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that is to say animals enough, and then the clothes that can shield me from wind and weather and cold.

"I would like to live without sadness and without pain, I mean without suffering of any kind, without sickness.

"And as a man I wish to be so close to all kinds of animals that in the hunt and at all kinds of sports I can excel over my countrymen.

"All that I desire for myself I desire also for those who through relationship are near to me in this life."

"What will you do to attain all this?"

"I must never offend Nuliajuk or Nârssuk.

"I must never offend the souls of animals. or a to'nraq so that it will strike me with sickness.

"When hunting and wandering inland I must as often as I can make offerings to animals that I hunt, or to dead who can help me, or to lifeless things, especially stones or rocks, that are to have offerings for some reason or other.

"I must make my own soul as strong as I can, and for the rest seek strength and support in all the power that lies in the name.

"I must observe my forefathers' rules of life in hunting customs and taboo, which are nearly all directed against the souls of dead people or dead animals.

"I must gain special abilities or qualities through amulets.

"I must try to get hold of magic words or magic songs that either give hunting luck or are protective.

"If I cannot manage in spite of all these precautions, and suffer want or sickness, I must seek help from the shamans whose mission it is to be the protectors of mankind against all the hidden forces and dangers of life."

The sea spirit Nuliajuk, the mother of the sea beasts.

Once in times long past people left the settlement at Qingmertôq in Sherman Inlet. They were going to cross the water and had made rafts of kayaks tied together. They were many and were in haste to get away to new hunting grounds. And there was not much room on the rafts they tied together.

At the village there was a little girl whose name was Nuliajuk. She jumped out on to the raft together with the other boys and girls, but no one cared about her, no one was related to her, and so they seized her and threw her into the water. In vain she tried to get hold of the edge of the raft; they cut her fingers off, and lo! as she sank to the bottom the stumps of her fingers became alive in the water and bobbed up round the raft like seals. That was how the seals came. But Nuliajuk herself sank to the bottom of the sea. There she