Among the Kwakiutl (today preferably called Kwakwaka'wakw = “Kwakwala-speaking peoples”), the year was traditionally divided into two well defined periods: the summer season, mainly devoted to the economic activities (fishing, hunting, collecting), and the winter season, the ceremonial period for excellence, when it was believed that the spirits came near the human world, while humans personated the spirits with costumes and masks. The religious time (tseka in the Kwakwala language) began at the end of the gathering and storage of the food supplies, in the fall, around the month of November.
The initiation of new members into the ceremonial societies was the focus of the celebrations. Among the most prestigious of the societies were those of the Cannibal (hamatsa) and of the Cannibal of the Ground (hamshamtsas). Membership into the dance associations and the ceremonial performances accompanying them (chants, rituals, masks) were regarded as proprieties and privileges of particular individuals, who had inherited them from their forefathers. Such prerogatives were distributed according to a hierarchical order of ranks, and each family, with its representatives, was placed in a certain position with respect to the other families. The dances were, thus, also a way to express and publicly celebrate the role and social standing of the noble families and their members.
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Masked dancers group during the Kwakiutl Winter Ceremony. On the left, without mask, is the Cannibal Dancer (Hamatsa) with his cedar bark ornaments. On the right, standing, a dancer with the costume of the Wild Man of the Woods (Beku’s) (Photo E. S. Curtis, 1915) |
Often, the marriage of high rank individuals was the motivation for the celebration of a ritual, during which certain ceremonial rights could be transferred from a man of high rank to his daughter’s husband, who in turn would keep them in order to transfer them to his children. The ceremonies could not be separated from the potlatches, public distributions of goods and food from the main prominent persons, who belonged generally to the noblest and high ranking families of the village. Such distributions were also a device for publicly validate the social and ceremonial position of an individual in his own community and towards the neighbourhood (Holm 1990: p. 378-379).
The masked dances consisted in the impersonation of the spiritual beings who originally had a communication with the ancestor of the family or kinship group, giving him or her, in this way, certain powers and the right to perform particular ritual functions. The dances were thus ways in which the exploits of the ancestors were commemorated and re-actualized. The ancestors were impersonated by their descendants and the spirits who had initiated them and given them their powers and privileges manifested themselves through costumes and masks. In particular, the spirits inhabiting the forest, on the margins of the human world, like the Cannibal Spirit, entered temporarily the village, to take off with them the youth who had to be initiated and who had to remain for a certain period in the wild and uncanny world of the woods, from which they shall come back “wild”, but owning a renewed spiritual power (Comba 1992).
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Masked dancers personating the mythical birds accompanying the Cannibal Spirit (Photo E. S. Curtis, 1915) |
Animals