Mask
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1 Nov 1878
name: label: Donor Name
content: Edward W. Nelson
notes: label: Notes
content: FROM CARD: "PICTURED IN NELSON, 18TH AR, BAE (1896-7), PL. XCVII, AND IS DESCRIBED ON P. 399 [AND P. 400] WHERE IT IS INCORRECTLY IDENTIFIED AS PL. XCVIII. LOANED TO THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ON SEPTEMBER 10, 1971. RETURNED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 2-9-72. INVENTORIED 1977."
label: Notes
content: Yup'ik mask. According to Edward Nelson, this mask "represents the tunghâk or being that controls the supply of game. It is usually represented as living in the moon. The shamans commonly make a pretense of going to him with offerings in order to bring game into their district when the hunters have been unsuccessful for some time.
label: Notes
content: "Masks of this character are too heavy to be worn upon the face without additional support, so they are ordinarily suspended from the roof of the kashim by strong cords. The wearer stands behind with the mask bound about his head, and wags it from side to side during the dance so as to produce the ordinary motion. I was told that in all the great mask festivals several of these huge objects were usually thus suspended from the roof." From Edward W. Nelson, The Eskimo About Bering Strait. 18th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1896-97, Part 1 (Washington, DC, 1899), page 400.
label: Notes
content: Illustrated in Fitzhugh, William W., Julie Hollowell, and Aron L. Crowell. 2009. Gifts from the Ancient Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, CT. Fig. 18, p 177. Identified there as a Tuunraq mask, wood, paint, and feathers, w. 93 cm. (fingertip to fingertip). "Large masks like this one ... representing the god-like master spirit that lived in the moon, were too large to wear and were hung from the roof. Shamans and other dancers danced "behind" the mask in ceremonies and festivals. This mask has been fitted with new swan feathers."
label: Notes
content: Photo and description in Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 2007. Yuungnaqpiallerput, The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival. Seattle: University Of Washington Press, p. 77. Kegginaquq/Mask said to represent a tuunraq, a shaman's helping spirit, used in dances to request future abundance, symbolized by the carved creatures on the mask's forehead.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 15 Mar 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 4
place: label: Place
content: Magemut, Yukon River, Mouth, Tundra South Of, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Yup'ik
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 78A00080
label: USNM Number
content: E33118-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Mask