Page:The Netsilik Eskimos (1931).djvu/281

In her house Nulia juk is surrounded by a lot of frightful beings. Just inside the entrance to her house passage sits kataum inua, the ruler of the passage, who keeps an exact record of all the breaches of taboo committed by mankind up on earth. Everything he sees and hears he passes on to Nuliajuk, and he tries in every possible way to scare the shamans who want to go in to her, so that they will abandon their intention of mollifying her.

A long way in the passage itself there is a big black dog, and he too keeps watch to see that none but the greatest shamans, of whom he is afraid, get into the house.

Nuliajuk herself lives with Isarrataitsoq: "the one with no wings, or the one with no arms" — a woman, but nobody knows who she is. She has the same husband as Nuliajuk, and he is a little sea scorpion.

A child, too, lives with Nuliajuk: she is called Ungâq: "the one who screams like a child"; it is a baby that was once stolen from a sleeping mother when her husband was out hunting at the breathing holes.

This is all we know of Nulia juk, the sea spirit, who gives seals to mankind, it is true, but who would much rather that mankind, from whom she once received no pity when she lived on earth, perished too.

This is the commonest tradition describing the origin of Nuliajuk. There are some, however, who believe that Nuliajuk is the same as the woman who married a dog and afterwards became the first mother of the white men and the Indians. Ashamed at having been a party to the murder of her own father she threw herself into the sea, went to the bottom, and built a house there inside a bubble. It is her husband, the dog, that guards the house so that no one can get in to her when she is angry.

As this version is represented by such an authority as Nakasuk I have included it here. On the other hand the story of Qaqugluk, the storm bird, was not connected with the sea spirit as among the Iglulingmiut.

The story goes that a father one day in anger said this to his daughter:

"You won't have a husband. I wish you had a dog for a husband!"