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-k?dtsa, 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 not338 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 339 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 340 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.
341
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.” 342 “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 343 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 344 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,345 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 346 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 347and 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,348 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 349 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 interest350 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 was351 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 352 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 353 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 354 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 355 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 re?nter 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 356 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 woods357 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 358 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 359 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 360 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 shagruk 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 ?sophagus 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 the361 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 shagruk.
t. b. reed and elsie clews parsons
