Food Taboos

At the same time that Dr. Marsh and I went southwest to Icy Cape, there also went from Point Barrow something like fifteen or twenty Eskimo sleds to a native dance at Icy Cape. The white men call it a “dance,” but really it is the most northeasterly variant of the British Columbian “potlatch.” Formal invitations had been sent by certain men at Icy Cape to certain men at Point Barrow to visit them . These invitations had included a statement of what sort of present the host expected to receive from his guest on his arrival. The messengers from Icy Cape when they returned home from Point Barrow carried in turn not only the acceptances or re grets of the people who had been invited , but in case of acceptances they carried also an intimation of what sort of present the visitors would expect in return for the presents which their hosts demanded. I did not see the dance at Icy Cape, but have seen a number of similar ones and the procedure is always the same. The visitors camped a few miles before reaching the Icy Cape village and a messenger was sent ahead in the evening to announce their coming. Several young men then came from Icy Cape to the camp of the visitors, and the following morning when everything was ready, these and a few of the young men from among the visitors ran a race back to Icy Cape. Each man who runs a race does it not for himself but as the representative of some prominent man who is going to take part in the ceremonies. Each racer as he arrives in the village goes to the dance-house, where he is met by the wife of his master, or other woman of his household, who brings him a warm drink of water and something to eat. Later on, the main body of visitors arrive and either pitch their own camps or move into the houses of their friends in the village. 

That evening the dance begins. A local man will dance first, singing songs, recounting his own achievements and telling whatever is in his mind to tell. Following this his wife or some one of his household hands him the articles which he intends to present to his guest. When the presentation is over the guest arises, and in some cases dances and sings in the manner of his host, but in others merely makes a brief speech and hands over the articles with which he pays for the present he has received . Sometimes the initial presents, or else the counter presents that pay for them, are not material, but ap parently one of them must be, for I never saw a pledge of super natural assistance paid for in kind. At one of these dances at Point Barrow I have seen a man give two cross fox skins to an old “medicine man” in return for the promise that the shaman would see to lit that he got two whales the following whaling season. Incidentally it may be stated here that the man who gave the two fox skins really did get the two whales which were promised in return for them. This somewhat strengthened at Point Barrow the general opinion that while Christian prayers are very good in ordinary things, the old-fashioned whaling charms are much more effective when it comes to catching whales. 

At such a dance or potlatch as this one at Icy Cape the visitors usually remain for several days, although the ceremony of exchanging presents is commonly accomplished within twenty-four hours after the arrival of the party. There is a good deal of feasting, sing ing, dancing, and story-telling, and every one has a good time. 

On this trip of ours to Wainwright Inlet and Icy Cape we kept getting new sidelights on the forms the new religion is taking in northern Alaska. One of the first things that an Eskimo learns when he becomes Christian is the importance of refraining from work on Sunday. In general the Eskimo's own religion consists mainly in a series of prohibitions or taboos, and the prohibitions of Christianity are therefore, of all the new teachings, the things he most readily understands. Under the old religion it used to be believed that sickness, famine, and death were caused by such trivial things as the breaking of a marrow bone with the wrong kind of hammer, or the sewing of deerskin clothing before enough days had elapsed from the killing of the last whale or walrus. To avoid breaking these taboos meant prosperity and good health, and the gaining of all the rewards (or rather the escape from all the penalties) provided for by that system of religion. Similarly, now that they know about salvation and damnation it seems but logical to them that one may be gained and the other avoided by the mere observance of such simple prohibitions as that against working on Sunday. 

Dr. Marsh , who is a man of university education and of broad views in religious matters, often tried to explain to his congregation at Point Barrow that while the keeping of the Sabbath was in general an estimable thing, there were certain circumstances under which it was not called for, nor even desirable. To try to make clear this idea he preached again and again from the text of how Our Lord gathered the ears of corn on the Sabbath , but failed completely in getting them to see the matter from his point of view. I suggested to Dr. Marsh, therefore, that possibly his own example would do more good than his preaching in showing the Eskimo how Sunday might safely be treated. Accordingly, in order to give the people an example, we traveled on two occasions upon Sunday. But the example availed nothing except further to lose Dr. Marsh his standing in the community. I heard many comments, most of which were to the effect that if Dr. Marsh was willing to endanger his temporal and eternal welfare, they nevertheless were not. They knew of old how dangerous it was to break taboos; they could see now that undoubtedly many of the past misfortunes and accidents of their people were no doubt due to the fact that they had broken the Sabbath taboo before they knew of its existence. Now that they knew it, no man who took thought of his own interests or those of the community would break the taboo. Possibly Dr. Marsh and I had some charm by which we could evade the effect of our transgression , but the punishment would surely fall on some one.

As with many other Inuit groups, Copper Inuit religion was more concerned with the here and now than with an afterlife. Most important was the relationship between humans and the spirits of the animals upon which humans depended for food. It was essential that the proper rituals be followed, so as not to offend these spirits, who are perceived as being much like humans. An animal spirit that had been offended through the violation of a taboo or the omission of an important ritual might decide to take revenge upon the group as a whole. Illness, starvation, or some other disaster could result. Copper Inuit observed a number of taboos which were believed to be important to maintaining good relations with the spirit world. A number of observances were related to the separation of land animals and sea animals. Copper Inuit were prohibited for cooking products of the land and sea in the same pot. Nor could they place seal meat next to caribou meat on the sleeping platform of the snow house.  Most pronounced was the prohibition against sewing caribou skin clothing during the early winter. All winter clothing had to be prepared in the fall, at the gathering places, and completed before the move to the sealing grounds on the sea ice.

In addition to believing in the spirits of animals and the shades of deceased humans, the Copper Inuit subscribe to a world inhabited by wondrous and often dangerous creatures dwarfs, giants, and Caribou people. They believed in a sea goddess (known as Sedna in other regions) who control the animals of the Seas. Arnapkapfaaluk, or 'big bad woman,' was not a benevolent goddess looking out for human beings: when offended by the violation of a taboo or some indiscriminate action, she would withhold the seals upon which people depended for survival.

Animal spirits

William Kuptana: The custom of the Eskimos is that when they take part in a hunt and make a kill, all who hunted the animal must participate in the cutting and sharing of the carcass. Those who do not follow that custom embarrass the animal spirit; therefore, it is believed that the non-participant will be hunted himself.

Death was not accompanied by elaborate ceremony. In Winter, the body was usually left behind and it's no house, while in summer, the body was wrapped in skins and left on the time go. The concept of an afterlife was not well developed. Jenness reported that it was definitely not viewed as a land of joy and plenty, but a "big and gloomy realm where, even if want and misery are not found (and of this they are not certain), joy and gladness at least must surely be unknown." (Jenness 1922: 190)

Shamans (angatkut) Served as important intermediaries between humans in the spirit world. Shamans provided a number of essential functions. They could act as healers, in the event of an illness, or could determine what taboos were violated When Animals became scarce. They were also believed to have powers for controlling the weather and warding off evil spirits. The shaman, acting as an intermediary, could communicate with animal spirits, often doing so with the aid of a spirit helper or familiar. Most angatkut claimed to have more than one helper. Jenness met one Copper Inuit shaman, Uloksak, who claimed to have a white man, a polar bear, a wolf, and a dog as helping Spirits. Shamans could be either male or female, but no matter what their gender they were expected to have some kind of visionary experience whereby a spirit helper revealed itself to the future angatkut. In their shamanistic performances, shamans may have relied upon ventriloquism and other dramatic acts to impress their audiences and demonstrate their powers. Shamans by definition are neither good nor bad. Some angatkut developed reputations for kindness and generosity;  others were greatly feared and used their powers to gain advantage over others.

The Trappists led a life of rigorous poverty, intensified in this barren remote land to the point of starvation. There were cattle on the station, but meat was excluded for religious reasons, and the monks existed on one meal a day of pumpkin and rice, and a little beer they had made from sorghum grown in the garden. Rising at 2 a.m. they kept vigil in the dark chapel till dawn, then worked till daylight’s end, speaking no word save in necessity, and closing the day with some hours on their knees on the bare earth. I was the first white woman to appear among them at the Mission, and the first that the natives of the region had seen.

From the newly arrived stores, Brother Sebastian had provided a strange and varied meal for us according to his lights, extraordinary stews and puddings served in any order and all strongly flavoured with garlic; milkless tea in a huge jug that was both teapot and cups for us all. Poor Brother Sebastian may have been a paragon of piety, but he was no cook. In my keeping today is a fragment of petrified bread roll he made for me in 1900! It has been mistaken for a geological specimen, and, always carried with me in loving memory, it has survived, without losing a crumb, thousands of miles of rough transport.

Perhaps the first woman in history to sleep in a Trappist bed, I was allotted the abbot’s bag bed and seaweed pillow, and the sawn-off log for my chair or table. I woke to hear the natives singing a Gregorian chant in the little chapel near by. Half clothed and, for all the untiring work of the missioners, still but half-civilized, they comprised the Nyool-nyool tribe, of the totem of a local species of snake. Most of the women and men had their two front teeth knocked out, and some still wore bones through their noses. Infant cannibalism was practised, where it could not be prevented—as it still is among all circumcised groups. One of the old men, Bully-bulluma, having been an epic meat-hunter in his day, had eight wives. Another, Goodowel, was dressed in trousers and shirt, one stocking, his face painted red with white stripes from each corner of his mouth in broad lines. A red band was round his head, the hair drawn back to form a tight knob, and stuck in the knob was a tuft of white cockatoo feathers and a small wooden emblem. I know now that he was in the sixth degree of initiation.

Although they had tried their hardest, with prayer and precept, to teach these natives cleanliness and Christian living, giving their very lives to the work in torture and privation, those Spanish priests could hope for little headway in the first generation. There was one terrible manifestation of savagery that I can never forget.

A man had been found dying of spear-wounds out in the bush, and carried to the Mission as he was breathing his last. I watched two of the lay brothers bearing the stretcher to one of the huts, a horde of natives following. I noticed that they held their burden curiously high in the air. Suddenly, as it was lowered for entry to a doorway, the natives crowding round, to my horror, fell upon the body of the dying man, and put their lips to his in a brutal eagerness to inhale the last breath. They believed that in so doing they were absorbing his strength and virtue, and his very vital spark, and all the warnings of the “white father” would not keep them from it. The man was of course dead when we extricated him, and it was a ghastly sight to see the lucky “breath catcher” scoop in his cheeks as he swallowed the “spirit breath” that gave him double hunting power.

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The women quite frankly admitted to me that they had killed and eaten some of their children—they liked “baby meat.”

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Baby cannibalism was rife among these central-western peoples, as it is west of the border in Central Australia. In one group, east of the Murchison and Gascoyne Rivers, every woman who had had a baby had killed and eaten it, dividing it with her sisters, who, in turn, killed their children at birth and returned the gift of food, so that the group had not preserved a single living child for some years. When the frightful hunger for baby meat overcame the mother before or at the birth of the baby, it was killed and cooked regardless of sex. Division was made according to the ancestral food-laws. I cannot remember a case where the mother ate a child she had allowed, at the beginning, to live.

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It was no unusual sight to see anything up to 100 of these cannibals, men, women and children, several of them but a week in civilization, climb aboard an empty truck and go off to an initiation ceremony farther up the line. I use the word cannibal advisedly. Every one of these central natives was a cannibal. Cannibalism had its local name from Kimberley to Eucla, and through all the unoccupied country east of it, and there were many grisly rites attached thereto. Human meat had always been their favourite food, and there were killing vendettas from time immemorial. In order that the killing should be safe, murderers’ slippers or pads were made, emu-feathers twisted and twined together, bound to the foot with human hair, on which the natives walk and run as easily as a white man in running shoes, their feet leaving no track. Dusk and dawn were the customary hours for raiding a camp. Victims were shared according to the law. The older men ate the soft and virile parts, and the brain; swift runners were given the thighs; hands, arms or shoulders went to the best spear-throwers, and so on. Those who received skull, shoulder or arm kept the bones, which they polished and rounded, strung on hair, and kept on their person, either as pointing-bones or magic pendants.

Every one of the natives whom I encountered on the east-west line had partaken of human meat, with the exception of Nyerdain, who told me it made him sick. They freely admitted their sharing of these repasts and enumerated those killed and eaten by naming the waters, and drawing a line with the big toe on the sand as they told over in gruesome memory the names they dared not mention.

My first words to them were always “No more man-meat.” From the weekly supply train, I would procure part of a bullock or sheep and show them the game food areas, mallee-hen’s eggs, rabbits and so on, that must be their meats now, with as many dampers as I could provide, and a drink of sweetened tea.

One morning very early, the news came that Nyan-ngauera had left the camp, taking a fire-stick and accompanied by her little girl. No one would follow her or help to track her. For twelve miles I followed the track unsuccessfully, but Nyan-ngauera doubled many times and gave birth to a child a mile west of my camp, where she killed and ate the baby, sharing the food with the little daughter. Later, with the help of her sons and grandsons, the spot was found, nothing to be seen there save the ashes of a fire. “The bones are under the fire,” the boys told me, and digging with the digging-stick we came upon the broken skull, and one or two charred bones, which I later sent to the Adelaide Museum. A grown man will never avenge the death of his own child, nor will he, under any circumstances, share the meal.

The late Frank Hann, on a survey exploration, conferred the name of Mount Daisy Bates upon a height a little south of Mount Gosse. I discovered that it was the area of one of the worst groups of cannibals in the Centre.

It is a theory which has been much in vogue among ethnologists that the fundamental reason back of the system of Eskimo taboos is that they are intended to keep the sea industries away from the land industries and the sea animals away from the land animals; the theory being that the Eskimo were once inland dwellers and accustomed only to land animals and hunting methods suited to the land, and that when they came down to the sea they found its requirements and its animal life so different from that of the land to which they were used that they conceived it necessary to keep the two rigidly apart and that taboos were therefore established. We have elsewhere pointed out that the western Eskimo consider that sudden death, pestilence, or famine will follow upon the sewing of caribou skin garments within a certain number of days after one of the large sea mammals has been killed. It is true among many tribes of Eskimo that caribou skin garments must not be made or mended on the sea ice. The flesh of caribou and of seals must not, among some tribes, be eaten at the same time, nor must the flesh of caribou be eaten on the sea at all. Under other circumstances when both may be eaten, they will have to be cooked in separate utensils and certain ceremonies have to be performed to cancel, as it were, the evil effects that might otherwise ensue. 

Here, however, everything was different. Not only did these seal hunters engage in the cutting up of the animals, but the meat was taken home and cooked in the same pots in which seal meat had been cooked and eaten; and not only the same day that seal meat had been eaten and the seals had been killed, but the seal meat and caribou meat were actually eaten at the same meal by the same individuals. One old man, however, said that he knew that it was not right to boil caribou meat in the same pot in which seal meat had been boiled unless you suspended the pot by a different string. His wife therefore took off the old greasy string which had served as a bale for the stone pot, braided a new sinew string, and swung the pot by that over the lamp. These Eskimo have various taboos relating to seal and to caribou, but none of those that I have seen in use or heard of, except in the case of this one incident of the string, had any tendency to keep the two apart.

One often hears the statement that there never have been discovered people so low that they do not have some form of religion. This is stating a true thing in such a way that it implies an untruth. The case is put rightly and the exact facts are truly implied, in saying that the lower you go in the scale of cultural development the more religion you find until, when you get to the people that are really toward the bottom of the scale of social and intellectual evolution, religion begins to cover practically all the activities and phenomena of life. There is a religious significance in every act and accident and a religious formula for every eventuality in life. 

The Eskimo are people whose intelligence is keen with reference to the facts of their immediate environment; but that environment is so monotonous, the range of possible experiences is so small, that no matter what the fiber of their minds may be at bottom, the exercise is wanting that might lead to a broad mental development. 

There was a time when I used to think I knew what the word "savage” meant. Since then I have associated with people who dress in skins, who live largely on raw meat, who had never seen white men until they saw me, who were as strange to our ideas and ways as any people on this earth can be to -day ; and the net result is that the word " savage” has quite lost its meaning. Like the word “ squaw, ” or “ half-breed,” the word “ savage ” is reprehensible because it carries a stigma which the facts do not justify. I should prefer to describe the peoples ordinarily referred to as “ savage,” as “ child -like, ” because the word is truthfully descriptive and not odious. It is the purpose of the present chapter to describe some phases of the religion of one of the child -like peoples. 

To begin with, the Eskimo are very unclear in their religious thinking, a fact which does not, however, differentiate them abysmally from our own race. Scepticism in religious matters is unknown.. If they are acquainted with my private character and find me in the ordinary relations of life reliable ; if I don't tell lies concerning the number or the fatness of the caribou I have killed, nor about the distance at which I shot them, nor the difficulty I had in stalking them, they will believe anything I say about any subject. They will assume as unquestioningly the truth of any metaphysical statement I make if they have once learned to rely on my statements regarding the thickness of the back - fat of the bull caribou I shot during the summer. On the other hand, if I told them there were ten caribou in a band I saw and they later on discovered there were only five, they would be disinclined to believe me if I told them there was but one God. The reasoning would simply be this : he did not tell us the truth about the number of caribou, therefore how can we rely on the truth of his statements about the number of the gods ? 

There are among all Eskimo certain persons whom we call “ shamans” and they call “ angatkut.” These persons hold com munion with the spirits and are familiar with the things of the other world ; they are the formulators of religious opinion. The days of miracles are not yet past among any primitive people, and new miracles happen on the shores of the polar sea daily, but more especially in the dark of winter. The miracles usually happen at the behest of the shamans, and invariably it is the shaman who tells about them ; but while new revelations are frequent, they are always revelations of the old sort. There is little originality in the minds of primitive people ; their daily experiences are uniform, and their thoughts are uniform, too. 

The most fundamental thing in Eskimo religion is that all phenomena are controlled by spirits and these spirits in turn are controlled by formulæ, or charms, which are mainly in the possession of the medicine-men, although certain simple charms may be owned and used by any one. It Follows from this fundamental conception that nothing like prayer or worship is possible. Supplication will do no good, for why should you beg anything from spirits that you can command ? All spirits can be controlled, and in fact are controlled, by charms; but certain spirits are especially at the service of certain men, and these men are the shamans. They may be male or female, and in fact some of the greatest shamans known to me are women. 

As we have said, the religious thinking of the Eskimo is unclear. There seems no agreement, and in fact no settled opinion on the subject of whether there are spirits of the class susceptible of becoming familiar spirits, which are not already in the service of some shaman. The general feeling seems to be that every one of these spirits has its master. For that reason, among the Mackenzie River people, at least, when a young man wants to become a shaman he must, in one way or another, secure a spirit from someone who is already a shaman, or else secure a spirit that has been freed by the death of a shaman. 

The ordinary Mackenzie River shaman has about half a dozen familiar spirits, any of which will do his bidding. When engaged in some such thing as the finding of a hidden article, the shaman will summon these spirits, one after another, and send them out separately in search of the lost article. Evidently a man may be able to get along fairly well with five familiar spirits, though he may be in the habit of employing six, exactly as we can dispense with an extra servant. A shaman may be old and decrepit or for some other reason may be what we should call “ hard up. ” This is a propitious occasion for some ambitious young man to obtain a familiar spirit. He will go to the old shaman and some such conversation as this will take place : 

“Will you sell me one of your keyukat?” ( that being the Mackenzie River name for familiar spirit). “ Yes. I don't see why I might not. I am getting to be an old man now and shall not need their services much longer ; besides, I have had my eye on you for a long time and shall be glad to have you for my successor. I think I might let you have my Polar Bear spirit.” 

“ That would be kind of you, but don't you think you could spare your Tide Crack spirit ? ” 

“ Well, no ; that is the one that I intend to keep to the very last. It has been very faithful to me and useful, but if you don't like the Polar Bear spirit you might have my Indian spirit.” 

And so the bargaining goes on, until finally it is decided that the young man buys the Raven spirit for an umiak freshly made of five beluga skins, twenty summer-killed -deer skins, two bags of seal oil, a green stone labret, and things of that sort without end —giving a newboat, in fact, loaded with all sorts of gear.

The young man now goes home, and presently, using the appropriate formula given him by the shaman, he summons his familiar spirit, but the familiar spirit refuses to appear. The young man then goes back to the old shaman and says to him : “ How is this ? The spirit which you sold me has not come.” And the old man replies : “Well, I cannot help that ; I transferred him to you in good faith, and if you are one of those persons with whom spirits refuse to associate, that is a thing which I cannot help. I did my part in the matter. That is the consensus of opinion in the community. The shaman has transferred the spirit in good faith and has kept his part of the contract and consequently keeps the boat and everything else with which the young man has paid for the spirit. Further, when it becomes noised about that this young man is the sort of a man with whom spirits will not associate, he loses social standing, for it becomes evident not only that he will never become a great shaman, but also that he is lacking in those essential personal qualities which commend him to the spirits, and which therefore commend him to his fellow - countrymen also. 

In our hypothetical case we have supposed the young man to go back to the shaman to complain over the non-arrival of the spirit. As a matter of fact it is only once or twice in a generation that such a thing takes place. When he has once publicly paid for the spirit, the young man has everything to lose by admitting that he did not receive it. He cannot get back what he paid for it ; he cannot have the advantage of being considered a shaman ; and he will lose social standing through the publication of the fact that the spirit refuses to associate with him. As a matter of practice, therefore, the purchaser will pretend that he received the spirit, and he will announce that fact. Some time later sickness occurs in a family or a valuable article is lost. The young man is appealed to, and in order to keep up the deception which he has begun by pretending to have received the spirit, he goes into as good an imitation of a trance as he can manage, for he has from childhood up watched the shamans in their trances. If he succeeds in the cure or whatever the object of the seance may be, his reputation is made; and if he does not succeed nothing is lost, for it is as easy for an Eskimo to explain the failure of a shamanistic performance as it is for us to explain why a prayer is not answered. It may have been because some other more powerful shaman was working against him, or it may have been for any one of a thousand reasons, all of which are satisfactory and sufficient to the Eskimo mind.