Wooden Mask
date: label: Accession Date
content: 30 Dec 1927
name: label: Collector
content: Herbert W. Krieger
label: Donor Name
content: Herbert W. Krieger
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Represents the one who makes a noise, like hoo-ho-hoo- etc. (trit do xu di nily neg i). Loan: Crossroads Sep 22 1988. Loan returned Jan 21 1993. Illus. Crossroads of Continents catalogue; Fig. 438, p. 307." Identified in Crossroads catalogue caption as: "Spirit Mask, Ingalik (Athapaskan) Indian. While utilizing elements of Eskimo iconography like "spectacles" and spots, this mask from Anvik, upstream from Eskimo territory on the Yukon River, has the long face, hair and ear ornaments that distinguish Ingalik Indian masks."
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=344, retrieved 7-10-2012: Elder Phillip Arrow (Deg Hit'an) of Shageluk identified this as a Wild Man mask, a type that is still made and used in the Deg Hit'an region. It has a spotted face with blue forehead and chin, goggle eyes, a rounded "O" mouth, long earrings, and a straight nose. White caribou hair is affixed to the head. Mr. Arrow said that a dangling ornament representing "snot" would normally hang at the end of the nose. The snot piece is missing but a peg hole for attaching it remains. Anvik residents in the 1930s made this type of mask, but called it the Cry Baby.(1) The Cry Baby was a character who appeared in the annual Giyama [Mask Dance] and was said to live inside a mountain.(2) The being was male even though it wore earrings and other female ornaments. On the mask shown here, the blue-painted chin may indicate a woman's facial tattoos.(3) According to Osgood, the O-shaped mouth of the mask was to show that the Cry Baby cried all of the time, a sound ("xu'xu', xu'xu'") that was imitated by the dancer who wore it. Mr. Arrow said that at Shageluk the Wild Man (or Cry Baby) mask is used for the Mask Dance and also the Stick Dance, which Osgood called the Animals' Ceremony.(5) This ceremony, no longer performed, was very different from the Koyukon Stick Dance, which centers around a decorated spruce pole that is carried through the village and then placed upright in the community hall during a memorial potlatch.(6) For the Deg Hit'an, the Stick Dance refers to three foot-long sticks of wood called "animal souls," each carved to represent a different creature, that supported ceremonial ceiling hoops inside the kashim ('ceremonial house') during the three weeks of songs and masked dancing that comprised the Animals' Ceremony.(7) These soul sticks were released back into the wild at the end of the ceremony by placing them in the river or on the river ice where they would be carried away in the spring. The purpose of this lengthy mid-winter ritual, originally taught to the people by a shaman, was to seek the favor and abundance of animals and plants that were needed to feed the community. Mr. Arrow refers to the women who brought in "something" (bowls of fish and "ice cream" consisting of fat, fish, and berries) to place in the center of the kashim, an offering that took place on the first night of the ceremony when the sticks and other equipment for the ceremony were being prepared.(8) As he also mentions, masks for the Stick Dance or Animals' Ceremony were stored outside under a spruce tree.(9) 1. Osgood 1958:84, Figure 8 upper right 2. Osgood 1958:93 3. c.f. Osgood 1970:71-73 4. Osgood 1958:93 5. Osgood 1958:96-134; Snow 1981:608 6. Madison and Yarber 1981a:26-42; Clark 1981:593-594; Huntington 1993:73 7. Osgood 1958:102 and Fig. 15 8. Osgood 1958:104 9. Osgood 1958:105
label: Record Last Modified
content: 15 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Anvik, Yukon River, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Ingalik (Deg Xitʼan, Degexitʼan, Deg Hit'an)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 097209
label: USNM Number
content: E339831-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Mask
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 61 cm