SEDNA. The concept of an owner, or master, of the animals appears in many hunting and fishing societies. For the Inuit (Eskimo) of Canada and Greenland, for whom sealing was of vital importance, this powerful being was the mistress of seals and other sea animals. Franz Boas, in his monograph about the Inuit on Baffin Island (1888), gave her name as Sedna, which probably means "the one down there." Other Inuit groups referred to the Sea Woman under different names, such as Nerrivik (Polar Inuit, "the place of the food") and Nuliajuk (Netsilik Inuit, "the lubricious one").

An origin myth tells how Sedna was once a girl who was thrown overboard from a vessel. While she tried to hang on, her fingers were cut off at the joints. She sank to the bottom of the sea, the segments of her fingers turning into sea mammals, and she became the...