the details of the sharing. In the district of Ammassalik
we might suspect certain modifications contingent on the peculiar
grouping, on this coast, of the population, the crowding together of
even distantly or entirely unrelated families in one and the same hut,
under the roof of the longhouse.

In West Greenland and wheresoever else the Eskimos are grouped
in small setthements of several houses, with two or three families in
each, the rule generally prevails that each member of the settlement
shall have a part, even if only quite a small one, of every seal that is
brought to land at the place. Meanwhile we have no further details
regarding the sharing of the seals from this coast either, and I
therefore think that my imperfect information from Ammassalik
about this matter is of some value, even if it bears the stamp of the
locality.

The large seals which lay deposited and frozen in the snow outside
the huts—I saw, for example, twelve outside Keersagaq’s house at
Ammiassalik and eight outside the house at Sawaranaartik in Sermilik
Fjord (see fig. 78)—were destined for winter suppliest. They had been
captured in the autumn, but were first drawn upon in the middle of
the winter gloom, or after New Year. According to information supplied

* Cf. First Part, p. 130 (G. Holm).
Tse 42

646 IW. THALBITZER.

by the natives (Akernilik, Mitsuarnianna, and Qiwinataaq), a large
seal was distributed in Keersagaq’s house in the following family

portions.
Family shares of deposit seal.
Husband’s family Portions Wife’s family Portions
1. Keersagaq, hus- Head (heart, 12. His wife Thigh, ete.
band (owner of thigh, skin) rep?
| 13. Wife’s father | upper parts

the seal) 14a a NAR nother { of back

2. His children Heart, liver, .
lungs, inte- ifs) » brothers back pieces
SUES (22) 16. » sisters fore limbs
3. » father : (flippers)
breast-pieces
4. » mother 17. » father’s tail-piece
5. » brothers ribs, breast- | father
and sisters arene parts of 113 » brother’s
children | side pieces
6. » brothers’ fore limbs eas)
wives (flippers) | SD SSUES s
children
7. » father’s pieces of back, aa
father thighs, 20. Remaining Fore-arms,
or flippers house-fellows Ceres
| side pieces,
8. » father’s shoulder blade | oe. per.
brother hind parts
9. » cousins shoulder blade,
(two)* pelvic portions,

back pieces
10. » mother’s neck
brother

11. Qiwinataaq’s** back-pieces,
brothers tail-piece

Notes. * The cousins of Keersagaq were Kattuarajee and Uttuaynye, sons of
Teemiartissaq.
** Qiwinataag was the second-wife of Keersagaq’s father.

The seal’s head, then, remains in the possession of the killer, who
is responsible for the observance of the ceremonies connected with
it, e. g. for the cranium being thrown back into the sea after the lapse
of three days.

The seal’s skin belongs to the capturer, and the breast, heart and
entrails also belong to him in the first instance, but if he so wishes,

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 647

these parts find their way to the childrens’ or parents’ mouths, two
parts of the breast falling to his parents and the entrails to his children.
In addition, the seal’s thighs are the share of the capturer and his
family (his brothers, his children, and his father’s father). The shoulder
blades are distributed to his father’s brother and to his cousins, who
may also get part of the back, or the tail part. The neck belongs to
his mother’s brother. The seal’s sides and ribs are distributed amongst
his brothers and sisters, and the children of his wife’s brothers and
sisters. The back is cut out partly for his father’s father, and partly
and principally for his wife’s parents and brothers. The fore limbs
(fore flippers) fall partly to the wives of the hunter’s brothers and
partly to his wife’s brothers and sisters, and the fail to her father’s
father. Such is the distribution of the various parts of the seal, provided
they have not been given away as capture portions to the hunter’s
fellow killers. Or to summarize it once more by way of a scheme:
The seal’s head, heart |

: devolved on the killer (the seal’s owner)
and skin |

— — entrails — - his children

— — neck — - - mother’s brother

— — shoulder blades — - - fathers brother and
cousins

-- — ribs and sides — - - brothers and sisters
and their children

— — loins — - - wife and children

== — fore limbs — - - wife’s brothers and

sisters
— — back — - = — father and mother
— — tail — a — father’s father.

In this sharing of the killed great mammal the coordination of

the parts of the animal and the members of the family is distinctly
seen. The husband’s family is opposed to the wife’s, but in such a

way that the wife’s interest is closely bound up with the husbana’s
share. The husband’s family has a claim to the upper body and the
forepart of the seal, viz., its head, neck, shoulder, breast, and stomach.
His wife’s family gets its share from the back and tail. The ribs,
which form the sides of the animal, are divided partly amongst the
husband’s brothers and sisters, and partly amongst the wife’s cousins.
The thigh-pieces go mainly to the husband’s immediate family. These
ancient customs are full of a realistic logic.

When a sealer has caught a small seal of the ordinary kind, his
wife attends to its flensing and distribution, so far as regard for taboo

42*

648 W. THALBITZER.

permits; first and foremost, she must not be childless. A newly married
woman is not allowed to touch the seal, only when she becomes
mother she gets the right to flense it. Failing her, the flensing is attended
to by the sealer’s sister or mother, or by some other female relation
who has children. When we were treated by Okusuk to a freshly
caught seal, it was not his wife but his female cousin, a young un-
married git] who yet had a child, who cut off and gave us the head.
Okusuk’s wife was childless, and therefore she received meat, and
skin for clothing, from her husband’s relations, not from himself. In
the same house there lived another childless couple, Qanayeejuk and
his wife. Instead of his wife his married sister distributed the meat
of his seals.

The larger animals are distributed according to other rules (as
mentioned above). ‘The men themselves flense the large seals, bears,
walrusses, and narwhals which they have caught. Later, the women

carry the pieces of meat round to the recipients. The same is true
also of the large seals which are deposited in the snow for winter
provision. The wife has nothing to do with the flensing of these.

About the new year, when darkness prevails, it is common for
guests to arrive, often travelling from a long distance. In the evening
the senior member in the house suggests that on this occasion a seal
shall be fetched from the deposit. Then the hunter whom the visitors
specially honour by their visit rises and drags one of the big seals
out of the frozen snow, tugs it through the entrance, and makes the
first cut in the frozen body. We witnessed this in the house at Sawara-
naartik in Sermilik when, on Jan. 12, 1906, in company with ten na-
tives we had wandered there over the mountains. Keerte fetched a frozen
crested seal and presented it as a gift to the guests, who were allowed
to cut pieces out of it, to be eaten at once or taken home, as they
pleased. The pieces which they wished to take home—as aids in this
hunger time—were taken out into the open air by a serving woman
of the house, and placed under one of the umiaks (woman’s boats)
until the departure. Keerte reserved the head, heart, and entrails of
the animal for himself and his family, while the other house-mates
also got pieces. But it was clear that on this occasion the general,
everyday regard for the family sharing had to give way.

Fig. 172. Woman sitting on the ground sewing together dried

caplins (ammattdt) in long bands later to be rolled up in bales

and stored (cf. fig. 18 and First Part fig. 222) (June 1906.

W.T. phot.).

Fig. 173. Mitsuarnianya’s tent-place on Taseessaarsik kanitteq, the easternmost tent-

place in the fjord. On the tent cover are seen a hunting bladder, a band of dried

caplins sewn together, and two darts stuck under the upper skin of the cover.

People are hurrying to the beach to receive some returning kayakers. (W. T. phot.
June 1906).

Fig. 174. “The sulky boy”, drawn by Kaarale in 1906,

Fig. 175. Nannaia. Nappartuko’s daughter (August 1906.
W.T. phot.).

Fig. 176. Cimmojoon, Nujappik’s daughter (August 1906.
W.T. phot.).

<

Young mother with her child in the amaut. Drawing by Kaarale in 1906.

Fig. 178. Scene from the river valley near the colony (ef. fig. 155) (August 1906.
W.T. phot.).

Fig. 179. The angakok grave with the rubbing stone near Kulusuk on Cape Dan
Island (W.T. phot. in 1906).

CHAPTER V
MARRIAGE AND MATRIMONY

(First Part pp. 65—67).—Before the wedding there is generally an
engagement, or, rather, and more seldom, an arrangement between
the parents that their children shall have each other. The young people
marry shortly after they become mature. The bridegroom (uwicsa’)
makes ready to fetch his bride (nulidcsa’) either in a woman’s boat
or in a sledge, according to the time of the year. The marriage has
the form of an abduction or a rape, to which the young girl pretends
to be greatly reluctant. But it includes sometimes a religious ceremony
in so far that the father-in-law delivers a ritual of magic formulae over
the newly married couple at their place on the platform in his house.

Teemiartissaq gave me a description of a wedding. After having
told me that the first occasion on which the father delivers a magic
formula over his son is when the latter gets his first kaiak, she added
that the next time the father makes spells for his benefit is when he
gets a wife. Thus she continued: — The young lad tries to stop the
fleeing girl by seizing her arm. “Get away, get away! That’s enough,
stop, leave me alone!’ she cries out. As her flight is delayed by her
having to look round at him, she is at last unable to escape him. He
brings her home to his platform in the house, where his father goes
from his place along the foot-end (kilé) of the platform (i. e. along
the back wall of the house) to the son’s place. Here, where the newly
married couple are to live, he says: ‘Take each others’ hands’, while
he leans forward a little over them and touches both his son and his
daughter-in-law. Then he recites two magic prayers in order that they
may enjoy good health and long life (see Magic formulae, p. 272,
no. 88).

Eskimo marriage is generally monogamous, and easily dissolvable
so long as there are no children.

When a man has two wives there are special designations for the
first and the second. At Ammassalik the first wedded wife was called
nuliarpa’q ‘the actual wife, the proper representative of a wife’; the

650 W. THALBITZER.

termination -pa’q signifies the supreme degree, the superlative’. The
second was called his qarceraq (variants qgarcoraq, qacsera'q)*, which
must mean something like ‘the addition or the increase upwards’; also
nuliarsia ‘his later acquired wife’.

A remark made by Kunnay, who himself had two wives, perhaps
gives us some insight regarding their mutual position in the house.
“My wife number one distributes the portions of the seal I have
caught, after my wife number two has attended to the flensing and
cutting out; the first, then, allots to the latter the portion due to her.”

The wife’s independence is strengthened by her bearing children.
As long as she has no children she dares not cut up and distribute
the meat of the man’s catch. Qanayeejuk’s wife, who was childless
after several years of married life, did not distribute the meat of his
seals, but his sister who lived next to them on the platform where
she was married to Aa™“taaserarter, and had children, distributed the
meat on behalf of both her brother and her husband. In other cases,
where the husband has no married sister, his mother, aunt, or another
female relation who has born a child attends to the cutting up of the
small seals which he catches, and distributes their portions both to
him and his wife.

The wife’s remaining tasks in the daily life in the house and tent
have already been mentioned in the First Part (60 and 503). As a rule,
the Greenlandic husband treats his wife well, and as an equal®. The
cases of maltreatment mentioned were due to the man’s hot temper.
Eepe, Kooitse’s brother had—so his mother told me—‘‘unfortunately
killed his wife’, but he hadn’t meant to kill her, only to punish her
because she had been unfaithful.

“How many men with two wives have you known?” I asked old
Qiwinataag. Without hesitating she answered from memory mentioning

‘ The suffix -pa’q signifies ‘the supreme (in rank, etc.)’ (e.g. WGr. qul’erpa’q),

‘by far the highest of all’ from qu’eq ‘highest’ (-Leq is the superlative suffix).

Cf. qalipa’q ‘man’s overcoat or outer coat of reindeer skin’ in superlative (derived

from qalipak ‘outer clothing’, ‘cuticle’, “egg-shell’); also kamip‘a’q (or kamip‘ak)

‘a top-boot’ or a special kind of (outer) boot of bearskin.

Cf. WGr. gacsorpa’ (in Kleinschmidt’s Dictionary kKagssorpd) ‘takes something

from below and puts it up on something else, piles it up’.

* Glahn reports the same from West Greenland (1771), p. 249, and Dalager (1752),
pp- 8—9. On the other hand, instances of maltreatment are not lacking. In a
West Greenland narrative (Kalal. Okalukt, 1863, 1V, p. 101), stress is laid on the
fact, as a kind of excuse, that a man beat his second wife (concubine), because

she had borne him no children. A wife who has borne her husband children is
undoubtedly less liable to be beaten. It should be noted that the Greenland
language possesses a verb, (patorpa’) not infrequently used, with the following
alternating meanings: 1. ‘The man beats his wife’; 2. ‘The wife beats her hus-

band’. In each case the context must show which is meant.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

Husband
Ajukutooq

A” gko

Aninootai
Tlinnuakkee
Qaataaion
Kaa’ k'ajik
Kunnan
Ootuaq
Tasaka

Umeerinnegq

Naarqortooq
Uwia

Ultuaq
Artaarteq
lliniwakeeq
Kaakaik
Papptk

Aninook

The Names of

(Settlement)

(Kanaarsik)
(Sermiligaq)
(Umeewik)
(Sermilik)
(Sioraartik)
(kkatta)
(Sawaraneq)
(Sermiligaq)
Cn narluaq)

(Sermilik)

(Kanaarsik)
(Noorajik)

( Taseesaarsik)

(Sawaranaarsik)

(Ikateq)

(Ikateq)

(Ikateq)

(Sermilik)

left him. He survived his first two wives.

the names of nine men who had been, or still were, married to two
wives at the same time, and one of them even to three!. While I was
at Ammassalik there were still three men who lived with two wives.
I here give the names of the men remembered by Qiwinataaq, as
having had two wives.

his wives

{ Eekeeluk

\ Igimarajik

| Ponorartiwdn
Ajo

| Putteqaar

{ Naanujuk

\ Nakippattaain

{ Aputcuk

\ Katlin’aar

J Ileekajippaain

\ Aaitsiwar

J An6éyp

\ Oorumipalik

J Natseq

\ Qiwi

J Uttuqutuk

\ Qaaink

f Pinnerse

\ Erqiuk

J Napa

\ Qaatsiarajik

In addition I may cite the following cases from the days of G. Holm’s
expedition, according to Hansérak (see First Part, List of inhabitants,
pp. 192—202).

Innaalik
Utsukuloot
Anileq
Kerliaat
Utsukuluk
Sortuerinnegq
Akipé
Imaaiané
Tumik (Tooq)
Apucsuk
Oqunarpajik
Anuk
Qiwinasaag
Pujooq
Ineqinarteq

\ Najattaarajik

‘ AkWkho’s marriage with three wives only lasted a year, after which Putteqaar

652 W. THALBITZER.

The missionaries on the west coast, and others, have often testified
to the Greenlanders living “‘in chastity and honour’? with one another?.
As regards the East Greenlanders, Graah states: ““They are not loose,
at least I have never been able to get evidence of that habit of ex-
changing wives or to find a trace of those kakses of which Egede
tells’*. It is astonishing that Graah did not come across traces of the
East Greenlanders’ custom of exchanging wives, as it is indeed a
common Eskimo custom, known from all districts*. In what degree
they are loose, or live “in chastity and honour’ cannot be easily
decided, and in this respect the conditions existing among the very
mixed West Greenlanders are of no use for providing a standard for
the customs of the heathens?.

Only in the case of childlessness does a man lightly separate from
his wife. The wife's sterility might be a valid reason for this, but
sometimes it merely gave cause for the man’s taking a concubine?.
For the rest, the reasons for separation might vary greatly: one man
may be discontented because his wife is too “‘filthy’’, so separates
from her®; another may be annoyed because his wife is incapable at
sewing clothes, or because she eats too much (also in the times of
scarcity), or because she cannot get on with her mother-in-law.
Riittel, in his journal’, reports a characteristic case: Umeerinneq’s
daughter had asked her husband to put a new handle on her ulo,
but the latter had disregarded her request and therefore, being annoyed,
she went across to her father, to whose household they belonged, and

‘ For example, Hans Egede (1729), pp. 42—46, and (1741), pp. 79—80. Saabye
(1816), pp. 54 and 76 (cf. 92, 112—13, 121).
Graah (1832), p. 126. Probably there is a reference to Fabricius’s vocable of kakse

‘whore-house’, see his edition of Egede’s Dictionarium Groenlandicum, (1804,

2nd part, p. 158). Kleinschmidt spells the same word kagsse. Cf. p. 659.
* “Exchange of wives’, cf. Franz Boas (1888), pp. 579 and 605—608 and (1901),
pp. 139, 141 and 158 from Baffins Land, and Nelson (1899), pp. 292, 360 and
379 from Alaska. The former calls it nulianititijung and mentions it in connection
with the Qailertetang episode of the Sedna feasts, and at a festival game
suluiting or quvietung by name, in which two masked persons, a man and a
woman (mirqussang), marry the rest of the men and women who take part in
the game. Nelson mentions the exchange of wives at “the asking festival” and
“the doll festival” and amongst other things says: “During the continuance of
the festival the namesakes of dead men are paired with namesakes of their
deceased wives without regard to age” etc. Mylius Erichsen mentions the
exchange of wives at Cape York (Smith Sound), pp. 272, 367, 405, 433, ete.
Cf. A. Bertelsen (1907), p. 17. G. Holm in the First Part of this work, p. 64.

’ Dalager (1752), p. 8, mentions a case where the husband took a concubine at

-

his first wife’s request “because she was tired of bearing children.”

°

Glahn, Anmerkninger (1771), p. 192; also pp. 2838—9 and 250.
Riittel, Dagbog fra Angmagssalik, Ti dar blandt Ostgrénlands Hedninger (1917),

p. 223.

are

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 6d5¢

got him to put the handle on. “But from that day she would have
no more to do with her husband, and did not answer when he ad-
dressed her.’ Then the husband, becoming angry, went to the catechist
and told him that he now wanted to be separated from his wife. The
catechist reasoned with him and persuaded him to wait a while and
see, so that he left in smiles. Four days later the couple were reconciled.
—If once there is progeny the husband seldom leaves his wife because,
as Dalager remarks! “‘in such a case the father would part with all
his right to the child’. Therefore it was a sore grief for Umeerinneq,
when the time came for him to be baptized by the Christian missionary,

that he had to renounce one of his two wives (his last wedded one)
by whom he had children. We witnessed this in 1906.

Marriage between near relations was considered improper, but a
few exceptional instances were to be met with at Ammassalik, e. g.
| Umeerinneq’s parents were first cousins®. Nappartuko thought that
children of separate parentage who were brought together by the after-
marriage of their parents might very well marry, but that it would be
an offence if ever a brother married his sister: ({pinarnerantk ilay'a‘'neq
ajortarput ‘they cannot sleep because of a quelling aversion’).

House fellows might very well marry, but the custom was only
conceivable, however, where the long-house—as in southern Greenland

—had replaced the original village consisting of small, separate houses
for each family or family group. The inhabitants of the long-house
are often not related or only distantly so, and it is not unusual for
the members of each family to change from year to year according
to new arrangements (cf. First Part, p. BATS:

For the same reason, viz., that the long-house has absorbed not

only the small family huts but also the communal festival house
(qashse), the customs of the festival house in East Greenland have
been transferred to the long-house, and this, also, applies to the game
of putting out the lamps (First Part, p. 69), which custom in the
original Eskimo community was of cultic significance and associated
with the religious winter festivals in the qashse (as known especially
from the Eskimos in Baffins Land and Alaska, see next chapter).
Distinction must be drawn between the exchange of wives which
took place when the lamps were put out during a cultic festival

1 Lars Dalager (1752) p. 8.—In the summer of 1904, however, two marriages where
children had resulted were dissolved near Ammasssalik, see Rittel, Dagbog
(Journal), p. 228.
* According to the old authors from West Greenland, marriage between relations,
even second cousins, was considered indecent, see Hans Egede (1729), p. 46,
and Saabye (1816), p. 77.
* For full description compare not only G. Holm (First Part, pp. 65—68) but also
! M. Mauss and Beuchat (Paris, 1904—05), pp.105—110, on the Eskimo community.

654 W. THALBITZER.

and lasted for only one night, and that which was the result of an
arrangement between two men with a view to the procreation of
children, or because of mutual attraction, which continued for a longer
period. According to the usual conception of the Ammassalik Eskimos
only the latter sort of exchange influences procreation, while a short
temporary copulation is not supposed to bear fruit. The determination
of the parentage is especially contingent on the view that the child is
not considered complete or brought to existence before it is born.
Thus several men can have a share in the parentage of a single child
if the mother during her pregnancy has lain with different men. The
child which is procreated after the longer exchange is mentioned by
both the men as their “half-and-half child’, no matter which of them
it most resembles; and they refer to themselves by an expression,
which means “half cousins” (awiliareen) and might also be trans-
lated as “‘partners’’, “fellows who share half-and-half”!. The child,
however, only has its home in the house of one of them though it
inherits from both.

A peculiar instance of wife exchanging is reported from the sum-
mer of 18967. Pergissijualik and Mitsuarniaynna had for the time
exchanged wives, and for this reason the former had just been over
to Amitsuarsik to visit the wife he had exchanged, but there he had
found Mitsuarnianya with Qaarqgortoog’s wife and Qaarqortooq with
Mitsuarnianya’s wife. Angry at seeing the wife he had exchanged, with
a third man—‘which is not considered correct and proper’’—Per-
qissinualik at once left Amitsuarsik and declared (before the priest)
that in future he would keep to his own wife only.—Another instance
is characteristic as showing the regard held for a father’s right over
his child®. A young wife, Ilisimaleq, who was about to be baptized
by the priest, was in an advanced condition of pregnancy. She came
and begged the priest to postpone the baptism till after the birth, telling
him that she was pregnant by another man than her husband, as the
latter and the former, named Maneekuttak, had exchanged wives. “If
she were now baptized before the birth she would not [as a Christian]
be able to maintain the usual taboo ceremonies, and if the child took
any harm [from her breach of taboo customs] she would be blamed
for it, and she dared not run the risk of that because of Maneekutlak,
who also had rights over the child.’ In the paganism uncontrolled
by the Christian priest such a conflicting state of affairs would not exist.

If a man and a woman are born of the same mother, but one

1 In West Greenland awiliarit means ‘two women who are married to one man’

(Kleinschmidt, Ordbog p. 63).
* Rittel, Dagbog (Journal) p. 64.
* Ruttelsalacspadlate

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 655

of them is begotten after the exchange of wives, they regard each other
as brother and sister, even though they have separate houses, and
they do not marry each other. The child who has two men as its father
calls its legitimate father ate’ra (‘my name-sake’) and its extra father
aga ra (‘my charm-father’, i. e. the father who charmed my mother).

“e

In the vernacular, the designation for the “‘game of putting out the
lamps” was gamina'rtdn, a nominal participle in the plural meaning
‘the ones who play the game of putting out the lamp’, from qamigpoq
‘the lamp (fire) is extinguished’; ue'ta’ta means ‘her (the woman's)
mating man’ (WGr. uwiussa'rta < uwe ‘husband’ and -ussa‘r ‘plays,
imitates’) and nulelora ‘his mate-woman’ (WGr. nuliusora cf. nuliag
‘wife’ and some undefinable ending, perhaps -suk). When I stayed
at Ammassalik a veil shrouded the character of the game of “‘putting
out the lamps’’, as a cultic festival; it was so perhaps even before the
arrival of the Europeans, and it was difficult to obtain enlightenment.
The old woman Alegaajik (christened before 1900) once, in my
hearing, scornfully stigmatized the men who still wore hair-halters! as
Naturally, this was connected with

’

players at “putting out the lamps”.
a wish on her part to honour the custom of the christened men of
cutting their long hair short in the European style, as a token that
they had received baptism, because at this their hair-halters had
become superfluous and were cast away. She understood that these
young men felt that they were doing full justice to. themselves as
heathens so long as they wore long hair and permitted themselves the
embellishment of hair-halters in the presence of their countrymen and
countrywomen. As a rule, the old men who had finished with women
did not wear hair-halters, as these were supposed to betoken those
who were “dangerous” for women.

CHAPTER VI
THE FESTIVAL HOUSE (QASHSE) IN GREENLAND

Since the gashse (qagsse, qacse) is everywhere peculiar to the
Eskimo community, it is probable that such have also at one time
been part of the Greenland Eskimos’ culture. But it is strange that
even before the time when colonization began in the 18th century,
they had evidently lost all their significance. If the converse had been
the case,—for instance if the men had had meeting houses where they
could retire from household worries, or if special festival houses had
been built, in which the drum-singing festivals might be held in the
winter,—the old Greenland authors would not have failed to relate the
fact. But, instead, we find only some very scattered suggestions of the
former existence of qashses in the Greenland community.

Along the entire west coast of Greenland occur place-names
seemingly formed from the same root, e. g. Qagsserssuaq ‘the large
qashse’ (or with other derivations “‘the small qashse’’, ‘‘the beautiful
qashse”’ etc.). Collaterally, tradition has preserved in mind that certain
villages had special houses where, so it is said, the young men and
women lived together for a few days periodically, and that these
houses were called qashses'. I heard of such houses also when at
Ammassalik, but there they were called something different.

In East Greenland.—At Ammassalik I was told of a certain kind
of houses, which were called nerteeldt or erteeldt, and had formerly
served as a sort of meeting houses for young lads and girls during
the late summer season. What was told me agreed fully with the
tradition of the gashse on Disko Island in West Greenland, which was
recorded by Giesecke a hundred years ago?®.

At Cioraain ‘the sandy shores’—so Ajukutoog related—just east of
the settlement Umeevik, on an island in the Ammattalik Fjord, lies
an old tenting place, where, in old times, a great crowd of people used

‘ Cf. my paper “Cultic Games and Festivals in Greenland” (1925).

* During my journey in 1924 along the Greenland west coast I noted several
such places where ruins of qashses are found, and some of them I have examined
myself, e.g. at Awannardleet (between Klavyshayn and Ege); and at Sardloq
(opposite the colony of Godthab). Cf. the postscript.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 657

to assemble in the summer for the sake of the whaling. That time,
he said, was before his father Akwko’s time, because he and his gener-
ation no longer carried on whaling; but during the summer he had
often visited the playing-house at Nerteeldt or Erteeldt {erte'’l'°dt]+
and had camped out there. It stood on a height above the camping
ground facing the sea, and was a very large and high house which
was only used in the summer by the Eskimo whalers. The young men
and women ascended to this house from the camp, and often spent
many days, at times more than a month, together in this house. “It
was their playing house (pinniwartarpia) and one said that it so
happened that the young girl was enceinte when she returned.”

This was confirmed by several old hunters giving me almost
corresponding information, independent of Ajukutooq’s communication.
Ukuttiaq knew of a very large house without windows, situated near
Umeewik, where large assemblies took place in old times. Mitsuar-
nianya had heard that his ancestors sometimes assembled in houses
without windows?.

Nappartuko had heard that uaajeertoq-games were played at
another Erteelat on Umeewik Island, just as at Ujaaittoq near the
head of Ammattalik Fjord. The players often spent a fortnight up
there before they came down. Kilime stated that on the small island
Ittiteeluaarag to the west of Ceesiwarag there stood a summer playing-
house (erteel'’dt or nertee’lat) the ruin of which was said to be still
about the height of a man and without windows, but with a very long
house-passage.

The description given of these playing-houses does not perhaps
entirely convince us that we are here dealing with the common
Eskimo qashse. But, on the other hand, the use which tradition ascribes
to them agrees exactly with the West Greenland conception of a qashse
as quoted by Giesecke. The East Greenlanders, in contradistinction to the
West Greenlanders, did not know this otherwise generally used Eskimo
word: the reason for which may be that it was tabooed in old times’.

1 The same word is used at Ammassalik about the toy-houses which the children
build from stone on the ground. Perhaps derived from ineerteelat (WGr. *iner-
Liussdt?). Used above as a place-name.

He mentioned, as an example, the house at Inalaaqanyitsoq (meaning ‘one without
windows’) in the Ammattawik Fjord, but I doubt whether the ruined house
which I there examined was ever such a playing-house; as far as I could see
from the ruins, it had been quite an ordinary house. But there may have been
another ruin in the vicinity. Cf. First Part p. 356 and 358.

In Umanak Fjord in West Greenland I recorded an old myth which began with
the words “in the large qashse’’ (Phonetical Study, 1904, pp. 274—275). An old
Ammassalik woman whom I induced to translate this tale in her own dialect
while I wrote it down, was quite unfamiliar with the word qashse, but, on the
other hand, not with a conception of “a house without windows”,

658 W. THALBITZER.

It seems, then, as far as one can judge, as if the old-fashioned
Eskimo gashse has undergone a change in Greenland, which is common
to the inhabitants of the West Coast and of Ammassalik, whereby its
significance has been greatly debased; because, from having been
originally the men’s house or the dancing and meeting house of the
village where the men worked and held feasts, council, etc., it has
been reduced to a temporary playing-house for the whale-hunters
during the summer and autumn.

This would be in accordance with the fact that at the whale-
hunting the old-fashioned customs of the people were tenaciously
preserved!. On such occasions at any rate, in pursuance of old hunting
customs and owing to the festive excitement of the great hunting there
was a return of the people to the old temple.

It would be of great interest to get a collective investigation of
these houses as they really appeared in Greenland; no doubt they may
be easily discerned from the ruins.

I cannot, in this connection, omit to call to mind that, at two
fairly large enecampments in Scoresby Sound, Ryder found what he
described as “square tent rings’’, a sketch of which he inserted in his
book2. In this divergent form in the arrangement of the tent stones
he assumes that he has come across childrens” playthings, e. g., their
imitations of winter houses. It is curious that the word mentioned
from Ammassalik, (n)erteeldt means the playing-houses of the adults
as well as the children’s toy-houses.

Schultz-Lorentzen in his treatise on the immigration of the Eskimos
(1904), p. 307, mentions that in the Greenland legends (and near Cape
York among the Polar Eskimos) the word qagsse (qacse) is not used,
but replaced by uvdlasaut. When, at Ammassalik, I asked if the latter
word was known, it was rendered to me in the dialect as uttisaa'’t,
thereby indicating in particular a trap built of green sods and wood
in the shape of a small house, for the purpose of catching birds or
foxes. Frozen snow is laid on the top, above the entrance hole, and
on this is laid a piece of blubber, which entices the animal to sit
down, when the hunter, who is on the watch within the house, can
‘atch hold of its legs with his fists (compare First Part, pp.406—407).
The house was described as being larger than a “‘snow-house” (EGr.
ittiwigaq). In the legend about Imerasugsuk, his wife, Misana, takes
refuge in such a trap for foxes and ravens, throwing herself down

1 Likewise the old-fashioned costume in whaling and the use of stone heads instead
of iron ones in the whale-lances evince a particularly conservative attachment
to the customs which are associated with whale-hunting (Cf. First Part, pp. 451
and 580).

* Ryder (1895), fig. 4, compare text p. 295—296 and 3802—303.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 659

into it through the opening (see First Part, p. 236). The word uttisaa'’t
literally means ‘a place (house) where one stays for a day, or for a few
days’ (compare Kleinschmidt uvdlivok). Here, perhaps, we really have
a compensatory word for the gashse which may have been dropped
in certain districts in Greenland owing to taboo.

In West Greenland.—A tradition of this kind from Disko Island,
West Greenland, was revealed for the first time by GrESECKE, who
writes in his Tagebuch (Diary, July 8, 1811)', that a kakse was found
on the north side of Disko Island, near Jgainak. His report hereon
deserves to be quoted:

“Hier stehen auch Trimmer von einem andern kleinen Hauschen Kakse,
wo sie bei gewissen leichtfertigen Spielen des Beyschlafes genossen und
wechselseitig ihre Weiber vertauschten. Hier war ausser der Lagerstatte von
Steinplatten [i.e., the platform was of stone) kein andrer Raum, auch kein
Fenster. Der Eingang war so enge und niedrig, dass ein Mensch knapp durch-
kriechen konnte, und gegen 24 Fuss lang. Das platte Torfdach, von welchem
aber keine Spur mehr vorhanden war, wurde von einer Basaltsaule gestiitzt.”

Rink, to be sure, questions the value of this evidence as proof’,
but it is significant not only that Giesecke during his visit on Disko
Island noted the designation of a kakse, i. e. a qagsse (Kleinschmidt),
associating it with a ruin, but also that his description of the kakse
received verbally from a Greenlander agrees with that of the West
Eskimos, of which neither the Greenlanders nor Giesecke could have
any knowledge. On the south side of Disko Giesecke noticed two
places named alike Kagsiarak, meaning ‘the little qagsse’*. But he did
not examine them.

It is related from the district of Cape York (near Smith Sound)
that at every settlement a small house is found temporarily inhabited
by the young marriageable men and women, and “where the men
selected their wives’’*; the word or the name qagsse (qashse) not
being mentioned.

In South Greenland (west coast) the name is often met with as
a place-name, but without any indication as to its original meaning.

As a rule the name is used about a basin-like bay with a narrow
entrance and enclosed by low, gently sloping cliffs. The meaning of

' K. Giesecke: Mineralogisches Reisejournal iiber Grénland 1806—13, 2nd edition
in MoG. vol. 35 (Kébenhavn 1910) p. 350.

2 Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, 1887, p. 12.

3 Giesecke, l. c. pp. 230 and 295.

4 A. Bertelsen, Om Fédsler i Grénland, 1907, p. 36.

660 W. THALBITZER.

the name is confirmed in some cases by the description of the
locality?.

Henrik Lund, when we met at Ammassalik, provided me with the
following names which he knew from the region around his native
place, in South Greenland, formed from the same root: Qagsse, a bay
or fjord to the west of Nanortalik, about 61° N. lat.; Qagssiarsuk ‘little
beautiful qashse’, in Tunulhliarfik fjord; Qagssitsiaq ‘the not quite
small qashse’ in two different places; Qagssinguaq ‘the little qashse’,
a little bay on Ighlitalik Island; Qagssersuaq ‘the large qashse’, also a
little bay on an island; and Qagssigssalik ‘a place suitable for a qashse’ ;
Qagssumiut ‘inhabitants of the qashse’ also occurs as a place-name in
the district of Julianehab. It is still an open question whether the
naming of these localities is due to a festival house having stood there
in old times, or whether the name is given to them on account of
their shape (round or amphitheatrical), which recalled that of a
qashse. I do not find the explanation of the dictionaries quite con-
vincing; it is based on the supposition that those places where the
name includes the stem (qagsse, qakse, qashse) are always thus called
on account of the natural shape of the bay or mountain caldron.
The originator of this explanation seems to have been O. Fabricius,
inasmuch as Egede’s Dictionary (1750) does not contain the stem word
but only (p. 69) mentions the derivative karksimiorput, verb without
suffix and without singular, ‘they sit together in the karksi to eat’.
Fabricius, on the other hand, in his improved and enlarged Greenland
dictionary (1804), gives the following explanation under kakse or
karkse: (1) a shut-in, spacious, bay in a fjord, the mouth of which
is very narrow; (2) a similar enclosure inland, between the mountains,
where the reindeer preferably reside; and (3) a brothel, used of yore
by the heathens, a diminutive house without windows and with a
narrow entrance, where both sexes used one another indiscriminately,
the married men particularly in exchanging wives.’ Kleinschmidt, in
his dictionary (1871), p.128, essentially repeats this interpretation:
“qagsse, (1) a mountain caldron or a bay or plain encircled by con-
tinuous heights, as a rule with a narrow aperture; (2) a circle of
people who sit closely together (in this sense used in the time of the
heathens about a brothel); (3) a brothel.”

‘In most cases these localities are situated on small islands, e. g. the two
Qagssit near Holstensborg which are known by the sailors as Riff or Riffkol
(see Bobé’s edition of Thorhallesen, Beskrivelse over Missionerne i Grénlands
séndre Distrikt, 1914, p. 100, note 5), and the locality near Pamiagdluk
(Pamialhluk) in the Frederikshaab district mentioned in Arctander’s diary (in
“Samleren” 1793, p. 1111), of which he writes: “Finally we reached a large
island called Kasse, really Sennerut, where Kasse lies on the eastern side’’. His
Kasse = qagsse (qashse).

el apes repre

Pw ie dal anaemia

uy

Wet A soy oe pr pete ee

Fig. 180. The angakok Maneekkuttaq’s wife drawn in red chalk by
Mrs. E. Locher Thalbitzer.

Fig. 181. Qananeejuk’s wife (“Mona Lisa”, ef. p. 686) (August 10, 1906.
W.T. phot.).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 661

singer

Jamp pillar
a ‘
married women

unmarried women

+e@0068

men

+ children

asnoy a2ueg

9 O0000-
O00000-

d

Uf Stecping bencls

\

Fig. 182 a. Interior of a qaggi (qashse) or festival house of the East Eskimos of Baffin
Land (F. Boas, Central Eskimo, fig. 531). b. Three snow huts around a communal house
(“singing house” or gaggi), Hudson Bay (From Hall, ef. Boas, 1. ec. fig. 532). c. Two
snow huts with a communal house (“dance-house”’) in front. Coronation Gulf, Northern
Canada (D. Jenness, Life of the Copper Eskimos, CAE, vol. 12, fig. 14). d. Plan of a
communal house in Alaska, during mortuary ceremony: 1, six drummers; 2, singers;
3, space occupied by spectators; 4, entrance (doorway); 5, vacant space under which
the shades are supposed to gather (E.W. Nelson, Eskimo of Bering Strait, fig. 140).
e. Section of a communal house at St. Michael, Norton Sound, Alaska (Nelson, l.c. fig. 77).
XL. 43

662 W. THALBITZER.

The zeal of the missionaries is visible in the last links of the inter-
pretations, but the slightly more explicit explanations which Fabricius
attaches to the word under point 3 and Kleinschmidt under points 2—3
are of real interest, because as flash-lights from popular tradition (as
seen through the missionaries’ spectacles)! they illuminate a corner in
the night of the past when the corner-stone of the old community still
lay in its place, deserted, neglected and degraded.

It is probable, then, that in Greenland also there has been a time
when the men, in accordance with the custom of the western Eskimo
tribes, assembled in the qashse or meeting house, where they ate
together and consulted about mutual concerns, and where the bachelors
slept. This was also the festival house, or their temple, where the
winter festivities of the people were held, and where once or twice

in the year (as in Alaska) a religious ceremony transiently dissolved
the customary monogamy in favour of the ritual communion of wife-
exchange (see p. 667).

The Festival House in Alaska.—In Alaska the gashse (kashim,
Nelson) was the house where the men collected, worked, played, and
held festivals. It was their own particular sleeping place, their suda-
torium and working place, and it was the place of reception for all
guests arriving from foreign parts, who here sang out what they had
to offer for sale. In addition, the qashse was the usual ceremony-house
of the angakog (who in Alaska is called fungralik ‘one with tungrat
‘familiar spirits’). The bachelors always slept in the qashse; only the
women and the married men slept in the private huts and in the family
houses. All the men ate together in the qashse, the food being cooked
in the hut, and daily carried over to the man by the wife or female
relative. The women, as a rule, had admission to the qashse only
during festivities, dances, and certain ceremonies, whereas they were
strictly excluded when other ceremonies were performed?.

* H. C. Glahn, the missionary, (who lived in Greenland 1763—69) had another
opinion than most of his colleagues about the national customs among the
heathens of the 18th century. He took an unprejudiced view of that exotic
culture and had a deeper understanding of it than any of the contemporary
missionaries. He speaks of the senneliarneg game as an episode from a cult
feast: “The natives regard it as a lawful, and indeed to a certain extent as a
sacred act.’’ H. C. Glahn, Anmerkninger (1771) p. 323. According to Glahn’s
description in the passage from which we quote the game seems to be closely
akin to “the lamp-extinguishing game” of the East Greenlanders. In several other
respects Glahn was in advance of his age.

Nelson (1899), pp. 285—287. With the arctic and central Eskimos, dome-shaped

ry

qashses built of snow are used.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 663

Fig. 183 a. Eskimo communal or festival house in southern Alaska, called a kashga.
Elliott, An Arctic Province (London 1886) p. 385). 6. Section showing subterranean
entrance and interior of a kashga (Elliott, l.c. p. 386).

Festivals and Masks.

Have the East Greenlanders formerly had
yearly recurrent festivals?

We know that the West Eskimo on Baffins Land, on the Gulf of
Boothia, and in Alaska had fixed festivals during the shifting periods
of the winter?.

The mimic and dramatic representations which we know from
Ammassalik, called there uaajeertul (or oaajeertut) must undoubtedly
be regarded as a last remains of old-time festivities of a cultic character.
In West Greenland even this kind of remains is almost unknown in
tradition, except in the northern part, where at Twelfth-night the
so-called mitaartut, young people with blackened faces or wearing
masks made of skin, play for amusement before their place-mates,

' F. Boas, Central Eskimo pp. 600—609, and in later works (e. g. 1901, p. 188—
142 and 1907, p. 491); Parry (1824) p. 538—540; Nelson (1899) pp. 357—393,
Murdoch (1892) pp. 365 and 373—376 (with valuable references). Barnum (1901)
§ 605, has some remarks on the S. W. Alaska Eskimos’ masquerading time
(karatarvik) ‘month of October and drum dance season’, and mentions another
feast chauyarvik in November, and further chorokatat, “a special variety of
native feast’; cf. also, chioglut (p. 332), ‘they represent by gesture or pantomime’
(i.e. native dance). Barnum states further that agiyunok {akaiiunogq], which was
explained by Nelson as the great mask festival, has now become the name for
the christianized natives’ church festival, and is especially used of ‘Sunday’.

43*

664 W. THALBITZER.

sometimes grotesquely equipped with a phallos. At the Greenlandic
and Danish houses they beg for giftst. They hereby call to mind “‘the
blackened men” in the ai-ya-gik festival described by Nelson from
Alaska, which festival is connected with the distribution of presents
and exchange of wives.

From the Eskimo of all the western districts we have descriptions
of festivals which seem to have almost the same character as the
uaajeertut of East Greenland. I have previously pointed out (First
Part, p. 663) that the ajagaq game, so well known everywhere in
Greenland is, in the children’s game, a simplified relic of the Alaska
Eskimos’ cultic November festival of nearly the same name. It took
place in the qashse and was connected with the exchange of presents
and of wives. In a similar manner, no doubt, we can see simplified
relics of cultic festivals in some of the East Greenlandic uaajeertut
games and tiwalin dances; most easily recognized, perhaps, by com-
paring them with those described from Baffin Land by Franz Boas,
for example the autumnal festival with three made-up men (Ekko ete.,

’

Boas, 1901, pp.141—142), and with the “amusements” from Iglulik
540).

The latter saw a woman, by name Iligliuk, suddenly unbind her
she platted it; tied both ends together to keep it out of her

way, and then, stepping out into the middle of the hut, began to make

and Winter Island described by Parry (1824, pp. 5388

“cc

hair:

the most hideous faces ete.” ““This exhibition which they call ayokittak-
poke’, presumably to be phonetically rendered thus |aioqit'a’rpoq|?,
and signifying ‘he (she) gives a performance’ or rather ‘he (she)
represents an ajogittaag, a kind of a teacher? scenic instructor?’—was
the beginning of a series of changing roles or games with loud eja-
culations, for example tkkeree—itkkeree or amatamad—amdatama, cf. in
my texts here (pp. 298—312) no.123 the ejaculation kikkee—kikkee
‘fy’; ef. no.129 papapa. Parry’s pit-koo-she-rak-poke must mean
(pi'qosira‘rpoq]| ‘he makes a fool of the others’ or ‘dupes them’ (Green.
perquserpoqg), Where naturally the fun and roguishness of the game is
aimed at. His keitik-poke may be the Greenlandic qitippoq ‘is seized
with erotic frolicsomeness’, ‘indulges in wild hilarity’. In these and

' A. Bertelsen (1909) p. 30. M. Porsild (1915) p. 248. Cf. Kleinschmidt (in his Ord-
bog p. 213) translates mitdrpoq thus: “makes absurd gestures or behaves
absurdly, makes faces (for fun)’.

A game of the same name (ajokilarpoq) from Baffin Land is mentioned in Boas:
Central Eskimo, 1888, p. 659. I connect this word with the Labrador ajogerpaa
‘teaches him’, ajogippoq ‘quick at learning or imitating’, ajoqgiftaugivog ‘he takes
part in an imitation (together with others), acts in a réle’ (Erdman, Esk. Worter-
buch, 1864, p. 8—9). Cf. Greenl. ajoqgee, or ajogeet ‘a teacher’; ajogerpaa, ‘he
teaches him a behaviour, a role’; ajogersorpaa ‘teaches him by augmenting his

knowledge’.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 665

similar games—ancient traditions of cultie origin—the Eskimos’ living
sense of the art of mimicry or mocking humour has displayed itself as
being of fairly unanimous nature everywhere, although with slightly
varying forms from tribe to tribe. In the history of the Ammassalik
Eskimos the ethic value of these customs for the maintenance of the
pleasure of life—and as a counterpoise to the dark side of existence
—has been great and effective right up to the arrival of the Europeans.

In the series of uaajeertoq games which I have described from
Ammassalik there is (as with the mitaartut) a reminiscence of the rites
and games associated with the cultic winter festivals. These have now
disappeared, but I saw old Akernilik and Ajukutooq made up as
uaajeertoq players, showing me several of the roles.

They were principally held in the houses during the winter and
in the presence of many onlookers, most of whom were. visitors.
Ajukutooq mentioned, however, that formerly uaajeertoq games had
also usually been played during the short summer fishing season in
the Ammassiwik Fjord, where the people camp for ammassit fishing
during the first part of the summert.

The players in this kind of games are generally men, sometimes
women. They make their appearance one at a time or one after another
alternately, each in his special roles (e.g. no. 148, p. 307). Each réle
has its particular name and disguise. For example, the man might be
made up as a woman with his hair done up at the top like hers, and
his stomach stuffed out with a bundle of clothes, so that he might
appear pregnant. The mouth is distended with a spile, which is placed
between the teeth, and in such a manner that its ends thrust the
cheeks outward. The corners of the mouth are straightened upwards
with the aid of a thin cord led between the lips and behind the ears?.

One evening I saw the old man Akernilik made up thus in one
of the naarteer (pregnant woman) roles. As he stood there in the semi-
obscure hut, in the yellow gleam of an oil lamp, drumming and dancing
like a woman who delivers a wild song of challenge or of lustfulness,
he irresistibly compelled the spectators to compassion. Only a great and
practised artist could conjure up such a telling figure. I got the same
impression of several other old men who showed me examples of
their talent in uaajeertog roles. From watching Ajukutooq and Marhré
I got a profound impression of the dramatic talent of these people.

The uaajeertog roles have been handed down from old days. They
are permanent mimic figures which represent types of human life seen

' Hansérak (Dagbog, ed. 1933, pp. 95, 97, 99) also mentions the uajérneq games
in agreement with the description given above.
° Cf. also G. Holm’s description, First part, p. 129.

666 W. THALBITZER.

with the humour peculiar to the Eskimo. It is usually a human failing
or some individual absurdity which the irony of the song lashes; for
example the cowardly drum-singer who in pain and perplexity awaits
the arrival of his opponent; or the drum-dancer smitten with his own
charm; or the woman too lustful after men. With the real uaajeertog
role a game is often associated, such as when a drum-dancer seizes
a burning wick-trimmer! and pursues his house-fellows with it inside
the hut, or sucks water up into his mouth and blows it out at them
in imitation of a whale.

To begin with, the rdle always has the form of a drum-dancer’s
monologue in song, first a long refrain and then the few words of the
text, again the refrain as at first, the repetition of the words, and the
whole repeated again and again with increasing solemnity or ludi-
crousness until the spectators are sated with enjoyment; after which
the player begins another role. In this way pass the hours of the night
in the hut. Each man has his repertoire and roles, which it is by no
means anybody's business to perform. The best impersonator is
rewarded with acclamations of admiring shouts after each per-
formance.

The women perform without any disguise, sometimes wearing
their anoraks but more often naked, only wearing their short trousers.
It was expressly emphasized (by Ajukutooq) that the womens’ uaajeer-
toq games were different from those performed by the men. There is
no clear distinction between the womens’ uaajeertog games and their
usual solo dances with songs (tiwalin). The main point is that the
women, like the men, contribute to the general merriment in the hut
by coming out on the floor and singing and dancing with drums in
their hands before the assembly. Both young and old women can
perform, and each of them, like the men, has her repertoire. The
woman dances with her back turned to the platform, the man with
his face towards it, not altering their position but merely wriggling
their ttunks and hips, and moving the drum gently with their arms.

As regards the subject of their songs I refer the reader to the
examples on pp. 292—311.

If any of the uaajeertog songs in my collection be characterized
by age, and might be thought to have some connection with the old
cultic festivals, then they must be these:

No. 1, Qaqqilaanerseq, “the bone-gnawer’’—according to Ajuku-
tooq this figure was said to be the first uaajeertog “player’’, possibly
in the sense that the performer was the first to think of distending
his cheeks with a stump of wood which he placed in his mouth.

See First Part, p. 535, and fig. 258 b.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 667

No. 3, Coowit? “What were you?’, the subject of which, though
rather enigmatical, gives the impression of an object implied. In the
latter the player addresses a question to his house-fellows which has
the appearance of an indiscretion, and evidently is intended to divide
them into two classes, somewhat similarly as at the autumn festival
mentioned by Boas from Baffin Land}.

Nos. 28, Uppaminarter and 30, Nacaararter, at which games it is
essential that gifts be given to the player when he has performed
his role.

Some of these uaajeertog games were probably made use of in
connection with the late night games of “‘putting out the lamps” and
“exchange of wives’’ (cf. p. 652 with note 3).

Wife-exchanging.

as differing from each other: the temporary exchange which took place

Two kinds of wife-exchanging must be noted

at certain recurrent periods by an arrangement between two men®?,
and the indiscriminate mating connected with the festival of “putting
out the lamp’, which took place regularly once or twice in the winter®.

The game of putting out the lamps naturally pertains only to the
life in the winter huts, but we have no exact information as to the
time in the winter when it took place. According to Hansérak’s journal
(kept on Holm’s expedition), the putting out of the lamps and _ the
exchanging of wives took place, for example, about the new year,
when guests arrived at the hut. It recurred (in 1885) in the middle
of May, and Hansérak, in his journal of the same date, presumes
that the custom of exchanging wives was connected with the occurrence
of the new moon or the full moon, (but this was perhaps only an
assumption on the part of Hansérak)*. From West Greenland, Hans
Egede mentions a festival with drum-dancing in the hut, at which a
sort of wife-exchange was said to have taken place some few days
before January 15th (in 1729)°.

The putting out of the lamp, gaminaartog, is not connected with
the vocation of the angakok. Kunnay assured me, for instance, that

' F. Boas, Central Eskimo p. 605 ef. Esk. Baffin Land and Hudson Bay, the tale
about Qaudjaqdjugq (= Gr. Kagsagsuk), p. 188 and 310.

* Hansérak mentions this custom in his Journal (Dagbog, ed. 1933, p. 163).

Holm in First Part, p. 69—70. The sexual orgy was connected with these winter

oo

festivals, perhaps as a kind of a religious “communion”, or as a communistic
sacrament which concluded the festival. Cf. M. Mauss and Beuchat (1904—05)
pp. 98—100 and 113—115.

Hansérak’s Dagbog, 1933, p. 69.

Hans Egede, Relation (1738), p. 252, and (1741), p. 78; Perlustration p. 78 (ed. by
Bobé p. 373) Cf. Poul Egede, Dictonarium (1750) p. 100 under mallikserpok and
H.C. Glahn, Journals (Dagbéger 1763—69, ed. by Ostermann 1921, p. 66).

4

ov

668 W. THALBITZER.

the angakok does not take any part in the game. The challenge is set
going by one of the ordinary men of the congregation; it would be
considered too ridiculous and unseemly if a woman made the first
advance. When the lamps are extinguished for this part of the game,
a skin curtain is hung in front of the inner end of the house passage,
and one of those who take no part in the exchanging of wives rattles
the curtain in such a way that it drowns the sound of what takes
place in the dark. In the meanwhile the children remain on the window-
platform. When, later, the lamps are lit, each man has to be back
again with his wife on their common platform place, making pretence
that he has not been elsewhere. But next day, the children will tattle
about what they have noticed.

The masks.
use they made of the masks (keeapaait), and in the main have given
their reply in the First Part, p. 639 in addition to the illustrations of the
masks; but unfortunately my information was incomplete. I did not
succeed in clearing up what Aleqaajik meant when she said that their
forefathers had used masks, tornar'’gelartulik, “when they played at

I asked Akernilik, Ajukutooq, and Aleqaajik what

being tornaq’’. With those games where the masks were used there
was no question of festivals of a shamanic character. It was not the
angakut, said she, but the men and women in the house who played
the uaajeertoq games, that sometimes used masks. Nor is it made clear
whether wooden masks or skin masks were preferred or perhaps both
were used indiscriminately. A few of the uaajeertog games which I
have related remind one (as already stated) of certain cultic festivals
amongst the West Eskimos on the American continent.

It seems to have been the custom to cast the masks (at any rate
the wooden ones) into the sea, together with the corpses of the deceased,
who were buried in this manner. Both Nataaq’s and Akernilik’s fathers’
masks were lost in this way, as both fathers were buried in the sea.
No genuine masks have been found in graves on land. But the wooden
double face carved on either side of a spigot in the style of the masks
(illustrated in First Part, fig. 356), testifies to the art of portraiture as
applied to sculpturing in wood having been employed with cultic
design also in East Greenland.

The masks which Akernilik cut for me from wood, and which
represented particular individuals, were also portraits'. He expressly
stated, of the first two which he brought, that the one represented
Ikerteewa, Aartuartee’s wife, recognizable by her top-knot wound round
with bands of seal-skin, from which depended two stems of ammassit
beads, and the other her lover, who wanted to seduce her (during the

* Cf. the dolls mentioned in First Part p. 649.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 669

game of putting out the lamps), by name Perkarteeliar, Isiaqittoq’s
son. The last-named was the son of the angakoq Ceerqiwa, and was
scorned as a bad sealer but lauded as a bear-hunter. The third mask,
like the first, had a hair-top with bands of seal-skin and beads, and
represented the old woman Oorujuk when young, at the time she was
married to Eeppia at Ammassalik (they were childless). Akernilik had
nothing to say as regards the reason for sculpturing these indi-
viduals.

The treatment of the wood is characteristic of Ammassalik, espe-
cially in the deep, close grooves which follow the flats and lines of
the face (representing wrinkles or tattooings). Just as characteristic,
also, are the facial expressions: the open mouth without any smile,
but mostly stamped with awe or pain; the small, oblique eyes; the
high brows, ete.

Postscript. — Qashse once more.

In the basic myth (mentioned on pp. 396—97) of the Sun and
the Moon, the heavenly brother and sister, these are termed “people
of our own kind’, and it says: “Once they were playing together in
a snow house with a skin roof, (of the sort) which is the playing house
of the young people in the winter’’.' This shows us that to the Green-
landers of the 18th century the qashse was known as a snow house
roofed with skin (usually depilated seal skin, often discarded tent or
kaiak skins). On the other hand, I do not mean to say that the Green-
landers of earlier days did not know more permanent qashses built
of stone and turf, for use all the year round. Although the presentday
central Eskimos are content to live in snow houses in the winter and
often incorporate their qashses in them, we know from the archaeolo-
gists that the earlier Eskimo tribes in the central regions erected solid
sarth houses (of turf, stones, timber or whale bones). I think, there-
fore, that the playing houses built of snow mentioned by Poul Egede,
are a secondary development, an adaptation to the climatic conditions
in the high arctic regions, and that we may assume the existence of
a primary arctic type of more solid qashses for the earliest immigrants,
no doubt continued side by side with the snow qashses right down
to and after Egede’s time (though he never mentions any such). That

1] take it for granted that what P. Egede here calls “the playing house of the
young people” was meant by the Greenlandish narrator (his source) to denote

a gashse (probably pronounced qagci in Egede’s time). However, it is not

certain that this word has been used by the narrator, who may have said

piyiwartarfia “the place where they play”.

670 W. THALBITZER.

this is the actual state of affairs is evidenced by the discovery of ruins,
not only Giesecke’s find on Disko island in 1811, but several ruins
discovered later on.*

Six years ago I was standing by two ruined qashses situated side
by side near the setthkement Awannarreet on the southern side of
Jakobshavn ice fjord (Ilulissat ‘the icebergs’). An old man, Seelarse,
told me that he had heard about them from even older people, but
it was clear that he hesitated to talk frankly about them; it seemed
to be difficult or perhaps disagreeable to him to divulge the secrets
of the qashses. He also hinted that the qashse was a place which was
once used for improper purposes, prostitution in connection with
singing and dancing. In the meanwhile, directed by his wife, I found
my way to the old ruined settlement. The time at my disposal only
permitted me to take a photo of the ruins. The two qashses were alike,
and stood beside each other on the outskirts of the settlement. Later
on I received a letter from the catechist of the place, Sechman Ros-
back, who confirmed my observations and added what he himself

had heard from “old people’. The qashse was roundish, judging from
the ground plan, with a semicircular lobby or entrance (isertarid); it
was said to be without windows as qashses usually are; “when the
lamps were extinguished, it was quite dark in there. The young (un-
married) people were not allowed to go in there; it was the old (adult)
people who generally used the qashse.”’ They were not used for
dramatic performances |?). Except in the lobby, there was a platform
(igdleq) running all round the place, so that there was only very little
floor space. This was the dancing place (livavfik); there “they danced,
drummed, and sang” (fivavdlutik). When they began all the lamps
were burning, and all who were present were to sing (ivngisdput)
while they looked at the drum dancer. When the dancing and singing
were over, they continued in the dark, sometimes till the dawn of day.

In 1931 when I was staying at Godthab (Niingme), I heard that
on the opposite shore of the fjord, near the small setthkement Sardlog
(SaarLoq) there was supposed to be a qashse. I put across and
examined the ruin which was situated on the eastern edge of the
present settlement.

Josva, the carpenter at Nuk, showed me the site of the heathens’
qashse now in ruins, and almost obliterated, while, as he said with

* Birket-Smith (MoG. 66. 1924. p. 144 (cf. 135) has pointed out that Giesecke’s
ruin was situated near a summer settlement, and hence, apparently, used in the
summer. This would agree with what the East Greenlanders stated about their
playing house, nerleeldl, (see p. 657), which, it was said, was in use in the

whaling season, that is to say, in the summer.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 671

a smile, he was building the first chapel for the Danish mission in
this place. There is now only a circular depression in the ground,
the edge of which marks the earlier wall, and the floor of which is
now flush with the surrounding terrain. The stones in it have been
carried away little by little to be used for new houses in process of
building. The ruin is situated above or at the edge of rather a steep
slope, which descends four or five metres into a small valley, perhaps

Fig. 184. Outline drawing of the qashse at Saarioq, a small village on the northern
coast of Godthab Fjord.
a.b.c. The ground plan of the wall, flush with the surrounding terrain, enclosing
a hollow c. 1 m deep, the diameter of the circle being c. 5m. d. A heap of earth,
perhaps a fragment of the wall. e. Probably the entrance; no remains of a house-
passage were seen. f. Front part of the floor (entry or lobby?) g. A ledge in the
earth some way down the rather steep slope.

a dried up river valley. The entrance to the qashse must have been
just at the edge of the slope, a circumstance which seems strange,
considering the difficulty of getting into it, probably as usual through
a passage (tunnel). But if such a tunnel has ascended(?) the slope,
all signs of it have disappeared. The entrance (e) is in a way the most
distinct part of the ruin. It looks like a cut in that bit of the wall
which is left. A couple of stones were still visible at the cut, in the
ends of the wall which here rises on both sides of the opening. But
in the middle of this there is a heap of earth (d), as if a bit of the
wall had been broken off from the main part and fallen in a heap
a little way down the slope. This makes it appear as if there had
been two entrances, one on each side of the detached piece of earthen

672 W. THALBITZER.

wall.—The following reminiscence is connected with this qashse. When
Christianity was first preached in Sardloq, Toornaarsuk was heard
to fly shrieking out of the qashse. In the heathen times, said Josva,
it was the custom of the inhabitants on the shortest day of the year,
when the stars Aassootit first appeared in the eastern sky, to dress
themselves in new fur coats and proceed in couples to the festival
house to celebrate the solstice.

Later I received a letter from Avgo Lynge, teacher at the training
college, who stated that he knew a similar qashse near Alangmik
north of Godthab, and another from Kristen Mikiassen, the catechist,
saying that he knew a ruin of a qashse near Narssaq south of Godthab,
situated by the setthkement of Qarajaq, now deserted. This qashse stood
at some little distance from the houses on the southern bank of
the river.

In an account written in 1880 by Eller Dorf, then a catechist near
Cape Farvel, we may read what the Greenlanders in the southernmost
part of the country, who really belonged to the inhabitants of the east
coast, still knew about qashses, particularly the qashse after which
Qagssimiut was named.

Qagssimiut ‘the inhabitants of (a) qashse’ is the name marked in
the map for a little village (outlying settlement) in the Julianehab
district. The qagsse is explained as the “‘Eskimo assembly house, the
first of its kind” (in this part) and is described thus:

“Tt was built with a round opening at the top and a narrow entrance”.
Then follows a tale about the use to which this qashse had once been
put, mainly as a kind of “trap” in which “the murderer” Isigaarseraq
was caught. He was a man said to be from Akilineq (the land on the
other side) and seems to be identical with the famous Uiarteq, who
sailed round the land (see First Part, p.108 and pp. 242—244). Another
qashse of the same kind is reported to be found to the northward
near Julianehab. This too had been built to catch the same “murderer”
(the word perhaps merely denotes a hostile invader coming from the
north). On both occasions, however, he evaded his pursuers by his
cunning and agility, slipping out of the qashse between their legs and
weapons and jumping out through the hole in the roof.

The tale seems apocryphal, especially by its reference to the hole
in the roof, which is never otherwise mentioned in accounts of the

' Eller Dorf, the author of the manuscript, was a catechist at Tuapaaift at the

time when Holm & Garde’s expedition sailed past the settlement. One of the
members of the expedition, P. Eberlin, acquired the Greenlandish manuscript,
which Holm kept. It consists of three small books in blue covers, and deals
with “the faith of our ancestors’, e. g. the sea woman, the moon man, angakut

and qashses. See the Gustav Holm Collection in the Royal Library, Kébenhayn.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 673

East Eskimo qashses. This feature may be due to a confusion of the
qashse with the dome-shaped traps often built on the east coast to
catch gulls or ravens (cf. First Part pp. 406—407, and fig. 222 in this
part). According to the legend about Jmerasugsuk his wife Misana hid
herself in such a trap. But the fact remains that the word qashse as
a term for an ancient assembly-house was known down here in the
far south of Greenland, and this is the only time the word is mentioned
in connection with the East Greenlanders.

Finally in 1935 I discussed the matter with an old hunter by
name Jakuaq Euginius! who belonged to the Moravian congregation
at Godthab, one of the last great upholders of the tradition on the
west coast. Like all Eskimos he knew his part of the country over
long stretches extending towards all four corners of the globe, and
carried a vivid picture of it in his imagination, so that he could at
onee draw a rough map on paper, with the place-names marked.
He put crosses against the places where in his opinion there were stil
ruins of qashses. I quote the names here; and may publish his map
on another occasion. I reproduce his spelling, only substituting q for
his k:

Igdluverungnerit (a little north of Kangeq)

(A place between) Qungnerit and Navsuvitsunguaq
Tuperssuartik (to the north on the island Qaquk?)
(A place between) Upernivik and Pisuvfik
Atangmik

Akungnat

Tlivilik (between Nuvfiumaneq and Nijagornarssuaq)
Sdrdloq

“At Pisuvfik there is a large ruined Eskimo settlement, and it is
well known that near to here there is a qashse, that is to say, here
it is a temporary lodge (tdssa ugdlasaut igdlo qagssinag qagsse agssiging-
mago), a shelter of the kind called a qashsinaq ‘resembling a qashse’”’.*
What Jakuaq meant by this will in part appear from his description
which we now append. “For in very old times (antiquity) all inuit
had, in connection with their angdkut, a sort of penal prisons put to
the following use. When women gave birth under concealment their
angakut shut them up in a temporary shelter where they ordered
them to go in; a house without a window like this one.”’ His manuscript
has a small drawing something like a crooked beehive. “This is a
temporary shelter, it also used to be called a qagssinag house. Such

1 Jakuaq is derived from Jacob and means “Little (-aq) Jacob.”
2 The first time I find this word quoted is in Schultz-Lorentzen’s paper on the
Eskimo immigration (in MoG. 26, 1904, p. 307).

674 W. THALBITZER.

are also found at Narssaq, Avangnda, Narajat igdluitsdt, Qarajat qerer-
tarssuag Agpanguit, Qagssijarssuk, Qerertai utorgqar, Utorqarmiut, Satut,
Navdluvfik (ete.)”.

He added a small story told of the place Qagssijarssuk (‘the peculiar
qashse’) which runs thus:

“Once in the old days, when the angakkoq of the inhabitants of
the Storo was on a prowling hunt in his kaiak, out by the sea, he
had to go ashore a moment to ease himself, and went up from the
beach. There he had a vision. A fine big woman was sitting on a stone
a little further inland gazing at him. Not knowing her, he asked,
“Who are you? What is your name?’ Then she spoke, saying, ““When
we were over yonder at Qagssiarssuk and I was cleaning my mother-
in-law from lice, some one called out ““Your husband has arrived,
they say.”’ “I did not go out, I did not hurry [as she ought to have done
as his wife). After a while steps were heard in the house passage. He
jumped up out of the entrance hole, came up to me, caught hold of
my topknot, pulled savagely at me, and dragged me out of the house
to the shelter (ugdlasaungmut) and forced me to go in. There I suffered
great anguish |[ndgdliogalunga, the word is used of spiritual distress
and pangs only|, and when I came out I turned into an ice-loon; I
turned into an ice-loon, quviveq, quviveq, qaqaquldajé6, | turned into an
ice-loon [the Greenlandish words are without meaning, they simply
give the call of the bird). When the great loon flew up, when it was
seen from behind, it is reported, it could be seen that she was a trans-
formed human being.”

Jakuaq Euginius’s dwelling on the qashse-like shelters, which had
their special uses in the discipline of the community under the control
of the heathen priests, is of considerable interest. But in this con-
nection I merely adduce it as one of several examples that from the
old days the Greenlanders made a distinction between qashses proper
(permanent qashses)—whose function was similar to that of the West
Eskimos’ festival houses

and qashse-like lodges. In other words,
there were two kinds of qashses.

The remembrance of the real original qashses is quite obscured
in Greenland. What has been preserved by tradition is the use of
smaller qashses, some square, others roundish in ground plan, some
built of snow, others of stones, turf, and timber like the ordinary
houses; the roundish snow qashses being in use in the winter, the
others perhaps permanently in winter and summer, apparently with
the function of being playing-houses for the young people, e.g. at
feasts or orgies in connection with the whale-hunting season.

Lodges for temporary habitation are well known both in Greenland and
in Alaska. I would remind the reader of the hastily built summer-dwellings

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 675

of the Greenlanders, often standing on the beach itself, which they use on
their hunting excursions. For Alaska E. W. Nelson mentions “snowhouses as
temporary shelters erected by hunters”, such are there called an-i-gu-yik,
which would correspond to something like Gr. anigujaaq (< anigorpaa ‘es-
capes a danger’) i.e. ‘an emergency shelter’. Barnum speaks of the snow-
house as an iglu in contrast with nna ‘a shelter, a nest, a couch, the place
of the thing, a room’, corresponding to Gr. ina (ine). But none of these lodges
has the function of a qashse.

Having noted the occurrence of these old qashses on the west
coast of Greenland, it would seem appropriate to quote some data
from our western sources, principally E. W. Nevson (N.) and FRANCIS
Barnum (B.), both of whose publications date from about 1900. The
information of the former is derived from the central part of the west
coast of Alaska, chiefly from the region inhabited by the Unalit tribe
(Pastolik from the mouth of the Yukon northward to Razbinsky, with
two kashims for 25 ordinary houses). Barnum’s locality was a little
further to the south. N

Description of the West Alaskan festival house from E. W. Nelson, The
Eskimo about Bering Strait (1899), pp. 242—246.

“Formerly, as at present, the village was usually an irregular group of
semi-subterrancan houses built about a large central building, called by the
Unalit, kaj’-i-gi. This term corresponds to the name kashim? of the fur
traders, which has been used throughout this paper to designate structures
of this kind.

These buildings are on the same general plan as the dwelling houses,
but are much larger and are used as the central point of the village social
life. They are ordinarily made large enough to contain all the villagers,
besides guests that may come during festivals. In some of the villages, how-
ever, where the number of inhabitants is considerable, two or more of these
buildings are constructed. Their size is necessarily limited by the material
available — which is mainly drift logs cast up along the shore. The people
of the lower Yukon have a tradition that there formerly existed below Ikog-
mut a village that contained 35 kashims; at present there are many villages
in which there are two of these buildings.

Snow houses, so common among the Eskimo of Greenland and other
eastern negions, are known in Alaska only as temporary shelters erected by
hunters when out on short excursions from their village during winter;
they are termed an-i-gu-yuk’, and their use is familiar to all of the Eskimo
although they are so rarely constructed ...”

[We pass over Nelson’s description of the common family house and
return to his mention of the kashim on p. 245).

“Kashims are common everywhere among the Eskimo and have been
adopted by the adjacent Tinné of lower Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. They
vary in size according to the number of inhabitants in the village. The
material used for these structures is driftwood, consisting of logs and poles
which float down the rivers in spring and are strewn along their banks or

1 This term is derived from the word kaj’-i-gim = “my kaj’-i-gi”.

676 W. THALBITZER.

carried to sea and scattered along the coast during the following summer.
Spruce is the most common variety. The logs are usually deprived of their
bark and are seasoned by exposure ...

In constructing a kashim the logs are laid in the form of a square to
the height of 7 or 8 feet; from thence they are drawn in on every side, in
alternate courses, until the last are short, and surround a square opening
in the roof, directly over the middle of the room, and from 9 to 12 feet
above the floor, forming a frame for the smoke hole, which is about 2 or
21/5 feet in width. If the building is small, it is covered with a heavy layer
of earth, but if large, a crib-work is built around it, held together by a
frame, so as to inclose the building and form a double wall, inside of which
is thrown a heayy layer of earth.

The floor is usually of hewed planks laid close together, and occupies
about one-third of the area of the room, in the shape of a square in the
center; it is laid on sills at the end so that the planks can readily be taken
up; below these there is a pit from 3 to 4 feet deep, in which the fire is
built to heat the room for sweat baths, or at rare intervals in winter; but
usually the heat from the bodies of the occupants keeps the temperature so
high that they remain nude, or partly so, much of the time, even in winter.
Other planks usually cover the ground back to the walls, although in many
places, especially where wood is scarce, the floor of this portion of the room
consists merely of earth, beaten hard—The entrance consists of a long,
roofed passage, built of logs and covered with earth; the outer end of this
is faced with planks, over which is a square, round or arched door way
leading into the room in summer, when it is closed only by a bearskin cur-
tain. In winter this entrance, which is above the ground, is closed tightly,
and a round hole in the floor near the outer end of the upper passage leads
through a low tunnel, along which the people pass on their hands and knees
to the fire pit, and thence through a circular or oval hole to the middle of
the room.

These rooms are from 12 to 25 feet square.

Around the inside, about 4 feet from the floor, extends a bench, hewed
from a single log, 15 to 18 inches wide and usually from 4 to 6 inches in
thickness, or left half rounded below; this heavy bench is supported by stout
sticks placed diagonally across the corners of the room, and is used as a
sleeping place, also as a seat during festivals and at other times.

At the back of the room, supported on an upright post from 2 to 3 feet
high, a lamp is kept burning, by public contribution, at all times when the
kashim is gloomy. A gut-skin cover is used over the smoke hole at all times,
except when the fire is burning in the pit, or when the heat becomes too
oppressive”.

B

Description of the South Alaskan festival house kazhga from F. Barnum,
Fundamentals of the Innuit Language ... of Alaska (1901) $$ 809—810.

“In every Innuit village there is a communal house, termed kazhga,
around which are grouped the private residences.

In older times, when the population was numerous, there were many
villages containing from five hundred to a thousand inhabitants, and even
more. There are traditions of great settlements, one of which possessed
thirty kazhgas. At present it is very rare to find a village in which the popu-
lation is large enough to require two .... The kazhga serves as the work-

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 677

shop, meeting place, bath house, theatre, and general club house for the residents
of the village. It may be described simply as a cellar with a roof over it.
It consists of an excavation from 12 to 20 feet square covered with a pyra-
midal roof of rough drift logs. The interstices are caulked with moss and
the whole roof is then overlaid with a thick coating of sods and earth. In
the centre of the roof a small square opening is left for light and ventilation.
This is covered with a curtain made of the intestines of seal or walrus.
These intestines are slit lengthwise and dried. When these thin strips of
membrane are sewed together they form a covering which is translucent
and impervious to cold. This opening is termed rhalok!. The frost has a
tendency to form thickly on the inside of the membrane, and thus dims the
light; hence frequently during the day the command rhalok patigaluku?
will be given. Thereupon one of the younger inmates will go out and knock
the frost down by patting gently upon the membrane covering. If the family
happen to have membrane wherewith to make a rhalok curtain, then a
large block of the clearest ice is selected and set into the opening. Large
objects which cannot be taken in through the usual entrance of the kazhga
are lowered down through the rhalok.

In the centre of the floor there is a deeper excayation, generally 6 or
8 feet square, which serves as the fire pif; when not in use this is covered
with hewn logs. The fire pit is only used when the inmates of a kazhga are
able to indulge in the luxury of a sweat bath. Owing to the extreme scar-
city of wood throughout the greater portion of the Eskimo country, fires
are never used to heat their residences. The presence of a number of people
shut up in these air-tight abodes suffices of itself to keep the temperature
just above the freezing point, which is considered to be comfortable enough
in a region where fuel is so precious. — When it is desired to convert the
kazhga into a bath house the logs covering the fire pit are rolled aside.
The wood is most carefully split up into long slips, which are as thin as
possible. This is done in order that it may produce much flame, and also
that it may all consume without leaving any coals to smoulder or poison
the air.

From the level of the fire pit a narrow ditch is dug, extending some-
times twelve or fifteen feet. This ditch slants upwards to the surface of the
ground, and is covered over so as to form a perfect funnel. This is the
agveak*. The outer opening of the agyeak is enclosed in a small shelter,
called laturak, from lan-latum ‘out of doors’. Occasionally a laturak is con-
structed of hard snow.

Between the fire pit and front wall of the kazhga there is a circular
shaft through the floor connecting with the tunnel; this opening is known
as the pug’yarak’.

To enter a kazhga, a person having passed the outer vestibule, or laturak,
creeps along through the dark little tunnel till he reaches the pugyarak;
here he is able to stand erect, and by pressing his hands on the sides of

* Same word as Greenl. igalaag ‘a window’.

Greenl. igalaaq patiLLugo (imperatively) ‘beating (tapping, patting at) the window’.
5 Greenl. agpaa, agsivog ‘moves (something) out’. Labr. aksiviak(q), ‘throwing-out

2

place’, aksaarneqg ‘outgoing current’.

Cf. Greenl. sila ‘out of doors, the open air’.

5 Cf. Greenl. puivog ‘emerges, pops out’. -giar, -ria ‘the way by which —’. -raq
‘little’.

XL. 44

678 W. THALBITZER.

the hole can spring up to the floor. This act of emerging from the pugyarak
is expressed by pagok?, and it is a most abrupt and ungraceful mode of
entrance. The exit is fully as ludicrous. The soft boots and fur clothing of
the natives make no rustling, and one beholds the inmates of a kazhga dis-
appear instantly and silently through the floor after the fashion of imps in
a pantomime.

Around the sides of the kazhga extends a broad shelf constructed of
split logs, laid with the flat sides upwards. This shelf, which is about 3
feet high, forms the usual sleeping place. The interior of a kazhga is always
dark and gloomy, the sides and roof are blackened with smoke and soot,
and the floor is covered with grease and dirt.”

“The term for a private house is mna* which always means a winter
house; the various styles of summer residences have each its distinct name.
— The well-known term iglu refers only to huts built entirely of blocks of
hard snow, which are cut from the weather side of drifts. These are only
erected for temporary shelter.

The nna differs from the kazhga in the following respects. It is much
smaller, and is erected upon the surface of the ground; occasionally some
are to be found which are slightly excavated. — Around three sides of the
interior extends the bed platform, which is about 5 feet wide, and generally
12 inches above the level of the floor. This platform is called inglok*, and
is covered with mats woven from dried grass.”

As far as the Chuckchi are concerned BoGoras informs us that
ceremony-houses are mentioned in their legends, though the people
themselves do not now know any such. The scabby shaman Rintew

‘ ’

built a “‘singing-house” and invited all the neighbours to a ceremony,
as the Indians and the Eskimo chiefs generally did. Among the in-
habitants of Kamchatka such a ceremony-house is likewise men-
tioned; and Hooper describes in detail a dancing-house among the
Asiatic Eskimos in the village Unisaq at Indian Point, which he saw
in 1848. So here again we have material for comparison which,
however, I shall not discuss more fully here, as I hope that the archaeo-
logists may find their way to this field before the subject is to be
discussed on a broader theoretical basis.

Coxiins, in his archaeological work from the western regions
(1937), did not go into the problem of the qashses (kashims), but it
appears from his incidental mention of them that the S.W.Alaskan
qashses, besides their conformity to the common type of house, have
certain peculiarities which no doubt correspond to their various social
functions (as a festival house; and as the working and sleeping house

of the men and their bath house). Our interpretation of the West
‘ pugok expresses entering a dwelling. Cf. Greenl. pulavog ‘creeps in’ (-lavoqg ‘is

in the state of’). The sense appears to be to bob up, or emerge from. When a

fish leaps out of the water it is described by pugok. Gr. puivog.

* Greenl. ina(a) ‘its place, nest’, ‘room’, (stem alternating ine, ina).

* Greenl. igdleq {ilhleq] ‘the platform along the back wall of the room’.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 679

Eskimo qashse must be based on our knowledge of the various house
types compared with those of the neighbouring peoples. Collins em-
phasizes certain surprising differences.

In the first place Collins (1937 p. 267), like Therkel Mathiassen,
shows that in N. Alaska the typical Point Barrow house, the ordinary
dwelling-house, is only an Alaskan type exteriorly, while its interior
is a pure Thule structure! (a rear platform and gabled roof, features
resembling the longhouse type of the East Greenlanders, see G. Holm
in First Part p. 35 fig. 31; ef. p. 360). But further (p. 269) the more
easterly type of Mackenzie river house is entirely different from the
Thule house and appears clearly ‘‘as a local and specialized form”’.
The prototype of the Mackenzie river house, however, recurs in the
more southern part of the Alaskan coast, from Norton Sound south-
ward. Collins points out such features as “‘the sleeping platform ex-
tending around the sides along the floor, and the partly vaulted roof”’;
the latter features “‘agreeing with the kashims of S.W.Alaska’’. And
in his search for the origin of the southern house type he pauses at
the Koryak houses south of the Chukchi Peninsula, especially those
of the maritime Koryaks (p. 272). ““From Jochelson’s detailed descrip-
tion we see that it is a large semisubterranean structure, octagonal in
ground plan” etc. This type does not lack in its centre “four pillars”
as “supports of the central roof structure which is to some extent
vaulted ... with a square opening at the top which served as smoke
hole and winter entrance.” (Cf. the Mackenzie river house type).
There is a special summer entrance. Collins concludes that the Koryak
house “‘resembles that of S.W. and W.Alaska (Bristol Bay to Norton
Sound) ... Furthermore, the outline of the house is octagonal, and
the only octagonal structures in Alaska are the kashims between the
mouth of Kuskokwim and Bristol Bay (observed by the present writer
‘Collins} at Goodnews Bay and Kulukak).”’

An octagonal ground plan comes very near to the circular form
of the qashse known to us from Fr. Boas’ ground plan of the qashse
from Baffin Land by Davis Strait. But it would be a bold conjecture
to suppose that the qashses of the W. Eskimos were originally roundish
in ground plan, seeing that all modern qashses in Alaska are described
as “‘square’’.* On the other hand, the qashses built of snow among
the central Eskimos are dome-shaped and circular, though sometimes
modified by being built on to the dwelling houses (see e. g. figs. 182a-c).

' Therefore Collins (1937 and previously) speaks of “a lale return’’ migration of
Thule peoples into northern Alaska, subsequent to the original eastward spread
from Alaska to the central regions” (p. 267).

> See W.E. Nelson and Fr. Barnum, and from earlier times Adrian Jacobsen

(ed. Woldt, 1887, pp. 230—234) and Elliott.
44*

680 W. THALBITZER.

As far as Greenland is concerned, the qashse found by Giesecke in
1811 would seem to suggest the square shape of the ordinary dwelling
houses.

From Labrador, finally, we have a description of a qashse through
the report of one of the Moravian missionaries who stayed at Nain
in 1777. I cite it from Packard’s Notes on the Labrador Eskimo.t

Crantz then mentions a feature of Eskimo life, which however repugnant
to the feelings of the Moravians, is of interest to the ethnologist, and has
not, so far as we are aware, been observed among the Eskimo of late years.
This is the erection of a temporary winter éstufa or public game-house. “A
kache, or pleasure-house, which, to the grief of the missionaries, was erected
in 1777, by the sayages near Nain, and resorted to by visitors from Okkak,
has been described by the brethren. It was built entirely of snow, sixteen
feet high and seventy feet square. The entrance was by a round porch,
which communicated with the main body of the house by a long avenue
terminated at the farther end by a heart-shaped aperture, about eighteen
inches broad and two feet in height. For greater solidity the wall near the
entrance was congealed into ice by water poured upon it. Near the entry
was a pillar of ice supporting the lamp, and additional light was let in
through a transparent plate of ice in the side of the building. A string hung
from the middle of the roof, by which a small bone was suspended, with
four holes driven through it®. Round this all the women were collected,
behind whom stood the men and boys, each having a long stick shod with
iron. The string was now set a-swinging, and the men, all together, thrust
their sticks over the heads of their wives at the bone, till one of them
succeeded in striking a hole. A loud acclamation ensued; the men sat down
on a snow seat, and the victor, after going two or three times round the
house singing, was kissed by all the men and boys; he then suddenly
made his exit through the avenue, and, on his return, the game was
renewed.”

As a set-off to this we now have my discovery of the qashse in
SaarLoq by the Godthabsfjord with a circular ground plan (fig. 184).

It is certain that the term gashse was applied to the find at SaarLoq
as well as to Giesecke’s find. It is undoubtedly a wellknown and
ancient word in the Greenlandish language, incorporated in the earliest
dictionaries.*

I myself noted down the word from the living tradition in 1901

1 A. Packard, Notes on the Labrador Eskimo and their former range southward.
The American Naturalist 1885, pp. 471—481 and (continued) 553 —560.

* Probably the play of nuLLutag (commonly spelled nuglutak) described here in
First Part p. 658, also mentioned by O. Fabricius, Grénlandsk Ordbog under
kimmerarpok.

% In O. Fabricius’ Vocabulary (1804) it occurs in the forms kakse and karkse
(p. 240), Kleinschmidt (1871) has Kagsse. Paul Egede (1750) only gives the

derivative karksimio-.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 681

in North Greenland (Umanak Fjord) as the initial word in the myth
about the sun and the moon, which opens as follows:

Qa”sersuarmigo'g ito igalarqayitoq inuil pavniartargigisat ... anutip
qatayune arnaq liqulugo pa’niartara’ (etc.).

“In the big meeting house, it is related, a house without any window,
the place of the inuit, where they used to play and lie with each other*.”

A Phonetical Study of the Eskimo Language, MoG. 31, Copenhagen 1903
(p. 294): North Greenlandic Contributions to Eskimo Folk-lore, no. 3, “Sun
and Moon”.

Qas'’serssuarme ‘in the great qashse’ (spelt according to the
idiomatic pronunciation). The fixed form of this tradition is probably
connected with the fact that in the old days the myth was recited as
part of a ritual ceremony, perhaps at a religious feast of a similar
kind to those described at length by E.W. Nelson and Knud Ras-
mussen among the Alaskan Eskimos. Unfortunately we have no
tradition or observation from Greenland or the intermediate areas of
the fact known from other parts of the world that myths dealing with
the supreme powers or the origin of the world may be recited at certain
ceremonies of a religious kind.

The word kashim is the American ethnologists’ or colonists’ imi-
tation of a similar word in Eskimo. In the authors from the different
parts (dialects) it appears in varying forms. I take it for granted that
disyllabies such as Labrador qagge, Gr. qagsse, are later develop-
ments (contractions) of the trisyllabics found in Stefansson and
Jenness from the Mackenzie river Eskimos: kadjigi, qajigiqg, and in
Nelson and Jenness from North Alaska: kdj-i-gi, qasiyi, qayigt,
cf. D. Jenness from Bering Strait (K): qagsi; Knud Rasmussen: qaqi
(Copper Esk.).*

I think I am able to show a connection between these words and
a nearly homonymous etymon kashi (or kash) in the Ainu language
meaning ‘a lodge, a hunter’s or fisherman’s lodge’; and owing to the
historical- geographical connection between the Ainu and the Japanese
I have extended the connection to the Japanese language in which,
according to the dictionaries, the stems kashi and kaji might come into
consideration.? The Greenlandish word must then be assumed to have
passed through the following stages in the history of the language:

»

See the Greenland dictionary under pdvd.

Knud Rasmussen, RFTE, IX (1932), p. 141 (note) and 310.

Hepburn’s Japanese-English Dictionary (4. ed. 1888) gives e.g. kashi ‘a loan,
anything lent’; kashi zashiki ‘a prostitute house’; kashiya ‘a house to let’. Kurt
Wulff (in a letter to me) regarded Jap. kashi ‘family property’ and kaji ‘family
affairs’ as loan words from the Chinese (cf. my Cultic Games and Festivals
p. 254).

te

682 W. THALBITZER.

WGr. qagsse (qaysse) < qaryce < *qaryje < *qardjre < *qadjre
< qadjire < qadjiye.
Other intermediate local forms: qayze (L.), qaLzi, qacciqe, qarrige.

Cf. a Greenlandish analogon: Gr. aqssaq < arkjaq (L. ayyaq) <
*ardjraq < adjiraq, adjiqaq (Petitot) “hand, forearm’’.

Even within the Eskimo area the available data do not speak
quite plainly. Let us assume a linguistic continuity between Gr. gagsse
and Al. qazhg"", but does the term therefore cover the same socio-
logical fact?

Linguistically qagsse was regarded by Kleinschmidt as a purely
Eskimo derivative of the same stem as qgak and qaa ‘surface’, ef.
qagdleq ‘the uppermost or outermost (part of the surface)’ -dleq being
the superlative ending; qagssivog about men or animals: “goes up or
climbs on land or on to an ice-floe, common particularly about marine
The (nominal)
stem of this verb is the same qgagsse with which we are here concerned
(cf. p. 660 for the different connotations of the word). Kleinschmidt?
also gives qaqivog ‘goes up’ and qagitsivog ‘saves something out of

2 OF

animals that have climbed on to the ice or on land.

the water, pulls it up out of deep water’, besides qgagssivog. His method,
however, is somewhat invalidated by his lack of knowledge of the
western forms of the word at the time when he worked. The western
forms brought to our knowledge later on give us a different picture
of the genesis of the word. It is true that the final element-ge, which
is traceable far to the south cf. Labr. gagge (< *qarge?), is compatible
with Eskimo morphology (cf. Gr. atigeq; nigeg), but the whole
character of the word and its inner elements would seem to indicate
an influence from another language.

The Greenlandish gashse, however, is surely, both as a term and
as an object, an offshoot of the W. Eskimo qashge, which in Alaska
has the character of a “men’s house” and club: the assembly hall
and festival house of the village, a substitute for a temple. The snow
qashses of the Central Eskimos are known to us chiefly as festival
houses. Among the inland Eskimos west of Hudson Bay isolation
shelters are mentioned’ of a similar kind to the gashsinaq referred to
by Jakuaq Euginius (p.673), though with a somewhat different function.
The term shows that there was a tendency to transfer the word to
another kind of buildings than the large festival houses. There is no
absolute continuity in the architecture of the qashses. And it must be

Bogoras, The Folklore of N. E. Asia. — AA, vol. 4, 1902 (p. 606).
* Kleinschmidt, Ordbog (1871), p. 125.
* Knud Rasmussen, RFT Exp. VII, 1 ([glulik) pp. 170-172 ernivik, kinervik.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 683

left open whether qgashse originally connoted a lodge (a hunter’s shelter),
the men’s club-house, the village festival house, or something else.

“The playing-house of the young people’, transmitted in Green-
land and attested by the ruins, is then probably only one of the kinds
of qashses in Greenland, connected with the festival of the great whale-
hunt in the summer.

Tradition associates the myth with the idea of the Sun and Moon.
The persistence of the tradition in N. Greenland is plainly evident from
the fact that as late as 1901 I noted down this myth in the fjord of
Umanak in North Greenland. In my version, which was written when
neither the narrator nor myself knew Egede’s text or any other tradition
about qashses, the very word occurs in the opening phrase (“‘the great
qashse’’). The persistence of this tradition is probably connected with
the fact that the myth in the old days was recited in a fixed form as
a part of the ritual ceremonies at a religious feast of a similar kind
to those described by E. W. Nelson and Knud Rasmussen as prevalent
among the Alaskan Eskimos, or like that mentioned by Holmberg in
use among the Konyag Eskimos on Kadiak Island south of Alaska.
“The feast begins by their running out of the kashim with burning
wooden torches in their lifted arms.”

Egede’s account almost leaves the impression that the cult game
in—or about—the qashse in N.Greenland was opened by a recitative
dancing song (tiwaneq) in which the myth was narrated. In the myth
the sun is called Malina, no doubt a derivative of the verb maligpog
‘she is pursued’, the name of the persecuted woman in the cult; the
name of the moon is given as Aningat, which signifies “their elder
brother’ or Aningasinna “‘their (i.e. the women’s) elder brother,
familiar from the myth”, viz. the Moon, the spirit of the moon. The
game may have consisted in an imitation of the action of the myth,
“her elder brother’? being understood as the symbol of any young man.

- | H.J. Holmberg Ethnografische Skizzen tiber die Vélker der Russischen Amerika
(Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicae, IV, 1856) in which there is information of the Konyak
Eskimos on the Kadiak Island. Holmberg describes a feast with invocation
of the spirits (pp. 404—405). It would seem to be an imitation of the action of
the sun and moon myth. The feast, be it said, takes the shape of a drama.
The actors represent hunters going out hunting. They use oars, weapons, drums

and rattling skins.

CHAPTER VII
PRIMITIVE ESKIMO ART

OLD SCULPTURE AND MODERN DRAWINGS

First of all it should be emphasised that there existed a genuine
Eskimo art independently of European models.

We have treated the topic ethnographically in two preceding
sections dealing with Art and Ornaments, chiefly Sculpture, Ivory
Bas-reliefs on Wood, Embroidery on Skin, ete., see First Part pp. 115—
124 (Holm) and 608—624, with illustrations up to p. 657. In natural
connection with this follows what has been written about the music
and the poetic and dramatic art of the East Greenlanders in this part
(pp. 1—179)}.

The physiognomical details reveal themselves in some of their
wood carvings, especially in the wooden masks and the faces of the
big dolls; note thus the wooden bust with the double face (First Part,
Fig. 356). Their feeling for facial expression or for gesture may some-
times be coupled with their vivid sense of grotesque humour—as we
know it from their sculptures and folklore. One thing should be kept
in mind, however; to the Eskimos themselves not all is humour or
grotesque style which Europeans conceive as such; to the Eskimo it
seems more like a realistic gravity.

PENCIL DRAWINGS

One day, during our stay among the Ammassalikers, I distributed
paper and pencils to the children in the hut, saying to them, “Now
draw me some tents and houses, dogs and sledges, kaiaks, umiaks
and the animals you usually see!’’ Some of them came with their
drawings the next day, others not until some months had passed. Only
a very few declared that they could not draw.

‘ Cf. also my recent publication on Eskimo Music: Inuil Sange og Danse (Eskimo
Songs and Dances from Greenland) Copenhagen 1939, with a bibliography.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 685

Many of these drawings were both imaginative and distinctive.
They depicted all that I had asked for and more into the bargain:
bear and seal hunts, family portraits, drum-singing men, angakut,
illustrations of legends and games, etc. I also received some maps of
the district drawn on paper slips and one or two carved in relief on
wooden boards. The draughtsmen were mostly children from the age
of four and upwards. but a few adults had also taken part in the
contest. In addition to the 157 drawings I received at the time, an
aftercrop was later sent me by Johan Petersen, the Danish super-
intendent at Ammassalik.

The illustrations subjoined here (and in other parts of my work)
are selected from this material and are provided with the Eskimos’
own explanations of the pictures?.

A half-grown boy especially distinguished himself. He was a son
of the lately baptised angakoq Mitsuarniaynya. His name was Kaaralé
and he was hardly 15 years old.

Kaaralé (or Kaaralik) was not only the most fertile inventor of
motives, he also surpassed the other boys in sureness of touch. He
understood how to make the picture come alive, often with quite few
strokes. My wife thought she would like to try to what degree of pro-
ficiency such a child of nature could be pushed on. In the room in
our wintering house where my wife herself modelled the Eskimo in
wax, some Parisian school drawings she had once used hung on the
wall. The boy at once copied them almost without using an india-
rubber, with a sure touch and with an astonishing eye for the essential
in the expression. In the course of April and May he came to us
regularly to take lessons in the art of drawing. Set more and more
difficult tasks, he progressed steadily. After a month’s lessons he began
to draw from a life model. This was not play but serious work, and
each drawing showed developing talent. The little artist was not for
nothing the son of one of the most intelligent and earnest figures in
this Eskimo tribe.—Already before our stay at Ammassalik he had
been taught by Henrik Lunp from West Greenland (Pastor Rittel’s
assistant) who acted as a catechist in Ammassalik and instructed the
children of the settlement in reading and writing the Eskimo language.
Later, after our departure from Ammassalik, Kaarale was sent to the

A selection of these original drawings and a number of toys from East Green-
land were exhibited at Paris in the spring of 1907 in “l’Ecole pratique des Arts”
at an exhibition arranged by “La Societé d'études et de propagande pour le
développement de la culture artistique et de l’enseignement du dessin” where
the drawings were well received. Unfortunately my collection, when returned to
me from the exhibition, had been deplorably decimated, and I never received
the missing pictures.

686 W. THALBITZER.

Greenlandish training college at Godthab on the west coast to be
educated as a teacher. Over there he unfortunately soon lost his
distinctive East Greenlandish character. The drawings reproduced here
show his talent before the influence of the European school had changed
his individual style (fig. 197 ff.)

Once when some Eskimos on a visit from Sermilik entered our
house, they exclaimed at the sight of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
(La Gioconda) of which a big photograph was hanging on the wall,
“Why, there is Qananeejuk’s wife from Sermilik. What a good likeness,
apart from the top-knot!”—The Eskimo Mona Lisa’s husband was a
lean, slim Indian type of man. He was immortalised by Kaaralé, who
drew him one day he had come from Sermilik to pay us a visit. The
reader can compare his drawing (Fig. 227) with my photos of the same
celebrity (figs. 82 and 11). Eventually Kaaralé drew several other
portraits from life models; a mother with her child in the amaut,
another old woman, “the sulky boy” (figs. 170, 174, 177) his own father
Mitsuarniaya, Maratté (the famous angakoq) etc. A lot of beautiful
landscapes drawn from nature are also from the hand of Kaarale,
some few coloured with chalks or in water colours. The likeness of
the portraits to the models was often striking.

Kaarale was the best, but several of the other draughtsmen also
showed good ability to characterise persons and animals. They were
generally very successful in drawing seals, whales, and bears, while
they found dogs and human beings the hardest to do.

Postscript.

As to Kaarale’s primitive style and his later development under
European influence there has been some discussion. Without doubt
there was some development in his art, though at the expense of his
national style. All primitive art nowadays goes into a common melting-
pot. Kaarale forms no exception, though in later life he tried to utilise
his early memories of his heathen past, e. g. by drawings representing
the familiar spirits of the angakuts, or trolls and tupilaks. These
pictures may be seen in Knud Rasmussen’s books on East Greenland?.
Some of the illustrations have an ethnological interest quite apart from
the artistic aspect. A few, however, must be characterised as quite
misleading, especially his figs. 12 (p. 96) and 138, representing East
Greenland drum singers: they show such strong European influence
in attire, physiognomy, and postures that every trace of the original
picture is as it were wiped away. Kaarale’s fig.11 (p.138) “‘an Erqilik”’,

*“Myter og Sagn” (1921) and “Posthumous Notes on the Life and Doings” ete.,

edited by H. Ostermann in M. o. G. Vol. 109 (1939).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 687

representing an “inland dweller’ (the Greenlander’s legendary remi-
niscence of an Indian), has again fallen back on the current miscon-
ception, probably under European influence, that these creatures were
a mixture of human beings and dogs, that is to say, a kind of humans
created with dogs’ tails and dogs’ legs. The myth, it is true, tells of
the offspring of a male dog and a woman. Her children (puppies) were
either Inuit or Qavhlunaait or Ergilhlit and other kinds of inland
dwellers, but surely this does not mean that to the heathen imagination
these creatures had the appearance of dogs: perhaps it does not even
denote anything degrading for the offspring. The origin and true
meaning of the dog myth it not yet quite cleared up (cf. W. Koppers’
and Fr. Kretschmar’s Monographs on the dog myth), but at any rate
it does not deal with such a monstrosity as Kaarale’s illustration would
have us believe in. The “‘tail”’ referred to in the tradition about Erqilhlit
is probably part of the festive attire of the West Eskimos, a dorsal
ornament belonging to the costume, sewed on to it like its feathers
and fringes. The error is also known from other parts of the world,
where white settlers have misinterpreted the native customs of dress
and many other phenomenal’.

Kaarale returned from Godthab to his native district on the east
coast and distinguished himself there for many years as the co-operator
of the Danish clergyman and the beloved teacher of his countrymen.
He died of pneumonia in 1934 during a stay in Copenhagen. Dr. Knud
Rasmussen had had him brought down to Denmark to act in his East
Greenland film Navarana, shown both in Denmark and abroad.
Kaarale lived long enough to make a commemorative oration in the
Greenlandish language at the broadcast issued when Knud Rasmussen
died?. Shortly after he fell ill himself and died in the foreign land.

1 Haddon informs us that the notion on the supposed “tail-men” on the Nicobar
Islands is due to the tail-like method of wearing the loincloth (1. c. 1934, p. 102).

* Kaarale’s speech is printed in the Report on the Last Thule-Expedition in
M. o. G. vol. 106, p. 265—268 (edited by Gabel-Jorgensen). Kébenhavyn 1940.

| ae

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 689

Pencil Drawings.

Nos. 185-188 and 190-192 were drawn by Qilertaanalik’s son Aaitsiwaq, aged
about 10 years. He had been given the blank pieces of paper in the winter, his father
bringing them back from the trading station which he had visited. I only received them
several months later and the little artist had been engaged in producing these pictures,
his first of the kind. He had chosen to draw the portraits of some of his families in
the huge Sermilik Fjord where he lived. Characteristically enough, he has given many
of the men European hats on their heads, while the women wear the national top-
knot. He himself had probably only on some few occasions seen men in European
hats, and not Sermiliks, for this would have been unthinkable at that time, but
probably at the headquarters of the colony, and the hat must have impressed him
profoundly. He told me the names of the men and families he had drawn.

ey

Fig. 185. Father is dragging a seal up to the hut, little sister is going to fetch our

little sledge. Mother is looking on.

ea ie cae

SSS

Fig. 186. Down there is an umiak, outside on the sea a kayak. Above are seen our

neighbours who have come up from the beach to visit us in the tent (top left);

the middle line on the left Tookutak with his wife and child, on the far right Nudn-
naarin (his name means ‘drum’) and his wife.

690 W. THALBITZER.

Fig. 187. This picture here represents two men meeting for a
drumming match. Why is there only one drum? “The two

men take it in turns to use it”. The rest are spectators.

Fig. 188. This represents the big man Kunnang Qartseerarter Ikeerqoq (in the
middle) with his wives, his first wife on the right, his extra-wife on the left;
further, their relatives.

Fig. 189. Drawing by a younger man aged 18. Kayaks on the
sea, some of them with a seal in tow; below, a kayak attacking

a white whale.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 691

Fig. 190. Two winters ago Aaitsiwag had seen this couple, whom he now drew. They are an old
widow in the north by name Akkitsekujooq standing beside her tent, and her son approaching
land in his kayak with a seal in tow.

Fig. 191. A man is seen on the lookout on a small cliff rising behind the hut with the strange
light vertical crevice; another man is standing below the upturned umiak lying on its staging outside
the entrance to the house.

692 W. THALBITZER.

Fig. 192. In the bottom line is seen our little (youngest) brother on the far right, held by the hand

by our mother. The youngest but one (unasiwia) is standing to the left of her; then comes the hand-

some big hunter of the Sermilik Fjord Qilertaanalik (also seen in figb. 19 and 22). The next man, wearing

a hat, is his brother Poortarterarter. The most important man stands to the left in the picture, the last
but one. This is the proud and dignified Kit'taararter with his wife and their son Anneeun.

Many features link up with those suggested—it is not easy for us to get to
the bottom of the draughtsman’s intimate conception, the innumerable impressions he
connects with each person he has drawn. We can merely guess at the ten year old
boy’s habitual human view of his fellow Eskimos in the Sermilik Fjord, and of the
earth on which they all live—the personal gestures and the interchange of words
which we can merely guess at but which the draughtsman himself must have felt
and known intensely. Drawing these figures from his imagination he creates a kind
of language.

The rest of the drawings continue in other styles. Each draughtsman reveals
his personality in line and composition. His personality is undoubtedly grounded in
the isolated Eskimo tradition. This is the first time he has been faced with the novel
task of reproducing pictures of their own lives on the surface of paper with a pencil
in hand. Epic pictures in a modern Eskimo fashion.

Fig. 193. Kayak man on a rough sea.

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 693

Fig. 194. Ten year old girl’s drawing of a tent, two persons
and a dog; at top, an umiak seen from above; at bottom,
a kayak on the sea.

Fig. 195. Two kayak men on the sea with white kayak skirts (half-jackets, akiwilisaq)
but without paddles. In front of each man is seen the receptacle for the harpoon
line, behind him the inflated bladder float ready to be used.

W. THALBITZER.

694

e
|

VAL FAA. AW AMAAD

Pig. 196. Drawn by an adult man Kaakajik (27 years old). Above, tents pitched between two high cliffs; birds
(like little crosses) flying up from one of them. Below the line marking the surface is drawn another landscape
reversed, apparently continuing the first with coast line, islands, bays, and nesses. Along the coast are seen two
umiaks followed by a kayak. Two of the rowing women have a child in the amaut. In the front part of the boat a
man is seen shooting a bird on the wing. In the next (third) field after this are again seen two umiaks followed
by three kayaks loaded with the catch (seals); the woman steering the first umiak has a child in the amaut; but
men are steering the other boats (figures without top-knots), In the fourth field below this is seen a man standing
on an island watching a spouting whale (a killer-whale) in the sea and a swimming seal. In the bottom

field a man is throwing his spear at a bear which is being chased by a dog and a number of hunters (ul'a'ra‘i").

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 695

Figs. 197—207. Hunting scenes drawn by Kaarale.

Fig. 198. The hunter is snaring a bird (grouse).

Fig. 199. On the sea ice he is stealing up to the blow hole of
a seal with the ice hunting stool’ in his left hand.

1 Cf. First Part p. 423, figs. 127—129.

R.

W. THALBITZE

‘(PNILYL) PL oy Uy Uaas st dn owoo sey yf YoIyM wos afoy ayy Sproy
S}P Sastet JUOdy UY OO at} soa! ayy OF UO dn autod savy YoryA s[eas poyods omy spavmoy, Furdaoao SI doyUnYy OL, “L0G “Blot

rc---—— =

‘Hos Sayuny ayy <q do a4} UO sWIOY poFFeap st patpry [eos ay “00% ‘Sly

697

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

‘aspa[s-sop ev ult pansand st aeoq oy, ‘juny Jveogq °Z0% “Sta

Sag ae ae ays

\ \ } hee eed

a ee

for)
le)
io72)

W. THALBITZER.

Fig. 203. The bear is surrounded by the dogs.

Fig. 204. The bear is killed by the hunter.

Fig. 205. The bear is dragged home.

699

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

uoos st dn auroo sv

Uy

“kas oy} avou
VE YOIYM YSnoryZ a[oY ayy, “WY sprvaoy pvoy s}t pouanz pue uontsod Suynsor szt woay uastr sey a0yqeL Oy, “VW

WO SULAT [vas oy} SpaseAo} ddI ol} 1aA0 sdaas9 oy ‘Twas v Jo syUaWOAOW ay] Sunepwy (pos "Sy yo) Koad sty Supypeys aoyuny ayy, “90% ‘Ble

Pa EEN GR 2 ESS mS hc en

W. THALBITZER.

700

+ dayautac?y St puey siyy,, ‘osnoas v ye anads ev Buy 07 yno sauioo oq y
‘yua} ayy avau dol ay} UO Furpueys Mou st pue a8pays oy} UO sso1oe oye] Uaaq Apuoare sey yeu at} | “punos at} Jo apis Loyjo ayy uo
puLyst oP e uo Suyaq ow oyy oy (,27MwWIs2simj.p) yo} oy) OFUL osnoY soyUTA oY Woy Sutds A[Awo ayy Uy SUyAoW “(opeaevy) “L0G “HA

701

ustoms and Mutual Ai

Social C

towns ayy Jo Javed syuoz ur ovary Koy, a1oYAM “YWNOS oY} UL puLT PseLUNY oy, *g0% “Sly

‘eZ ynoqe pode uvw Sunok v (ueyjeuor posydeq) ynsnyQ Aq ssurmeaq “O16—80% “SI

aG

“(QUIpuag yo YyNos) ,aoe[d UMop Surdaseo poos ayy ‘aasyilitdaeyy st

PUrT SIYT,, ‘WO ay} 07 UMOP patduro Suloq av syoalqo a9y}O pue sajod yuay, “oovjd Surduivs yxou oy} toy aanjqavdaqd “G0Z “I

if

702

708

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

‘(yusnyo) ‘vededvedy ayey ayy Sureajsntyy ‘O1Z St

*saye} plo Suneajsnyypyr

ajeivey pue ynsny¥OQ Aq ssurmesrq “[ZZ—01% ‘SP

‘(QyNsnyO) peoyasoy sry punoas pouoysey purq wv woay uopanq sty Suphavo (yysi oyy uo) owoy Furuanjoa
UaeS ST PUL JeOLJ JOppelq sty UO (Jol ayy OF) Aye a4] YFnory, paris sea OYA JerfruvElIN JHoqe o[ey oy} a0y VONVAysNITL e[qnoqd “L[1Z “Hy

W. THALBITZER.

704

705

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

‘(ajeareyy) ynfnasueu avoq 1a}suoW oy} puk OS SOY “BLS SA

borne

elaine cana a

Pe yyy aoe

pens sa

THALBITZER.

W.

213—214. The doubting Kuta (“Gula”) who would not believe the hunting stories of his fellows, sled¢

g out
to verify them. He is seen by the mountain where the talking bird lives. In West Greenland Rink wrote down

e about the doubting Qatigagse, who did not believe in the angakuts but at last had the belief in them

rmed to such a degree that after his conversion he was seized with fear and trembling and dared
present at their incantations (cf. Rink, 1. ec. 1866 no. 32 (p. 127) (Kaarale).

xt be

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

Fig. 215.

A SS

~I
i=
~J

/

en fe

Fig. 216.
Fig. 215—216. Angakasia “mother’s brother’, who helped his sister’s son to revenge him-
self on the murderers of his father. The drawing shows the house, the man on the

way out on to the ice where he sits waiting at the blow hole of the seal, and the
murderers approaching from behind.

}
vA

a
Ec eeee

Fig. 217. Nipisaaniwajik has fled to the top of the ber

g, while the five men close
in upon him to kill him (Kaarale).

708 W. THALBITZER.

Fig. 218. Scene from the tale of Qasidtta (W Gr. Qasiagssaq), the Greenlanders’

narrator of incredible hunting stories, or bragging hunter. The fellow inmates of his

house are welcoming him at the landing place.

TI *
\ 4 NS
cage C7.
FLA tA

Fig. 219. The tale about Arqatia and his son.

Fig. 220 shows the woman Nuanaanuaraat, an East Greenlandish imitation

of the

West Greenlandish name Navyaranak, on the woman who was dragged to death on

account of her treachery (Okusuk del.).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.
: ]
A pf | \
/ 4
yf /
cael erties eT roan on

tig. 221. The tale of the tame bear who protected the old woman (Kaarale).

MUM UI bed Icne

Fig. 222. Dog kennel (E Gr. qinmip itiva, W Gr. -igdlua, “the dog’s

house’), built of snow. It is otherwise generally called itivinag and is

rarely used for this purpose, but more as an occasional hunting

lodge on journeys or as a trap for gulls and ravens. Cf. First Part,
pp. 406—407 (Kaarale del.).

Figs. 223—233. A series of pictures with subjects from the cult.

pid kin. GOH AAd hen A

Fig. 223. Asertagak means a sacrifice made to a stone god; the picture
shows a sacrificial stone in the shape of a bear to whom the man is
sacrificing blubber or dried meat. The sacrificing hunter who is passing
the stone on a hunting excursion says: “This piece, a gift for you,
you shall requite by a bear | shall get” or “by a seal” (nanutacsanuk
anusacsanuk akileranijarumarputin or (without mention of requital)
miarniarumarparma “you will, | hope, be so good as to give me a
,

bear (or seal) home with me’ (‘from your store’, corresponding to

W Gr. minar-). Thus explained by the draughtsman Kaarale.

710 W. THALBITZER.

Fig. 224. This house interior (a drawing by Kaarale) shows an examination by a

qila’queercer, a man or woman who is consulting his or her private familiar spirit

(qila). Here we are not concerned with head-raising (cf. pp. 464—465), but it is the

method where the patient sits up on the platform in the neighbouring stall (see

picture), with his back turned towards the room, while the consulting “doctor”

lies on his back on the inmost part (kile) of the platform covered by a seal skin
(plainly seen in fig. 228).

Fig. 225. An angakoq seance developing in the hut. We see the front wall of the room
facing the beach. The shaman is sitting with his face turned towards the dried seal
skin hung up in front of the inner door opening (katak) to the house passage; over
which is seen a small middle window (over the passage extending between the two
larger ones). His hands are tied on his back; on the left his drum. On each of the
two platforms by the window is seen one of the angakok’s assistants (young boys).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

Fig. 226. An iliseetsog (man) is seen making a tupilak (tupitiler) made
up of the body of a seal and the head of a dog (Kaarale), cf. First Part,

fig. 365.

Fig. 227. Qananeejuk, “Mona Lisa’s husband” (cf. p. 686),
drawn by Kaarale.

Fig. 228. The shaman, lying on the platform under a skin,

consulting a qila-spirit (qilarucercer), cf. fig. 217.

~I

W. THALBITZER.

712

Fig. 229. The angakok Paalee’s flight through the air (ilim‘arler) during his trance. The house where he is sitting in trance stands on
facing the sea; in the background is seen an upturned umiak placed on four props.

'

a slope

~I
_
ww

Social Customs and Mutual Aid.

Fig. 231. Fig. 232.

Figs. 230—233. An angakok’s way to the house of the moon-man in the sky. Mitsu-
arnianya first drew for me the drawing to the left, with his own house below by the
beach, that of the moon above, and the way to it across the sea to the horizon and
from there mounting along the vault to the moon. Then he drew that to the right,
on the long side of the paper, the ascending road from the horizon being thus

714 W. THALBITZER.

Aare

——
SSS)
ee a is

Ror Lin Ca ira bro Phe g ym clebas )

Fig. 233.

prolonged, and the moon’s house moved apparently nearer to the earth or the sea,
but actually up above the house on earth, nearer the zenith. This drawing has more
details than the other one, some lakes near each of the houses (in which the moon
catches whales); three transverse lines shortly before the ascent to the moon denote
some difficulties. On the way a star has to be passed where “the woman who tears
out the intestines” (Erhlaweersissoq) has her house. This is one of the greatest
dangers on the way.
The ink drawing in fig. 233 1 have borrowed from the Rey. Riittel’s diary." He has
the following note on it. From the dwelling-place of the angakok the road runs down
to the sea, thence under the water to the beginning of the sky, where there is again
land and rock. You pass a byway leading to a star, the house of Erhlaweersissoq
(the tearer out of intestines), which is not worth visiting; therefore you go on along
the road to the moon. But on this you come to three dangerous cracks which, however,
the angakok easily crosses for he hovers above the ground, only touching it now and
then. Later you again come across another road leading to the same bad star creature
and then you come to some props where the moon-man has his sledge. Finally
you come to the Moon himself. He lives in a house and has a woman to cook his
food. The house has two rooms and between these there is a prop with a crack in it.
On one side of the crack there are little boy children, on the other side girl children.
If a man wishes his wife to bear him a boy the angakok may prevail upon the moon-
man to throw down a man-child to his wife who must then give birth to it. The
moon-man has a peep hole through which he can survey all land. Near by his house
there are many narwhales etc. These, too, he throws down as he pleases, so that men
may catch them. Such a journey takes a whole night until the dawn of day.

.P. Rittel, Ti Aar blandt Ostgronlands Hedninger. Copenhagen 1917 (ed. by L. Bobé,
pp. 39—40).

Social Customs and Mutual Aid. 7/105)

Fig. 234.

Fig. 235.

Fig. 234—235. Two “maps” drawn by Okusuk. The first represents the interior of the

Sermilik Fjord, the second represents his residence further north at Igtaain (W Gr.

Ighlerajik). N above S below. Cf. the wooden maps in Holm’s collection, First Part,
pp. 665—666, figs. 390—391.

716 W. THALBITZER.

YA

a b c

haf

d e€ if

Fig. 236. Skin Pictures for Decoration of the Walls. */; natural size.

The East Greenlanders inhabiting the southern part of the coast, (but not those in
the north at Ammassalik) had the custom of cutting out silhouettes in thin black
skin and putting them up on the walls; according to Grah they represented men and
women or animals (ef. First Part, p.618, Note 1). I received those shown here (fig. 236)
from Aawtaaritaa who lived at Sammisog. He called them = aesilidt, “made acsit,
artificial pictures”, and told me that they were cut out with a pair of scissors and
stuck on the wall over the sleeping platform. “They were our wall pictures”, he said.

a) represents a pregnant woman carrying a child in the amaut on her back.
b) Front view of a pregnant woman.
c) Woman without child.
d—e) Side and front views of big-bellied men.
f) Man in profile wearing an okucuk hood with a “point” at the top. Its significance

in the cult will be mentioned later.

Knud Rasmussen has the following passage in the tale of the man-eating woman
from the southern part of East Greenland where legends were told of inland dwellers:
When he looked about the house he discovered that she had his former lost house-

mates as pictures in her house, having stuck up the skin(s) of their faces on the wall.
(Knud Rasmussen. Under Nordenvindens Svobe, 1906, p. 152).

Cf. First. Part,

Aarb. nord. Oldk.
AfAn.

AfR.

Act.Arch.
AmAA.

AmGS.

AmA.

AMNH.

AmSPR.

AmConer.

An.
VAn.

ann,
an. ser.

ASSF.
BAE.

BaeA.
BCLC.

BoasAV.

bull.
CGS.
CIP.
DVS.
exp.

FoF.
FEC.
FUE.

GSAa.
XL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

continued.

List of works consulted, pp. 733—741 (reaching up to 1913).

A. Abbreviations.

Arboger for nordisk Oldkyndighed. Kobenhayn.

Archiv fiir Anthropologie (Vélkerforschung). Braunschweig.
Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft. Leipzig-Berlin. :
Acta Archeeologica. Kobenhavn.

American Anthropological Association. U.S. A.

The American Geographical Society. New York.

The American Anthropologist. Lancaster, U.S. A.

The American Museum of Natural History. New York.

American School of Prehistoric Research. Old Lyme, Conn.

Amerikanisten-Kongress. Congress of Americanists. Congrés des
Ameéricanistes, etc.

Anthropos. Médling bei Wien.

PAnthropologie. Paris (etc.).

annals; annual ete.
anthropological series.

Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae. Helsinki.

Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian Inst.). Washington.
Baessler-Archiv. Berlin.

Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague. Kobenhavn.

Boas Anniversary Volume .... in honor of Franz Boas. New
York (1906).

bulletin.

Canada. Geological Survey. Ottawa.

Carnegie Institution Publications. Washington.

Det kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Kobenhavn.
Expedition.

Folkminnen och Folktankar. Géteborg.

The Folklore Fellows Communications. Helsinki.

Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen (fiir Sprach- und Volkskunde).
Helsinki (Helsingfors) und Leipzig.

Det gronlandske Selskabs arsskrift. Kobenhavn.

Greenland

Gronland

W. THALBITZER.

Det gronlandske Selskabs skrifter. Kobenhayn.

Geographical Review (publ. by the American Geographical
Society of New York). New York.

Geografisk Tidsskrift (ed. by Det Kgl. Geografiske Selskab).
Kobenhayn.

published by the Commission for the Direction of the Geological
and Geographical Investigations in Greenland, vols. I—III.
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CONTENTS
OF
SECOND HALF-VOLUME
Nr. 4. SOCIAL CUSTOMS AND MUTUAL AID

Page

PREFACE 569
Sailing) im .2-5: nee Pe see Byiil
INTRODUCTION. CULTURE WAVES ......... oh ees Ft ras c.5 Ve)
Postscript 2 ace eee eee ee OSCE C EO eee 594
CHAPTERS sPAREN ES AND] G HITE DREN seer cere nee aes 599
Il. EDUCATION. PROPAGATION OF THE TRADUDIONS eens 606

Ill. THE ESKIMO COMMUNITY IN GREENLAND......-...-- . 618
GeneralfandGhistoricaliviews .-- eae aie ee 627

POStSGRIPE s..s ore oe Oe Sk oe OO ee Ee Oal

IV. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMY Pcesek essa 5 636

Rules for distribution of captured bears and seals ..... 643

V. MARRIAGE AND MATRIMONY : . 649

VI. THE FESTIVAL HOUSE (QASHSE) IN GREENLAND...... 656

The festival house in Alaska ... Se sae oe sa ok 662

Festivals and masks . : : (38

WANTS COE MENT ETS = oe codec nosh ooabaces cates: . 667

Postscript. Qashse once more aoe .. 669

VII. PRIMITIVE ESKIMO ART st - ee eee OG.

Old sculpture and modern pencil drawings. iy sitewee O84

IPostscr:iptse ee agra . 686

Pencil drawings reproduced . ae . 689

BIBLIOGRAPHY =a Peete ee f A nic ee 7/17;

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