The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan EskimoHawkes, Ernest William
Religion
The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo
Hawkes, Ernest William
Eskimos -- Alaska; Indian dance -- North America
[2] While the northern and southern tribes have the same general
movements for their ordinary dances, they give a very different
presentation of the festival dance-songs. The northerners leap and
stamp about the kasgi until overcome with exhaustion; while in the
south the performers sit or kneel on the floor, adorned with an
abundance of streaming furs and feathers, sweep their hands through
the air in graceful unison. It is a difference between rude vigor
and dramatic art.
Quite often a woman steps into the center of the circle, and goes
through her own dance, while the men leap and dance around her. This
act has been specialized in the Reindeer and Wolf Pack Dance of the
Aithukaguk, the Inviting-In Festival, where the woman wearing a
reindeer crest and belt is surrounded by the men dancers, girt in
armlets and fillets of wolf skin. They imitate the pack pulling down a
deer, and the din caused by their jumping and howling around her
shrinking form is terrific.
PARTICIPATION OF THE SEXES
There appears to be no restriction against the women taking part in
the men's dances. They also act as assistants to the chief actors in
the Totem Dances, three particularly expert and richly dressed women
dancers ranging themselves behind the mask dancer as a pleasing
background of streaming furs and glistening feathers. The only time
they are forbidden to enter the kasgi is when the shaman is performing
certain secret rites. They also have secret meetings of their own when
all men are banished.[3] I happened to stumble on to one of these one
time when they were performing certain rites over a pregnant woman,
but being a white man, and therefore unaccountable, I was greeted with
a good-natured laugh and sent about my business.
[3] This custom appears to be widespread. Low writes of the Hudson Bay
Eskimo: "During the absence of the men on hunting expeditions, the
women sometimes amuse themselves by a sort of female "angekoking."
This amusement is accompanied by a number of very obscene rites...."
Low, The Cruise of the Neptune, p. 177.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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