Unfathomable to the white man’s intelligence as many of these odd observances may be, the root idea will explain the general scope of them. The spirit of the deceased is earth-bound for three days, and if of an evil disposition when alive, is liable to do much mischief to his late family and friends. Earth-bound spirits are the Toopelât (pl.), the evil spirits of the dead. Hence the custom of haling the dying well outside the house. During the three following days, a knife edge, placed outwards, is set at the entrance of the igloo to prevent the spirit from returning, especially at night, and doing some injury—causing some pain, sickness or death—to the sleepers within. When an Eskimo community hears of a death in its midst, the husband on his return from sealing waits for the first quiet moment in his house, and then offers his wife the third finger of the right hand, to crook, and they say together, “Tokkoneangelagoot” (we shall not die). This is the custom of “Killaryo.” The children then come to the mother, and in turn she takes the third finger of each one’s left hand between her teeth and singes a little piece of the hair on the left temple of the child. The child is bidden to bite the mother’s jacket on the shoulder, and say “Sittatoot,” the mother answering with another formula of preservation. The writer has made every effort to get at the meaning of these doings, but they seem to have lost their original significance by now, and even the oldest natives fail to interpret them any more. They were probably some form of supplication against the entry into the body of the Spirit of Death. From much of the foregoing it will be seen that the Eskimo have a decided belief in the soul, the innua—the spiritual, immortal essence of man. Also that they have formed for themselves definite ideas about the after life, either in bliss, as a reward for good living, or in misery, as a punishment for evil—Good and Evil, of course, being tinctured by the cast and scope of the Eskimo mind and its standards of social life. There is little of ethical content in it all. The heaven and hell of Eskimo conception are gross and material. Heaven is a land of warmth and sunshine, with good hunting, absence of storms and hard seasons, and plenty of fat seals in its ice-free sea. Hell is the dark and bitter abode of the submarine Sedna, the enemy of man, who engineers bad weather and times of scarcity. Descriptive legends of her awful “house” abound among the tribes, showing a fancifulness and imagination fantastic as nightmare. To deal with the subject of the Eskimo religion, however, requires a chapter to itself. Its chief priests are the Conjurors, and its chief festival the Sedna ceremony. CHAPTER XII THE ESKIMO LANGUAGE