. . . Or perhaps a single man, with
black vision changed the course of Inuit history. Perhaps the
man had the hypnotic power that later shamans would have, but
of messianic intensity that swayed the entire race. The boreal
deserts of the North, like the xeritic deserts of the Old World,
are a terrain prolific of visions. It may have been that the
Ipiutak vision came at high altitude, for there is evidence that
the Ipiutak people were the first to spend much of their time
away from the sea, hunting caribou in the Brooks Range. Perhaps
while the dark shaman was alone in the mountains, a boreal satan
appeared before him in the wilderness, and this time was convincing.
. . .
--KENNETH BROWER
