DALL.] 



INNUIT MASKS. 123 



soon be available on the return of the party lately stationed at Point 

 Barrow by the Signal Service. 



The figures will give a better idea of the masks and their appendages 

 than can be expressed in words. A few remarks in regard to the ob- 

 ject of these pendants, &c, may not be out of place. 



When the wearer is dancing the feathers and other appendages at- 

 tached flexibly to the margin of the mask will move backward and for- 

 ward in correspondence with the motions of the wearer, a feature which 

 is considered by these people as a very important part of their appear- 

 ance while partaking in the dance. 



These dances are usually made to the sound of a parchment drum or 

 tambourine struck with a long wand by one of the older men of the vil- 

 lage. He is frequently accompanied between the intervals of drum- 

 ming by some person who sings a few words alternating with a uniform 

 chorus in the customary Innuit fashion. To this the spectators, most 

 of whom are women, add their voices in chorus. These songs are de- 

 scriptive of some event such as might occur on a hunting, fishing, or 

 other expedition, generally relating either to some of their mythic le- 

 gends, or to actual events which have taken place to the knowledge of 

 those present. At some crisis in the song, the little doors of the mask 

 will be thrown open, and the chorus will be suddenly changed. The 

 disclosure of a humorous or terrifying face, where none was seen before, 

 by suddenly opening the little doors (which are pulled open by small 

 strings which pass inside the mask), is supposed by these people to 

 have something particularly humorous or startling about it. 



The finger-masks, of which some descriptions will be given, are worn 

 by the women on their forefingers during the dance, and are, perhaps, 

 peculiar to the two deltas. They are also variable in character, and 

 represent often heads of animals as well as the faces of human beings. 

 The latter are sometimes normal and sometimes ludicrously distorted. 

 Often small figures, representing on a much diminished scale the com- 

 plex maskettes which we have just described and like them furnished 

 sometimes with miniature doors or flapping wings, are attached to the 

 borders of large masks, to portions of the dress, or to wands or other 

 articles held in the hand by the dancers. Many such are contained in 

 the collection of the National Museum. 



Among the humorous or ludicrous masks, which represent conven- 

 tionalized animals or portions of animals, there are some which show 

 either human faces or whole human figures, either concealed by flaps 

 or carved in depressions on the surface of an animal mask. Some rep- 

 resent in a rude manner the head of a merganser, or saw-billed duck. 

 The head is, however, resolved into a rounded, convex, anterior por- 

 tion like the bottom of the bowl of a very large ladle. The bill, with 

 its long teeth represented by pegs, is bent backward over the top of the 

 head almost exactly as the handle of a ladle. The rounded part, how- 

 ever, has lost all resemblance to a bird's head, and is carved to repre- 



