St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, Alaska, United States, North America
Accession Date:
21 Mar 1881
Collection Date:
25 Jun 1880 to 28 Jun 1880
Notes:
FROM CARD: "SMALL-HUMAN FEATURES-NOSE PLUG-LIP PLUG, WOODEN TEETH -ALMOND SHAPED EYES - WRINKLES ON BROW-RED WITH BLACK AND WHITE TRIM. ILLUS.: HNDBK. N. AMER. IND., VOL. 5, ARCTIC, FIG. 8, PG. 267. INVENTORIED 1977."
From Card (for 45721 -45723): "...Oct. 2, 1966. Mrs. Verne Ray today examined this mask (No. 45723). She says no masks were made at St. Lawrence Is., hence none of the three could come from there. Most likely provenience is St. Michael; Cape Vancouver or Pastolik are also possibilities. SHR"
Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact https://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=106 , retrieved 7-31-2018; see web page for additional information: Mask. The mask is carved of wood and painted red, with a bird quill through its nose, wooden pegs for teeth, and a wooden labret (lip ornament). A second labret is missing. The eyes are outlined in white, and the eyebrows and a mustache are painted in black. The mask was tied on with leather thongs. Calvin Leighton Hooper, captain of the U. S. Revenue steamer Corwin, obtained the mask on St. Lawrence Island circa 1881. It is a rare item, since there is no historical evidence that masks were worn for dances or ceremonies on St. Lawrence Island or in the Yupik villages of the Siberian shore.(1) None have been found in archaeological sites on St. Lawrence Island. However, a 1500 year-old wooden mask was found in an Old Bering Sea period burial at the ancestral Ekven site in northeastern Siberia.(2) According to St. Lawrence Island Yupik Elder Vera Kaneshiro, masks were not used on St. Lawrence Island, but their use is found in stories, which may mean that they were used long ago. Their word for “mask” is gginaqwaaq. Nemaayaq was a well-known St. Lawrence Island artist, born in about 1864, whose work included masks, according to Estelle Oozevaseuk, and who probably made this mask.(3) Archaeologist Otto Geist visited the artist's home at Kangii [place name on St. Lawrence Island known as Camp Collier] in 1927 and wrote, "Here lived Numaiyuk [Nemaayaq], a brother of the strongest shaman on the island [Asunaghaq], and carver of many dolls, idols, fetishes, and ornamented household utensils fashioned from driftwood . . ."(4) Nemaayaq was 56 at the time of the U.S. Census in 1920 and so was born in about 1864.(5) He was a survivor of the great famine or epidemic that killed more than half of the island's population during 1878-80, and was probably old enough at the time of Captain Hooper's visit in 1881 to have been the creator of the mask that Hooper collected. Nemaayaq's older brother, Asunaghaq, was an important Native leader known as "Chief Assoona" to the early missionaries.(6) He was also a shaman and healer. One of his dramatic performances as a shaman was witnessed by schoolteacher and missionary William F. Doty in 1899.(7) 1. Bogoras 1904-09:366 2. Arutiunov and Sergeev 1975; Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:126 3. Fair 1982:52; Lee 1999:15 4. Geist and Rainey 1936:34 5. Krupnik et al. 2002:49 6. Krupnik et al. 2002:73 7. Krupnik et al. 2002:289-91.
