_Abstentions._--From the fact that we did not hear of any of the
deaths until after their occurrence, we were able to learn very few of
their customs concerning the dead. The few observations we were able
to make agree in the main with those made elsewhere. For instance, we
learned with tolerable certainty that the relatives of the dead, at
least, must abstain from working on wood with an ax or hammer for a
certain period--I believe, four or five days. According to Dall,[N579]
in the region about Norton Sound the men can not cut wood with an ax
for five days after a death has occurred. In Greenland the household
of the deceased were obliged to abstain for a while from certain kinds
of food and work.[N580]
[Footnote N579: Alaska, p. 146.]
[Footnote N580: Egede, Greenland, p. 150.]
A woman from Utkiavwĭñ, who came over to the station one day in the
autumn of 1881, declined to sew on clothing, even at our house,
because, as she told Lieut. Ray, there was a dead man in the village
who had not yet been carried out to the cemetery and “he would see
her.” After consulting with her husband, however, she concluded she
could protect herself from him by tracing a circle about her on the
floor with a snow-knife. In this circle she did the sewing required,
and was careful to keep all her work inside of it.
One of the natives informed me that when a man died his labrets were
taken out and thrown away. I remember, however, seeing a young man
wearing a plug labret of syenite, which he said had belonged to an old
man who died early in the winter of 1881-’82. It was perhaps removed
before he actually died.
_Manner of disposing of the dead._--The corpse is wrapped up in a
piece of sailcloth (deerskin was formerly used), laid upon a flat
sled, and dragged out by a small party of people--perhaps the
immediate relatives of the deceased, though we never happened to see
one of these funeral processions except from a distance--to the
cemetery, the place where “they sleep on the ground.” This place at
Utkiavwĭñ is a rising ground about a mile and a half east of the
village, near the head of the southwest branch of the Isûtkwa lagoon.
At Nuwŭk the main cemetery is at “Nexeurá,” between the village and
Pernyû. The bodies are laid out upon the ground without any regular
arrangement apparently, though it is difficult to be sure of this, as
most of the remains have been broken up and scattered by dogs and
foxes. With a freshly wrapped body it is almost impossible to tell
which is the head and which the feet. We unfortunately never noticed
whether the heads were laid toward any particular point of the
compass, as has been observed in other localities. Dr. Simpson says
that the head is laid to the east at Point Barrow.
Various implements belonging to the deceased are broken and laid
beside the corpse, and the sled is sometimes broken and laid over it.
Sometimes, however, the latter is withdrawn a short distance from the
cemetery and left on the tundra for one moon, after which it is
brought back to the village. Most people do not seem to be troubled at
having the bodies of their relatives disturbed by the dogs or other
animals,[N581] but we know of one case where the parents of two
children who died very nearly at the same time, finding that the dogs
were getting at the bodies, raised them on stages of driftwood about 4
or 5 feet high. Similar stages were observed by Hooper at Plover
Bay;[N582] but this method of disposing of the dead appears to have
gone out of use at the present day, since Dall[N583] describes the
ordinary Siberian method of laying out the dead in ovals of stone as
in use at Plover Bay at the time of his visit.
[Footnote N581: Compare Lyon, Journal, p. 269.]
[Footnote N582: Tents, etc., p. 88.]
[Footnote N583: Alaska, p. 382.]
The cemetery at Utkiavwĭñ is not confined to the spot I have
mentioned, though most of the bodies are exposed there. A few bodies
are also exposed on the other side of the lagoon, and one body, that
of a man, was laid out at the edge of the higher tundra, about a mile
due east from the station. The body was covered with canvas, staked
down all round with broken paddles, and over it was laid a flat sledge
with one runner broken.[N584] At one end of the body lay a wooden
dish, and under the edge of the canvas were broken seal-darts and
other spears. The body lay in an east and west line, but we could not
tell which end was the head. All sorts of objects were scattered round
the cemetery--tools, dishes, and even a few guns--though we saw none
that appeared to have been serviceable when exposed, except one Snider
rifle. If, as is the case among Eskimo in a good many other places,
all the personal property of the deceased is supposed to become
unclean and must be exposed with him, it is probable that his friends
manage to remove the more valuable articles before he is actually
dead.[N585]
[Footnote N584: Compare Samoyed grave described and figured by
Nordenskiöld (Vega, vol. 1, p. 98), where a broken sledge was laid
upside down by the grave.]
[Footnote N585: Compare Holm, Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, p. 98:
“kun Kostbarheder, saasom Knive eller lignende Jærnsager beholde
den afdødes efterladte.”--East Greenland.]
The method of disposing of the dead varies slightly among the Eskimo
in different localities, but the weapons or other implements belonging
to the deceased are always laid beside the corpse. The custom at Smith
Sound, as described by Bessels,[N586] is remarkably like that at Point
Barrow. The corpse was wrapped in furs, placed on a sledge, and
dragged out and buried in the snow with the face to the west. The
sledge was laid over the body and the weapons of the deceased were
deposited beside it. Unlike the Point Barrow natives, however, they
usually cover the body with stones. In the same passage Dr. Bessels
describes a peculiar symbol of mourning, not employed, so far as I can
learn, elsewhere. The male mourners plugged up the right nostril with
hay and the females the left, and these plugs were worn for several
days. The custom of covering the body with stones appears to be
universally prevalent east of the Mackenzie region.[N587]
[Footnote N586: Naturalist, vol. 18, pt. 9, p. 877.]
[Footnote N587: See the passage quoted from Bessels, for Smith
Sound; Egede, Greenland, p. 148; Crantz’s History of Greenland,
vol. 1, p. 237; East Greenland, Holm, Geografisk Tidskrift, vol.
8, p. 98, and Scoresby, Voyage to Northern Whalefishery, p. 213
(where he speaks of finding on the east coast of Greenland graves
_dug_ and covered with slabs of stone. _Digging_ graves is very
unusual among the Eskimo, as the nature of the ground on which
they live usually forbids it. Parry mentions something similar at
Iglulik: “The body was laid in a regular, but shallow grave, * * *
covered with flat pieces of limestone” (Second Voyage, p. 551);
Lyon, Journal, p. 268 (Iglulik); Kumlien, Contribution, p. 44
(Cumberland Gulf); Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 124 (Baffin Land);
Rae Narrative, pp. 22 and 187 (northwest shore of Hudson Bay), and
Ellis, Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, p. 148 (Marble Island). I myself
have noticed the same custom at the old Eskimo cemetery near the
Hudson Bay post of Rigolette, Hamilton Inlet, on the Labrador
coast. Chappel, however, saw a body “closely wrapt in skins and
laid in a sort of a gully,” Hudson’s Bay, p. 113 (north shore
Hudson Strait), and Davis’s account of what he saw in Greenland is
as follows: “We found on shore three dead people, and two of them
had their staues lying by them and their olde skins wrapped about
them.” Hakluyt, Voyages, 1589, p. 788.]
The bodies seen by Dr. Richardson in the delta of the Mackenzie were
wrapped in skins and loosely covered with driftwood,[N588] and a
similar arrangement was noticed at Kotzebue Sound by Beechey, who
figures[N589] a sort of little wigwam of driftwood built over the dead
man. At Port Clarence Nordenskiöld[N590] saw two corpses “laid on the
ground, fully clothed, without protection of any coffin, but
surrounded by a close fence consisting of a number of tent-poles
driven crosswise into the ground. Alongside one of the corpses lay a
_kayak_ with oars, a loaded double-barreled gun with locks at
half-cock and caps on, various other weapons, clothes, tinder-box,
snowshoes, drinking-vessels, two masks, * * * and strangely shaped
animal figures.” On the Siberian coast the dead are sometimes
burned.[N591]
[Footnote N588: Franklin, Second Expedition, p. 192.]
[Footnote N589: Voyage, pl. opposite p. 332.]
[Footnote N590: Vega, vol. 2, p. 238, and figure of grave on
p. 239.]
[Footnote N591: See Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 88, and Dall,
Alaska, p. 382.]
Nordenskiöld believes that the coast Chukches have perhaps begun to
abandon the custom of burning the dead, but I am rather inclined to
think that is a custom of the “deermen,” which the people of the coast
of pure or mixed Eskimo blood never fully adopted. Dall, indeed, was
explicitly informed that the custom was only used with the bodies of
“good” men, and at the time of Nordenskiöld’s visit he found it “at
least certain that the people of Pitlekaj exclusively bury their dead
by laying them out on the tundra.” The body is surrounded by an oval
of stones, but apparently not covered with them as in the east.[N592]
The Krause brothers observed by the bodies, besides “die erwähnten
Geräthschaften” [Lanzen, Bogen und Pfeile für die Männer, Koch- und
Hausgeräthe für die Weiber], “unter einen kleinen Steinhaufen ein
Hunde-, Renthier-, Bären- oder Walross-Schädel.” This custom shows a
curious resemblance to that described by Egede[N593] in Greenland:
“When little Children die and are buried, they put the Head of a Dog
near the Grave, fancying that Children, having no Understanding, they
can not by themselves find the Way, but the Dog must guide them to the
Land of the Souls.” The body is usually laid out at full length upon
the ground. Among the ancient Greenlanders,[N594] however, and in the
Yukon region the body was doubled up. In the latter region the body
was laid on its side in a box of planks four feet long and raised on
four supports[N595] or wrapped up in mats and covered with rocks or
driftwood.[N596] The custom of inclosing the dead in a short coffin,
to judge from the figures given by the latter writer in P1. VI. of his
report, appears also to prevail at the mouth of the Kuskokwim. In the
island of Kadiak, according to Dall and Lisiansky,[N597] the dead were
buried.
[Footnote N592: See Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, pp. 88-9
(Pitlekaj), and 225 (St. Lawrence Bay); Krause Bros.,
Geographische Blätter, vol. 5, p. 18 (St. Lawrence Bay, East Cape,
Indian Point, and Plover Bay) and Dall, Alaska, p. 382.]
[Footnote N593: Greenland, p. 151. See also Crantz, vol. 1,
p. 237.]
[Footnote N594: Egede, Greenland, p. 149, and Crantz, vol. 1,
p. 287.]
[Footnote N595: Dall, Alaska, pp. 19, 145, and 227.]
[Footnote N596: Petroff, Report, p. 127.]
[Footnote N597: Alaska, p. 403, and Voyage, p. 200.]