Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community

6. Life Passages

150 chapter 6 Life Passages I n 1928, fifty years after the 1878 tragedy, the abandoned nenglus and manteghapiget at Kukulek and Kiyalighaq still held the bones of those whose untimely deaths kept them forever entombed in their homes. The original survivors and their descendants, cautious and respectful of the restless and sometimes angry spirits of the dead, had left them to themselves—mourned, feared, and untouched. Elsewhere, along the slopes of Sivuqaq Mountain and in the high outskirts of the island’s other small settlements, occasional slanted poles remained . Once the grim foot markers of the deceased whose remains had been properly disposed, they were dug into the tundra at south-facing angles to keep contract with aghveq, lest that great beast be offended by the actions of men. The first James Aningayou had told Alexander Leighton in 1940 that the whaling ship crews out of Boston and New York sometimes ignored traditional rules which the islanders followed to assure the return of the whales. One such rule involved the burial stakes: Sometimes those whaling ship people never went back to their ship for a long time, too busy to go back to their own ship. Just building a fire on the beach and having a lunch there. A long time ago we used to carry dead people up to the grave yard [situated on Sivuqaq Mountain], rolled up in a deer skin and lashed, with a stick in front to keep [the] body from bending. After [they] lay [the body] in the grave yard, [they] pull off the deer skin and cut it up, cut up the lashing rope, cut up the clothing and leave the bare person there on the ground. That stick drive into the ground close to the feet, straight up but kind of leaning away from the body. That stick [is] called Erryoduk. White people [whaling ship crew members] burn those [sticks taken from the grave yard] near the beach. Oh, how people don’t feel good about burning that! They believe driving all the whaling game away. Then I heard about people saying long after that, they says whale never come near again, on account of Erryoduk burning near the beach. Maybe sometimes happen like that here about the whaling. (Aningayou, DLC 1982:52–53) When pain or hunger or misery weighed too heavily upon someone, he or she still sought release in death. The decision to end life this way was very hard for the family. Death came only after the person pleaded with relatives at least three times to end his life. The person hoped to find honorable release and a place in the realms of the dead through suicide. Relatives hung the person on stakes which they held upright until life ended. Often the person was already dressed in readiness for his own funeral. When dearly beloved children succumbed to the capricious forces of disease spirits, some men sacrificed themselves, believing when they did so that their afflicted child might live, once the voracious appetite of these evil spirits had been satisfied. Young couples, saddened by the cheerless prospect of a childless marriage , toiled up the long rock-strewn slopes of Sivuqaq Mountain to make offerings to spirits, which sometimes seemed to bring infants into barren households. Later, the couple returned and the wife went dutifully and hopefully to the bed of her husband’s hunting and trading partner. These and other age-old practices were used to fill houses grown unusually silent following the epidemic and famine of 1878. Paul Silook told Henry Collins: On the top of the hill back of Sevugenuk, the old village about 2 miles from Gambell, is a fallen-down stone structure or enclosure, mainly the remains of a wall with a small enclosed space. . . . [It] was a place where barren women came with their husbands to ask for a baby. A small sacrifice was made. . . . Immediately after that the woman was sent to some other man in the village . . . [in hopes that a] child might result. Afterbirth is kept until the mother is able to get up. She then gives it to a woman who has not been able to have a child. This woman buries it. Purpose to help her have a child. There are records of women suckling puppies. Paul’s [Paul Silook] mother did it when several of her children had died, thinking to avert more deaths. . . . (Henry Bascom Collins Collection 1982) Life Passages 151 [52.14.221.113] Project...