E. W. HAWKES THE DANCE FESTIVALS OF THE ALASKAN ESKIMO I I 



feet in the Eskimo high kick, settling down into the conventional 

 movements of the men's dance. 1 



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-ln 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. 2 I happened to stumble on to one of these one time 

 when they were performing certain rites over a pregnant woman, 



1 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. 



2 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. 



