Yupik and Aleut male rituals

Secret societies that united all male adults of a community must have existed in North America only among the Aleuts and Yupik Eskimos. Yupik men and boys slept in a common house – kazhim. Women only came there to bring food to their husbands or to witness a performance acted there during which men in costumes and masks represented spirits. The performance was accompanied with cries, whistle, howling, beating walls – i.e. everything that could fill the female spectators with the holy terror.

Russian missionary Innocent Veniaminov describes a performances acted in the beginning of the 19th century by the Aleuts of the Unalaska Island. Part of the men who pretended to set off for hunting came back secretly disguised as “devils”, and the rest pretended that they beat the assailants back. After some time the noise and the cries died down and the men explained to the women that they had scared the “devils” off. Then it turned out that one of the men had disappeared. Then a woman selected in advance “to ransom the stolen one” was snatched. “Several days after that”, Veniaminov wrote, “Men return who had gone hunting, and they are told about the attack of devils while they were absent, and the latter listen with attention and horror. And the naïve Aleut women believed from the heart that this really was an attack of devils”.

Anthropomorphic mask USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. The first third of the 19th cent.		Mask. USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. The first third of the 19th cent.		Mask. USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. 1843
Mask. USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. 1843		Mask. USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. 1843		Mask. USA, Russian America. The Kadiak Eskimos. 1843