Torngarsoak, a great Torngak, created the first man, who found a wife and fathered the Eskimo. In one tale, puppies set adrift became intermediaries bringing Indians and white people to the world. Another story recounts a woman who married a dog and was cast into the sea by her father, where her severed fingers transformed into sea creatures, and she became a spirit beneath the ocean.
Source:
The Labrador Eskimo
by E.W. Hawkes
[Canada, Department of Mines]
Geological Survey, Memoir 91
Anthropological Series no. 14
Ottawa, 1916
► Themes of the story
Creation: It narrates the origins of humans and animals, detailing how the first man was created by Torngarsoak and how various creatures came into existence.
Transformation: The tale describes metamorphoses, such as a woman’s severed fingers becoming sea creatures and a man turning back into a dog.
Supernatural Beings: The involvement of Torngarsoak, a great Torngak (spirit), highlights interactions between humans and divine entities.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about Inuit peoples
In the north lives Torngarsoak, the great Torngak; he made man from nothing. The man travelled a long way, and found a woman. They married, and from them sprang all the Eskimo. One day Torngarsoak set some puppies adrift in a pair of old boots. The puppies drifted off in different directions. Finally one returned bringing with it the Indians; very much later the other puppy returned as a man, bringing people with white skins in a big umiak. They were the white people. The man then turned back into a dog.
There was a woman who married the dog. Her father was ashamed of her and took her in his umiak to a lonely island.
► Continue reading…
When out to sea he threw her overboard. She seized hold of the side of the boat, but he cut off her fingers with his knife. The thumb became the walrus, the first finger the seal, and the middle finger the white bear.
The woman sank, and now lives at the bottom of the sea.
Another version:
One day an Eskimo was chopping down a tree. He noticed that the chips that fell into the water became water animals and the chips that fell on the land became land animals. That is how the animals were created.
Before this time the earth had been covered with water. Finally the water went away, and the dry land appeared. The seaweed and kelp became the grass and trees.
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Dreamtime Whispers 