There were many people in Alaska when the Second Disaster came to the earth. This time it was a great flood. Water covered all of the land. Before the time of the flooding, four Eskimo families found out how to survive and they lived through the Second Disaster.
This is how it happened: The earth had real good weather from the middle of the winter time. It was now early summer. The Eskimos were beginning to wonder: “Are we going to have a real good summer, or does this mean we are going to have lots of bad weather?”
One night a man called Beeueoak dreamed a terrible dream. He was in great terror. His life was in danger. In the dream he was standing on the very tip of a high mountain top. When he looked around there were no other mountains. There was no land around about except where he stood. There was water as far as he could see. He was alone. He got so scared he called out, “Is there anyone to help me out of this bad trouble I have?”
A voice answered his call. He looked around. He saw a man. That man was the exact same image of himself. He was standing on top of the water. The image of Beeueoak said, “Go to your people. Tell all of them there will be a great flood coming.”
Beeueoak woke up. It was the most miserable dream he had ever had. He told his people about the horrible dream. They just laughed at him. They said to each other, “How can water flood over all this land with the big mountains like we have? We will have lots of safe places if there is a flood. How can a man believe only a dream?”
Beeueoak told the people he saw himself standing on the water. He told them when his image talked to him it seemed like he was talking from another place. He told everyone about the man-image and his advice, “He told me to tell all you people to build a raft and to prepare for a big flood.”
Beeueoak said to three of the men who listened to him, “We must follow my dream. We must build a raft of logs. It must be big enough so waves of the storms will not reach on top of it. It has to stand a high sea. We must use big tree logs and bind it with tree roots. Roots are the strongest binders there are in the world. We must start to build it at once. When the flooding comes this raft will be our only safe place for a long time.”
The men agreed to follow Beeueoak’s dream. They made plans to build the raft. They told others to do the same things they were doing. But, the others did not believe the flood was really coming.
The four men moved to where there were big trees. All four men walked in the trees to find the tallest, thickest timber. They found a place where there were lots of big fir trees around. All they had to do was cut them down. They cut some trees for going across. Then they cut some more to lay on top to make the raft high and strong. They moved the timbers very close to where they were going to work. Then the men cut plenty more trees to make the raft big enough for their four families.
The men did much hunting while the logs were drying. They were bringing in lots of meat and fish. They hung all of this to dry. The womenfolk gathered lots of leaves, roots, and berries and put them away to eat later. They were preparing for the flood time when there would be no hunting for a long time.
The women made caribou skin covers for tents. The men pulled lots of roots from the trees. Some of those roots were twelve feet long or more. They put the roots in water so they would not dry out. They had to stock up lots of roots to bind the timbers for such a big raft. They dried many skins of all kinds from large and small animals. The men cut most of the skins for lashing ropes and tied them between the trees to dry. These strips would make the large and small ropes for lashing things to the raft.
Finally, the men began to build the raft.
In mid-summer it began to rain. It rained more and more and the water rose up. The four men began working harder on the raft. They told the other people to build rafts too. Those others just laughed. They said to those four men, “This water raising will not come up to cover the earth. There are many mountains around to make a safe place in high water.”
The four men did not stop. They still kept building the raft. They were working to bind the timbers together with long roots. The raft was nearly ready. Finally the great raft stood on the land. The men put caribou skin tents on the top. Each family had a tent. The womenfolk helped their men. Soon they had all the dried meats and fish and the other foods on the raft. They tied them on real good so the stormy weather would not wash them away.
For many days after the raft was done it sat high up on dry land. Pretty soon the water began to reach it. Very soon it flowed around the whole thing. The storms were getting worse all the time. Big waves began breaking into white caps. The raft began to float safely on the water. The four families were living in their tents on the raft. The people began to worry because of all those rough storms. Still, the raft was holding together good. Nothing had happened to them yet and they could still see some land.
Soon all the earth was swallowed up by water. There were no mountains. The people could see no land anywhere. Lots of human bodies floated around the raft. Bodies of animals floated everywhere. Lots of birds were flying around looking for a place to sit. Many were sitting on floating wood. Some birds sat on top of the floating bodies of animals and humans.
After many months the rain stopped. The people were still floating on the water. The blowing wind stopped, too. Still everything was flooded. There was no sign of land. At last the weather changed. It was calm everywhere.
Beeueoak and the others saw something they had never seen before. No one had ever heard of such a thing. It was a rainbow. They pointed to it and talked about it. They were kind of afraid, too. Every day, after the calm came, the rainbow appeared. It had many colors in it. The people decided it was a sign the flood would go away.
Many days passed. The sun was warm and comfortable. One morning Beeueoak came out of his tent. It was calm and still. He looked around and saw the top of one mountain sticking out from all that water. It seemed good just to look at it.
Beeueoak called for the others to come and see. He said, “It is a sign the flood has stopped and the water is going down. If more and more of the earth appears it will mean the flood will leave. Things will go back to the way it was before.”
That night Beeueoak had another dream. He saw a great man looking down at him from the top of a mountain peak. This was a mighty and giant man. Beeueoak had never seen anyone like him. His voice came out like a roar.
The Voice said: “You will be a father of a great people for generation after generation. Prepare, and I will make you a man honored by your people. Your son, and your son’s sons will spread all over this country and live by the land. You have been through the Second Disaster. You saved your family and the families of others. Your wisdom and pride saved you and them. They will share with you in this land.”
In the morning Beeueoak told the others about his dream. He told them what the mighty man on the mountain peak said. He told them how the roaring voice had spoken and said that Beeueoak was to be honored for what he had done to help them all survive the Second Disaster.
Beeueoak said, “We will be given a plentiful land. We will be able to use every living thing in that place. When the land appears it will have many rivers, lakes, and trees. There will be lots of different creatures living there. They will use the land with us.
“There will be a new generation beginning. It will spread all over this land. We must tell them about their ancestors who survived the First Disaster when the sun and moon eclipsed. The new generations must know about Ekeuhnick and Seelameu. They must know about the Second Disaster. They must remember these things for their coming generations. They must obey the things our old people taught us. We must all remember and keep the customs of our ancestors and teach them to the new generations coming along. Our children will become many people in this land.”
The others thought about what Beeueoak said. They saw they would have to start a new life but they must still keep the customs of the generations before them. They saw they had a wise man among them in this Second Disaster time. It was his wisdom that saved them. They were the only survivors of the great flooding of their living place.
The water dropped down more and more and the land showed. It was like Beeueoak told them. The Second Disaster was over. The great flooding time had stopped. A new land appeared after the waters drained away. It was full of rivers and lakes. There were many fishes. There were alders and willows and big flat lands covered with moss and grasses. There were lots of birds, small animals, and large animals like caribou and bear.
Beeueoak and his people made homes on the land. Beeueoak was a wise leader and was respected for a long living time.
The Eskimos began to spread all over. They settled along the sea coasts. They moved apart from each other. Their way of talking began to change from each other. In different places the people began to speak different dialects of the Eskimo language. This happened even though they were not very much distance away from each other. Even so, they could still understand each other when they wanted to. This was true for people to talk to each other from where Pt. Barrow is to Cape Darby. They call their language Inupik.
Farther south the Eskimos got a different language that is hard for others to understand. This is true as far as past the mouth of the Yukon River to where the rivers come to the places where the Indians live. The Southern Eskimos call their language Yupik. The Aleut people on the islands have their own language and it is not much like Eskimo at all. The Eskimos of the North, even though they have different ways of saying things, can still talk to each other from Alaska clear over to the other side of Canada.
These changes all came after the terrible times of the Second Disaster. Our ancestors, Beeueoak’s people, were our Forefathers. The earth has not changed much since their time.
Beeueoak had seen a spirit who told him those who survived the Second Disaster would be the forefathers of a new generation. This was a mighty giant man with a roaring voice. Beeueoak was the first man to have a dream that told about the future and let him know what to do to help his people.
After the survivors of the Second Disaster settled down into the useful land, Beeueoak told his wife, “I am going out for a few days alone. I will be all by myself.” He left the others behind and went away.
The first evening he stayed in a place where there were no signs of men. There were only human bones left. He gathered all the pieces of a man together and laid them on a flat rock. He laid every bone where he thought was the right place for it to be. Finally, he was done. The skeleton seemed to be looking at him. Then Beeueoak made a fire for the evening near by those bones. Once in a while he would look at the skeleton’s head. It was almost in a sitting position on the rock. The head seemed to smile at him. Beeueoak thought, “He is one of those people that drowned in the flood.” Whenever he looked at the dead man’s skull, it smiled back at him.
All that long evening Beeueoak was trying to figure out, “How shall I find out the spirit of this man? There is a good question to answer, but there is no way to find out.” He saw it was a very hard question.
Beeueoak thought about it as he got ready to sleep. “Is there going to be an answer. Is there a spirit of this dead man?”
In the morning Beeueoak roamed around his campsite looking for more skeletons. Soon he found another person. He gathered up all the bones he could find. He looked very carefully so he wouldn’t leave any bones behind. He took all the pieces to his camp. He put all those bones together. He studied this skeleton. It looked different than the other one. He worked on the bones and studied the skeleton until noon-time. He put the two dead people side by side up on the flat rock.
When he finished, he looked at them and smiled. It seemed they smiled back at him. It looked as if they could only say something to him, he would find out the answer about their spirits. But they only seemed to smile, and there was no answer to his wish.
Once more Beeueoak examined the skeletons. The one he found that morning was smaller than the other. He thought about it. “This one,” he decided, “might be a woman.”
After lunch, Beeueoak wandered away from the campsite again, but in a different direction. He came to a stream. He sat down right close by the creek and began to think about those dead people. He sure wished he could find out if they had spirits and if he could be helpful to them. If he could talk to them he would follow their wishes. He saw that they had not been treated the right way for people after they die. If he could find out what to do, he could tell the others he left behind and they would know what to do with other bones of drowned people.
Beeueoak began to feel he must find out one way or another about the spirits of those bones. He began to have many ideas about the spirits. People would honor him if he could find the answer to his questions. He did not want to talk this over with the others or to ask them to help him find answers about the spirits. He thought, “I must do this alone. I must find out what spirits are and how to communicate with them. If others find out what spirits are they will try to contact them, too. Someone will find out sometime. I am the one who must succeed in finding the answers.”
Beeueoak built a fire and made his supper. He roasted some meat before it got real dark. He kept thinking away all through the long evening. After he ate, he laid down beside his fire while it was still burning. He put his hand under his head for a pillow and thought hard about how to find the spirits.
All at once Beeueoak went to sleep. He did not remember anything at all. Suddenly he woke up. He heard someone talking to another person. Without moving or opening his eyes, he laid there and listened to two people talk. He could tell clearly that one of them was a woman.
The woman said, “I miss one of my bones in my hand. It hurts.”
The man said, “I miss one of my ribs. It sure hurts me when I move a little.”
The woman answered, “It really hurts. I wish he could find the one missing bone of my hand.”
The man agreed, “I wish he could find my missing rib, too. If he could only find our missing bones we would feel better. How can we reward him if he does find them?”
The woman said, “I would talk to him, even though I am invisible.”
The man said, “Oh, I would do anything for him. I would contact him any time, or help him if he needed some help.”
The woman said, “I would help him, too, and do anything he wanted that I could do.”
Beeueoak by the fire thought, “I may be beginning to find the spirits of those bones. At least, voices are coming from them.”
Beeueoak did not move. He just laid there thinking about what he heard. “If only I can find the two missing bones…”
Beeueoak couldn’t sleep any more at all. He was getting so excited because this might be the beginning of the answer he wished for. If he could find the missing pieces, it might lead to finding the spirits.
Early in the morning, as soon as daylight began to come in the east, Beeueoak got up. He built a fire and ate some breakfast. After that he went right straight back to the place where he found the bones. He looked around very carefully. He was afraid some animal might have carried the missing bones somewhere that he could not find. There was some grass growing around. He knelt down and looked all around the roots of the grasses. He moved around on his knees looking hard. Ahead he saw a little part of something white sticking up. He went over and picked it up.
It was the missing rib. He was sure glad to find it. Now, there was one more piece of bone to find. He went over to the second place he found bones. This time it was a small finger bone he had to find. It was very hard to see such a little thing. Much later he found that, too.
Beeueoak went back to his camp site. He fitted the bones into place. He thought, “Now my task is complete. I will have to wait until evening. Then something might happen. Maybe this thing I have done will bring me good luck. I am not sure, but maybe this will let me contact the spirits. I wonder if I should go to sleep, or if I should stay up all night. I wonder if I should go to sleep again so they can talk.”
It was early yet. Beeueoak took off down to the river. He sat beside the trees and looked down at the stream. He saw something like a human being. He went a little closer to investigate. He could not see what he saw before. He looked around once more without going any closer. There it was. He saw something again. This time it seemed that there were two of them. He almost ran over to them, but once more, he could not see them.
He thought about it. “This is very funny. Every time when I go to where they are, I cannot find them.” Four times he looked around. Then he saw them again. This time he recognized a camp site. There were two people standing beside a flat rock. When he looked again they were gone.
Beeueoak went back to his camp and looked around. Suddenly, he was unconscious. He did not know what happened. Then, when he came to, he heard two people talking near by. He turned over and sat up on the ground. He saw two persons standing beside the flat rock where the bones were sitting. He saw a man and a woman. He recognized both of them. They were two of his relations that had drowned in the big flood.
The man said, “Now, you have found our bones and put them together. We will give you a reward. You will be able to see us. No one else, only you will be able to do this. We will give you our spirits. You will be able to hear our voices from under the floor of your house.”
“You have seen our spirits now. Look over there and you can see our bones that you gathered into one place. Now, look at us. We are not standing on the ground.”
Beeueoak looked at those people’s feet. They were not touching the ground. Their feet were standing on air above the earth.
The man-spirit continued. “From now on you will see anyone you want to see when you want to see them. You can even see your wife. Do you wish to see your wife and children? Any others?”
Beeueoak said, “Yes, I would like to see my people.” The man-spirit pointed. “Now, then, look over there.”
Beeueoak turned, and he saw his wife and the others who had stayed at home.
The spirit-man and woman kept talking to Beeueoak. They told him, “We will teach you a song that we learned while we lived under the world.”
Then the spirit-people sang a song. It was the first time Beeueoak had ever heard a song. He did not know what a song was for or what it meant. It was a strange sound to him. He told this to the spirit-woman. She said to him, “You will learn four songs. We will help you to learn them fast. It is important for you to learn them and to remember.”
Beeueoak sure learned those songs fast. They were the first songs he ever heard, too. After he learned the songs, the spirit- people told him to build a drum. The spirit-man said, “Look over there and you will see a drum.”
Beeueoak saw a drum made out of wood. It had a hide over it. The spirit-man said, “You must make a drum just like the one you see.”
After Beeueoak finished the drum, the spirits taught him how to sing and drum for the four songs he had learned. Then they taught him to dance to the songs. He learned everything and remembered it for all time. Beeueoak talked to the spirits and they told him they were his helpers. They told him he was now an aungutguhk (user of spirits) because he had helped them. They promised to help him and to do what he wanted them to when he called to them with their songs. Beeueoak and the spirits talked a long time and he learned how those spirit-people would work for him and how he could help his people because of their power.
The spirits told Beeueoak many things. “An aungutguhk can ask his spirits anything he wants to know, no matter what it is. The spirits know everything. Spirits can see their master and they can tell him whatever he asks them. If the aungutguhk wants to know about other people, even when they are many miles away, the spirits know how those people are, what they have been doing, and they even know what is going to happen to them. The spirits know all about weather. Nothing is hidden from them.”
Beeueoak went back to his people to be the first Eskimo aungutguhk. It seemed he had found out a lot of useful things, but he had learned some bad things, too. He became a very powerful man and some people were afraid of him.
Pretty soon Beeueoak had two wives. Later he added two more wives and they all made lots of children. He began to have many people on his side when he wanted to do things. People saw that if someone did not obey him, he would kill them. People decided they had to work for him. Toward the end of this first aungutguhk’s life, he used his spirits to murder many men and then he would take their wives. No matter where they came from, if he wanted their wives, he would kill the men and take the wives away from the husbands. Soon this first aungutguhk came to have power over many people.
One day that aungutguhk left his body to fly away in space. He did not come back.
Before he became so powerful, the first aungutguhk had taught several others about the spirits and so they learned to be aungutguhk, too. When the first aungutguhk did not come back from his travels in space, the people knew that one of the others had gotten the best of him. They did not know who. Later on, when he was flying away from his own body, one of the aungutguhk’s older sons met his father’s spirit. His father told him another aungutguhk had killed him while he was on his way out in space. He said, “One of my older sons will receive my spirits and he will be a stronger aungutguhk than I, because they will add more power to his own spirits.”
The history of the Eskimos shows that after each Disaster, one following the other, the people learned more new things to add to what they already had learned. After the Second Disaster, they learned about spirits and some of them became aungutguhks and shamans. Some of this was good because it helped people to know about things that were going to happen to them. It helped them with the weather and made it easier to go hunting when they knew about good weather coming. Some of the things the people learned were bad. The aungutguhks could become very powerful and make people work for them. They could kill people and others were afraid of them. The spirits of the first aungutguhk brought the people songs and dancing, but sometimes the aungutguhks learned evil songs. The shamans were helpful and did not become strong like aungutguhks in a way to scare people.
Both the good and bad of the shamans ended many years ago. Sometime between 1800 and 1900 the missionaries came to Eskimo lands. They stopped the aungutguhks and stopped people from learning to be shamans.