Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/340

Rh so." When they kill a reindeer, and have skinned it, they cut off bits of different parts of the animal, and bury them under a sod, or some moss, or a stone, at the exact spot where the animal was killed. When an Innuit passes the place where a relative has died, he pauses and deposits a piece of meat near by. On one occasion, when travelling with Sharkey, I saw him place a bit of seal under the snow near an island which we were passing. When I questioned him, he said that it was done out of respect for the memory of an uncle who had died there. When a child dies, everything it has used, either as a plaything or in any work it did, is placed in or upon its grave. When Tukeliketa, Tookoolito's boy, died, some weeks after the mother collected all his playthings and put them upon his grave. Visiting the spot some time after, she found that one article, a gaily-painted little tin pail, had been taken away, and her grief was severe at the discovery. In March, 1862, while I was in the Northern country, the wife of Annawa found beneath the tuktoo bed of their recently-deceased child a toy game-bag. A consultation among the Innuits who were then there was held, and the bag, together with all the articles that had been presented to the child by the ship's hands from time to time, consisting of powder, shot, caps, tobacco, and a pistol, was deposited at the grave of their beloved boy.

There exist also among the Innuits many curious customs connected with hunting. They cannot go out to take walrus until they have done working upon tuktoo clothing; and after beginning the walrus hunt, no one is allowed to work on reindeer skins. One day in March, I wanted Tookoolito and Koodloo's wife to make me a sleeping-bag of tuktoo skin; but nothing could persuade them to do it, as it was then walrus season. They "would both die, and no more walrus could be caught." When a walrus is caught, the captor must remain at home,