n it was marked and turned
loose in the sea to decoy other whales. But the natives of Inchaun, an
adjoining village, caught and killed the marked whale, which was scaring
away all their fish. The Inchaun people were thereupon attacked by the
Whalen men, who slaughtered every soul in their village. There is no
doubt that this tribal conflict did take place some time during the
eighteenth century, but I cannot say whether the murder of the marked
whale was the real cause of the battle.

The Tchuktchis appeared to have no religion, and I never saw any
ceremony performed suggestive of a belief in a Supreme Being, although
good and evil spirits are believed to exist, and when I was at
Oumwaidjik, sacrifices of seal and walrus meat were often thrown into
the sea by the medicine men to abate its fury. Three men who died at
Whalen during our visit were clad after death in their best deerskins
and carried some distance away from the settlement, where I believe they
were eventually devoured by the dogs. Several natives told me that a man
who dies a violent death ensures eternal happiness, but that an easy
dissolution generally means torment in the next world, which shows that
the Tchuktchi has some belief in a future state. The theory that a
painful death meets with spiritual compensation probably accounts for
the fact that loss of life is generally regarded here with utter
indifference. A ghastly ceremony I once witnessed at Oumwaidjik is a
proof of this. It was called the _Kamitok_, in other words the
sacrifice, with the full consent, of the aged and useless members of the
community. When a man's powers have decreased to a depreciable extent
from age, accident, or disease, a family council is held and a day and
hour is fixed for the victim's departure for another world. The most
curious feature of the affair is the indifference shown by the doomed
one, who takes a lively interest in the preliminaries of his own
execution. The latter is generally preceded by a feast where seal and
walrus meat are greedily devoured and whisky is consumed until all are
intoxicated. After a while the executioner, usually a near relative of
the victim, steps forward, and placing his right foot against the back
of the condemned, quickly strangles him with a walrus thong. Or perhaps
he is shot with a Winchester rifle, this being the usual mode of
despatching a friend who has asked another to put him out of the world
on account, perhaps, of some trifli