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- 3) Traditions
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3. TRADITIONS.
As an introduction the Ethnographical Memoranda just mentioned
contain two traditional tales, of which the first one shows a striking
resemblance to some Indian tales. In the beginning, it says, people
had heads like ravens, and all the world was wrapped in gloom,
with no change of day and night. At that time there lived a
powerful chieftain on the top of the highest peak. Suspended on
the roof of his hut were two balls, which were considered very
precious and carefully guarded. One day the guards being asleep,
some children knocked down the balls with a stick. They rolled
out through the door of the hut and down the mountain side.
People rushed after them and a struggle ensued for their possession,
which ended in breaking them. Light sprang from one and
darkness from the other. This was the beginning of day and night. —
In the other tale we certainly recognise the Greenland myth of sun
and moon, but not so completely rendered as in one from Point
Barrow.
The rather puzzling similarity mentioned in Vol. 1 p. 20, of a
Samojedic and an Eskimo tradition certainly as yet seems too
isolated to be of any weight in questions about a common origin, but
still it reminds of laying more stress on the study of the relation
between the arctic folk-lore of the old and that of the new world
The Greenland version of the said tale (Poul Egede: Efterretninger,
p. 145) says: A reindeer hunter observing a crowd of women bathing
in a lake, stole the clothes of one among them and got her for
his wife, while the others by means of their clothing were
transformed into geese. His wife got a son, but later on both of them
escaped likewise in the shape of birds. He then set out on a
journey in search of them and met with an old man, who was
hewing a piece of timber. He wiped up between his legs with
the chips, and threw them in the river where they turned to salmons.
The old man said: From what side doest thou come? if from
behind, thou mayst live, but if from before, thou must die. He
answered: From behind, I am looking for my wife and son. The
old man then made a salmon out of a large chip and bade him
sit down upon it, but with the eyes closed. The fish then conveyed
him to his wife and son.
The Central Eskimo, according to Dr. Boas relate the story
thus: A man who wished to marry, went out in search of a wife.
He found a lake, in which many geese were swimming which could
be transformed into women by putting on their boots, which were
left on shore. The man here got a wife by stealing boots. The
rest its much like the Greenland tale. Only the salmonmaker allows
him to approach from before and not from behind; he polishes the
chips in order to make them slippery, and such like.
Finally we have the Samojede story (M. A. Castrén: Ethnologiska
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