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Updated: June 16, 2025
And from that time on he learned every day; but the pronunciation was as varied as the workaday vocabulary, and it was an unending task. It proceeded with many interruptions from the Angekoks, who tried more than once to bewitch him, but finally gave it up, convinced that he was a great medicine-man himself, and therefore invulnerable.
Some of these angekoks, no doubt, were partly self-deceivers, believing to some extent the deceptions which they practised, and desiring more or less the welfare of their dupes; but others were thorough, as well as clever, rogues, whose sole object was self-interest.
When at length they became convinced that Egede knew more than their Angekoks, they came to him with the request that he would abolish winter. Very likely they thought that one who had such knowledge of the hot place ought to have influence enough with the keeper of it to obtain this favor. It was not an easy task, from any point of view, to which he had put his hands.
No one thought his conduct strange, or sought to disturb him, for angekoks belong to a privileged class. But think as hard and as profoundly as he could, no way of escape presented itself until the evening was far advanced, and then, without an appreciable effort of thought, a door seemed to fly open, and that door was Ippegoo. "Yes," thought the wizard; "that will do. Nothing could be better.
If they did, angekoks would only have to listen to all they had to tell on every subject, and there would be an end of it; they would have no occasion to use their judgments at all. No; the torngaks tell what they choose by degrees. Mine told me to leave my tribe, and visit the Kablunets. On the way he told me more, but not all."
But before that they tried to foment a regular mutiny, the colony being by that time well under way, and Egede had to arrest and punish the leaders. The natives naturally clung to them, and when Egede had mastered their language and tried to make clear that the Angekoks deceived them when they pretended to go to the other world for advice, they demurred. "Did you ever see them go?" he asked.
"Well, have you seen this God of yours of whom you speak so much?" was their reply. When Egede spoke of spiritual gifts, they asked for good health and blubber: "Our Angekoks give us that." Hell-fire was much in theological evidence in those days, but among the Eskimos it was a failure as a deterrent. They listened to the account of it eagerly and liked the prospect.
"I am but an average sort of sailor, and can't boast of very much education, though I have a smattering; but we have men in my country who do seem to know 'most everything wise men they are. We call them philosophers; you call 'em angekoks. Here, won't you go in for a steak or a rib? If you were as hungry as I am, you'd be only too glad and thankful to have the chance."
Yet this house, notwithstanding our senses of seeing and smelling were most woefully offended, in such frightful weather, was of equal welcome to us as the greatest palace." When Haven here began to speak of the Saviour, the Angekoks began to exercise their enchantments.
"Then you don't believe in angekoks?" asked Rooney. "No," replied the Eskimo earnestly; "I don't. I think they are clever scoundrels clever fools. And more, I don't believe in torngaks or any other spirits." "In that you are wrong," said Rooney. "There is one great and good Spirit, who made and rules the universe."
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