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Yup'ik and Cup'ik Native American history - page 2

Social norms and behavior were all geared toward survival and compatibility among family and village groups. Roles and social rank were largely determined by gender and individual skills. Successful hunters, nukalpiit, usually become group leaders. Men’s tools were associated with hunting and were elaborately decorated with appropriate spiritual symbols to aid in hunting success. These items included a variety of spears, harpoons, snow goggles, ice cane, and bow and arrows for hunting and warfare. Women's roles included child rearing, food preparation and sewing. Women’s important household items included the versatile, fan-shaped, slate knife uluaq, stone seal-oil lamp and skin sewing implements made from stone, bone and walrus ivory. Traditionally, skins of birds, fish, and marine and land animals were used to make clothing. Hunting clothes were designed to be insulated and waterproof. Fish skin and marine mammal intestines were used for waterproof shells and boots. Grass was used to make insulating socks, and as a waterproof thread. Coastal villages traded with the inland villages for items not locally available. Seal oil was highly desirabed by inland villages who usually bartered moose/caribou meat and furs such as mink, marten, beaver and muskrat, for seal oil and other coastal delicacies such as herring and herring eggs.

The tradition of yuraq or dance in its many forms was a uniting force in bringing people from villages together in the larger Yup'ik community. This tradition has been a system for perpetuating kinship ties for a long time, based on a long-standing value system of compassion and love for each other. During dances, the qasgiq came to life. Heavenly hoops hung from the ceiling, and the underground entranceway was transformed into a watery passage between land and sea. Stories were everywhere, carved into the masks and dance fans, woven into the clothing, painted on drumskins. Even the skylight cover, constructed of strips of dried seal gut sewn together, told a story.

There were good and evil shamans that had separate roles within the village. Good shamans would heal, search out animal spirits for the hunters, ask for survival necessities such as driftwood and good weather. The bad shamans battled good shamans for power, placed curses on people, generally made life miserable for others and could even kill. It is believed that some Yup’ik/Cup'ik people still possess shamanistic powers.

Yup'ik people remain one of the most traditional groups of native Americans, with an interest both in preserving their past and in carrying vital traditions, such as dancing and mask-making into the future. From a long time past people wore masks. It was a way of praying so the animals would come when they hunted them. Throughout that period in the past, Yup'ik people called a ceremonial masks an agayu. Before the missionaries brought Christianity, when people told stories they would mention the Agayu religious ceremony that had been practiced by the people. When they made a presentation with a mask they would say that they were practicing the custom of Agayu. The Yupiit believed that sea mammals lived in huge underwater qasgiq, where they arranged themselves around a central firepit in ranked fashion. From these underwater homes the animals viewed their treatment by people and, based on what they observed, chose whether to give themselves to human hunters.

One of the major festivals of the Cup’ik people was Ilvariq, the bladder festival, which took place in November or early December. The Cup’ik people traditionally believed that the spirit of the seal was in the bladder, and the bladder festival honored the spirit of the seals and returned them to the sea. By honoring the seals, the Cup’iks hoped to insure continuing harvests. The people believed the seals had a qaygiq under the ocean, where the spirits of dead seals lived until returning in live seals the following spring. Hunters kept and cared for the bladders of seals they harvested each year to use in this festival.

• Athabascans,
• Yup'ik and Cup'ik,
• Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik people,
• Aleut and Alutiiq peoples,
• Eyak, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people.

Cup'ik and Yup'ik Native American history - page 1

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