Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo - Alternative Religions ...

Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo - Title Page
angakut being the only authority who were acknowledged to derive their power from the supernatural
world, naturally make the religious belief a governing principle in their actions. Their influence, of
course, at the same time, rested upon their greater intelligence and talent. The unshaken faith with which
the population regarded their marvellous deeds cannot be explained except by supposing them to have
had a more profound knowledge of the laws of nature, enabling them to form a more accurate conception
than others of what was likely to happen as regards weather, hunting, sickness, and everything depending
upon physical laws; while as to their own belief, their skill in divination most probably was confounded
in their own fancy with imagined revelations from superior beings. No doubt they themselves relied upon
the reality of their supernatural performances, notwithstanding the necessity which, on the other hand,
often caused them to act with the sole aim of more or less consciously deceiving others as well as
themselves.
The rules and customs concerning property, position, and what represented the administration of justice,
evidently bore a close relation to their religious belief. The customs according to which an individual
became member of a family, partaking of its reputation as well as its means of subsistence, were
supported and confirmed by the belief that the souls of ancestors remained guardian spirits to their
descendants, having left them their amulets and serrats as a kind of pledges. The same ideas must be
regarded as having formed the principal foundation for the avenging of blood.
The social institutions in connection with the local conditions leaving still ample room for arbitrary acts
of violence, the fear of vengeance by ghosts, kivigtoks, p. 64 anghiaks, serrats, amulets, and tupilaks, must
have powerfully contributed to prevent weak and helpless persons being wronged.
By the custom of naming a child after a deceased person, it was intended to secure rest in his grave for
the latter. The child, when grown up, was bound to brave the influences which had caused his death. If,
for instance, the deceased had perished at sea, his successor had only so much greater an inducement for
striving to grow a skilful kayaker.
The education of children was apparently managed without any corporal punishment; but threatening
them with the vengeance of malevolent spirits, principally the kungusotarissat, was one of the means
employed to keep unruly urchins in check.
The various rules for abstinence in many instances certainly had a direct relation to health.
As to the funeral rites, the treatment of the body being considered in some way to influence the state of
the soul after death, it was generally placed on the floor, for the purpose of guiding the soul on its road to
the under world; but in the case of malefactors, the body was dismembered, and the separate limbs were
thrown apart. Otherwise the funeral rites differed extremely, the Asiatic Eskimo, it is said, burning their
dead, the East Greenlanders throwing them into the sea; whereas the rest and greater part of the nation
buried them beneath a heap of stones, or in a kind of stone cell.
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