At the end of the arctic summer, before the young ice begins to form again along the shores, there comes a spell of tempestuous weather, with frequent storms and high, rough tides. Food grows more and more scarce as sealing increases in risk and difficulty. Those intrepid hunters who do venture out, return empty-handed day after day, and it grows high time for something to be done. The goddess Sedna is supposed to be causing these storms and all this dirty weather at sea, to prevent her animals being killed. And so a conjuration has to be performed to liberate the seals.

This is the occasion of the most elaborate festival in the Eskimo calendar.

It begins by the conjurors, in full dress, calling the people altogether to dispense them for a short space from their marriage ties. Each witch doctor is masked, and clad in women’s clothing. The idea of his amazing get-up, apart from the usual intention to awe the people by grotesqueness or hideousness, is to disguise the face and body, to efface as it were the well-known individual, to make the people lose sight of the conjuror in the representation of a great power [211]at work among them. His dress is partly that of a man and partly that of a woman, and he carries the usual implements used by both sexes. This is to bring the needs of either before the great power, and to intercede for their respective needs.

To begin with, the Angakok wears several pairs of nether garments and boots, until he looks very big and out of his usual proportions. He has a woman’s pointed tunic, whose sleeves are elaborately trimmed with fringes and charms. The hood is pulled down [212]over his head, and he wears a mask of black skin tattooed all over. On his shoulders he carries an inflated sealskin float, and over his arm a coil of walrus hide. In his left hand he bears a woman’s skin scraper, and in his right a spear. Thus caparisoned, he emerges from his tent and begins by pairing off the couples.

The tribesfolk are ranged in two long lines, the men and women facing each other, and a lane between. Then the “Kailuktetak” (a minor order among the initiate) open the ceremonies. Each conjuror is furnished with a deer-horn scraper like a long curved knife (used in the ordinary course of things for scraping the newly formed ice from the kyaks as they are drawn out of the water), to which is attached a small piece of bearskin. He starts off down the living lane, dancing and shouting in glee, touching first a man and then a woman with the wand as he goes. The two thus indicated pair off, and are man and wife for the next twenty-four hours, or perhaps a little longer. The fun is fast and furious. Much of the whole thing has been prearranged, and the element of surprise is rather subordinate to that of anticipation. The conjurors choose among the women for themselves first, and next for those hunters who have had sufficient eye for beauty and sufficient of this world’s goods to mention the fact privately and persuasively beforehand.

There has been quite a stream of visitors to the conjuror’s house of late, and quite a number of presents [213]made, which forgetfulness on the part of that worthy has failed to return. So that the pairing off on this auspicious day is largely a prearranged affair. However, it occasions plenty of Eskimo laughter and delight. The enceinte (and the old folks) are not included in this adventure. They play the part of spectators only, but applaud or deride as heartily as the rest over each mating. These women are Kooveayootiksatyonerktoot, i.e., “no-longer-the-material-for-a-rejoicing,” having apparently given hostages to fortune already, or having sufficiently fulfilled the hopes of the community. Children are paired off first—boys and girls of no more than twelve years—and then the adults.

Each couple, as they are selected, join hands and walk away towards the man’s dwelling, attended for a little distance by the Kiluktetak who has picked them out, dancing all round them and about them like a mad thing. If they chance to touch him, they too begin to dance, and to voice their excitement in no uncertain manner. On entering the dwelling, each drinks a little water and mentions the place of his or her birth.

The conjuror has an âvetak slung upon his breast, that is, the entire skin of a seal which, inflated, is generally used as a float on the kyak. On this day, however, it serves another purpose. As the couple presently return to the Kilukletak, they pour water into this, and each individual, drinking from it again and again, mentions the place of his or her birth a [214]second time. The rite is official, and sets the conjuror’s seal upon the proceedings and its consequences.

The root idea of this pairing off is to strengthen a race that might easily be weakened by too much inter-marriage, and to increase the birth-rate. The writer has elsewhere commented on the defensibility of such a custom—from the Eskimo point of view—but it remains to be added here that, as regards parentage, the father of a child is always known and acknowledged, be he the woman’s husband or her temporary Sedna mate. The Sedna offspring is cared for by the regular husband, or by the community.

Next comes the extraordinary performance already described, when the conjuror is speared through the chest.

After this, the principal Angakok prepares to give battle to Sedna. The goddess can be killed; but as she subsequently comes to life again, this killing has to take place every year. The whole performance is a representation of seal-spearing on the ice. The conjuror coils a rope on the floor of a large hut, and leaves a little opening at the top to represent the blow hole. Two assistants stand on either side, armed respectively with harpoon and spear. A third chants incantations at the back of the dwelling. Sedna is supposed to be lured from the underworld, and when she comes to the hole, is transfixed at once. She sinks away again, dragging the harpoon with her, [215]wounded and incensed. The conjurors haul on the line for all they are worth, and recover the weapon.

Then the chief Angakut squats upon the floor, with his arms and legs bound by a length of light hide line. The lamps are pressed down to burn so dimly that it is all but dark. The rest of the folk also sit about the floor with their heads bowed, so that none may stare at the conjuror’s face. He begins his incantations, rocking to and fro and uttering sounds that seem incredible for a human throat to compass. He works himself into a state of insensibility (but not before his familiar spirit has undone the knots and released him from his bonds.) It is this trance which makes such an impression on the tribesfolk. They believe that the witch doctor’s spirit has left his body and their midst, and has really gone to meet and despatch the powerful figment of their myth, to kill her and liberate the seals.

The hardening of the weather soon after this ceremony, when the prospects of the sealers naturally improve, seems to the Eskimo mind a clear demonstration of cause and effect. Probably the conjuror quite believes it, too, and although he has done nothing but hypnotise himself and strike awe thereby into the onlookers, this assumption of all that he accomplishes in the meantime is as real to him as to the others.

After the Kiluktetak—the chief of the whole conjuring band—has concluded this séance, he proceeds to make good hunters. Those who are ambitious to [216]make a name for themselves in this respect, and greatly desire the skins and trappings that come of abundant catches, pay the conjuror a walrus hide line; whereupon he resorts again to his incantations, and his Tougak causes the soul of a seal to enter the body or mind of the young man in question. The whole business may perhaps have some result, perforce of suggestion, and the sealer who had hitherto doubted his own judgment or prowess, who had felt discouraged by ill success, or who had failed perhaps in skill or patience, picks up a fortuitous confidence in himself and really has better luck afterwards.

It is impossible to believe that these beliefs and ceremonies would be so widespread among the people and carry so much weight, were no sort of explanation to be sought for them. These folk are trained and accomplished hunters; they attribute their success to junketings of this description, and by no means wholly to the obvious care they take to ensure it. If the ceremonies had no value and proved by experience to have no bearing on all these vital matters, even the primitive mind would scarcely perpetuate them for their own sakes pure and simple.

In the meantime, while the Kiluktetak has his hands full in the underworld, all sorts of other things are taking place, all sorts of games going on, in the village above.

There is a tug of war with a rope of walrus hide or white whale hide, a contest provocative of uproarious fun, watched by a keen, delighted crowd. One end of [217]the rope is manned by the “Ptarmigans” (those born in the winter time) and the other by the “Ducks” (those born in summer.) If the former yield to the latter, it is taken as an augury of good weather for the ensuing season.

After this a curious game is played. One of the lesser conjurors is fantastically got up in a number of garments, and in a pair of trousers with very narrow legs. The trousers seem to tickle the Eskimo sense of the ludicrous in exactly the same way as Charlie Chaplin’s baggy ones and his “caterpillar” boots tickle ours. He takes a piece of wood in one hand, a skin scraper in the other, and starts capering off, calling on all and sundry to follow him and assemble in the “Kagge,” or singing house.

The ceremony in the Kagge was performed in the past but now only the Sedna ceremony is performed, minus the Kagge.

The Eskimo build larger houses than those they usually occupy, for feasting, singing and dancing on particular occasions. The singing house is dedicated to a particular spirit which has the shape of a bow-legged, hairless man. It is generally built upon the usual round plan of the igloo, sometimes three being grouped together, apse and transept fashion, with a common entrance (nave). The company disposes itself in concentric rings round the house, married women by the wall, spinsters in front of them, and a ring of men to the front. Children are grouped on either side of the door, and the singer or dancer, [218]stripped to the waist, takes his stand amid them and remains on the one spot all the time. A pillar of snow in the middle of the house supports as many lamps as it requires to illuminate the proceedings and to warm the air. Singing festivals and competitions in the Kagge especially mark the great occasion of the tribal deer hunting in the spring, so that it will be described at somewhat greater length in that connection.

As soon as everyone has crowded in, all the new made (temporary) couples are bidden to join hands and guide each other out. Everyone is laughing, but the pair in question have to preserve the gravity of owls. If they yield to the infectious merriment and badinage going on, and fail to keep absolutely solemn faces, some grievous sickness will befall them. The conjuror touches their feet as they cross the threshold, [219]and when he himself follows out the last pair, blows off hard, like a seal.

At the risk of wearying the reader with the apparent uncouthness of all this (an alien humour is always hard to perceive), one more incident of the festival must be given.

The Mukkosaktok possesses himself of a whip with a particularly short handle, and starts on a tour of the village on his own account. He enters the first house he comes to, and starts to lay about him in play. He fillips one of the inmates with the end of his lash, and orders him to sing a song—an extempore song of his own composition. If the victim fails, another one has to take his place, and so in turn until the circle is exhausted. This goes on in every household, all sorts [220]of weird howls and chants and guttural distiches being elicited by force majeure, until at last the Mukkosaktok is playfully hustled to the door and pushed outside.

The underlying idea of much of all this is doubtless that of promoting sociability and good feeling all round. The Eskimo are an intensely sociable people, and, to the very limited extent of their powers and opportunities, delight in entertainment. These festival songs, for instance, have required a certain amount of preparation. They are composed about some event that has taken place and caught the singer’s attention. They have been rehearsed and, if successful, will be repeated all through the long winter nights, when the folk spend so much weather-bound time in visiting each other and exchanging tales and gossip round the igloo lamps. No tribesman likes to be laughed at, so he really does his best over his song.

There is a real groundwork of sense about the ceremony of visiting each house in turn, and the scramble for presents. In the first place, it is a symbol of goodwill and plenty. Each householder is expected to keep up appearances by doing this sort of thing, and he uses every effort to gain the wherewithal to meet the obligation. This militates against laziness and any tendency to hoard—great crimes in the Eskimo estimation of things. The hunter strains every nerve to provide the things his neighbours scramble for, and the women of the village do their utmost, so far as attractiveness and domesticity go, [221]to attach such men as husbands. Again, by a general scramble, the poorer and less lucky folk get a good many windfalls otherwise unobtainable.

The roysterers flock off in a body, to make the round of the encampment, stopping at every man’s house in turn. The owner goes inside, makes a selection of all sorts of unconsidered trifles—generally bits of sealskin used for the legs of boots, with different kinds of sewing sinew attached—and, returning to the vociferous crowd waiting outside, scatters these things broadcast. There is a grand commotion and no end of noise, as the oddments are battled for. As this performance is repeated at every house in the village it necessarily takes some time.

Little information is obtainable as to the significance of these games or ceremonies, or whatever the Eskimo themselves may consider them. The annual pairing off doubtless serves to keep up the numbers of the tribe. Women are always in excess of men, owing to hunting fatalities among the latter, and other causes; and some of these, although married, may be childless. The Sedna proceedings tend to remedy this state of things to a satisfactory extent. The writer’s own idea is that, in addition to the main responsibilities of the festival, which rest on the shoulders of the Kiluktetok, the doings of the lesser lights of the order of conjurors are designed more or less to keep things going merrily and to establish themselves firmly in the good-will of the community.

The main idea of the frequent acknowledgment of [222]breaches of village law is undoubtedly to keep the social life intact, to ensure that no secrecies and plottings shall break it up, and no hoarding of supplies lead to quarrels and injustices. Another feature of the Sedna day is a general “confessing” of all these “sins.” Another lesser luminary, called a Noonageeksaktoot, dresses himself up in a medley of garments and dons a close-fitting cap made from the skull of a ground seal. This cap has a peak, to represent a bird’s bill. He binds upon his feet some of the sticks used for beating snow from clothes, so that they resemble a raven’s, and hops about in imitation of that bird. As often as the people come up and accuse themselves of wrongdoing, he betakes himself to the beach, to tell Sedna, and returns with forgiveness.

It will be readily understood that it is of great value in the hard fight for existence in the arctic that a spirit of hope and cheerfulness should be maintained. No one knows this better than the commander of an arctic or antarctic expedition, or than the head of a trading station! It is quite essential that the Eskimo village should make itself a centre of jollity and comfort to the returning hunters, and to travellers on the trail. There are sound economic principles underneath the queer trappings of some of all this barbaric custom, and even sound hygienic laws governing some of the regulations and taboos of daily life. That one, for instance, which forbids a woman in childbirth to eat any food not provided by her husband, [223]probably acts quite beneficially. Eskimo food is very rich and often consumed in the raw state, so that a glut of it, as would result from a shower of benefactions, would upset the new-made mother.

The Sedna ceremony has been carefully studied by the best ethnologists, like Dr. Boas, who have travelled for the sake of science among the arctic tribes; but it may be hazarded that the raison d’être of much of it could only dawn on an observer who had actually lived for a very considerable time in close personal and linguistic touch with the people.

The writer offers his interpretations with all diffidence, but believes they constitute something original to the descriptions of other writers. Those who easily dismiss the whole subject as fantastic savagery, much of which is unfit for publication, seem singularly to have failed in any real grasp of the character of these benighted, but in many ways cheery and genuine, children of the sternest wild in the world. [224]