Myths and Legends of British North America/Beliefs (Eastern Eskimo)
BELIEFS
Eastern Eskimo
NO MAN can ever go into the Sky Land until he is dead; so all the people say. The sky that we see is a hard, blue stone, built up over the earth just as the igloo is built with snow, rounding, over the Eskimo family. But where the land and sea meet are high precipices which slope inward so that no one can climb up in the Sky Land. This blue dome is very cold, and sometimes it is covered with crystals of frost which fall as snow, and then the sky becomes clear.
The clouds are large bags of water, owned by two old women who push them across the sky. The thunder is their voice and the lightning their torch. When water leaks out of the seams of the bags, it rains on earth. If a spark of lightning falls upon anyone, he has to go to the Ghost Land.
At each corner of the Earth World there lives a mighty being, with a very large head. When any one of these breathes, the wind blows. Some breathe violent storms and others summer breezes. Each wind spirit has many powerful servants.
At the edge of the Earth World, and beyond the precipices, is a great abyss. A narrow pathway leads across it to a land of brightness and plenty and abundance and warmth. To this place none but Raven and the dead can go. When spirits wish to speak to people on earth, they make a whistling noise and people answer only in whispers. Auroras are the torches held in the hands of spirits to guide the newly dead over the abyss.