East and south of the Mackenzie delta the Eskimo tell of a Supreme Goddess, Nuliayok, who was once a coy maiden and refused to marry a mortal.  Wooed by a gull, she accompanied the bird to an inland home, to find instead of her dreams of delight a nest of sticks and rotten fish on a high-hung ledge.  Jostled by the other fulmars, or gulls, who tried to push her off the rocks, she sent for her father.  In the night-time he came and sailed with her over the water in an oomiak.  The deserted fulmar-bridegroom, taking a leaf out of Prospero’s book, raised a storm.  The father, to lighten the craft and propitiate the storm-spirit at the same time, threw the poor bride over-board, and cut off her fingers as she clung to the boat.  As the four fingers dropped into the sea they changed respectively into beluga the white whale, nutchook the common seal, oog-zook the big seal, and ibyl the walrus.  After thus giving origin to the four great sea-friends of the Innuit, the Goddess Nuliayok let go the boat and went to the world beneath the sea, where she now lives in a whalebone house with a dog for husband.  She cannot stand erect, but hunches over the ground, holding one foot under her as a baby does who has not yet learned to walk.

It is to Nuliayok that the spirits of sea-animals go after staying three days by their dead bodies; and this is the reason why the Eskimo breaks the eyes of a killed seal.  He does not want it to witness the indignity of seeing its own body denuded of its skin.  This too is the raison d’etre of the ceremonies which every Eskimo punctiliously performs in connection with the animal he kills.  Each animal has a soul or spirit to be offended or placated; if pleased, the spirit of the dead animal communicates with its living kin, who in turn will deem it an honour to be killed by such considerate folk as the ceremonious Innuit.  Round the igloo fire we heard another tradition of Nuliayok.  The Goddess of the Sea once gave birth to a litter of white and red puppies.  These she put into two little water-tight baby-boots and set them floating before a north wind.  The puppies landed on southern shores and became the white race and the red race, the Europeans and the Indians.  The Innuit, of course, had lived from the beginning.

We arrogate to ourselves the term of “white race,” but if these Eskimo were to wash themselves daily (which they do not do yearly) they would be as white as we are.  They have fleshy intelligent faces and eyes with more than a suggestion of the almond-slant of the Oriental.  The idea occurs to us that the full appearance of the cheeks of the women is more likely to be caused by the exercise of chewing skins and boots than by an accumulation of fatty tissue.  The men are distinguished by the thin, straggling growth of beard and moustache which adorns their Asiatic progenitors.  The labrets of the men are offset by the long pendant earrings of the women, which are made from H.B.  Co. beads