People of the Deer

by Farley Mowat

  It is permissible to appeal to Kaila, yet there is no implicit belief that Kaila will hear or respond to prayers couched in the midge-like voices of men. This quality of impersonality, of detachment, in this god of the Ihalmiut strengthens the majesty of his power. Kaila is no simple creation of men’s imaginations shackled to the whims and fancies of human minds. Kaila, to the People, is an essence. Kaila is not spoken of with fear, nor yet with love. Kaila is. That is enough. What man may do or not do is of no more direct concern to Kaila than the comings and goings of ants under the moss. Kaila is not a moral force, because the Ihalmiut have no need of a spiritual magistrate to administer the moral law. Kaila is essential power. He is the wind over the plains; he is the sky and the flickering lights of the sky. Kaila is the power in running water and in the motion of falling snow. He is nothing—he is all things.

  The amorphous quality of Kaila makes it difficult for an outlander to understand the Ihalmiut’s real concept of their god, but the lesser deities associated with Kaila are more readily comprehensible. Of these, the most important are Hekenjuk the sun, and Taktik the moon. Both are real in the same sense that the world is real, and it has happened that shamans in trances have visited Taktik and found themselves in a land not unlike the Barrens.

  However, though they have a concrete existence, both Taktik and Hekenjuk exist also as primeval forces which are manifestations of Kaila. This dual concept allows for the parable of Hekenjuk being released from his imprisonment deep in the bowels of the earth by Amow the wolf; and this parable is no more difficult to reconcile with modern religious thought than is the parable of Adam and Eve. In fact, most of the spiritual beliefs dredged up by anthropologists from the folklore of native peoples are nothing more than parables. This point is worth remembering when we tend to pass superficial judgments on the religions of native races.

  The demiworld of spirits, ghosts and devils is much easier to understand. These spirit beings are either devoted to the cause of good or evil or to an admixture of the two. For the sake of clarity I have divided them quite arbitrarily into three groups. The first of these, the supernatural entities who devote themselves to evil, are fantastic and often horrible apparitions, which are in some ways no more than elaborations of the ultimate evil in man or the ultimate destructive power in animals. Those with a human form kill by human means, but those that resemble animals destroy by means of teeth and talons.

  Of those evil spirits the foremost is Paija, an immense female devil. She is a giantess who has but a single leg, springing from her generative organs, and who is clothed only in flowing black hair. Paija stalks abroad in the winter nights, and her single track is sometimes found in the new snow, an immense, twisted impression of a human foot.

  No man can tell you much of Paija, except from hearsay, for to see Paija is to die with the sight of her frozen in the mind, forever beyond the reach of words. I once heard of a man called Jatu who lived near the Hudson Bay coast and who met Paija. One winter night he was coming home from his trap line, a blizzard blowing in his face. The swirling clouds of gray snow were like shadows seen by the light of a misted moon on a black night. Jatu had reached his igloo and was pulling up to a halt when those of his family who were inside the snow house heard him scream above the whine of the wind. He cried out a single word before his screams ended, and that word was “Paija!”

  It was hours before anyone dared venture out to see what had happened. Then a brother of Jatu, who wore an amulet belt and was something of a shaman, took his spear and went out into the night. He found Jatu standing by his sled. The snow was drifting steadily so that it had already risen above Jatu’s knees—and he was dead. Frozen solidly there, yet he still stood and his open eyes stared into the smoke of the drifts—and in his eyes was the image of Paija. So the brother of Jatu came as close as any man ever has to seeing Paija and remaining alive, and he saw only the horror reflected in the eyes of the dead man in the snow.

  This is a well-known story, and both Jatu and his brother were well-known men along the river where I heard this tale.

  Paija is the most feared of all devils, yet she is but one of many. Another of these unpleasant beings is a troll with a huge and hairless belly which drags on the ground. The tips of this devil’s fingers are armed with wicked knives which grow from the flesh. He is said to lie in wait for men in the high hills of the land and to tear the flesh from the body of a victim with such exquisite deliberation that the victim lives for many hours.

  Another, called Wenigo, is a notorious cannibal who haunts the forests. Wenigo is also known to the northern Indians and he is the most feared spirit in their land, where he is called Wendigo. There is no doubt that these two devils are one and the same, and this is very interesting, for it illustrates one of many affinities between the culture of the Indians and the Ihalmiut, who are blood enemies of each other.

  These three unpleasant demons, like dozens of others in this group, serve a useful purpose. Wenigo was a very powerful influence in dissuading the Ihalmiut from venturing deeply into the timbered areas, where they might have been massacred by the Idthen Eldeli. Paija keeps men from making unnecessary journeys in the winter darkness, when the blizzards are awake, and that is a good thing, for many men have not returned from such dangerous journeys. As for the troll of the hills, he too acts as a deterrent to those who would try to penetrate the dangerous rock heaps where he lives.

  His value was demonstrated to me once when I took Ootek with me for a trip into the Ghost Hills near Windy Bay. Ootek was loath to go, but rather than admit his fear he came along. We made progress only with the most heartbreaking efforts, for the overburden of immense glacial rocks was so heavy that horizontal travel was worse than mountain climbing. We leaped from rock to rock, and even with rubber-soled boots I took several painful tumbles. Ootek had deerskin kamiks on his feet which gave no grip at all on the smooth and moss-encrusted stone. After two hours, in which we had gone only three miles, Ootek slipped and caught his leg between two rocks.

  He did not cry out with the pain, but tears were in his eyes when I reached him and he could hardly bear to stand. With Ootek limping painfully, supporting himself with a rifle for a crutch, it took us seven hours to retrace our path. Had he been alone, Ootek would still be in that vicious labyrinth of shattered rocks, and the troll might well have claimed another victim. As it was, and with all the help I could give him, he barely made the shore of Windy River without collapsing. And all he was suffering from was a badly bruised ankle!

  Whether they exist or not—and I will not argue the point—the demons do represent manifestations of real and potential evils, and so they are not without value.

  The second of my arbitrary groups includes those unpredictable spirits who may be benevolent, neutral, or actively evil—more or less as the mood strikes them. Of these, the most interesting is Apopa. Apopa is the Puck of the Barrens, a little dwarf devil shaped like a man, but grossly deformed. He plays malicious tricks on the People, but not all of his trickery is completely objectionable and so the Ihalmiut regard him with tolerance unless he carries his jokes a little too far.

  The trick Apopa played on me is still something of a puzzle.

  One afternoon in the fall of my second year in the country, Andy and I were sitting quietly in the cabin at Windy Bay, drinking tea and chatting. Then without warning the little shack was violently shaken, much as a rat is shaken in the jaws of an angry dog. We both jumped to our feet and rushed out of doors, certain an earthquake had struck us. But as we stood on the bank of the river, we could see nothing amiss. A small herd of deer rested contentedly by the far shore, and the September day was drowsy and quiet.

  Baffled and a little uneasy, we went back to our tea. But we had barely seated ourselves when the shaking was repeated! Tin mugs bounced off the table and stretching-boards fell with a great clatter from the rafters. This time we were thoroughly excited. Once again we ran outside,
and again we could find nothing to explain the sudden vibrations in the cabin.

  Some Ihalmiut who had come down for a visit were camped near at hand, and in search of an explanation of the strange tremors I walked up to their tents and described what had happened. They looked at me quite blankly, and showed no signs of comprehension. In some exasperation I asked if they had not felt the vibrations too, and I even suggested that they were playing a trick on the white men. They only looked more puzzled than ever. Then Ohoto brightened a little.

  “Kakumee is camped just over the hill,” he said. “Perhaps he will know what happened, for it sounds like the work of a devil.”

  I went on to Kakumee’s tent, and when I put my question to him he answered at once—almost as if he had been expecting my visit and knew its reason.

  “It was Apopa,” he told me. “Apopa—the mischievous one. He flew over this place, for I saw the air shake as he passed, and so I knew he was near. No doubt he glanced down at your igloo and saw the two Kablunait drinking their tea. Apopa would laugh to see such a ludicrous thing, for his sense of humor is keen. So you see, when he laughed he shook the walls and the floor, and that was what you felt.”

  That was that. The matter was settled, and the Innuit paid no more attention to it, except to chuckle a little at the exquisite sense of humor of Apopa, who was so uproariously amused by the mere sight of white men. Well, I suppose that Apopa too has his value, for a sense of humor is a hard thing to retain in that land.

  Apart from Apopa and one or two other particular devils, there is one large group in my second category of spirits that can be collectively referred to as the Inua. They comprise not only the actual ghosts of dead men but also, to some extent, the spirits of such inanimate objects as rivers, rocks and plants. The Inua come in two sizes: Inua mikikuni, the little ghosts; and Inua angkuni, the great ghosts. Inua of both sizes vary from active hostility to active benevolence toward men. The dangerous Inua are those who come from the land of the dead, because of failure to give them proper burial, because of some crime they have done, or because of evil which was in their hearts when they died. These spirits are not content to remain in the land of the dead. Instead they return, to pass through the lands of the living, and they may come in the actual guise of a man. They are fond of the rough hill country, and so are another good reason for giving the rocky hills a wide berth. However, they do not restrict themselves to the hills, but may come wandering over the plains in search of a living being whom, by treachery or through terror, they can possess and thus manage to return fully into the land of the living.

  One of my most vivid experiences in the Barrens was when an Ino—the singular of Inua—chose to attack my song-cousin, Ootek. Here is the story just as it happened. I did not see the Ino myself; nevertheless I am convinced that as far as Ootek was concerned, this Ino existed in an unpleasantly material sense.

  Again the incident took place at Windy Cabin, but this time in June, when there are no nights but only the coming and going of twilight. It was very late, and I was trying to catch up on my notes while Andy was occupied with some little task at the back of the cabin. Ootek was staying with us, and this evening he was busy carving a new pipe from a piece of black spruce.

  Casually, Ootek glanced up at the window to see if the moon had risen yet. What he actually saw caused him to explode into a perfect frenzy of terror. He shrieked like a woman in childbirth, leaped to his feet, and shot out of the door of the cabin.

  Andy and I were both so startled by this inexplicable eruption of our midnight quiet that it was some time before we could get up steam enough to see what had happened to Ootek. When we did move, we found him standing near the doorstep, gibbering wildly and staring at the slopes of the Ghost Hills. He tried to tell us what he had seen, but nothing came from his mouth except garbled noises and a thin trickle of saliva that ran down his trembling chin. Andy pulled him into the cabin, while I had a look around, a cocked rifle in my hands. Nothing moved except for a flock of late ducks which came whistling down the river.

  When I went in, Ootek was squatting on the floor. He had recovered some of his self-control and was able to make us understand that he had seen an Ino—an Ino wearing complete winter clothing—that had fixed Ootek with the eyes of a dead man. Now Ootek was certain this spirit had determined to possess him, and he was not unnaturally terrified at the prospect.

  We told him he had seen no more than the flicker of wings as a late bird went by the window, but Ootek would have none of it. At length it became obvious to us that this was no imaginary terror which gripped him. So we changed our tactics and I offered to mix up a particularly powerful Kabluna potion that would keep the Ino away. Ootek’s gratitude was pathetic. I went to the table, poured some harmless chemicals into a vial, then added a scrap of paper on which I had written—with my usual lack of imagination—the first line of “God Save The King.”

  When I brought it to Ootek, Andy had just finished giving the Eskimo a rough physical examination. He told me, with a worried note in his voice, that Ootek’s pulse was nearly twice as fast as it should be. In addition the Eskimo was sweating so heavily that his clothing was soaked. He seemed to have all the symptoms of severe physical shock, even to a shortness of breath.

  I handed him the vial, and he grasped it with a pitiful eagerness, but the reaction was hardly what we had hoped for. His eyes suddenly rolled up until the pupils were hidden. He gasped once, fell over on his side, and his limbs kicked uncontrollably, while his breathing seemed to stop completely and his lips began to turn blue!

  At this point I suspect we were sweating as freely as Ootek, for we were not looking forward to explaining the presence of his corpse to his friends when next they visited our camp. And a corpse he would certainly have become had not Andy, acting on pure intuition, pried open the clenched jaws to find that Ootek had literally swallowed his tongue! My friend got his hand bitten, but he managed to crook a finger around the tongue and restore it to its proper position. It was bad luck for the Ino, who had come within an ace of finishing Ootek completely.

  Ootek recovered quickly after that. He was almost normal again in an hour, for his faith in the charm we had given him was boundless, despite its first effects. Later on I asked him if he had ever had a seizure like this before, since I suspected it might have been some sort of epileptic fit. But he swore that this was the first, and he intimated that he would be quite happy if it was also the last. I have no doubt his condition was simply one of severe shock, brought on by a serious fright. By an Ino? Well, whether it was a bona fide ghost or not, its effects were only too real.

  Ootek sewed our vial into his amulet belt, where it hung as a mute reproach to me during the rest of my time in the country—for I, who take a dim view of people who perpetrate superstitious humbug on the natives, was now guilty of the same crime.

  The amulet belt brings me to the last of my three groups of spirits. These include the Tornrait, whom we have met earlier, and who are the chief aides of men in their struggles with the elements and the unfriendly devils; and a lesser breed of good spirits who have no inclusive name and who are perhaps better described simply as forces, rather than as supernatural entities.

  These latter beings are attached to a man by virtue of an amulet he has acquired, preferably in his youth. When a child is born, his parents at once attempt to enlist certain animal forces to aid him through life. The amulets, or tokens of the chosen spirits, should preferably be “things of the earth.” Thus even small insects are believed to be efficacious, for they come from the earth. Beetles and bugs are thought to have a specific value as defenses against the more gruesome trolls and dwarfs who live under the ground. Amongst the other charms worn at the amulet belt are the talons and beaks of birds, the dried skins of small mammals such as weasels and lemmings, the teeth and the ears of larger mammals, such as wolves and foxes and in some cases even the scales of fishes. I should add
that man does not necessarily acquire the physical attributes of these things. A weasel tapek, or charm, for instance, does not endow the owner with the strength or speed of the weasel, but acts instead as a specific deterrent against some form of evil. Halo, one of the Ihalmiut who claims rather extensive supernatural favors, wears a miniature parka and a pair of tiny kamiks on his amulet belt, and these ensure him against accidental death from freezing or drowning.

  It is best for the owner to acquire amulets by purchase or as gifts. The more distant their source, the greater their power. Halo purchased a seal-tooth amulet from the Padliermiut to the east, and they in turn had obtained it from the Dhaeomiut on the coast. The tooth came a long way, gaining power as it came, and its ultimate purchase price, when Halo bought it, was one new kayak! The value of a good amulet is not insignificant.

  Probably connected with the amulets are the particular tabus called pewhitu. These tabus are laid on a child at birth, and they usually forbid him some specific form of food, or they may forbid him to kill a certain species of animal. Thus Ohoto is forbidden to eat the flesh of the great northern pike; Anoteelik may not shoot nor eat a loon; Hekwaw must never touch the liver of deer, and Tablu must not kill a lemming. The penalty for disobedience is the possibility that the lawbreaker may become an Ino after death. The practical value of these tabus is purely disciplinary, as are many of our religious prohibitions.

  As for Tornrait, they are not to be acquired so easily as are the amulet spirits, for they are the most powerful forces for good in the Barrens. They are positive beings who not only defend their owners—or rather, their friends—from evil, but who can attack actively and accomplish great things. Tornrait may be acquired in a variety of ways, although usually a man must seek them out by enduring physical hardships. So the shamans expose themselves to the weather, to hunger and thirst until they fall into a trance. Then, and then only the really great Tornrait appear, and a struggle between the wills of the man and of a particular Tornrak ensues. If the man wins, he secures the lifetime services of that Tornrak. If he loses, he seldom returns from his ordeal.