»■"•«•• ' TLINKIT AND HAIDA MASKS. 113 



Museum of Natural History, in New York, I have observed numerous 

 iustauces of a somewhat similar position of the figures composing masks 

 from New Ireland and the vicinity of New Guinea. 



The object with which the tongue was in communication was some- 

 times a suake, which then was furnished with other snakes or with 

 branches resembling palm leaves proceeding from its body in imitation 

 of arms and legs, and was very frequently either a bird or a very large 

 beetle, of the kind which have enormous horns or jaws extending in 

 front of the head. One of these is represented on Plate X, figs. 11-12, 

 and. with others, has been referred to under its proper geographical 

 head. 



E. G. Squier has called attention to the fact that in carvings the 

 tongue has been used by most (and especially by west) American peoples 

 as an index to life or death in the object symbolized. The tongue firmly 

 held forth indicates life or vigor and spirit; the tongue dangling help- 

 lessly froin one corner of the half-open mouth signifies death or captivity 

 doomed to end in death. The Mexican antiquities indicate this with 

 great clearness, and from our knowledge of the Tlinkit myths, we are 

 justified in considering that the touch of the tongue, as in the case of 

 the otter, frog, and kingfisher, symbolized to them the transmission 

 of spiritual qualities or powers. I learned from an old Aleut, who 

 had been well educated and held positions of trust under the Prus- 

 sian regime in Alaska, that, formerly, among his people, the wife desir- 

 ing sons of especial vigor took her husband's tongue between her lips 

 during the generative act, and men who had no progeny were re- 

 proached as "short tongued." This appears to be an enlargement of 

 the same idea, and that something of the same kind is symbolized by 

 the South Sea Islanders, in their carvings of tongue-touching forms, is 

 sufficiently evident from some of these articles which cannot be fully 

 described here. 

 The following masks from the northwest coast have been examined: 1 

 2658. Plate XIV, fig. 24. The mask was collected by Mr. Scar- 

 borough, of the United States exploring expedition under Wilkes. The 

 locality may have been anywhere betweeu California and British Colum- 

 bia, as it is simply recorded as from Oregon, which name covered at 

 that time a much larger area than at present. It is likely to be of 

 Haida workmanship. It is one of the oldest specimens in the Museum, 

 as the number indicates, and the most artistically carved of any I have 

 seen from that region. It is made of Alaska cedar, smoothly carved, 

 but brown and polished by age and use ; mostly uncolored. The eye- 

 ball around the iris is whitened, the hair and other markings on the 

 face are black. The hair of the mustache, beard, and head had been in- 



1 Since this paper was pat in the printer's hands I have been able to consult a new 

 work in which a number of masks from the Northwest Coast are most beautifully 

 illustrated in colors and described. This is Dr. Bastian's Amerikas nordwestkiiste 

 neueste ergebnisso ethnologischer reisen. etc., folio, Berlin, Asher, 1883. 

 3 ETH S 



