The Native Races (Complete 5 Part Edition). Hubert Howe Bancroft

A ceremonial banquet takes place a year after the death of a relative; or an entertainment may be announced as a reparation for an injury done to one's neighbor. At some of these feasts only men dance, and at others the women join. Upon these occasions, presents are exchanged, and the festivities sometimes continue for several days. The men appear upon the scene nearly or quite naked, with painted faces, and the hair fantastically decorated with feathers, dancing to the music of the tambourine, sometimes accompanied by sham fights and warlike songs. Their faces are marked or fantastically painted, and they hold a knife or lance in one hand and a rattle in the other. The women dance by simply hopping forward and backward upon their toes.107 A visitor, upon entering a dwelling, is presented with a cup of cold water; afterward, fish or flesh is set before him, and it is expected that he will leave nothing uneaten. The more he eats, the greater the honor to the host; and, if it be impossible to eat all that is given him, he must take away with him whatever remains. After eating, he is conducted to a hot bath and regaled with a drink of melted fat.

      Sagoskin assisted at a ceremony which is celebrated annually about the first of January at all the villages on the coast. It is called the festival of the immersion of the bladders in the sea. More than a hundred bladders, taken only from animals which have been killed with arrows, and decorated with fantastic paintings, are hung upon a cord stretched horizontally along the wall of the kashim. Four birds carved from wood, a screech-owl with the head of a man, a sea-gull, and two partridges, are so disposed that they can be moved by strings artfully arranged; the owl flutters his wings and moves his head; the gull strikes the boards with his beak as if he were catching fish, and the partridges commence to peck each other. Lastly, a stake enveloped in straw is placed in the centre of the fire-place. Men and women dance before these effigies in honor of Jug-jak, the spirit of the sea. Every time the dancing ceases, one of the assistants lights some straw, burning it like incense before the birds and the bladders. The principal ceremony of the feast consists, as its name indicates, in the immersion of the bladders in the sea. It was impossible to discover the origin of this custom; the only answer given to questions was, that their ancestors had done so before them.

      SUPERSTITIONS OF THE KONIAGAS.

The shamán, or medicine-man of the Koniagas, is the spiritual and temporal doctor of the tribe; wizard, sorcerer, priest, or physician, as necessity demands. In the execution of his offices, the shamán has several assistants, male and female, sages and disciples; the first in rank being called kaseks, whose duty it is to superintend festivals and teach the children to dance. When a person falls sick, some evil spirit is supposed to have taken possession of him, and it is the business of the shamán to exorcise that spirit, to combat and drive it out of the man. To this end, armed with a magic tambourine, he places himself near the patient and mutters his incantations. A female assistant accompanies him with groans and growls. Should this prove ineffectual, the shamán approaches the bed and throws himself upon the person of the sufferer; then, seizing the demon, he struggles with it, overpowers and casts it out, while the assistants cry, "He is gone! he is gone!" If the patient recovers, the physician is paid, otherwise he receives nothing.108 Colds, consumption, rheumatism, itch, boils, ulcers, syphilis, are among their most common diseases. Blood-letting is commonly resorted to as a curative, and except in extreme cases the shamán is not called. The Koniagas bleed one another by piercing the arm with a needle, and then cutting away the flesh above the needle with a flint or copper instrument. Beaver's oil is said to relieve their rheumatism.

"The Kadiak people," says Lisiansky, "seem more attached to their dead than to their living." In token of their grief, surviving friends cut the hair, blacken the face with soot, and the ancient custom was to remain in mourning for a year. No work may be done for twenty days, but after the fifth day the mourner may bathe. Immediately after death, the body is arrayed in its best apparel, or wrapped with moss in seal or sea-lion skins, and placed in the kashim, or left in the house in which the person died, where it remains for a time in state. The body, with the arms and implements of the deceased, is then buried. It was not unfrequent in former times to sacrifice a slave upon such an occasion. The grave is covered over with blocks of wood and large stones.109 A mother, upon the death of a child, retires for a time from the camp; a husband or wife withdraws and joins another tribe.110

      The character of the Koniagas may be drawn as peaceable, industrious, serviceable to Europeans, adapted to labor and commerce rather than to war and hunting. They are not more superstitious than civilized nations; and their immorality, though to a stranger most rank, is not to them of that socially criminal sort which loves darkness and brings down the avenger. In their own eyes, their abhorrent practices are as sinless as the ordinary, openly conducted avocations of any community are to the members thereof.

      THE ALEUTS.

The Aleuts are the inhabitants of the Aleutian Archipelago. The origin of the word is unknown;111 the original name being Kagataya Koung'ns, or 'men of the east,' indicating an American origin.112 The nation consists of two tribes speaking different dialects; the Unalaskans, occupying the south-western portion of the Alaskan Peninsula, the Shumagin Islands, and the Fox Islands; and the Atkhas, inhabiting the Andreanovski, Rat, and Near Islands. Migrations and intermixtures with the Russians have, however, nearly obliterated original distinctions.

The earliest information concerning the Aleutian Islanders was obtained by Michael Nevodtsikoff, who sailed from Kamchatka in 1745. Other Russian voyagers immediately followed, attracted thither in search of sea-animal skins, which at that time were very plentiful.113 Tribute was levied upon the islanders by the Russians, and a system of cruelty commenced which soon reduced the natives from ten thousand to but little more than one thousand.

The Aleuts, to Langsdorff, "appear to be a sort of middle race between the mongrel Tartars and the North Americans." John Ledyard, who visited Unalaska with Captain Cook, saw "two different kinds of people; the one we knew to be the aborigines of America, while we supposed the others to have come from the opposite coasts of Asia."114 Their features are strongly marked, and those who saw them as they originally existed, were impressed with the intelligent and benevolent expression of their faces.115 They have an abundance of lank hair, which they cut with flints—the men from the crown, and the women in front.116 Both sexes undergo the usual face-painting and ornamentations. They extend their nostrils by means of a bow-cylinder. The men wear a bone about the size of a quill in the nose, and the women insert pieces of bone in the under lip.117 Their legs are bowed, from spending so much of their time in boats; they frequently sitting in them fifteen or twenty hours at a time. Their figure is awkward and uncouth, yet robust, active, capable of carrying heavy burdens and undergoing great fatigue.118

      ALEUTIAN HAT AND HABITATION.

The hat of the Aleut is the most peculiar part of his dress. It consists of a helmet-shaped crown of wood or leather, with an exceedingly long brim in front, so as to protect the eyes from the sun's reflection upon the water and snow. Upon the apex is a small carving, down the back part hang the beards of sea-lions, while carved strips of bone and paint ornament the whole. This hat also serves as a shield against arrows. The Fox Islanders have caps of bird-skin, on which are left the bright-colored feathers, wings, and tail.119 As a rule, the men adopt bird-skin clothing, and the women furs, the latter highly ornamented with beads and fringes.