Yup'ik masks, like many masks, were intended to tell stories. A large amount of historic information has been lost due to cultural assimilation practices (19th/20th Centuries) though it is thought that the masks
were used as a means to ask a particular animal to
come back the next season, to ask that the weather cooperate, or to
give respect and honor to members of the spirit world.
Source. Their construction was a collaboration of carver and shaman where the shaman oversaw and influenced the work and creative flair of the carver.
The Loon Mask
One day a woman took her husband out to the tundra. When he fell
asleep she made her breast drip into his eyes, which caused him to
become blind. The woman had become weary from skinning many animals, as
her husband was a mighty hunter. Now he would be unable to hunt anymore.
When the husband awoke he discovered that he was blind. He crawled
around until he came to a lake. There he heard a sound and shouted in
that direction. Two men answered his call, and when they came near, they
told him to get astride their kayaks. Four times the kayaks sank below
the surface, almost drowning the blind man, and as suddenly rose to the
top. The fourth dive restored the man's full vision and he was brought
ashore. Then the strangers told the hunter to turn his back until they
had gone a short distance away. When the man looked, all he saw were two
large loons.
Owl Mask
Aa-ya-guu-ma-rraa-ya-guu-ma
Aa-ya-guu-ma-rraa-ya-guu-ma
Flap your wings
Flap your wings
When your father comes
Aa, you will eat
Five big voles
Aa-ya-quu-maa
Aa-ya-guu-ma-rraa-yag-uu-mai
Flap your wings, flap your wings
The Wolf/Fox Mask
A fox was getting food for her young ones. She came upon a bear who
was also hungry. The fox shaped snow into several ptarmigans. She barked
and they were instantly living birds, which she killed and fed to the
bear. The grateful bear wished to repay the fox. The fox said that only
when she ate human beings was her hunger satisfied. The bear went out to
the sea looking for seal hunters. Towards evening, as he returned, the
fox saw that he had been struck by the hunters' spears.
The fox said she would heal the wounds. She heated two pebbles
in a fire. When they were red, the fox put one pebble in a spear wound,
which made the bear howl and snarl. Then she put the next pebble in the
second wound, which killed the bear. The cunning fox laughed and ate
bear meat for many days, forgetting her own young ones. Suddenly she
remembered them and returned to her den where she discovered that the
young foxes had left to find food for themselves.
The Crane Mask
In Yup’ik lore, the crane connotes stealth, power, and insight. The
human face on the bird’s belly (in both masks) represents its yua,
or spirit—the part of the animal that understands, and can relate to,
humans. The pair of hands (also seen in both masks) are a typical Yup’ik
symbol indicating that the mask is for use by a shaman. Historical
Yup’ik masks—at least those that have survived—were made of wood;
Charette crafts his from clay, but often tries to give the appearance of
wood.
Amikuk
Both these masks depict Amikuk, a creature of Yup’ik legend. Writing in
the early twentieth century, the collector and Alaska resident A.H.
Twitchell described Amikuk as “a spirit that lives in the ground. He
comes out at times but leaves no hole in the ground. He sometimes
dislikes men and will jump through them, but leaves no mark. The man
then lies down and dies.” The “teeth” (which are wood in the Smithsonian
mask, and not animal bone but porcelain, hand sculpted by the artist,
in Charette’s mask) serve as a reminder “to use our gifts for good
effect, or they will consume us later in life,” says Charette. Objects
that hang from the bottom of the mask ward off evil spirits with their
sound (as in a windchime).
Walrus
In Yup’ik lore, the walrus is a symbol of strength. Charette’s version
incorporates “singing spirit” masks and other details that connote
ancestors. The Smithsonian mask, also collected by A.H. Twitchell,
depicts “the spirit that drives the walrus, sea-lions, and seals towards
the shore so the hunter can get them,” Twitchell wrote.
Little sea bird
The book
on Yup’ik masks describes the Smithsonian piece as “delicate mask, both
bird and face, collected by J.H. Turner on the lower Yukon, 1891” and
offers the following story from a Yup’ik woman: “There was an angalkuq
[shaman] who was very prominent, who was approached by a little calling
bird out in the ocean. While he was on ice early in the morning, a
little bird landed above him and began to sing. As he listened to it
singing, he understood its call saying, ‘It is going to get stormy.
Don’t stay there, go up to the land.’ …When he understood what it was
saying he went up to the land. Shortly after that, it got very stormy
and pieces of ice began to break off and float out to the ocean. That
little bird was probably his little tuunraq [helping spirit].”
The Wind maker
The Wind-Maker
Spirit (Tomanik), one of more than 30 paired masks dreamed by a shaman from the Kuskokwin
River area around 1900. In this mask we see paired tubes, representing the
winter and summer winds, slender danglers, representing the air bubbles rising
from submerged seals, and the concentric circles are the different levels of the
Inuit cosmos.
