Religion

Shamanism. May 15 we missed our primus stove “ needle "-- it may have been taken by someone or it may have got lost. A woman angatkuk ( shaman ), I -ku -tok [by name], offered to get it for us (by witchcraft) if I paid for the performance. This I refused to do unless it were a success in which event I would give her a small file. That suited her, and the performance began. As Natkusiak understands them (the shamanistic performances] somewhat better than I, it was arranged he should act in my part and “ say yes” for me. There were about 15 persons in our tent and 50 or 60 outside listening. The woman got a free floor space about 11 by 3 feet in the middle of the tent, where she stood up. She began at first quietly, saying in an ordinary tone and manner that she would first look for the lost articles “ apkuota ” l — the “ road, ” I suppose, by which it was taken away when stolen. Where was it when it was stolen ? In that box ? Where was the box ? In what part of the box was it ? Was she to find the thief ? Was she to get her spirit to find the “ road ” of the thief ? (to 19 out of 20 at least of her questions the answer was “ yes ” ). 

Most of her questions (the shaman) asked of me, but some she asked of others. Not only the person asked but half a dozen others would answer “ yes ” in chorus, or else [they answered] by other affirmatives and urgings to “ go on,"' " describe the thief,” etc. 

Gradually [ the shaman ] became more excited and little by little she narrowed her eyes till they were finally held closely shut. Then of a sudden she changed her tone of voice, evidently now trying to imitate an old man both by tone of speech and by hoarse laughing. She now announced that she was so-and-so (the name escaped me -it was no doubt the name of the spirit that now possessed her). “ Ha, I see the road ! It did not go out by the tent door ; it went out by that corner of the tent ! ( As a matter of fact, our visitors used to come and go under any but the back side of our tent. ) She to the village ! It is not a man ; it is a woman. She has hidden the needle in her boot. She has on a pair of ' fancy ' boots.” ( Here followed a detailed description of [ the thief's] costume, but as most women dress alike, no one could recognize the description. ) 

[ The listeners now commenced asking eager questions of the shaman. ) “ Tell us, is she old or young ? Is she a big woman ? ” 1 Apkuota = its path ; thoroughfare or channel by which it traveled. etc. [But the sorceress kept on as if she did not hear. ] “ Oh, now I cannot see clearly; there is a fog coming over me. But I see one thing. She goes to a house a little east of the middle of the village. ([The audience:] ' Which house ? which house ?' ) The house has snow walls and a tent roof (nine-tenths of all the houses had) —it has a peaked tent roof ( three-fourths of the houses had) ( audience: ‘ What sort of gear is outside the house ? Tell us and we will recognize the house'). There is a bag full of clothes (every house had one or more). There is a seal spear; there are two seal spears ( a common number - most houses had two families). I cannot see more, the fog darkens. (Here she became more quiet. After being possessed by the spirit she spoke in hoarse shrieks. By now she was out of breath and tired. ) I am now myself again, I am now no longer so-and-so.” 

Of a sudden the shaman staggered as if to fall backwards, then regained herself and began to mutter rapidly and not harshly. It was now said she was possessed by a Kablunak ( turnnrak ).1 There were apparently no real words in this muttering ( i.e. no Eskimo or any other speech ), but it was said she was now speaking Kablunat ( white men's) language. There were constant repetitions of -a -tji, -la-tji, -ta -tji, etc., reminding one strongly of Athabascan Indian speech, and almost exactly like our Tannaumirk's alleged imitations of Loucheux talk. 

When all was done (about ten minutes of mutterings), the woman announced that the thief had left the village. She then assumed her natural voice and the performance was over. As two or three families had left that morning, starting east towards the bottom of the Sound, it was concluded one of the women (of those families) was the thief. A man offered to go get the needle (from them ). No one seemed to doubt he would get it. I offered the man the file if he would the woman acknowledged she had failed to get the needle for me. She was, however, to get some pay also if the man succeeded. The man was gone about six hours, and came back unsuccessful. With him came back the whole suspected party, apparently to assert their innocence. 

A man angatkuk now offered to try. His performance consisted in "ceremonially” removing from the primus stove box every article it contained except the (glass) alcohol bottle. This he feared, and I had to take it out for him. Fearing this was considered by the rest to be a sign of great wisdom. None of them had known enough to fear it and several had touched it (for it had looked harmless to them and it was only the supernatural wisdom of the Great Shaman that saw the insidious peril of this transparent thing that looked like ice but wasn't). He then stuck his head into the box and kept it there three or four minutes, lifting and setting down the top several times meanwhile (his head all the time in the box). He finally emerged and announced he could not see the road by which the needle went. He said he had not been looking for the thief, merely for the “road” of the needle.

Superstition. "Superstition” is perhaps more in evidence here than anywhere else. At the large village I could get no single individual to be photographed. An attempt to get a sample of “ auburn ” hair was futile and caused much (unfavorable) comment and suspicion. I tried first to trade some of my hair for itſa sample of the hair of a European looking Eskimo), then to buy it. There were continual requests that I should next summer " think away ” sickness from them and “think them ” plenty game and good fortune. There have been requests of this sort at all villages, but nowhere so serious, insistent and often repeated. Pamiungittok gave me a pair of breeches and an arrow to make me “ think good ” for his son who was sick - Agleroittok [is his name]. He asked repeatedly that I give him nothing in return, for he feared if I paid for the breeches I would not “ think good ” for his The blind man, Avranna, in Clouston Bay ( there is also a blind man at Prince Albert village - old man about 60) told us the reason of his blindness was that he had killed a large ugrug and when the people came wanting to cut it up he grudged to let them help themselves, therefore he became blind. I could not make out if the grudging' of itself caused the blindness, or if some “doctor” (shaman) was angered by it and made him blind — I believe the former. Natkusiak says it is no doubt true, for he knows of parallel cases in his own country. Usually there, however, it was this way : some one committed a bad deed (grudged to give something, stole, etc.) in secret. The “doctor” would then so ordain “ magically ” that the guilty person would in some way suffer then not only was the guilt punished but also people found out who was guilty (e.g. if an article had been stolen). 

At the first Nagyuktogmiut village in April some noise was heard outside our snowhouse. Our visitors of the time decided it was our son. (or my) turnnrak (familiar spirit] and forthwith started a chorus of requests and prayers to me (not to the turnnrak) to have the turnnrak provide plenty seals, good weather, good health, the safe birth of expected children, etc. As we were leaving there was a concerted request by all present that we intercede with the turnnrak for two women , Arnauyak and Anaktok ( both young, though only Anaktok recently married - other two or three years) that they might have children born to them . At last village (May 16) I staid over a day to see if a few lead and opium pills would do Agleroittok any good - he had had chronic diarrhoea since the summer 1908. They did seem to do good , but they were not satisfied with that — I must " pat” his stomach before going. Hitkoak made for me and bound on me a charm sash (usual type) so that I should remember and “ keep thinking that his wife should have safe delivery of a healthy child ” event about a month distant. 

Natkusiak says the angatkuk performances are very different here from (those among] his people he does not seem to think Victoria people are very powerful angatkuk (shamans] but has firm faith in all the claims of his own people's angatkuk. 

The woman's performance [described above) was very similar to that of Ovayuak [a Mackenzie River shaman] in January, 1907. The Sound people would not do cats' cradles for me because it is now in the long days — they play them only when sun is away — cf. Akulia kattagmiut as well as Ilavinirk's account of [cat's cradle customs in] Kotzebue Sound. 

Natkusiak tells : Some or all children are turnnrak [spirits] before birth . A few people can remember the things they knew when they were (prenatally) turnnrak. These are powerful angatkuk and can tell people many things they must not do (i.e. , [these shamans) impose taboos) . He has known one such man. He came as a turnnrak along the coast from the east and north, following every curve of the coast. Like other turnnrak of his class he was looking for a mother through whom to be born. He found her at Prince of Wales. The man when he grew up could tell many wonderful things that he knew before incarnation . Among other things, he told that the reason people don't see these turnnrak that are looking for mothers is that they iglaurut tautugnaittuagun (literally : travel through, or by, unseen regions ). Natkusiak does not know just how this is —he has merely heard the expression. Perhaps it means they travel underground , ” he says. He learnt in Prince Albert Sound (that there are there] some men who remember their prenatal existence.

Many of my ideas as to the form which Christianity takes in the minds of the Eskimo I naturally get from the Eskimo with whom we most associated, the civilized Alaskans whom we employed to accompany us on our journeys of exploration. One of them, Ilavinirk, was a native of Kotzebue Sound, and had for over twenty years been fairly continuously in the service of white men, although, like the rest of the natives of Herschel Island, he had not been an avowed Christian more than four years.

 During the summer of 1909, when we were traveling by boat east along the coast from Flaxman Island, there was in our party, but sailing his own boat, an Eskimo by the name of Oniyak. His old and decrepit father was also of the party, and it seemed to me that I had seldom seen an old man so badly treated, for every evening he was compelled to make his own camp separate from that of his son and family, although there was plenty of room for him in his son's tent. He was not allowed to take his meals with the rest of them, but was given a sort of “hand out. ” He was continually short of tobacco and matches, although his son was a trader and had more of both than he needed for his own use. The old man used to beg various things from us, which we of course gave him gladly. I did not understand at the time why he should have been so treated, and thought of it only as an unusual example of unfilial conduct. In general I have seen old people among the Eskimos remarkably well treated. 

It was only one day at Langton Bay, two years later, that Ilavinirk asked me if I knew why it was that Oniyak treated his father in this way, and when I said I did not know why, he explained that it was because the son had just been converted to Christianity, and the missionary had told the converts not to associate with unbelievers. The old man and one old woman in the tribe were the only two who did not accept Christianity. The old man's son, Ilavinirk said, was in a great quandary, because he was fond of his father but did not dare to disobey the missionary's injunctions. He had found a sort of middle course, therefore, by compelling the old man to keep his own house and to eat by himself. 

Continuing on this subject, Ilavinirk said that the old woman who would not accept Christianity was the most perverse old body he ever heard tell of. All arguments had failed to convince her of the truths of Christianity, and she kept saying that she had seen the spirits of her own belief cure disease, avert famine, and bring a change of wind, and she had yet to see that the new religion could do any better. It was of no avail to explain to her that the new religion did not claim to do any better in these things, but differed from the old in promising eternal blessedness to those who lived righteously, and threatened eternal punishment to those who did not. The old woman kept saying she would wait and see. She would not believe in either heaven or hell until she saw them. 

Ilavinirk said that the old woman's son was greatly worried by this attitude of mind of his mother, and whenever he got new arguments and new facts from the missionary or from the converted Eskimo he would always present them to his mother with the hope of getting her to experience a change of heart. One day a missionary had preached to them in this way : If any of you believe that fire will not burn you if you stick your hand into it, then you may believe also that the things I tell you are not true; but if you believe that fire would burn you, then you must believe also that what I say is true. (Naturally, no missionary ever said any such thing. What he really said can only be guessed at. Extreme misunderstandings are, of course, common, due partly to the missionary's imperfect command of Eskimo, and partly to the fact that his ideas are essentially strange to them. ) When her son presented this argument, Ilavinirk said that such was the old woman's perversity that she only laughed and ridiculed it, saying that she did not see anything convincing about that sort of reasoning. Hoping nevertheless to convince her by an actual test, her son waited until she was asleep, when he lit a match and held it under her hand, letting the flame play over her fingers. The old woman awoke screaming with pain. But so perverse was she that even this did not convince her, and so far as Ilavinirk knew she was still a heathen. Some people are that way, Ilavinirk philosophized. He supposed, however, that if the fire of a match was not hot enough to make unbelievers change their minds, perhaps the fires of hell would be more convincing. 

I heard from Ilavinirk a good deal about the religious views of the Baillie Islands Eskimo, but knew little of them otherwise, for it has happened that I have never associated much with that particular group. The summer of 1911 I sent Ilavinirk and Natkusiak to the Baillie Islands with a boat, and they remained there for several weeks. At that time Ilavinirk told me there came from the Mackenzie River the report that God had said that you must not look at the sun. It is difficult to guess what the foundation of this story may have been. It is conceivable it may have been based on the story of how the Israelites fell away from the true religion and worshiped false gods, and how some people have looked upon the sun as a god. Possibly the missionary may have meant to tell his hearers that they must not look upon the sun, powerful and brilliant though it is, as a deity. But what they understood was that they must not glance at it. This commandment struck Ilavinirk as a little unreasonable, and he said that he had argued with the Baillie Islanders to the effect that no doubt God did not mean that they should be prohibited from glancing at the sun, but only that they must refrain from staring intently at it. 

As an introduction to the narrative that follows it is necessary to point out that among the Eskimo, as among many other primitive people, notably in North America, a person who is under some sort of taboo must not follow in the trail made by other people, and if he makes a trail, then others must not follow it. 

Apparently some missionary in Alaska, or it may possibly have been at Mackenzie River, had preached from the text : “ Do not follow in the footsteps of the wicked. ” What some of the Eskimo thought of me, no less than how they understood the text upon which the missionary had preached, can be seen from the fact that one day I noticed that some Eskimo who were traveling behind me were not following in my trail.

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.

The foundation of the next story we have to tell is no doubt a discussion by some missionary of a text the substance of which is that everything on earth, and all that men have, is from God. This the Eskimo have understood in a manner to make Christ practically the equivalent of the ancient culture hero. Just as Hiawatha gave mankind the Indian corn and taught us how to cultivate it, so Christ has given the white men everything they have and taught them everything they know. Consequently it is not such a wonderful thing, nor indeed one with which we ought to credit ourselves particularly, that we possess marvelous inventions and much knowledge. It is Hiawatha and not the ordinary Indian who deserves the credit for introducing the art of corn-growing; and so it is Christ and not any ordinary human being who deserves the credit for having taught white men how to raise wheat and grind it into flour. “All our knowledge is from God” they understand to mean that Christ, who represented God on earth, personally instructed us in all arts and crafts. Gunpowder and field -glasses are wonderful in their way, but the Eskimo does not see why he should be considered behind the white man just because Christ taught the white men how to make these things. He did not happen to teach it to the Eskimo, which is the misfortune of the Eskimo and not their fault. 

In the winter of 1911–12 I met with a striking example of this belief among the members of my own party. There is in use among the Mackenzie River Eskimo for writing purposes an alphabet introduced among them by Rev. C. E. Whittaker, the missionary of the Church of England at Fort McPherson. This alphabet being based on English and being introduced by Mr. Whittaker before he had as yet acquired the same command of the language which he now has, is not very phonetic, and for my own use I had devised an alphabet on more strictly phonetic principles, where the ideal is that each letter shall represent but one sound, and that there shall be a separate letter for every sound. My own Eskimo, who knew Mr. Whittaker's system of writing, soon picked up mine and grew to prefer it. They were very enthusiastic about the new system, and commenced teaching it to their neighbors, for one of the most remarkable things about the Eskimo is their passion for such rudiments of learning as they have been able to lay their hands on. 

One day there arose in our house a discussion of the various arts and inventions possessed by the white men, and the Eskimo, in a moralizing way, said that we had to be thankful to Christ not only for the spiritual blessings which He had bestowed upon mankind and the hope of salvation He had given them, but also for teaching them useful things, and especially for teaching them to read and write, for they considered reading and writing to be the foundation of all knowledge and of all the advancement of the white men. With reference to this, I said that they had evidently misunderstood the missionary. The missionary had no intention of telling them that Christ had taught us how to read and write. “Well,” they asked me, “if Christ did not teach you, how did you first learn it?” I had to reply that I did not know how we first learned, but I did know that it occurred longer ago than the date assigned as that on which Christ lived on earth, and explained to them the fact that many books of the Bible much antedated the coming of Christ. That was as it might be, about the antiquity of the books of the Bible, they said in reply, but one thing they did know was that Mr. Whittaker had told them that Christ taught mankind to read and write, and as for them, they believed it. They did not know what I thought of Mr. Whittaker, but they believed that he was a truthful man. I told them that my regard for the veracity of Mr. Whittaker was quite as high as theirs, but I felt sure that they had misunderstood him, and then, in a joking way, I said to them that whoever it might have been who originated the alphabet which Mr. Whittaker gave them, it was I myself who had originated the alphabet which they were now using. No doubt, they replied, I knew whereof I spoke with reference to my alphabet; but so did Mr. Whittaker know with reference to his alphabet; Mr. Whittaker had told them that Christ had made it, and that being so, they were hereafter going to use Christ's alphabet and not mine. From that time on they ceased writing letters to their friends in my alphabet or in any way using it, going back entirely to Mr. Whittaker's alphabet. 

Those who do not know any situation analogous to the one we are describing are likely to say that any such notions as those indicated by these scattered anecdotes can be easily eradicated by a missionary who understands the situation and sets himself to the work, but this is not so. (Fundamentally, the Eskimo consider themselves better men than we are. In the matter of Christianity they concede that we introduced it, but they do not concede that we know more about it than they do; just as many Christians concede that Christianity spread from Rome, but do not concede that Rome is nowadays the highest authority in religious matters. 

A striking way in which this shows itself is in the belief in special revelations which come directly to the Eskimo, and the belief in the rebirth of the Saviour among them. Both in Alaska and in Green land there have been, since the coming of Christianity, many cases of Immaculate Conception and the birth of heralded saviors of the In some cases the thing has been nipped in the bud through the fact that the child born happened to be a female, which was not according to the predictions. A sufficient number of these cases are on record in books, and instead of retelling them I shall therefore merely refer to the interesting accounts of Knud Rasmussen from Greenland, which can be secured in any bookshop or library. 

There are also in every community Eskimo who are in the habit of visiting heaven and conferring there with Christ Himself, with Saint Peter and others, quite in the manner in which they used to visit the moon while still heathen and have discussions with the man in the moon. The man in the moon used to teach the shamans songs and spells, and now St. Peter teaches the deacons of the Eskimo church hymns and chants (which are, curiously enough, generally race in the jargon language which the whalers use in dealing with the Eskimo). 

There are also frequent and weighty revelations in the matter of doctrine. If the missionary should learn of any of these things and should disagree with them (but he is not likely to learn, for the Eskimo have found out that the missionaries do not approve of present-day revelation, and therefore keep it secret as much as possible), they might be respectful and polite about it to his face, as they always are, but among themselves they would say that while they had no doubt that the Lord spoke unto Moses, neither did they doubt that he also spoke unto this and that countryman of theirs; and if what God said to the Hebrews seems to disagree with what He has said more recently, then evidently it is only reasonable to accept the latter version.