You ask me to tell you the story of somebody’s life at Anvik, my home
in Alaska. I will tell the story of the woman who gave me the moccasins
I showed you—there is more to tell about a girl than a boy. But I shall
have to tell about a boy, too, for you can’t tell about the girls
without telling about the boys.
When Cries-for-salmon was to be born, they called in Havetse-kĕdtsa,
Their-little-grandmother, an old woman of experience, to help. For
three days after the birth Their-little-grandmother stayed by the side
of the bed of skins, nor might the mother leave her bed without the
permission of Their-little-grandmother. I don’t know much about these
days because boys and men do not stay in the house at this time; they
go to the kadjim (the men’s house). All I know is that the after-birth
is wrapped in a cloth, and placed in the fork of a tree—the after-birth
is a part of the body and you would not want to destroy it, just as
when you cut yourself, you wipe off the blood with shavings and place
the shavings in the fork of a tree. Even what is left of an old garment
you would not destroy, you would not throw it into the fire as the
white people do, but put it into a bag which in course of time you will
place in a spruce tree. Whatever is put away in the woods is thought of
as being still a part of the village, so that when a ceremonial circuit
has to be made of the village, a half mile or so of woods is covered so
that these things in the trees may be included.
The baby’s cord is tied around the wrist or the neck of the baby with
sinew, and left on for two or three years. An ax head is placed on
the body of a boy baby for a certain number of days—I don’t know how
many, nor what they put on top of a girl. Should a white person come
into the house at this time, the object is removed. If the child dies
under three or four years of age the object, the ax or other thing, is
put with the corpse. I don’t know why, and when I have asked the old
men they would answer, “Who of us knows?” as they often answer when
they _do_ know but have not enough confidence in you to tell. Besides,
young fellows are not expected to ask questions; you must learn by
overhearing, and coming that way to understand.
For twenty days after Cries-for-salmon was born, her father had to stay
at home, indoors, “under his smoke hole,” as people used to say when
they lived in igloos or underground houses. Nowadays, all or almost all
live in frame houses. During these twenty days a man is not to touch
any object made by white people, more particularly things of steel or
iron, knife or ax or ice pick. Copper, got in trade from the coast,
which has been melted down and hand beaten, a man may use; and he would
eat out of dishes of wood or bone. Work tools of any kind he would not
handle, unless in a household emergency he had to go to the forest for
wood or game, when he would first go to the dyiin, the shaman, to get a
song to sing in the circumstances. For this song, as for other songs,
the shaman would be paid loftak—skins, meat, or oil.
Even if a man goes out during the twenty days, he should be careful not
to pass over the water of a stream or lake—it would be othlang, and the
fish would cause a skin eruption in the child. Our skin is usually very
smooth and clear, and whenever any one has an eruption or rash we know
it is from othlang.
Had Cries-for-salmon been born in the spring, then the following fall
her father would not go eeling—that too would be othlang and it would
cause a dearth of eels. Nor would a man go eeling for a year after a
death in his family. If you knew how much we depended on eels for food,
you would understand why we have to be so careful. The first sign of
the eel coming is the finding of an eel in the stomach of a lush, the
fish which is our main food in winter. Some one may find an eel in a
lush, miles away from the village, and then at once he sends word, and
the men go out to the places on the river where the channel is narrow
and there are good feeding grounds for the eel. Here they come so thick
that they cause the water to rise, and you have but to throw them out
on the bank with a stick. As people eel together in this way, every one
would know if a man went eeling after a death or birth in his family.
As with work after a birth in his family, so with amusements—a man
should not take part. He should sit quiet, with his head down, for at
this time he is supposed to be in connection with his spirits. His
spirits are not any stronger than the strongest songs he has, and at
this time a man must be watchful lest his songs lose their virtue or
power, or lest from violations of the rules the baby die.
When Cries-for-salmon was restless as a little child, and cried, no
doubt her mother called out to her, “Lia! the Evil One! Keep quiet!” to
scare her. (To abuse any one, people will say, Li dená! Blood of the
Evil One.) And when Cries-for-salmon was able to walk, she was watched
all the time by her father or mother, for she had to be taught from the
very beginning not to step on anything pertaining to the welfare of
the family that might be lying on the floor. Should a stick be lying
there, for example, that was being worked for an arrow or fish trap,
the little girl would have to walk around it, not over it. The spirit
of the boy is stronger than the spirit of the girl, so a boy may step
where he pleases.
And the girl, as she grows a little older, has to be taught to be
extremely careful about whatever she finds on the floor, of bits of
food, of bone or feather or hair or skin. It is a rule that all such
waste bits be put separately into baskets by the women, and carried to
the haunts, in forest or on river, of the creatures to which the bits
belonged. Cries-for-salmon would go along with her mother to see how
she dumped into the river from her canoe the feathers of duck or goose
or swan, that they might change back into birds such as they had come
from—as the feathers drifted down the current, although invisible to
her, Cries-for-salmon was told, they became birds again to return to
feed in their old haunts of mud and goose grass. Similarly she saw her
mother empty out fish bones to become fish, and she saw her take to the
forest the bones of game animals. Were such bones left on the floor and
stepped on, it would be othlang.
Sometimes, as men sit on the floor with their heels drawn back to the
buttocks, or as they sit cross-legged, left leg over right, with a bowl
of food propped on their legs, a bone may snap out on the floor instead
of back from their fingers into the bowl. It is a spirit of the family,
a hungry spirit, who is after the food. The spirit of the food goes
to feed the family spirit, and although the particle is picked up and
taken to the forest, it has lost its power, it will not become animal
again.
When we men kill willow or ruffed grouse (ptarmigan), we take out some
of the tail feathers and throw them on the ground, giving them back to
the forest to become birds again. I remember that the first time I
shot a grouse I took out some feathers above the tail. The fellow with
me laughed. “That is not right,” said he. “It is the tail feathers you
must take.” In selling grouse to the Mission, people will first skin
them, just as they will first pluck the geese or ducks they sell, and
remove the entrails. Similarly, they skin and clean the rabbits they
sell. (Before a ceremonial the men engage in a rabbit drive. They pick
out an island or a point of land, and spread out, each man in sight of
another. Each yells and beats on the trees to scare out the rabbits,
and then they form the arc of a circle and close down to the water.
They keep the rabbits for the feast, but a few they may sell.) Bear
meat and lynx meat they would not sell at all to white people.
We do not eat rabbit meat in summer and no doubt Cries-for-salmon was
told, as are other children, that it was wormy. She was told, too,
never to eat in the dark, lest she swallow the eye of the Evil One,
which in going back to the Evil One, would choke her. Nor in eating
meat should she cut off a piece in her teeth. In pouring out tea or
liquids, Cries-for-salmon was taught to be very careful to pour only to
well below the brim, almost an inch below, not to risk spilling. If the
cup ran over it would be othlang to the person served—he would fail to
run down his game, to catch fish, or to do well in leadership—and to
overcome the othlang he would have to go to the shaman for a song.
In all these particulars a girl has to learn how to behave, how to
carry herself. A young man is rated by his ability in making snowshoes
and in running down game, fox, deer and, before the portaging of the
whites drove them out, caribou. A girl is rated by her ability in
handicrafts and in providing food, but she is also esteemed for her
household behavior. If she is gifted with strength, with virtue, as she
grows old she is likely to have given into her keeping an old wooden
bowl which has been passed down from generation to generation of women,
within the same rank, to be used in ceremonies to honor hunters of
distinction. Moreover, the presents of a careful woman are welcome.
People hate to see a young man as he grows up wear things made by any
or everybody. Were he to wear mittens or boots or parki (shirt) made
by a careless woman, his own ability might be reduced and his spirits
weakened.
Cries-for-salmon was taught, like other little girls and boys, never
to sing or whistle when eating, and never to imitate at any time in
the winter the birds of summer—that would prolong the winter, perhaps
making it run into two winters (a frequent expression of the narrator
meaning that the already short summer is further shortened), and so
causing famine. Nor was Cries-for-salmon ever to make snowballs or snow
images. There is but one time a snow man may be made—when people want a
freezing spell in the spring. Travelers are afraid of being caught away
from home by the spring floods. One early spring I remember that there
were many traders at Anvik when it turned warm. The men had to get home
to make their fish camps and set their fish nets. Some of them had a
portage of twenty miles to make through tundra and woods. The soft snow
in the woods and the slush would tire out their dogs. So they went to
the shaman and got permission to make a snow man to face the north, and
draw from it the cold winds. As image maker they chose an unmarried man
who had been born in a month of changing weather.
Snow fights the children may not play, but they play at war in another
way. Almost anything will start a sham fight. Perhaps a child will call
the family of another child dirty or say, “My father has more skins
than yours.” Then they gather fireweed, strip the stalks and use them
for spears and darts. These weapons take the skin off your forehead,
but the more you bleed the better you like it, and you never cry, no
matter how hard hit. Two or three boys will pretend to be killed, the
girls will set up a wail, they have a big feast, and they make friends
again.
The boys play, too, at duck-hunting and deer-stalking. They will make a
duck of grass and fasten it to a long, slender stick. Then they put it
into a muddy place and throw short wooden spears at it. The game should
be played only in the spring, for if it is played later it will cause
famine. It is a very exciting game, and often, out of season, we boys
would carry cans of water into the woods to make a duck pond out of
sight of the old people.
To play deer-stalking, boys take a bunch of grass and make it into the
figure of a deer. For the belly they insert strips of salmon. They
set the figure up on sticks and then go off into a cover of stumps
and grass. One boy says to the other, “I see a deer.” “Where?” “Over
there.” They creep up on it. They shoot, and the boy who sends his
arrow nearest to the heart is deemed the killer. They skin the deer,
talking all the while—“How fat it is, how limber.”—“It was hard to
get.” They take out the dried fish, the killer cuts it up and, as would
an adult, he sees to it that the food is divided up among the hunters.
When a man returns from a long and successful hunt he goes to the
kadjim, while his wife prepares the food and invites all the people to
come and partake of it. She goes from house to house, saying, “Come and
drink tea and eat meat.” (By “meat” she would always mean bear meat, as
that being the most powerful meat, is called just meat. Other flesh she
would call deer meat, porcupine meat, etc.) Similarly when a woman gets
a full trap of fish all the people are invited to eat.
Little girls and boys together play at fishing and housekeeping. The
boys will gather willows and make them into a great bundle, a foot and
a half thick and fifteen feet long. They choose a shallow place in the
river where there are little fish, and they lay the willow trap in an
oval. After the catch the girls take the fish to cook, and boys and
girls pair off together to make fish camps like their elders. Once when
I was about ten, I paired off with Cries-for-salmon. She got roots to
sew into a basket, and grasses to make a doll. She sang to the doll
and pretended to nurse it. I went into the woods and gathered bark and
wood. I shot a squirrel and a little bird with my bow and arrows, and
Cries-for-Salmon skinned the squirrel and picked the bird and cooked.
We even made a kadjim to have a feast in. In winter, we children built
snow houses and snared rabbits and stole pieces of dried meat or salmon
from home. It is not stealing unless we are caught. But our games in
winter were cut down.
I wish I could tell you about the time when the children, girls and
boys, are turned over to the shaman, that they may belong to the
village, to be a part of the village. I know there is a ceremony at
that time, but I don’t know much about it. At that time I was at the
Mission house. The children are little—about four or five years old.
Henceforward, should anything happen to the family, the village would
look after the child, and the village is responsible for the child’s
learning as much as possible about village custom. The old men talk to
the boys, and the old women to the girls. They tell them old stories
to teach them what they may not have learned at home. Of course there
are other stories that people tell; but these are never told except at
night in the kadjim and in the early part of the winter before it is
time to prepare for the big ceremonies, to make the masks and rehearse
the songs. Many of these stories are about the bird nobody will ever
kill, Raven, who can change himself into anything and who made the
Yukon river by drawing a furrow with his feet, and the hills and
mountains, by carrying earth. And many stories are about the beginnings
of a town, of how it was started by a couple who survived a massacre
and of what happened up to the present day.... It is improper to tell a
story when nobody is listening, so every other sentence or two somebody
must say “hen, hen” to show that there is a listener.
There is a ceremony for getting a name, too, which I know little about.
Persons may be named according to what they do or according to their
character. One girl I know is called Swollen-face; another, Pointing-at
(she had a mean habit of pointing her finger [index finger of left
hand] at people in scorn); another, Does-not-like-any-one (i. e. men;
she would refuse suitors); another, One-the-Evil-One-does-not-like.
This last girl got her name because she was never sick or subject
to epidemics; she had good eyes; she was big at heart; she was a
successful basket maker and net maker and rabbit snarer; she had a
cheerful face and looked helpful, just the opposite of the kind of
woman who hurts people by looking at them in scorn, and of whom people
are afraid. I know a man called He-creeps-towards because his gait is
stealthy, as if he were stalking something. Because of the way the name
is given, and because it has so much meaning the name is little used.
You go around it. A man will call out “Look here!” and his child will
recognize his father’s voice and know it is he who is being called.
When the Mission children call a village child by his name, it makes
him very angry.
We go on now to when Cries-for-salmon is a big girl. When she first
menstruated, she was placed in the corner of her father’s house to be
out of sight of young men, and to stay so for a year, as we count by
moons. The space assigned to Cries-for-salmon was just long enough
to lie down in. In this corner Cries-for-salmon had to keep all the
things she used, more particularly her own cup and bucket of water.
When no one was about, she went to fill the bucket, but, as with her
other things, she had to be scrupulous about not leaving the bucket
where young men could by any chance come in contact with it. Girls
are supposed not to go outdoors at all; but if a girl has to go, she
must walk with head bent so that if she passed by a young man her eyes
would not get a direct line on his eyes, or his eyes on hers. That
would be othlang. The man would lose his hunting and fishing powers
and what I may call his community power. (For example, he would not
know how to speak in meeting, where there are rules for speaking in
order to cut out loose talkers.) Once I went to Cries-for-salmon’s
house while she was in the corner. We do not knock on the door like
white people, and I would have gone in, making the customary quavering
sound of hihihihihihi and saying something perhaps about the weather,
expecting to be told to sit down and to be served with food—a guest
is never allowed to leave without food—but Cries-for-salmon’s father
saw me approaching and met me at the door, saying, “Let us go to the
kadjim.” I knew what that meant; he had a daughter in the corner; he
was protecting me.
In the corner, a girl wears continually a beaded forehead band to which
bear claws are attached. Her behavior during this time determines
whether or not she is to be a worthy woman for life, and how skilled
she will be in the domestic arts. For at this time she makes everything
she is going to use after she marries—what I have heard the students
here (at Hampton Institute) call a hope chest. She learns to sew, to
make beadwork and porcupine-quill work, to make baskets, and fish
nets. The first few months she is not allowed to cook, but towards the
close of the period the cooking, the bulk of the housework, indeed, is
put upon her. And it is then that suitors take notice of her work and
accomplishments. They notice whether the seams of the boots and mittens
she has made look strong and durable; whether her bead embroidery
is fine, whether she is industrious and competent, how she carries
herself. A man knows how important to his welfare the character of
his wife is. A man has to run his chase, but, after he marries, that
is all; his wife does all the hard work. She gets wood and water, she
snares grouse and rabbits, she sets fish traps, and she prepares all
the clothing and all the food, not only for the family but for the
ceremonies at which the man is called upon to contribute.
But there is more to tell about the girl in her first stage, as well as
about the feeling about women until they have a change of life, until
they are old. If a girl goes into the corner in the summer, when we
are all at the fish camp, her family, in returning to winter quarters,
will probably have to cross the river or go along it. This happened,
I recall, in the case of Cries-for-salmon. Her father had to go to
the shaman. He went to Salmon-clubber, who lived with his two wives
and several families who had followed him because of his services, to
settle down twenty miles or so away from Anvik. Cries-for-salmon’s
father gave Salmon-clubber what he asked for—several bundles of fish,
some seal oil, and a deerskin. And then Salmon-clubber went into a
trance and, as the feeling he had in it was good, he gave permission
to the family to move. Cries-for-salmon had to stay in the bow of the
canoe, crouched down that her head might not be above the gunwale, and
her face had to be covered over. Had she not observed these rules, it
is likely that some time later a rash would have come out on her face.
Salmon-clubber would have had to withhold permission had any men been
out hunting ducks or geese, as they do hunt after the fishing season
closes. The birds and animals are sensitive, as you would say, to girls
“in the corner.” To have animals respect them, men must respect their
songs. After I returned home in 1917, I went on a bird hunt—this was
in the spring. I got only one goose and one crane, and the other five
men got much less, too, than usual. On our return one of the old men
said to me, “My son, are you thoroughly familiar with all our rules? I
have been talking with the shaman and he has seen you bathing where the
girls bathe. There are three girls in their first stage.” “How did you
know?” “We have ways of knowing.” And he used one of the phrases the
old men use which we do not understand. The old men talk to us, only
on the outside of things. They tell us enough for us to understand if
we think as they think. He went on, “It was because of that, you got
so little on your hunt, and the snow fell and heavy northwest winds
blew.... We could put you aside; but we think too much of you; and I
speak to you as a friend.” Had I been stubborn or not seen through
what he meant at this time or another, I would have become known for
it from one village to the other, and it would be hard for me to get a
wife.
This old man knew, of course, that boys of the Mission were apt to be
careless of the old rules. He may have seen the boys, for example, go
into the basement of the girls’ dormitory, a violation of a strict
rule, for, until a woman is old, she is, as we say, in an unfavorable
state, and she should never be above the head of a man. In the spring,
families move out to the fishing grounds where they open the season by
making canoes or boats they will use. In cutting the wood they use a
whipsaw. Now it is a rule that if a man and a woman are sawing together
the man must always stand at the higher end of the saw, the woman
below. Similarly, in putting away the fish in the cache, the post-built
storeroom, the man must do the overhead work; a woman would never work
on a rack above a man. In the kadjim, women sit on the floor, and men
overhead on the benches which they also use to sleep on. Not only the
Mission house, but other houses built on the American two-storied plan
are making it difficult to follow this rule of overhead.[17]
Again, while a woman is still young she should not be present at a
birth. Nor may she eat a certain species of duck or their eggs, and
“meat” i. e. bear, she may not eat.[18]
During the menstrual periods, for about a week, were a young man to
come into the house or a man to stay home, it would cause the woman
pain at childbirth, so at these times a woman’s husband leaves their
bed and goes to stay in the kadjim, sleeping there with the boys and
young men. A boy leaves his mother, to live at the kadjim as soon as he
has courage enough, perhaps at fourteen or fifteen. If plucky, he may
go earlier; but if a weakling, he may not go until he is eighteen.
During her periods, a girl or woman will protect men against herself
if she can. For example, if a boy starts to wrestle with a girl—to
fuss her, as you say, only it is not done your way, a boy wrestles
and throws a girl down, and tumbles about, it is much gayer and more
lively—the girl, if she is in her period, will claw his face to make
him leave her alone. The old people see him scratched up and they know
why, and they laugh at him.... Once when Cries-for-salmon’s mother
was in the kadjim at a ceremonial, she was called upon to dance on
the skin she was giving to the shaman for a deceased relative. We saw
her hesitate. “Go ahead. What’s the matter with you?” some one said.
She was in her period. “That’s all right,” they said to her. “Stand
on one corner of the skin. We’ll fix it up.” She took her place with
Cries-for-salmon next to her, and they went through their own dance,
their eyes on the ground, and making the motions with their arms that
belonged to the dance.... In this way, you see, Cries-for-salmon
learned the dance that belonged to her mother.
Like all dancers, the girl and her mother faced the doors of the
kadjim—there are two doors, the outer of bearskin, meaning strength,
the inner, about four feet away, of wolferene, meaning speed and skill.
The space of about four feet, between the doors, allows for the first
door to close on the person entering on all fours, and shut out Li,
the Evil One, before the second door is opened. When masks are set out
under their covers they, too, face the doors. The smoke hole of the
kadjim has a cover of bear gut. Below it, in the center of the floor,
is the fire. The kadjim is always warm. After the fire flares up, it is
killed with split logs.
There is a ceremonial in the kadjim for a girl after she comes out
from the corner. I know that she wears a new parki given to her by her
parents or by her suitor; but I have never seen the ceremonial and I
can’t tell about it.
As I said before, a girl may have a suitor while she is in the corner
or before—that is a young man, who has noticed her and knows he wants
her, has set to work for her family. He cuts wood for them and fetches
water and gives them the bulk of his game. If he does enough to create
an interest in him on the part of the old people, they will accept
him. The girl herself has no say. Even if she likes him, if the old
man does not like him, thinking he has not done enough, the young man
can not get the girl. On the other hand, the girl may not like the
young man whom the old man likes. As soon as she came out of the corner
Cries-for-salmon was married to a man her father liked because he had
done so much. This man, Thleg’athts’ox, Fish-skin-hat, after giving
loftak, had also to get the consent of the shaman, or perhaps it was
the chief of the village. Cries-for-salmon did not like Fish-skin-hat;
and yet although his father is a miser, Fish-skin-hat himself is a good
man of ability and power—songs had been bought for him and his name was
one no ordinary fellow would have. (For such a name a man must have
powers and must live up to them.)
Cries-for-salmon’s parents knew that since Cries-for-salmon would be a
woman of ability, a good snarer and fisher, a woman who would be highly
esteemed for the amount of fish she could cut up in a day, and for the
skill and rapidity of her sewing, she should get a husband equally
competent, one who would run his chase well, who would save his furs
and trade. The old people knew, too, that unless Cries-for-salmon got
a good husband, it would be a slave’s life for her. She would have to
work for her husband’s relatives as well as for him. For the first two
or three years, a girl will live on with her man in her parents’ home;
but then he builds his own house and takes her to this house. It may
be near her parents’ house, but it belongs to her husband. She will
leave it, if she quarrels with him, and is scolded or beaten up by him,
and she will return to her parents’ house, or to her grandmother’s or
nearest relative’s, to stay there until he comes for her.
Fish-skin-hat belonged to Anvik, but Cries-for-salmon had seen little
of him before he began to come in at night to visit her. Older boys
and girls do not go about together in the day time; you never see
them paddling together in a canoe. A girl would not speak to you on
the road. If she wants to talk, it must be in the dark or under the
cover of a roof—under cover because, as people say, “There is some one
watching you.”
After the ice breaks up and people live in tents, when a man wants to
take a girl, he will slip in at night under the tent wall to the side
where he knows she sleeps, and he will slip out again when the birds
begin to make noise. People of position see to it that nobody visits
their daughter this way, except the man she is to live with openly
after a while, i. e. marry. Parents would say to a girl, “You watch
yourself.” If the wrong young man came in, the girl would know because
he would not make the signs agreed upon, holding her perhaps in a
certain way, and parents would expect the girl to cry out and wake
up the family. But—some people are careless, and there are young men
who do browse about. Sometimes the family will so embarrass the young
man that he has to marry the girl; they will say that the girl has
conceived by him—“from him she has man inside.” A man who persisted
in not marrying in these circumstances, would be shunned by the other
girls.
At the ceremonies, young men see the girls in a formal way. The chief
will appoint a girl to be a man’s partner, sohaldid. When I returned
home in 1917, the chief appointed three girls to be my partners, and
two of the three girls, Cries-for-salmon and one other, accepted.
During the intervals of the ceremonial, your partner invites you to
her house, and sets out, for you to eat and drink, tea and whatever
the season has produced, bear, caribou, etc. What you can not eat you
are expected to carry away, and you judge the girl according to the
generosity of her service. Always there is great lavishness in setting
out food. At bear feasts, for example, the woman serving would set out
ten times more than I could eat. (Never forgetting at the conclusion
to give me a bowl of water to wash with and a cloth, that I might not
take out carelessly any waste particle.) The dance leaders call out for
the presents. When you give them, you go through a short dance. Once
when it was my turn, two women, thinking I did not know the dance, got
up, without being asked, and danced in my place. One woman was gifted
with bear songs, the other, with hunting songs. I had given some tea in
bulk. A cupful was given to every one present except to me, the giver,
and then of what was left over they gave first to the shaman, and then
to the elders and so down. On another occasion I received a skein of
twine, an ax, a saw, a steel trap, two large white fish, and some ice
cream of seal oil, berries, boneless fish and snow. Somebody made a
joke. “We have given him things as if he were married. He ought to go
and take some of these old women around here who are looking for old
men.” I did not like the ice cream, so I gave it to Cries-for-salmon
who saw to it, as a partner is always supposed to do, that my presents
were taken out and put away. Women give feasts to men, where the women
dance and give out presents, inviting the men between dances to eat.
The day following, the men give the feast to the women, seeing to it
likewise that the women get all they can eat. I may say here that it is
the interest a man expresses in the feasts, in the ceremonials, that
helps to make him a chief. Who helps most at these times and at other
times (whenever one man can help another, help is expected of him)
qualifies as a chief.
The sohaldid or partner relationship lasts. Whenever you return to the
village where your partner lives, she will provide for you. Married
women as well as unmarried are assigned as partners, and this sometimes
makes trouble with the husband. But I remember one case where all the
trouble was made by the missionary. Two men had each the other’s wife
as partner, and after a while they agreed each to take his partner as
his wife, that is they exchanged wives. Five years later the missionary
heard about it and, although by that time one of the women was dead, he
decided to make the other woman go back to her first husband.
With the marshal and me he went at night to Myuli’s house. They
knocked. “Who’s that?” called Myuli.... “Why don’t you come in the
light as we do when we want to speak to any one?”... The woman went to
the door. A woman always goes to the door, as the newcomer might be an
enemy, and she goes to protect her husband. The missionary wanted the
marshal to arrest Myuli on the spot. “Do you think I am a white man to
run away?” asked Myuli.... Myuli got sixty days, the other man thirty
days, and the woman six months. “I can’t see through this,” Myuli said
to me, “the other man was satisfied, I was satisfied, and she was
satisfied, and now they come and break up things for us.”... Myuli
sent in food to her after he got out, and after she got out they lived
together again.
At the ceremonies the old men saw that I was well provided for, and
because I had been away four years I was given a seat with the chief
men of the village; and people tried to attach me to Anvik in other
ways. Women are the berry gatherers, and so women would ask me to come
and eat berries at their houses. At other times men would invite me.
Once one of the chiefs met me as he came in from a hunt. He invited me
to his house to eat. Instead of saying, however, “Do you want to come
now?” or “Let’s go,” he said, “Wait a while.” From that I understood
that he did not want me to follow him directly to the house because
he had a daughter in the corner, and I knew too that he wanted me to
become a suitor. He was afraid if I went along with him I might ask a
question about her in the open sky—that would be othlang.
More than once an old man would say to me, “We want to see you settled
down with a good-hearted girl who will take good care of you and
keep to the customs. We don’t want to see you with a Mission girl.
They don’t amount to much, they have lost their pride.” (You see the
Mission girls don’t have to make their clothing or look ahead. Because
of famines we always look ahead. People become greatly alarmed when
they are down to a few skins, etc.; they are prudent, they watch
themselves—except in ceremonies when they give away everything.)
And the old man might go on to say, “A man is no more than his wife.
You must use your head enough to get a village girl. If you will go
with the right kind of a girl here, we won’t say anything. We don’t
care if you slip in at night and slip out again.” Some one else then
might laugh out and make a joke. “If you went in you might upset a
bowl and have to get out!” Being a Mission boy they thought I might be
awkward.
People do not want young men to marry out of their village, and so,
just as soon as a boy kills his first game, as soon as he can run his
chase down and trap—perhaps he is only sixteen or so—they want him to
take a girl. Nor do people welcome foreign suitors. They suspect them.
A man never gives up connections with his own people—at ceremonies,
for example, men who have wandered off may return home, and then they
sit in the old place with their own people, even if the wife’s people
are there too. Outsiders are invited to ceremonies. Two messengers are
sent out to carry the invitation to other villages. From the masks the
messengers wear, people know whether the performance is to be a mask
ceremonial, a spirit ceremonial, or an ordinary “feast.” In the old
days of raids of one village upon another, when all but the chiefs
and the girls were killed, a foreigner might betray his wife’s people
to his own people, telling them of weakness from an epidemic or from
lack of warriors for various reasons, or telling about an abundance of
stored food. And so even now people are suspicious of foreigners. If
you do not marry within your village, they joke about you—they joke so
much that it makes it disagreeable.
When I had volunteered to go into the American army, people said to
me, “If you died among us, we would see to it that you were sent off
right; but if you die on a battlefield you might be blown to pieces;
men would track over you.”
“I am not afraid,” I answered.
“You are not afraid; but we want to look out for you.... Give a minx
skin to the shaman; he thinks highly of you, he would not expect much
to safeguard you.” Three men and two women came to me to urge this.
Finally the shaman himself came. He said, “I will not ask you to pay
anything. Let me but tattoo on your back the image of cross-guns.”
“No,” I said, “it would not do when I came to be examined by the white
army doctor.”
“I will give you a skin-tight shirt with the cross-guns on it. You can
take off the shirt before the examination.”
“No, in the army you may wear only what the government gives you to
wear.”
“Well,” ended the shaman, “we will perform secretly to protect you.”
The idea about the cross-guns was that as a spirit will not go against
a spirit of its own kind, with the image on my back other guns and
bullets would not attack me.
Again last year when I had the influenza here, and they wired home
about it, my friend Cries-for-salmon gave fifteen dollars in gold to
the shaman to have him visit me through his fox, the one who carries
his messages. Weasels and wolferenes, wolferenes are the most powerful
of all, may be messengers for the shamans, but the commonest messenger
is the fox. The fox is swift and sly.
A boy should marry among his own people, but it is not customary for
him to marry near kin, a first cousin. To have relations with a sister
is othlang. Of such a boy, people would say, “There are so many girls,
yet he did not have the courage to go with them, he went with his
sister.” If he did go with his sister, he would be thinking at the same
time of another girl. And for this reason, a sister, realizing she was
a substitute, would feel outraged. A really weak-minded boy would even
go with his mother. It is possible, for it is all in the dark, and no
one speaks; merely some one will come, some one will go.
Cries-for-salmon has a brother who is dead or, as we say, “has gone.”
In telling of his death you will hear about the death rites and the
way the people mourn. I will tell you, too, of a woman relative of
Cries-for-salmon, who died.
But first I would tell you of another relative of Cries-for-salmon who
has been such an invalid since the birth of her first child that she
can not sit up, and who will never have another child. She had been a
woman who menstruated with the waning moon—the character of such women,
it is thought, is poor. So, as women do, she went to the shaman to
have him regulate her periods to fall with the growing moon—the best
hearted, best natured women menstruate at that time. Again there was a
time when this woman was much frightened because the menstrual flow did
not stop. This time she asked an old woman shaman—sick women are apt
to go to women shamans and to the wives or widows of shamans, and sick
men, to men shamans—if she should consult a white doctor. “Yes,” said
the old woman, “we don’t know what is going to happen nowadays.” Since
the whites have come people have lost self-confidence. Formerly they
were far more certain that the cause of sickness, of an epidemic, let
us say, was not keeping the rules.
Well, when Cries-for-salmon’s relative was sick after her first child
was born, she went again to the man shaman. On this occasion the shaman
expressed a desire for her, but she refused. Ordinarily women will not
refuse the shaman. Nor would their husbands expect them to. The old
women tell you never to go against the will of the shaman. “That is one
of the things you will have to watch,” an old woman once said to me.
Nevertheless Cries-for-salmon’s relative refused, and she has been sick
ever since, and ever since the other women have sneered at her.
Her husband, too, has been down and out. They were poor to start with,
he lived in one of the few underground houses left at Anvik, and now
he has only three poor dogs, bale-back dogs we call them, nor can he
borrow a dog team. Not long since, he was charged with stealing green
fish (fish fresh from the trap) from another man’s cache. “Why did you
steal?” the old men asked him. “Don’t you know if you are hungry we
will feed you?” And so they would. Food would be given to any one who
was hungry, although sometimes in return he might be asked to help at
the fish traps or in making snowshoes. With us it is only when a man is
put into a mean position, when he has lost pride in himself, that he
will steal. In this case, the man denied the theft, so the old men kept
at him. “Why do you deny?” they asked. “We know what you have done.
Don’t you know that there is somebody watching you?” You see, since it
is customary for the young men to be most of the time in the kadjim,
except when they are away hunting or in other settlements—on their
return they go directly to the kadjim to tell the news and to give the
jokes they have heard about the persons they know—the old men know
pretty well what the young men are about, where they are. Besides there
is the shaman. A man believes that the shaman knows what he is doing
all the time. It is just because of this knowledge that the shaman is
head of the village.
It is not only for cures, and to buy songs for hunting and trapping,
that people go to the shaman: the shaman has to blow upon the masks
which we put on to represent other beings (when we put them on we
are not ourselves), and the shaman has to give power to the dancers
by blowing on them at the ceremonies or, as we say, the annual
performances, of which each has its own name. Until the shaman blows on
it, a spirit mask is just like any other mask. Besides downy feathers,
from the leg and breast of duck and goose, are fastened to a spirit
mask and from the forehead there is the quill of a goose feather with a
downy tuft tied to the tip. The masks of the fun makers are not blown
on. The fun makers come out at intervals to give the dancers time to
rest. The fun makers are usually young men, but sometimes a witty old
man will act. I remember one old man—he was a shaman—and one of his
jokes. He acted like a woman and he said, “Half of me belongs up river
and half down river. How are you going to ‘fuss’ me?”
Men may wear female masks. There are certain parts women may not take,
so men act for them. But there are female masks that women wear. Women
never wear male masks. Women sing in the kadjim, too, to big drums,
four feet in diameter, made of a sea animal’s stomach on a spruce
frame—five drums that can be heard a mile or more away. There may be as
many as a hundred and fifty persons singing at one time in the kadjim.
But in the powerful dances—the hagerdelthlel—ordinary women do not
sing, only the wives of chiefs and shamans.
After a mask is made, it belongs in the kadjim for a year, and some
man will appropriate it to wear for the year—or longer if he likes, and
if he performs well what the mask represents. The shaman does not make
the masks—he is too busy. He is charged with the welfare of the whole
village, and he may be called upon in any emergency—at an eclipse,
for example. Once long ago, it is said, there was a great famine, the
winter ran into two winters, and Moon said to the shaman, “Whenever I
go out of the sky, the people may not look, they should go inside and
cover the smoke hole until I have performed my duty.” Since then, at an
eclipse, the shaman will send out fast runners to cry out, “Moon has
gone under the sky! Stay indoors!” The shaman himself will go on top of
the kadjim and chant and go through the motions the moon taught. When
the moon reappears, the shaman will reënter the kadjim where every one
has been sitting silent,—if a dance had been on at the time, it had
stopped. The following morning all form a long line, the shaman in the
lead. They encircle the village, forming an arc starting from the river
and ending at the river, and, as I said before, taking in a half mile
of woods above the village and half a mile below. They drum and sing
and go through certain motions, each having a bundle of fish on his
back.
There are many other times, too, when the shaman takes charge or tells
people what to do. I remember a great to-do over a frog that appeared
in a house in the middle of the floor. The house had been built in the
fall, after the ground was frozen, and one warm day in the dead of
winter the frog thawed out of its hole and came out on the floor. This
was an othlang, and it had to be righted at once. The shaman had to be
paid to find out about it. Such an incident would never be forgotten.
Muskrats come out from their holes in the bank of pond or lake, when
the ice breaks loose in the spring. If a muskrat came out before, say
in February or March, this, too, would be othlang and would have to be
righted.
Sometimes a whale will stray up the Yukon River, and when this happens,
unless the whale is killed, there will be a great famine. Once, a
whale went up river as far as Tenana, about nine hundred miles. There
was great alarm, and one of the shamans, a shaman of medium powers
(there are shamans of high, medium, and low powers; nowadays, however,
there are no very great shamans who, as in the ancient days, can do
everything; nowadays some shamans do one kind of thing, others, other
things), this Tenana shaman went out single-handed and speared the
stray whale. It was forty to fifty degrees below zero, he was nude
from the waist up, and from the great exposure and the great strain,
within a few days he died. The people were so grateful to the shaman
for saving the village that they made a carving in split spruce of the
shaman spearing the spouting whale, to place near his grave-box.
When the caribou and deer began to decrease at Anvik, the people became
greatly alarmed, they were afraid it was because of something they had
done, and they consulted the shaman. When he came out of his trance,
he told them to paint seven deer on the board over the ridge pole of
the grave-building of a certain shaman who had been a great hunter of
caribou. Each deer was to represent a year’s kill. Once, long ago, to
preclude othlang, the shaman ordered a man to be thrown off the side of
a certain mountain.
At every death the shaman has to give the death stroke, that is, when
it is time to send the spirit of the deceased away—on the fourth day
for an ordinary person, some days later for a person of distinction—the
shaman has to strike the corpse on the chest. He sends him on his
journey under the river to the village of the spirits—kethagyiye—a way
where there are, at intervals, pillars of fire at which the dead may
warm himself, and may cook. At the time of giving the death stroke,
the shaman also drives away all the evil spirits that are around the
village.
I mentioned a cousin of Cries-for-salmon who died in childbirth. Her
child was born alive, but as it was a girl and as the family were
ordinary people—the deceased woman was a sister of the invalid woman
I told about—the baby was put in the grave-box of the mother, in her
bosom. Strong families with many songs, with spirit powers and hunting
powers, might save babies in these circumstances, particularly a boy
baby; some woman in the family would adopt him. But the girl baby of an
ordinary family would certainly not be let live. I remember the case of
a girl baby the Mission people wanted to save. They took her, and she
had the best of care from them, but in four months she died.
Should a child die while it is still creeping, it is wrapped in
something the animals will not devour, like bark, and placed in the
woods under a spruce sapling. As long as the tree lives, the spirit of
the child lives, too, under its protection. The spirit dies with the
tree.... I may say here that in getting wood or bush from the forest we
do not take all there is in any place. We depend on the wood and bark.
If we destroyed it, we would become vagabonds.
The death of Cries-for-salmon’s brother was by drowning. He had been
drinking with the white trader, they were out in a boat together, the
boat upset, and the Indian was drowned. When Cries-for-salmon’s mother
heard the news, she rushed out of the house, wailing with heart-rending
cries, pulling her hair, and stripping herself to her waist. “My son,
why have you left me?” she cried, looking to the North where the dead
live. We could hear her cries a mile away, and we knew from her wailing
songs the family of the deceased. Distinguished families have their
own songs, and they make a greater outcry at death. Cries-for-salmon’s
mother is a woman with power. She has many strong songs. Her father
had been a great hunter, with wolferene and bear songs. She is always
consulted in the village, she knows her power, and there is no one to
check her or to talk about her. So she stripped to the breeches—an
ordinary woman would be afraid to strip lest people would talk—and she
threw herself into the ice-cold water. She wanted to go on with her
son, he was the only son left her. But they pulled her out. And they
pulled out her husband who had also thrown himself in.
After two or three hours, they found the body and took it home,
transporting it in the oldest or most worn-out canoe at hand. As the
spirit of the drowned man was supposed to be still in the water, nobody
was allowed to go into the water. It would cause othlang. People were
told not to use that channel for a year, and women were not to set out
their fish nets in a place where there was a good place for pickerel.
The evil spirit of the place might pull them overboard. I recall
another place in the river where there are sand bluffs where, unless
people pay homage, they do not feel safe.
As usual, the mourners made new garments, new mittens, new moccasins,
and a new cap for the dead man. The second night they danced and
sang old songs, and the third night they danced to new songs.
Cries-for-salmon’s brother was a good bear hunter, so they danced bear
dances which showed how a bear behaves and which would promote the
increase of bears. Had he been a good seal hunter or hunter of other
animals, similarly they would have danced seal dances or other animal
dances. Besides, had he died during a good game year, they might have
carved the game animal on his grave-box. I recall a hunter with a good
heart, who died in a good deer year, having a string of deer carved on
his grave-box—to continue the abundance of the deer.
During the mourning time of work, of dancing and feasting, the corpse
is placed so that the dead man can see what is going on and absorb it
all. He is in a sitting position or, even if he is laid out, as happens
nowadays, the body is propped up. The dead man has to report in the
village of the dead how his favorite food was placed near him and how
he was honored, up to the last. On the sixth day, after waiting for
relatives from another village to arrive, after the death stroke,—in
this case the white man was not allowed in to pray, for everything
was done in the old way,—the dead man was put in the grave-box in a
sitting position, his eyes open, frozen open, and his hands placed in a
position to show his interest. He is thought to return to his grave-box
from time to time, more particularly in summer, and he wants to see
what is going on. For this reason, too, the sinew corded grave-box
is set on a hillside overlooking the river, the face of the corpse
turned towards the river, that the dead may see who are passing and
what is going on in the village; likewise that the dead may be near
his food supply, i. e. the fish in the river. In the late autumn,
after the leaves have fallen, the older women take bits of their most
valued food, salmon and, since the coming of the whites, biscuit, to
place by the side of the grave-box for the dead to eat, and to bless
the givers. At the same time the men, if not the old women, will put
the grave place (tudatonte, where the body lies stiff, as we say) in
order, removing vegetation and restoring implements to their place.
Thus engaged, every one will be continually breathing out to the North.
Towards spring these attentions to the dead are repeated, on a smaller
scale.
At death, food is put near the head of the corpse in the grave-box and,
in the case of Cries-for-salmon’s brother, the bows and arrows of the
deceased were tied to a cross piece supported by upright sticks by the
grave-box; but, as he was not a shaman or chief, no roof was built over
the grave-box nor was the box ornamented. The dead man’s things were
given away to relatives; his rifle in particular was given to a member
of the family distinguished for his ability and for his songs. After
the distribution was complete, they set fire to the man’s house, to
drive away the evil spirit.
Cries-for-salmon’s brother, like most men to-day in Anvik, had only
one wife—formerly a man might have as many wives as he could support,
generally he had two wives, sometimes three. And she had not yet
reached middle age, the time when women tattoo lines on their chin—they
tattoo according to the songs they have or their husband has, a
shaman’s wife will have more lines than a chief’s wife—nevertheless,
she decided not to marry again and she bobbed her hair. In this way
she showed, even to men from other villages who did not know about
her, that she grieved and that she was unwilling to associate with one
without her husband’s power. She wanted to prolong his powers, and to
keep the atmosphere she was left in by him, from going over to another
man. Having his atmosphere and songs, she was strong and she felt
spurred to care for herself, to accomplish almost anything.
Sometimes a dying person will send for one to whom he wishes to
pass on his powers. Then the dying one looks to the North, breathes
on the other and spits on him (spittle is a part of you). Once,
Cries-for-salmon said to me, “I think a great deal of you. I would
do almost anything for you, and I would like to give you some of
my power, but if I did, I would die within the year. I must live
for my children—providing the Good One sees fit for me to live.”
Cries-for-salmon spoke this way to me because a while before she had
said something to me which I did not understand, and it hurt her. An
old man present said, “You can’t expect much of him” (as a Mission
boy). So Cries-for-salmon said to me, “With all the white man’s
knowledge, you have no intelligence whatsoever. Had I completed my
duties to my children, I could tell you more.”
Many widows do not bob their hair, but even so, unless a woman were of
no account, she would not remarry within the year, she would wait two
or three years. A woman is esteemed not only for waiting, she is valued
according to the way she cared for her husband before he died, when he
was helpless. A man’s feelings are badly hurt if he is neglected in
these circumstances.
If a man and his wife died at the same time, let us say, from eating
poisonous berries, “devil berries” people call them, the two would be
buried in the same grave-box. I had to move such a box once—the Mission
wanted to make some use of the place. A string of beads fell out, not
the kind we use to-day, these were very old, I think, got from Siberia
in trade. They asked me for the beads in the village, but I kept
them—until they disappeared. The people wanted them very much.
The deceased is referred to as “the one who has gone from us.” The term
for dead is used only of animals. Once I referred to some one as dead.
They said, “What! He is not a dog. You are referring to a human being.”
Nor is the name of the dead ever mentioned; but people think of them,
and whenever they think of them they turn to the North and breathe out.
(A prolonged, gentle expiration, as Reed showed me.) So on return from
a hunt, passing the cemetery, a man will take a berry, eat half, and
throw half in the direction of the cemetery, to some chief dying in a
good season, and then look to the North and breathe out.
I recall a visit up river I paid to Shagrūk where lives my mother’s
sister. “My grandmother,” I said to her. “Whose blood is this
addressing me?” she asked. When she knew me, she began to wail, looking
to the North—she was recalling my mother: “My sister, my sister, and
here is my blood come again to me!” People think that if ever they said
anything disrespectful about the dead, they would be laughing, as we
say, at their own corpse. (In thinking of the dead, people appreciate
the experience awaiting them.)
About Christmas time there are ceremonials for the dead for three or
four days. Persons who have lost their relatives in the past year are
called upon by the shaman to contribute the bulk of the feast. “Who
will contribute so many bundles of salmon?” asks the shaman, “so many
sacks of seal oil, so many sealskins or caribou skins, so many cords
of sinew (for sewing), the œsophagus of a white whale (used in
trimming)?” People eat to their heart’s content. Sometimes they eat
for the dead, sometimes they set aside the food—the best that can be
got from the woods and waters. The missionaries are told that these
are merely social feasts. Not that many of the old ceremonies have not
indeed been cut out at Anvik. If a ceremonial can not be performed
fully, in the proper way, people do not want it performed at all.
Yet it is much against the wish of the people to go without their
ceremonials. The “feasts,” as I have often told the missionary, are the
only amusements of the people, and they would like to keep on with them
just as they do at the conservative village of Shagrūk.