There was once a giant named Inugpasugssuk. He was so big that his lice were as large as lemmings. He used to fish for salmon at Kitingijait, a wide and enormous ravine in the Netsilik land. Through the ravine runs a river so deep that no one can see the bottom. There Inugpasugssuk used to catch salmon, standing astride the ravine. He took the salmon with his hands as they lay under the stones, and although they were very big fish he called them salmon fry.
Sometimes he caught seals. He waded out into the sea with a stick in this hand and killed the seals when they bobbed up out of the water, striking them with this stick.
He was always very careful with humans and always afraid of doing them harm, and therefore he used to move those that lived on the low, lat shores up onto the higher islands in the bay. Once he waded out at Arviligjuaq as usual to hunt seals. He had to swim a stroke in order to get a seal, and it made a wave so enormous that it washed people out into the fjord. That wave went far in over all the land in the vicinity and washed quantities of fish up on the shore. It is those we now find as fossils and use as wick-trimmers for our lamps. There are all types of small fish, small sea scorpions, small cod with large eyes, sticklebacks, salmon fry, cod and many other kinds.
Another time Inugpasugssuk raised a wave that flooded the whole district of Arviligjuaq. As usual he was out sealing when he accidentally struck his own penis; it had shot up out of the water but was so far away that he thought it was a seal putting its head up. The pain made him tumble over backward so that he sat down, and that movement raised a sea that went right in over the land.
Inugpasugssuk was very fond of humans and often camped close to where they were. He once fell in love with an Inuk woman and exchanged wives with her husband. The arrangement turned out so badly, however, that Inugpasugssuk never tried it again. The Inuk man who was lying with Inugpasugssuk’s wife fell into her genitals and never came up again. He dissolved inside her and his bones came out with her urine. But the Inuk woman with whom Inugpasugssuk was lying was split right across and died.
Inugpasugssuk was sorry he had killed a human. To console himself he adopted a human son and reared him in such a manner that he grew and grew and became much bigger than humans usually grow. The foster son helped the giant with all kinds of work. When evening came and the giant lay down to sleep, he loved to be loused, but his foster son, who was afraid to take the big lice out with his naked hands, always wore mittens when he loused him.
One evening, it is said, the giant gave his foster son two stones, a small one and a big one, and said to him, “Tonight I expect that big game will come to our house. If a bear should appear in the ravine you must awaken me, and you must do it by first knocking on my head with the little stone. If I don’t wake up, take the big stone and thump my head with it.?