ALASKAN CANNIBALS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XIX, 30 October 1897, Page 603

ALASKAN CANNIBALS.

Along the coast of Southern Alaska dwell some very queer aborigines, as goldseekers flocking to the Klondike region will surely discover. They do the most of the freighting across the passes into the interior, carrying loads on their backs, but their imputation during many centuries has lieen so shut away from other tribes by gigantic ranges of snow-clad mountains that they have developed a jieculiar culture and customs unknown anywhere else. Hence the exceptional value of a monograph aliout them prepared by Dr. Franz Boaz, a distinguished ethnologist, which is to be published shortly by the National Museum. These natives may be said to live largely in a world of imagination, inasmuch as their customs and habits of living are based to a great extent upon ideas ami beliefs wholly sujiernatural. Creation, from their point of view, is peopled by strange monsters and demons, which, while normally hostile to man, may lie rendered friendly and even helpful with the aid of certain ceremonials of a quasi religious character. For example, according to a Washington special to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the most important of these monsters is a serpent which has a head at each end of its body and a human head in the middle. To touch this strange monster these natives lielieve is death, all the joints of the victim becoming dislocated, but specially favoured individuals are enabled to perforin wonderful feats by wearing a lielt of its skin, while its eyes, used as sling stones, will kill any animal, even whales. Another of these fabulous lieings is a wild woman who lives in the woods. She has enormous breasts, and carries a basket, into wl.ich she puts children whom she steals for the purpose of eating. One of the most remarkable of the festivals celebrated by the Indians is a carnival of ghosts, which is held each winter. It seems to be derived from a tradition that tells of a journey made by an adventurous individual to a region beneath the earth, inhabited by phantoms. The celebration itself is a mimic representation of the visit to Hailes aforesaid, and the performer who represents the submundane traveller wears a necklace and head-dress set round with skulls. Cannibalism is very conspicuous in the myths current among these people, who have themselves been eaters of human flesh up to a recent period. Indeed, though the whites are supposed to have put a stop to such practices, it would seem that secret indulgence in them has not been wholly done away with. Quite a number of strange demons are worshipped as guardian spirits—among them a cannibal demon that lives on the mountains and is always engaged in the pursuit of human lieings for his table. The smoke of his chimney is the colour of blood, and he has a female slave who gets food for him by catching men and collecting corpses. In his house is a fabulous bird, with an immensely long lieak, which lives on the brains of persons whose skulls it fractures with its bill. Anybody who is so unfortunate as to encounter the cannibal spirit may be transformed into a grizzly liear. On the other hand, if he can please the demon, he may obtain power to handle fire without being burned. Another guardian spirit is a fearsome warrior who lives in the far North. He travels constantly, ami never leaves his canoe. By obtaining his protection a man may become invulnerable, or he may acquire power to catch the invisible disease demon. This demon is at all times Hying almut in the air in the form of a worm. The fortunate protege of the warrior spirit catching the worm can throw it into the tasly of an enemy, who will die at once. The suggestion of the modern germ theory of disease contained in this belief is quite interesting. Not to lie neglected among the guardian spirits are certain ghosts, which liestow the power of returning to life after death. Dr. Boaz has secured for the National Museum a large nuinlier of masks, such as are worn by the Indians of the Alaskan coast in their ceremonials. Some of them are of enormous size and astonishingly grotesque.