It begins by the conjurors, in full dress, calling the people altogether to dispense them for a short space from their marriage ties. Each witch doctor is masked, and clad in women’s clothing. The idea of his amazing get-up, apart from the usual intention to awe the people by grotesqueness or hideousness, is to disguise the face and body, to efface as it were the well-known individual, to make the people lose sight of the conjuror in the representation of a great power [[211]]at work among them. His dress is partly that of a man and partly that of a woman, and he carries the usual implements used by both sexes. This is to bring the needs of either before the great power, and to intercede for their respective needs.
A Conjuror’s Mask.
Mask made of sealskin with hair shaved off, and with tattoo marks, used by ancient Eskimos of Central tribes. This mask is used by the Conjuror at the celebration of the Autumnal Sedna feasts and ceremonies. Sketch by a Conjuror of the Central Eskimos.
To begin with, the Angakok wears several pairs of nether garments and boots, until he looks very big and out of his usual proportions. He has a woman’s pointed tunic, whose sleeves are elaborately trimmed with fringes and charms. The hood is pulled down [[212]]over his head, and he wears a mask of black skin tattooed all over. On his shoulders he carries an inflated sealskin float, and over his arm a coil of walrus hide. In his left hand he bears a woman’s skin scraper, and in his right a spear. Thus caparisoned, he emerges from his tent and begins by pairing off the couples.
The tribesfolk are ranged in two long lines, the men and women facing each other, and a lane between. Then the “Kailuktetak” (a minor order among the initiate) open the ceremonies. Each conjuror is furnished with a deer-horn scraper like a long curved knife (used in the ordinary course of things for scraping the newly formed ice from the kyaks as they are drawn out of the water), to which is attached a small piece of bearskin. He starts off down the living lane, dancing and shouting in glee, touching first a man and then a woman with the wand as he goes. The two thus indicated pair off, and are man and wife for the next twenty-four hours, or perhaps a little longer. The fun is fast and furious. Much of the whole thing has been prearranged, and the element of surprise is rather subordinate to that of anticipation. The conjurors choose among the women for themselves first, and next for those hunters who have had sufficient eye for beauty and sufficient of this world’s goods to mention the fact privately and persuasively beforehand.
There has been quite a stream of visitors to the conjuror’s house of late, and quite a number of presents [[213]]made, which forgetfulness on the part of that worthy has failed to return. So that the pairing off on this auspicious day is largely a prearranged affair. However, it occasions plenty of Eskimo laughter and delight. The enceinte (and the old folks) are not included in this adventure. They play the part of spectators only, but applaud or deride as heartily as the rest over each mating. These women are Kooveayootiksatyonerktoot, i.e., “no-longer-the-material-for-a-rejoicing,” having apparently given hostages to fortune already, or having sufficiently fulfilled the hopes of the community. Children are paired off first—boys and girls of no more than twelve years—and then the adults.
Each couple, as they are selected, join hands and walk away towards the man’s dwelling, attended for a little distance by the Kiluktetak who has picked them out, dancing all round them and about them like a mad thing. If they chance to touch him, they too begin to dance, and to voice their excitement in no uncertain manner. On entering the dwelling, each drinks a little water and mentions the place of his or her birth.
The conjuror has an âvetak slung upon his breast, that is, the entire skin of a seal which, inflated, is generally used as a float on the kyak. On this day, however, it serves another purpose. As the couple presently return to the Kilukletak, they pour water into this, and each individual, drinking from it again and again, mentions the place of his or her birth a [[214]]second time. The rite is official, and sets the conjuror’s seal upon the proceedings and its consequences.
The root idea of this pairing off is to strengthen a race that might easily be weakened by too much inter-marriage, and to increase the birth-rate. The writer has elsewhere commented on the defensibility of such a custom—from the Eskimo point of view—but it remains to be added here that, as regards parentage, the father of a child is always known and acknowledged, be he the woman’s husband or her temporary Sedna mate. The Sedna offspring is cared for by the regular husband, or by the community.