The Sheldon Jackson Museum January artifact of the month is a wooden Yup’ik mask (SJ-II-B-110). Dr. Sheldon Jackson collected the mask from Andreafski, near the present-day location of St. Mary’s, in 1893. Unfortunately, like many masks collected during the 19th century, this mask's significance and the stories associated with it were not documented. It's similar to several masks at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and may have been danced in winter ceremonies.
Until the early 1900s, the Yupiit held an elaborate ceremonial season with six major ceremonies. Masked dancing was an integral part of the winter festivals commencing after freeze up. In three of the six ceremonies, the community hosted, feasted with, and honored spirits of the human and animal dead to ensure the proper position of the human and spirit worlds and their harmonious relationship to one another.
There are five masks reminiscent of the January artifact of the month in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. The collector, Edward Nelson, was a contemporary of Sheldon Jackson’s. They all feature a similar head shape and include a smaller face or yua.
The Smithsonian masks represent black bears, a grizzly bear, and a wolf. In one of the black bear masks (E48985-0), the animal's yua or inner spirit, peers out from the left side of the face. Hunters often told of seeing inuas in the fur, feathers, or eyes of animals they were hunting. Tufts of human hair (some now missing) hang over the eye. The bear has a wooden red tongue attached by a flexible willow splint. It would have bobbed up and down during a dance, perhaps representing the animal's fatigue as hunters pursued it. Another black bear mask (E48986-0) was likely made to be its pair. It has a semi-human yua or inua in its right eye, partly obscured by human hair. The mask is missing its original white paint, tongue, and arcing array of white feathers. The grizzly bear mask (E38865-0) has similar red coloring and has an inua in the left eye.
Of all five masks, Smithsonian mask E38854, is most like the artifact of the month. It's catalogued as a wolf mask in old museum records, yet was identified as a black bear mask in Ann Feinup-Riordan’s book The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks. The artifact of the month has a very similar form, though the face is not quite as tapered. Both masks have similar nostril holes cut from the snouts, opened mouths, holes for feathers all around the outer edge, simple cutout shapes for the eye holes, red paint applied to the face, and a small round yua located in the center of the forehead.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum cares for 112 Yup’ik masks. You can see the January artifact of the month, other Yup’ik masks, and many other examples of Yup’ik material culture at the museum. We're currently open Wednesday-Saturday, 10 am - 4 pm, except holidays. General admission is $7, $6 for seniors. and free for ages 18 and under and active military and their families.
Nelson, Edward William. The Eskimo About Bering Strait. Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, 1983
Fienup-Riordan. The Living Tradition of Yup’ik Masks. Seattle, Washington. University of Washington Press, 1996
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