Page 615. It may be of interest to learn that in 1885 and 1886 two
instances of this kind occurred in Cumberland Sound. There was a very
old woman in Qeqerten by the name of Qaχodloaping. She was well provided
for by her relatives, but it seems that one of the most influential men
in Qeqerten, Pakaq, whom I mentioned above (p. 668) as the executioner
of a murderer, deemed it right that she should die. So, although she
resisted him, he took her out of her hut one day to a hill and buried
her alive under stones. Another case was that of an old woman whose
health had been failing for a number of years. She lived with her son,
whose wife died late in the autumn of 1886. According to the religious
ideas of the Eskimo, the young man had to throw away his clothing. When,
later on, his mother felt as though she could not live through the
winter, she insisted upon being killed, as she did not want to compel
her son to cast away a second set of clothing. At last her son complied
with her request. She stripped off her outside jacket and breeches, and
was conveyed on a sledge to a near island, where she was left alone to
die from cold and hunger. The son who took her there did not use his own
sledge nor any other Eskimo sledge for this purpose, but borrowed that
of the Scottish whaling station.