THE SEDNA CEREMONY
At the end of the arctic summer, before the young ice begins to form
again along the shores, there comes a spell of tempestuous weather,
with frequent storms and high, rough tides. Food grows more and more
scarce as sealing increases in risk and difficulty. Those intrepid
hunters who do venture out, return empty-handed day after day, and it
grows high time for something to be done. The goddess Sedna is supposed
to be causing these storms and all this dirty weather at sea, to
prevent her animals being killed. And so a conjuration has to be
performed to liberate the seals.
This is the occasion of the most elaborate festival in the Eskimo
calendar.
It begins by the conjurors, in full dress, calling the people
altogether to dispense them for a short space from their marriage ties.
Each witch doctor is masked, and clad in women’s clothing. The idea of
his amazing get-up, apart from the usual intention to awe the people by
grotesqueness or hideousness, is to disguise the face and body, to
efface as it were the well-known individual, to make the people lose
sight of the conjuror in the representation of a great power at work
among them. His dress is partly that of a man and partly that of a
woman, and he carries the usual implements used by both sexes. This is
to bring the needs of either before the great power, and to intercede
for their respective needs.
To begin with, the Angakok wears several pairs of nether garments and
boots, until he looks very big and out of his usual proportions. He has
a woman’s pointed tunic, whose sleeves are elaborately trimmed with
fringes and charms. The hood is pulled down over his head, and he wears
a mask of black skin tattooed all over. On his shoulders he carries an
inflated sealskin float, and over his arm a coil of walrus hide. In his
left hand he bears a woman’s skin scraper, and in his right a spear.
Thus caparisoned, he emerges from his tent and begins by pairing off
the couples.
The tribesfolk are ranged in two long lines, the men and women facing
each other, and a lane between. Then the “Kailuktetak” (a minor order
among the initiate) open the ceremonies. Each conjuror is furnished
with a deer-horn scraper like a long curved knife (used in the ordinary
course of things for scraping the newly formed ice from the kyaks as
they are drawn out of the water), to which is attached a small piece of
bearskin. He starts off down the living lane, dancing and shouting in
glee, touching first a man and then a woman with the wand as he goes.
The two thus indicated pair off, and are man and wife for the next
twenty-four hours, or perhaps a little longer. The fun is fast and
furious. Much of the whole thing has been prearranged, and the element
of surprise is rather subordinate to that of anticipation. The
conjurors choose among the women for themselves first, and next for
those hunters who have had sufficient eye for beauty and sufficient of
this world’s goods to mention the fact privately and persuasively
beforehand.
There has been quite a stream of visitors to the conjuror’s house of
late, and quite a number of presents made, which forgetfulness on the
part of that worthy has failed to return. So that the pairing off on
this auspicious day is largely a prearranged affair. However, it
occasions plenty of Eskimo laughter and delight. The enceinte (and the
old folks) are not included in this adventure. They play the part of
spectators only, but applaud or deride as heartily as the rest over
each mating. These women are Kooveayootiksatyonerktoot, i.e.,
“no-longer-the-material-for-a-rejoicing,” having apparently given
hostages to fortune already, or having sufficiently fulfilled the hopes
of the community. Children are paired off first—boys and girls of no
more than twelve years—and then the adults.
Each couple, as they are selected, join hands and walk away towards the
man’s dwelling, attended for a little distance by the Kiluktetak who
has picked them out, dancing all round them and about them like a mad
thing. If they chance to touch him, they too begin to dance, and to
voice their excitement in no uncertain manner. On entering the
dwelling, each drinks a little water and mentions the place of his or
her birth.
The conjuror has an âvetak slung upon his breast, that is, the entire
skin of a seal which, inflated, is generally used as a float on the
kyak. On this day, however, it serves another purpose. As the couple
presently return to the Kilukletak, they pour water into this, and each
individual, drinking from it again and again, mentions the place of his
or her birth a second time. The rite is official, and sets the
conjuror’s seal upon the proceedings and its consequences.
The root idea of this pairing off is to strengthen a race that might
easily be weakened by too much inter-marriage, and to increase the
birth-rate. The writer has elsewhere commented on the defensibility of
such a custom—from the Eskimo point of view—but it remains to be added
here that, as regards parentage, the father of a child is always known
and acknowledged, be he the woman’s husband or her temporary Sedna
mate. The Sedna offspring is cared for by the regular husband, or by
the community.
Next comes the extraordinary performance already described, when the
conjuror is speared through the chest.
After this, the principal Angakok prepares to give battle to Sedna. The
goddess can be killed; but as she subsequently comes to life again,
this killing has to take place every year. The whole performance is a
representation of seal-spearing on the ice. The conjuror coils a rope
on the floor of a large hut, and leaves a little opening at the top to
represent the blow hole. Two assistants stand on either side, armed
respectively with harpoon and spear. A third chants incantations at the
back of the dwelling. Sedna is supposed to be lured from the
underworld, and when she comes to the hole, is transfixed at once. She
sinks away again, dragging the harpoon with her, wounded and incensed.
The conjurors haul on the line for all they are worth, and recover the
weapon.
Then the chief Angakut squats upon the floor, with his arms and legs
bound by a length of light hide line. The lamps are pressed down to
burn so dimly that it is all but dark. The rest of the folk also sit
about the floor with their heads bowed, so that none may stare at the
conjuror’s face. He begins his incantations, rocking to and fro and
uttering sounds that seem incredible for a human throat to compass. He
works himself into a state of insensibility (but not before his
familiar spirit has undone the knots and released him from his bonds.)
It is this trance which makes such an impression on the tribesfolk.
They believe that the witch doctor’s spirit has left his body and their
midst, and has really gone to meet and despatch the powerful figment of
their myth, to kill her and liberate the seals.
The hardening of the weather soon after this ceremony, when the
prospects of the sealers naturally improve, seems to the Eskimo mind a
clear demonstration of cause and effect. Probably the conjuror quite
believes it, too, and although he has done nothing but hypnotise
himself and strike awe thereby into the onlookers, this assumption of
all that he accomplishes in the meantime is as real to him as to the
others.
After the Kiluktetak—the chief of the whole conjuring band—has
concluded this séance, he proceeds to make good hunters. Those who are
ambitious to make a name for themselves in this respect, and greatly
desire the skins and trappings that come of abundant catches, pay the
conjuror a walrus hide line; whereupon he resorts again to his
incantations, and his Tougak causes the soul of a seal to enter the
body or mind of the young man in question. The whole business may
perhaps have some result, perforce of suggestion, and the sealer who
had hitherto doubted his own judgment or prowess, who had felt
discouraged by ill success, or who had failed perhaps in skill or
patience, picks up a fortuitous confidence in himself and really has
better luck afterwards.
It is impossible to believe that these beliefs and ceremonies would be
so widespread among the people and carry so much weight, were no sort
of explanation to be sought for them. These folk are trained and
accomplished hunters; they attribute their success to junketings of
this description, and by no means wholly to the obvious care they take
to ensure it. If the ceremonies had no value and proved by experience
to have no bearing on all these vital matters, even the primitive mind
would scarcely perpetuate them for their own sakes pure and simple.
In the meantime, while the Kiluktetak has his hands full in the
underworld, all sorts of other things are taking place, all sorts of
games going on, in the village above.
There is a tug of war with a rope of walrus hide or white whale hide, a
contest provocative of uproarious fun, watched by a keen, delighted
crowd. One end of the rope is manned by the “Ptarmigans” (those born in
the winter time) and the other by the “Ducks” (those born in summer.)
If the former yield to the latter, it is taken as an augury of good
weather for the ensuing season.
After this a curious game is played. One of the lesser conjurors is
fantastically got up in a number of garments, and in a pair of trousers
with very narrow legs. The trousers seem to tickle the Eskimo sense of
the ludicrous in exactly the same way as Charlie Chaplin’s baggy ones
and his “caterpillar” boots tickle ours. He takes a piece of wood in
one hand, a skin scraper in the other, and starts capering off, calling
on all and sundry to follow him and assemble in the “Kagge,” or singing
house.
The ceremony in the Kagge was performed in the past but now only the
Sedna ceremony is performed, minus the Kagge.
The Eskimo build larger houses than those they usually occupy, for
feasting, singing and dancing on particular occasions. The singing
house is dedicated to a particular spirit which has the shape of a
bow-legged, hairless man. It is generally built upon the usual round
plan of the igloo, sometimes three being grouped together, apse and
transept fashion, with a common entrance (nave). The company disposes
itself in concentric rings round the house, married women by the wall,
spinsters in front of them, and a ring of men to the front. Children
are grouped on either side of the door, and the singer or dancer,
stripped to the waist, takes his stand amid them and remains on the one
spot all the time. A pillar of snow in the middle of the house supports
as many lamps as it requires to illuminate the proceedings and to warm
the air. Singing festivals and competitions in the Kagge especially
mark the great occasion of the tribal deer hunting in the spring, so
that it will be described at somewhat greater length in that
connection.
As soon as everyone has crowded in, all the new made (temporary)
couples are bidden to join hands and guide each other out. Everyone is
laughing, but the pair in question have to preserve the gravity of
owls. If they yield to the infectious merriment and badinage going on,
and fail to keep absolutely solemn faces, some grievous sickness will
befall them. The conjuror touches their feet as they cross the
threshold, and when he himself follows out the last pair, blows off
hard, like a seal.
At the risk of wearying the reader with the apparent uncouthness of all
this (an alien humour is always hard to perceive), one more incident of
the festival must be given.
The Mukkosaktok possesses himself of a whip with a particularly short
handle, and starts on a tour of the village on his own account. He
enters the first house he comes to, and starts to lay about him in
play. He fillips one of the inmates with the end of his lash, and
orders him to sing a song—an extempore song of his own composition. If
the victim fails, another one has to take his place, and so in turn
until the circle is exhausted. This goes on in every household, all
sorts of weird howls and chants and guttural distiches being elicited
by force majeure, until at last the Mukkosaktok is playfully hustled to
the door and pushed outside.
The underlying idea of much of all this is doubtless that of promoting
sociability and good feeling all round. The Eskimo are an intensely
sociable people, and, to the very limited extent of their powers and
opportunities, delight in entertainment. These festival songs, for
instance, have required a certain amount of preparation. They are
composed about some event that has taken place and caught the singer’s
attention. They have been rehearsed and, if successful, will be
repeated all through the long winter nights, when the folk spend so
much weather-bound time in visiting each other and exchanging tales and
gossip round the igloo lamps. No tribesman likes to be laughed at, so
he really does his best over his song.
There is a real groundwork of sense about the ceremony of visiting each
house in turn, and the scramble for presents. In the first place, it is
a symbol of goodwill and plenty. Each householder is expected to keep
up appearances by doing this sort of thing, and he uses every effort to
gain the wherewithal to meet the obligation. This militates against
laziness and any tendency to hoard—great crimes in the Eskimo
estimation of things. The hunter strains every nerve to provide the
things his neighbours scramble for, and the women of the village do
their utmost, so far as attractiveness and domesticity go, to attach
such men as husbands. Again, by a general scramble, the poorer and less
lucky folk get a good many windfalls otherwise unobtainable.
The roysterers flock off in a body, to make the round of the
encampment, stopping at every man’s house in turn. The owner goes
inside, makes a selection of all sorts of unconsidered
trifles—generally bits of sealskin used for the legs of boots, with
different kinds of sewing sinew attached—and, returning to the
vociferous crowd waiting outside, scatters these things broadcast.
There is a grand commotion and no end of noise, as the oddments are
battled for. As this performance is repeated at every house in the
village it necessarily takes some time.
Little information is obtainable as to the significance of these games
or ceremonies, or whatever the Eskimo themselves may consider them. The
annual pairing off doubtless serves to keep up the numbers of the
tribe. Women are always in excess of men, owing to hunting fatalities
among the latter, and other causes; and some of these, although
married, may be childless. The Sedna proceedings tend to remedy this
state of things to a satisfactory extent. The writer’s own idea is
that, in addition to the main responsibilities of the festival, which
rest on the shoulders of the Kiluktetok, the doings of the lesser
lights of the order of conjurors are designed more or less to keep
things going merrily and to establish themselves firmly in the
good-will of the community.
The main idea of the frequent acknowledgment of breaches of village law
is undoubtedly to keep the social life intact, to ensure that no
secrecies and plottings shall break it up, and no hoarding of supplies
lead to quarrels and injustices. Another feature of the Sedna day is a
general “confessing” of all these “sins.” Another lesser luminary,
called a Noonageeksaktoot, dresses himself up in a medley of garments
and dons a close-fitting cap made from the skull of a ground seal. This
cap has a peak, to represent a bird’s bill. He binds upon his feet some
of the sticks used for beating snow from clothes, so that they resemble
a raven’s, and hops about in imitation of that bird. As often as the
people come up and accuse themselves of wrongdoing, he betakes himself
to the beach, to tell Sedna, and returns with forgiveness.
It will be readily understood that it is of great value in the hard
fight for existence in the arctic that a spirit of hope and
cheerfulness should be maintained. No one knows this better than the
commander of an arctic or antarctic expedition, or than the head of a
trading station! It is quite essential that the Eskimo village should
make itself a centre of jollity and comfort to the returning hunters,
and to travellers on the trail. There are sound economic principles
underneath the queer trappings of some of all this barbaric custom, and
even sound hygienic laws governing some of the regulations and taboos
of daily life. That one, for instance, which forbids a woman in
childbirth to eat any food not provided by her husband, probably acts
quite beneficially. Eskimo food is very rich and often consumed in the
raw state, so that a glut of it, as would result from a shower of
benefactions, would upset the new-made mother.
The Sedna ceremony has been carefully studied by the best ethnologists,
like Dr. Boas, who have travelled for the sake of science among the
arctic tribes; but it may be hazarded that the raison d’être of much of
it could only dawn on an observer who had actually lived for a very
considerable time in close personal and linguistic touch with the
people.
The writer offers his interpretations with all diffidence, but believes
they constitute something original to the descriptions of other
writers. Those who easily dismiss the whole subject as fantastic
savagery, much of which is unfit for publication, seem singularly to
have failed in any real grasp of the character of these benighted, but
in many ways cheery and genuine, children of the sternest wild in the
world.