78 MASKS AND LABRETS. 



pierced in the thinner portions of the face about the inoutb. Usually 

 after the first operation lias been performed, and the original slender 

 ] > 1 1 1 inserted, the latter is replaced from time to time by a larger one, 

 and the perforation thus mechanically stretched, and in course of time 

 permanently enlarged. 



They are worn iu some tribes by women only, in others by men only, 

 in still others by both sexes, in which case the sjyle of the labret is dif- 

 ferent for each sex. There are sometimes several small ones forming a 

 sort of fringe about the sides of and below the mouth (iu America 

 the upper lip is or was very rarely perforated), as in the Mag'emut 

 women of the Yukon delta; most generally the perforation is made 

 either just below the corners of the mouth, one on each side (Western 

 Eskimo, males); in the median line below the lower lip, (Tiinkit 

 women; Aleut men of ancient times; Mexicans; Botokudos; Mosquito 

 coast males): both at the sides aud iu the middle (occasional among 

 the Aleuts when first known and' at present by the females among 

 certain tribes of Bering Sea Eskimo) ; and, lastly, two small ones close to 

 the median line (females among some of the Western Eskimo). It will 

 be noticed that these fashions shade into one another, but that the 

 median single labret, when the practice was iu full vogue, was almost 

 always (in adults) much larger than any of those used iu lateral posi- 

 tions even when both sorts were employed by the same person. 



From this custom several narues for tribes have been derived, aud 

 passed into ethnological literature, such as Botokudo, from the Portu- 

 guese botoque, a plug or stopper, and Kaloshian, from the Bussiau 

 latushla, "a little trough," iu allusion to the concave surfaces of the 

 great labrets woru by elderly Tiinkit women in the time when their 

 archipelago was first explored by the Bussians. 



In most regions which have been brought closely into relations with 

 civilization the practice is extinct or obsolete. The Botokudo and the 

 northwestern Eskimo still use labrets of the original sort; with the 

 Tiinkit only a little silver pin represents in marriageable girls the odious 

 kalushka of the past, while among the Aleuts the practice is extinct, 

 as also, as far as known, it is among the people of the western coast of 

 the Americas from Puget Sound southward. 



Other changes are to be noticed antedating the historic period, which 

 is, for the Aleuts, only about a century and a half. Thus, iu discussing 

 the evolutiou of culture as exhibited in the stratified shell heaps of the 

 Aleutian Islauds 1 (1. c. pp. SS-S9, and plate), I have shown that in 

 the shell heaps belongiug to a very remote period, a form of labret was 

 iu use among the Iuuuit of Aliaska Peninsula and at least as far west 

 as Uualashka Island, precisely similar to the Tiinkit kalushka, but 

 which had passed entirely out of use at the time these people were 

 discovered by the expeditions of the Russians and other civilized nations. 



1 Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. 1. Tribes of the extreme North- 

 west. 4°. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1877, pp. 41-91. 



