22 UNIVERSITY MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGICAL PUBLICATION VOL. VI 



whaling ceremony performed at the taking down of the 

 umiaks. 



The dance contests in the Inviting-In Feast resemble the nith 

 songs of Greenland. They are Comic and Totem Dances in 

 which the best performers of several tribes contest singly or in 

 groups for supremacy. The costumes worn are remarkably fine 

 and the acting very realistic. This is essentially a southern fes- 

 tival for it gives an opportunity to the Eskimo living near the 

 rivers to display their ingenious talent for mimicry and for the 

 arrangement of feathers. 



There are a few purely local ceremonies, the outgrowth of 

 practices of local shamans. An example of this is the Aitekatah 

 or Doll Festival of the Igomiut, which has also spread to the 

 neighboring Dene. Such local outgrowths, however, do not 

 appear to spread among the conservative Eskimo, who resent 

 the least infringement of the ancient practices handed down from 

 dim ancestors of the race. 



It is not often that they will allow a white man to witness 

 the festival dances, but, owing to the friendliness of the chief of 

 the Diomede tribes, who always reserved a seat for me next to 

 him in the kasgi, I had the opportunity of seeing the local rites 

 and the Great Dance to the Dead. The same favor continuing 

 with the chief of the Unalit, during my residence on the Yukon, 

 I witnessed the Inviting-In Feast as celebrated by the southern 

 tribes. Having described the dances in general, I will proceed 

 to a detailed account of each. 



THE ASKING FESTIVAL 



The Aiyaguk or Asking Festival is the first of the local 

 feasts. It occurs about the middle of November when the 

 Eskimo have all returned from their summer travels and made 



