390 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



A festival in honor of the spirits of land and sea, and in memory 

 of deceased kinsmen, is celebrated annually in the month of Octo- 

 ber or November. Lieutenant Zagoskin,* who spent five years 

 among these people exploring the Yukon and Kuskokvim Eivers, 

 has given us full details of that strange mummery and capers 

 which characterize Innuit festivals and dances. What he saw be- 

 tween 1842 and 1845, and so graphically narrated, is to be seen sub- 

 stantially the same now everywhere among these people, who are 

 almost wholly unchanged from their primeval habits as they live 

 to-day. 



Of the tribal organization of these people but little is known : 

 yet, there seems to be no recognized chieftainship each isolated 

 settlement generally contains one man who makes himself promi- 

 nent by superintending all intercourse and traffic with visitors. 

 The profits accruing to him from this position give him some slight 

 influence among his people ; but the oomailik (oomuialik of Zago- 

 skin), as these middlemen or spokesmen are called, possess no au- 

 thority over the people of their village, who pay far more attention 

 to the advice or threats of sorcerers, shamans, or "medicine men." 

 In the festivals, consisting of feasting, singing, and dancing, with 

 which these hyperboreans while away the long winter nights, the 

 shamans also play a prominent part, directing the order of the per- 

 formances and the manufacture of masks, costumes, etc., while the 

 oomailik or spokesman sinks back into insignificance for the time 

 being. 



All these games, both private and public, take place in the 

 kashga. At the public performances the dancers and singers, men 

 and women, stand around the fire-hole ; and the men, to the time 

 of the drum and the singing, go through various contortions of the 

 body, shifting from one foot to the other without moving from the 

 spot, the skill of the dancer being displayed only in the endurance 

 and flexibility of his muscles. The women, on the other hand, with 

 their eyes cast down, motionless, with the exception of a spasmodic 

 twitching of the hands, stand around in a circle, forming, we may 



* The Russian Imperial Government in 1841 ordered Governor Etholin, 

 of Sitka, to select a skilled engineer to make this exploration, and accord- 

 ingly, on July 10, 1842, Zagoskin was started for St. Michael's. His expedi- 

 tion was the most extended of any white man ever made in Alaska prior to 

 American search. 



