People of the Deer (29 page)

Again the incident took place at Windy Cabin, but this time in June, when there are no nights but only the coming and going of twilight. It was very late, and I was trying to catch up on my notes while Andy was occupied with some little task at the back of the cabin. Ootek was staying with us, and this evening he was busy carving a new pipe from a piece of black spruce.

Casually, Ootek glanced up at the window to see if the moon had risen yet. What he actually saw caused him to explode into a perfect frenzy of terror. He shrieked like a woman in childbirth, leaped to his feet, and shot out of the door of the cabin.

Andy and I were both so startled by this inexplicable eruption of our midnight quiet that it was some time before we could get up steam enough to see what had happened to Ootek. When we did move, we found him standing near the doorstep, gibbering wildly and staring at the slopes of the Ghost Hills. He tried to tell us what he had seen, but nothing came from his mouth except garbled noises and a thin trickle of saliva that ran down his trembling chin. Andy pulled him into the cabin, while I had a look around, a cocked rifle in my hands. Nothing moved except for a flock of late ducks which came whistling down the river.

When I went in, Ootek was squatting on the floor. He had recovered some of his self-control and was able to make us understand that he had seen an Ino—an Ino wearing complete winter clothing—that had fixed Ootek with the eyes of a dead man. Now Ootek was certain this spirit had determined to possess him, and he was not unnaturally terrified at the prospect.

We told him he had seen no more than the flicker of wings as a late bird went by the window, but Ootek would have none of it. At length it became obvious to us that this was no imaginary terror which gripped him. So we changed our tactics and I offered to mix up a particularly powerful Kabluna potion that would keep the Ino away. Ootek's gratitude was pathetic. I went to the table, poured some harmless chemicals into a vial, then added a scrap of paper on which I had written—with my usual lack of imagination—the first line of “God Save The King.”

When I brought it to Ootek, Andy had just finished giving the Eskimo a rough physical examination. He told me, with a worried note in his voice, that Ootek's pulse was nearly twice as fast as it should be. In addition the Eskimo was sweating so heavily that his clothing was soaked. He seemed to have all the symptoms of severe physical shock, even to a shortness of breath.

I handed him the vial, and he grasped it with a pitiful eagerness, but the reaction was hardly what we had hoped for. His eyes suddenly rolled up until the pupils were hidden. He gasped once, fell over on his side, and his limbs kicked uncontrollably, while his breathing seemed to stop completely and his lips began to turn blue!

At this point I suspect we were sweating as freely as Ootek, for we were not looking forward to explaining the presence of his corpse to his friends when next they visited our camp. And a corpse he would certainly have become had not Andy, acting on pure intuition, pried open the clenched jaws to find that Ootek had literally swallowed his tongue! My friend got his hand bitten, but he managed to crook a finger around the tongue and restore it to its proper position. It was bad luck for the Ino, who had come within an ace of finishing Ootek completely.

Ootek recovered quickly after that. He was almost normal again in an hour, for his faith in the charm we had given him was boundless, despite its first effects. Later on I asked him if he had ever had a seizure like this before, since I suspected it might have been some sort of epileptic fit. But he swore that this was the first, and he intimated that he would be quite happy if it was also the last. I have no doubt his condition was simply one of severe shock, brought on by a serious fright. By an Ino? Well, whether it was a bona fide ghost or not, its effects were only too real.

Ootek sewed our vial into his amulet belt, where it hung as a mute reproach to me during the rest of my time in the country—for I, who take a dim view of people who perpetrate superstitious humbug on the natives, was now guilty of the same crime.

The amulet belt brings me to the last of my three groups of spirits. These include the Tornrait, whom we have met earlier, and who are the chief aides of men in their struggles with the elements and the unfriendly devils; and a lesser breed of good spirits who have no inclusive name and who are perhaps better described simply as forces, rather than as supernatural entities.

These latter beings are attached to a man by virtue of an amulet he has acquired, preferably in his youth. When a child is born, his parents at once attempt to enlist certain animal forces to aid him through life. The amulets, or tokens of the chosen spirits, should preferably be “things of the earth.” Thus even small insects are believed to be efficacious, for they come from the earth. Beetles and bugs are thought to have a specific value as defenses against the more gruesome trolls and dwarfs who live under the ground. Amongst the other charms worn at the amulet belt are the talons and beaks of birds, the dried skins of small mammals such as weasels and lemmings, the teeth and the ears of larger mammals, such as wolves and foxes and in some cases even the scales of fishes. I should add that man does not necessarily acquire the physical attributes of these things. A weasel
tapek,
or charm, for instance, does not endow the owner with the strength or speed of the weasel, but acts instead as a specific deterrent against some form of evil. Halo, one of the Ihalmiut who claims rather extensive supernatural favors, wears a miniature parka and a pair of tiny kamiks on his amulet belt, and these ensure him against accidental death from freezing or drowning.

It is best for the owner to acquire amulets by purchase or as gifts. The more distant their source, the greater their power. Halo purchased a seal-tooth amulet from the Padliermiut to the east, and they in turn had obtained it from the Dhaeomiut on the coast. The tooth came a long way, gaining power as it came, and its ultimate purchase price, when Halo bought it, was one new kayak! The value of a good amulet is not insignificant.

Probably connected with the amulets are the particular tabus called
pewhitu.
These tabus are laid on a child at birth, and they usually forbid him some specific form of food, or they may forbid him to kill a certain species of animal. Thus Ohoto is forbidden to eat the flesh of the great northern pike; Anoteelik may not shoot nor eat a loon; Hekwaw must never touch the liver of deer, and Tablu must not kill a lemming. The penalty for disobedience is the possibility that the lawbreaker may become an Ino after death. The practical value of these tabus is purely disciplinary, as are many of our religious prohibitions.

As for Tornrait, they are not to be acquired so easily as are the amulet spirits, for they are the most powerful forces for good in the Barrens. They are positive beings who not only defend their owners—or rather, their friends—from evil, but who can attack actively and accomplish great things. Tornrait may be acquired in a variety of ways, although usually a man must seek them out by enduring physical hardships. So the shamans expose themselves to the weather, to hunger and thirst until they fall into a trance. Then, and then only the really great Tornrait appear, and a struggle between the wills of the man and of a particular Tornrak ensues. If the man wins, he secures the lifetime services of that Tornrak. If he loses, he seldom returns from his ordeal.

The lesser Tornrait may be encountered quite by accident, though. Thus it happened that when Hana was out hunting one day he met what he believed to be a demon. He describes it as a rather squat animal-thing, with immense hairs on its snout and with a single paw that extended half the length of the body. This apparition attacked Hana, who bravely flung down his bow and grappled with the monstrous being. After an exhausting fight, the Tornrak—for such it was—gave up the struggle, and ever afterwards served as the personal Tornrak of Hana, to the man's great advantage.

There is a revealing sidelight, both on the Tornrait and on the minds of the Ihalmiut, in the relationship maintained between the helping spirits and men. If it happens, as it sometimes does, that a Tornrak is incapable of assisting its friend, then the man assumes that the spirit is simply bone-lazy, and with no further nonsense he sends it packing and the fallible spirit goes weeping off into the plains, out of a job.

It is impossible to talk about the Ihalmiut spirits and devils without also talking about the shamans. These dedicated men are the chief physical defense of the People against evil spirits, and so they must be particularly strong and well armed. As an almost invariable rule they are the most intelligent men of each generation, and so they supply whatever nebulous leadership is present in the Ihalmiut society. They are not sorcerers, as many missionaries would have us believe, for, at least in the Ihalmiut country—Kakumee excepted—they work no evil but concentrate on assisting the People for the People's own good. And they make few extravagant claims. They do not say they can provide good hunting, for the Ihalmiut believe all animals have the gift of free will, and neither the wishes of men nor those of gods will influence the movements of beasts. Nor do the shamans claim to be able to control the weather, for this is Kaila's province, and Kaila does not listen patiently to the begging voices of men.

However, the shamans can, and do, assist men with particular problems. By passing into a trance and conferring with their Tornrait, the shamans can give advice on whether or not a dangerous winter trip should be attempted. They can often relieve a man of a mysterious illness and they can advise on all manner of domestic and practical problems. These things are their strength, for by virtue of their experience and intelligence they can materially assist their People, whether or not they do it by supernatural means. At the same time they are seldom so all-powerful that they come to stand head and shoulders above the rest of the Ihalmiut. A man who is too efficient, or too powerful, is not liked by the Innuit and this applies even to shamans, who exist to serve men, not to control them.

The shaman's trance provides the psychological background essential to any religion and is sometimes a formidable thing to behold, even if the onlooker is white and skeptical. There is a minimum of mummery and stage setting. While the People sit in a circle about the floor of a tent, the shaman may take his drum and with half-closed eyes shuffle about, singing a song in the ancient shaman language. The audience carries the chant, as in a drum dance, but much more softly.

At last there is a break in the drumming and the shaman collapses in a heap on the floor and a palpable silence ensues for some minutes. Then voices may be heard. The voice of the shaman is followed by the voice of his Tornrak—a strange and eerie sound which, so it seems, could not come from the throat of a man.

The awakening is sometimes exceedingly violent and exciting. The shaman may leap to his feet and be possessed with a quite inexplicable physical strength. Half a dozen men may not be able to hold him at all, and he may break through the wall of the tent and disappear into the darkness, to come back streaming with blood and in the last stages of exhaustion. In the after-grip of the trance, a shaman may do himself bodily harm which would be fatal to an ordinary man. Yet he invariably recovers from such self-inflicted wounds.

But awakenings are not usually so bloody and violent. In most cases, the shaman returns to this life quietly, and as quietly tells his audience what he has seen and heard. If there has been trouble in the camp, the shaman may say his Tornrak has told him that someone has broken a tabu. Then there ensues a mass confession. All the onlookers confess their sins and so ease their consciences.

Certain individual shamans are gifted with unusual powers. One of these is a young man, nineteen or twenty years old, who once was of the Ihalmiut, but who now lives near the coast. He is a shaman of note, for he has the hypnotic ability to fill the tent, where a seance is being held, with deer, wolves, bears, and even seagoing beasts such as walrus and seals. On occasion he has conjured up such a menagerie that the audience has been crowded right out. It happens there is an independent trader who lives near this Eskimo camp, and one day this trader made the tactical error of doubting the shaman's ability when the young man was visiting the post. Quick as a wink, the young Eskimo conjured up the formidable steel prow of the Mission Ship,
Stella Polaris,
and brought it crashing through the wall of the cabin with such ferocious realism that the trader fled for his life, yelping with fright.

This tale is told with great gusto and joy by the Dhaeomiut, but unfortunately I didn't witness it myself. However, I did watch Kakumee at work on one of the other tasks of a shaman, the chasing away of an evil spirit.

Again it was a summer night when we were visited by an Ino, but this time the incident took place while we were entertaining Kakumee and some other Ihalmiut in our tent out on the Barrens. I never discovered just who saw what, before our quiet evening of gossip was interrupted by a startled rush of all the Eskimos, except Kakumee, for cover under bedrolls, blankets and anything else that could be found in the tent. By then Andy and I had grown moderately used to such erratic behavior, and we could observe what happened without the distraction of being thrown into a flap ourselves.

Kakumee stood his ground in the middle of the tent and stared at the doorway, mumbling like an old dog that catches the scent of a wolf. The others trembled visibly—at least the parts of them which were exposed trembled visibly—and so we assumed another ghost was in the vicinity.

The first shock wore off almost at once, and the fugitives crawled out from cover looking both sheepish and scared. Kakumee now sat them in a circle about him, and he went from one to the other holding out his outstretched hand. Each man gave the shaman some small object—a pinch of tobacco, an empty brass shell case, or a match. We contributed a pinch of sugar and a .22 bullet.