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Updated: June 25, 2025
For a long time the Tupilak lay there beneath him, and looked at him, until there came this thought: "Why did he make me a Tupilak, when afterwards all the trouble was to come upon me?" Then it swam up and attacked the kayak, and the water was coloured red with blood as it ate him.
But when he put on his hunting coat ready to row out, the Tupilak thought: "Now we shall see if he disappears again." And just as he was getting into his kayak, he disappeared from sight. And at the end of that day also, Qujâvârssuk came home again, as was his custom, with a catch of two seal. Now by this time the Tupilak was fearfully hungry.
But Nukúnguasik, being afraid of the Tupilak, went away without trying to harm it. Now he rowed home, and there the many brothers were waiting in vain for the middle one to return. At last the day dawned, and still he had not come.
Maisanguaq saw Ootah struggle to release himself; then he saw the kayak tilt as the hunter was drawn, by the mighty impetus of the plunging sea-horse, into the water. He heard Ootah's cry saw the blood red waters seethe as they closed over him. In a brief interval the kayak righted itself it was empty. A murmur of dismay rose from the others. "The tupilak! the tupilak!"
Again it tried to get a little farther, seeing that the bird appeared not to heed it at all, but then suddenly the bird turned and bit a hole just above its flipper. And this was very painful, so that the Tupilak floundered about with pain, and floundered about till it came right out into the water.
Of these also they kept nothing for themselves until the second hunting. Now when the ice was gone, then that old man we have told about before, he put life into the Tupilak, and said to it then: "Go out now, and eat up Qujâvârssuk." The Tupilak paddled out after him, but Qujâvârssuk had already reached the shore, and was about to carry up his kayak on to the land, with a catch of two seals.
But a Tupilak can only eat men, and therefore it now thought thus: "Next time, I will go up on land and eat him there." Then it swam over towards land, and as the shore was level, it moved swiftly, so as to come well up.
However, he put out with quick powerful strokes, and with a sense of anticipated triumph, for he was confident that the magician by his necromancy had created in the depths of the sea a tupilak, or artificial walrus, which should attack Ootah. He knew it might upset Ootah's kayak and cause him to be drowned.
It came up there, and went to the passage way, and there was a big black bird, sitting there eating something. The Tupilak thought: "That is a fortunate being, which can sit and eat." Then it tried to get up over the walls at the back part of the house, by taking hold of the grass in the turf blocks. But when it got there, the bird's food was the only thing it saw.
I shall create a tupilak, and from the hands of Sipsu it shall carry destruction to Ootah on the sea. Yah-hah-hah!" He laughed crazily. Continuing his chant he constructed of the bones a crude likeness to an animal skeleton. Over this he sprinkled a handful of dried turf.
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