The Monstrefact: Ikuutayuuq, The One Who Drills

In other tellings, monsters who terrorized the people. Ikutayuk, whose name means one who drills and his brother would capture people, pin them down on their backs, and then murder them by drilling holes in their bodies. Afterwards, they would cover a corpse with piles of rocks kirns, or to the Inuit inuksuk inusuk, were largely used to aid navigation, but were sometimes used as warnings of dangerous grounds. According to the myth, the brothers continued their horrible crimes until a

twu Nit set out to stop them. The Tunit were a legendary people said to live long ago, possibly connected to an actual Paleo Esquima culture. They were tall giants even, and possessed of fierce energy and competition. Gill and Sullivan's share that tunit were said to die of exhaustion from fierce competitions and feats of hunting and archery. And so one brave Tunit took it on himself to rid the

people of the Kutuyuk and his brother. He challenged Akutuyuk to a fight, and they battled while tied together with a rope. The Canadian Museum of History features a nineteen sixty carving by Inuit artist Issa Kupirowala a la Usa depicting the back, which you can view on their website. In the end, the two knit hero succeeded in killing a Kutayuk, and the remaining brother fled into the wilderness.

The story of a Kuduyuk was also related by Inuit author Jonasi Kuinurayak, who lived eighteen ninety five through nineteen sixty four. Now you might wonder what manner of drill this monstrous killer would have used. The Inuit traditionally made use of the pump drill, an ancient hand powered tool used in fire making as well as for drilling small holes and objects for jewelry and the like. It's a

simple hand powered flywheel tool. The craftsperson revolves the drill shaft by vertically working a bow or bar carrying a cord attached at the center to the upper end of the shaft. I realize this is hard to picture, so I recommend looking up an image or video. Materially, the pump typically involves some combination of wood, ivory, rawhide, metal, stone, sometimes jadeite. According to the Pin Museum, there's also the

Inuit mouth drill. This was essentially a small bow drill used for fire making, and the user would brace the tool and provide downward pressure with the head via a

mouth or chin block. Now, to be clear, neither of these tools was a weapon, but according to Robert Fortune in his nineteen eighty five article Lancets of Stone Traditional Methods of surgery among the Alaska Natives, there is reason to believe that dental drilling may have been practiced to alleviate toothpain, and that cranial drilling may also have been practiced in some cases for either medical or magico religious purposes,

known as trepanation. This practice is found in cultures around the world dating back to prehistoric times, with some rare modern proponents of the procedure as well, so one can imagine how the idea of murderous drillers might have emerged in Inuit mythology and storytelling based on everyday technology and or painful surgical procedures that had been experienced or witnessed. The possibility of actual isolated drill based torture is, I

suppose not impossible. I ran across one reference to isolated drill marks on Inuit remains a nineteen ninety three article by Melby in Fairgrief titled a Massacre and Possible Cannibalism in the Canadian Artic, But the consensus would seem to be that the evidence in question suggested a mortuary practice, with drill holes being just one of the classifications of cuts found to the bone. Ikudu Yuk and his brother are haunting figures to consider, and yet another fascinating aspect

of Inuit culture. Tune in to additional episodes of The Monster Fact or The Artifact, or a new upcoming short form series each week. As always, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot.