»*«•• I CHUGACHIGMUT MASKS. 125 



made an attempt to furbish up the old painting by daubing on a little 

 vermilion and by sticking a few new feathers into the holes, whence the 

 old ones had rotted away. I suppose that these masks were old danc- 

 ing masks, which, as was sometimes the custom, were thrown away after 

 the festival was over into some convenient and perhaps habitual rock- 

 shelter. There they had Iain many years, for wood decays with great 

 slowness in this climate when not actually subjected to periodic soak- 

 ings and dryings. When the agent had appealed for " curios" to the 

 natives of the adjacent villages, some one had thought of these old 

 masks as a means of procuring some tobacco, and having brought them 

 in, supposed a little brightening up would not make the price any 

 smaller, and so, before presenting them to the agent, added the ver- 

 milion and new feathers. At least this is the way 1 interpret the evi- 

 dence of the specimens. 



The attempts at humor in the make-up of these masks give one a 

 very poor idea of the wit of the makers. These efforts are confined to 

 elevating one eyebrow and depressing the other; to tipping the straight 

 gash by which the mouth is represented up or down at one corner ; to 

 representing the left eye as half-closed, closed, or even absent ; painting- 

 one eye red and leaving the other blank. 



It is to be remarked that though these people are the most south- 

 eastern of all the West American Innuit, and in constant communica- 

 tion with people of Tlinkit stock, there is not the slightest similarity 

 of style between their masks and those of their Indian neighbors. In- 

 deed, they are not much like those of the present Innuit tribes of the 

 peninsula and eastern coast of Bering Sea, nor of the Aleuts in de- 

 tails. But the style is distinctively Innuit, nevertheless. 



These masks are described below and figured, as it seemed they were 

 well worth it, notwithstanding their rude execution. 



None of the present inhabitants of Prince William Sound appear to 

 wear labrets ; at least I saw none with them, though they were formerly 

 worn by the males, and of the usual Innuit type, i. e., that resembling 

 as nearly as possible a " stove-pipe " hat. 



With the exception of fig. 20265, these masks are figured on a scale 

 of one-eighth the size of the originals. 



20265 (Plate XXIII, figs. 54-56).— Dancing mask made of white 

 spruce wood, very rude and cumbersome, contributed to the National 

 Museum by the Alaska Commercial Company, collected at Prince Will- 

 iam Sound by their agent. History wanting, but they all bear evidence 

 of much weathering and were doubtless obtained from some rock-shelter, 

 where they had lain many years. The figure shows the shape, which 

 resembles the conventional form adopted by the Innuit of the western 

 coast for the head of the " bowhead " whale (Balaena mysticetus, L.). A 

 similar carving, very minute, but representing the same subject, was 

 dug out of shell heaps at Port Moller by me in 1874, and figured in the 

 first volume of the Contributions to American Ethnology (P. S7, fig. 



