WOLF-MAN

The Nuu-chah-nulth (or Nootka) on Vancouver Island, of which they inhabited the Southern Coast, celebrated in winter a ceremony very similar to the Winter Ceremony of the Kwakiutl. It was centred on the initiation of new members into the tlukwana society, a term probably of Kwakiutl derivation, meaning “to acquire a supernatural power” (Boas 1897: p. 396).
The details of the ceremony recall in  many points the hamatsa (Cannibal Dancer) initiation among the Kwakiutl. During the feast, suddenly some “wolf-men” irrupted in the ceremonial house and, going around the fireplace which had been immediately extinguished, they uttered a particular sound with the aid of a special whistle. As soon as the wolves had abandoned the ceremonial house, the fire was rekindled and the participants discovered that some individuals, generally youths, were disappeared. They had been kidnapped by the wolves and brought into the forest.

Nootka Wolf Dancer with frontlet mask (Photo E. S. Curtis, 1916)

 

The novices had to remain in the woods with the wolves for a certain time, with their faces blackened and with hemlock branches around their waists and heads. It was believed that the spiritual power (heina) of the wolf watched over the neophytes during the seclusion period, and sometimes it possessed them and determined their “wolf” behaviour. After four days the villagers went to meet the initiates coming back from the woods, accompanied by the wolves. They danced and sang with the purpose of “appeasing” and “domesticating” the wolf-men.

 

Wooden frontlet mask with a wolf skin collected among the Nootka (American Museum of Natural History, New York)

 

After having come thrice near the initiates, one of the dancers exclaimed: “Now the wolf is domesticated”. Then, some men captured the initiated and brought them back to the village, while the wolves and the “Wild Men” (pokomis and  akhmako) accompanying them went away and disappeared again into the woods. The Wild Men were regarded as dangerous and destructive spirits, incarnating the most worrying aspect of the forest. With the appeasement of the initiates, and their return into the human condition, they had been re-transformed from wolf-men into human beings, while the wolves and the Wild Men were rejected again into the woods, from which they were not to reappear until the next winter (Ernst 1952; Comba 1992).

 

Group of Kwakiutl masked dancers during the Winter Ceremonial, among which, to the far right, there is a Wolf dancer  (Photo E. S. Curtis, 1915)