Festivales y ceremonias de los esquimales de Alaska: fuentes históricas y etnográficas, 1814-1940

Jesús Salius Gumà

doi:10.5209/rev_reaa.2014.v44.n1.47637

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to shed light on the festive and ceremonial events of some of the Eskimo cultures of Alaska through a review of the ethnohistorical documents at our disposal. The study centers on the ancient societies of the Alutiiq, Yup’ik and a part of the Inupiat, communities that share a series of common features, and sees their festive and ceremonial activities as components of the strategies implemented to maintain control over social reproduction. This review of the historical and ethnographic sources identifies the authors and the studies that provide the most pertinent data on the subject.

Highlights

The ancient Eskimo societies of Alaska implemented a series of strategies in order to control social reproduction 1 and to ensure their survival
The study describes the use of other masks that Dall found together with some Aleutian mummies, which he associated with traditions he had observed on Kodiak Island (Dall 1878: 28). In another description of festive events entitled On Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Customs, with an Inquiry into the Bearing of their Geographical Distribution (Dall 1884), Dall provides a classification of the masks from various societies in South and North America, including several Alaskan cultures (Dall 1842: 121-143), and contextualizes the masks through descriptions of the dances in which they were used
The ethnohistorical record of Alaska contains a wide range of information concerning the strategies of social reproduction adopted by the Alutiiq, Yup’ik and Inupiat cultures

Summary

Introduction

The ancient Eskimo societies of Alaska implemented a series of strategies in order to control social reproduction 1 and to ensure their survival. The performance of festivals and ceremonies in which dances and songs played a predominant part represented an important feature of these strategies. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Alaskan Eskimos. The detailed analysis of this information allows us to establish ethnoarchaeomusicological 2 reference points which so far have not been studied in detail (Salius 2010; 2011). This study presents an appraisal of the ethnohistorical sources that record the festive and ceremonial activities of the Alutiiq, Yup’ik and the south-western Inupiat societies. In so doing we aim to answer the following questions: (1) which of the sources are the most informative regarding the social reproduction strategies implemented through dances and songs? In so doing we aim to answer the following questions: (1) which of the sources are the most informative regarding the social reproduction strategies implemented through dances and songs? (2) how is this information expressed? (3) which features occur consistently in the sources, and which appear less frequently than we might expect?

Selection of the historical and ethnographic sources

The first descriptions of ceremonial and festive events

Historical and ethnographic accounts from the 1880s onwards

The ethnohistory of the Twentieth Century

Conclusions

Bibliographic references