[75-2] For they, as it were, hold the food, the life of
man in their power, garnered up on high, to grant or deny, as they see
fit. It was from them that the prophet of old was directed to call back
the spirits of the dead to the dry bones of the valley. "Prophesy unto
the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord
God, come forth from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these
slain, that they may live." (Ezek. xxxvii. 9.)
In the same spirit the priests of the Eskimos prayed to _Sillam Innua_,
the Owner of the Winds, as the highest existence; the abode of the dead
they called _Sillam Aipane_, the House of the Winds; and in their
incantations, when they would summon a new soul to the sick, or order
back to its home some troublesome spirit, their invocations were ever
addressed to the winds from the cardinal points--to Pauna the East and
Sauna the West, to Kauna the South and Auna the North.[76-1]
As the rain-bringers, as the life-givers, it were no far-fetched
metaphor to call them the fathers of our race.
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