Ingalik Social Culture (Deg Hit'an, Deg Hitan, Deg Xit'an, Degexit'an, Kaiyuhkhotana Indians, Dene)

302 Pages·1958·16.459 MB·English

by  Cornelius Osgood

NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE
THOMASJ BATA LIBRARY
TRENT UNIVERSITY
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YALE UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS
IN ANTHROPOLOGY
NUMBER 53
INGALIK SOCIAL CULTURE
CORNELIUS OSGOOD
NEW HAVEN
PUBLISHED FOR THE
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY, YALE UNIVERSITY
BY THE
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Trairl University Libra
1958
PETERBOROUGH, QMT.
f'JD.S'l
IRVING ROUSE
Editor
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
T
IME passes with incredible quickness, and a lifetime soon disappears over
the hill. When my field work among the Ingalik had come to an end in the
summer of 1937, I was happily confident that ten years given to the study of the
Northern Athapaskans had produced satisfying results. The research had been
exciting, if not always easy, and I was looking forward to a pleasanter region in
which to reflect on the social characteristics of an alien community. I had begun
the study of Chinese and had shifted the focus of my activity to a new area of
research, but despite the fact that I undertook a community study in Yunnan the
next year, by the end of 1939 I had completed the manuscript, Ingalik Material
Culture, which was published in 1940.
The reason for that volume appearing first in the series did not reflect a primary
interest in technology; I simply found that a presentation of the physical pro¬
ductions of culture was a logical preliminary to writing about human behavior.
It became increasingly apparent that I could not adequately set the stage for
social interaction without referring to things, and therefore the things had first to
be described. Life in a kashim is rather difficult to comprehend if one does not
fully understand what kind of a shelter it is. Without feeling a necessity for haste,
I intended to continue with the presentation of my data following the more or less
regular routine of compiling reports. Trouble clouded the horizon, however, and
war hampered work in China even before the devastation spread to disrupt the
world everywhere. Priorities pushed aside the little-appreciated Athapaskans until,
by the nineteen-fifties, my major interests were distantly removed from northern
America.
In the year 1953, circumstances impelled me to finish the descriptive reports on
the Ingalik. Therefore I set about producing them, and by the spring of 1956,
except for the analyses and commentaries, I had essentially completed the manu¬
scripts of the monographs on both social and mental culture. Then, with the inten¬
tion of checking on certain aspects of the wTork, as well as of adding to the data, I
returned to Anvik for the third time. Certain inferences from my previous records
were fortunately confirmed, but so little data were added to the present volume
that discussion of the last visit in 1956 will be relegated to the monograph, Ingalik
Mental Culture, which, it is hoped, will soon be forthcoming.
It would perhaps be misleading to go further without specifically stating that the
similarity of such cultures as those of the Ingalik and Tanaina to those of the
adjacent Eskimo has been recognized. It does not seem desirable, however, to
confuse the purpose and method of presenting one culture with those of a com¬
parative study, especially one of such importance as will probably bring about a
change in the general conception of the cultural alignments of the two, widely
spread linguistic stocks represented. Therefore, the temptation to draw suggestive
generalizations has, at this time, been almost wholly suppressed.
3
4 PREFACE
Out of consideration for the practical consequences, the innumerable references
to the Ingalik Material Culture, which might have been included for the purpose
of defining objects that are mentioned, have been almost entirely eliminated. Suf¬
fice it to say that those who are imbued with a curiosity about any technological
point will probably find satisfaction by consulting the “Index of Manufactures”
in the above-mentioned volume and then examining the figures and accompanying
descriptions.
In this work on social culture, the illustrations pertain mostly to the ceremonials
and consist largely of masks representing a selection of those in the Yale Peabody
Museum. An effort has been made to depict both the group of masks that play a
primary part in the ceremonies, and those that will illustrate the stylistic variations
of the Ingalik woodcarver. It should be especially mentioned that the technical
descriptions of these particular masks, inappropriate for the text and too extensive
for the legends on the figures themselves, have been given in the list of “Text
Figures.”
As one who has grown old in this undertaking, I have some parental concern
for the result. To contribute basic anthropological knowledge is a laborious task
and perhaps not as emotionally exciting either to writer or to reader as the presenta¬
tion of theoretical opinions. Ethnography, considered as being primarily the de¬
scription of the cultures of nonliterate peoples, is peculiarly limited in time. It
belongs essentially to a hundred year span that is drawing to a close, a period
before which nothing technical was done, and after which probably no aboriginal
cultures will remain. In this belief, I take it as fortunate to have gleaned what I
could, and my awareness of the weaknesses in this work becomes less painful than
it might otherwise be. Surely anyone who has tried to restore the image of bygone
days by sucking the honeycomb of memory knows that it is easier to obtain sugar
in the market place of a functioning culture. Here, if the sweetness be small, I hope
that the flavor released in the process of refinement may be sometimes seductive
and soothing in its effects on the reader.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since this is the second of a series of reports on the Ingalik, the basic acknowledg¬
ments pertinent to the field work have already been made in the preface of the
first. It is my privilege, however, to reiterate a tribute to my friend and principal
informant, Billy Williams of Anvik.
In some ways nothing is more difficult in ethnography than the reconstruction of
long, complex, behavior patterns involving scores of people. The task is not easy
even for the participant observer of a ceremony—and I have never attended one.
Still, I have confidence that the descriptions given in this monograph correspond in
most respects to empirical reality, and I would like to say why. I had spent many
months, even years, among the Northern Athapaskans before my first visit to the
Ingalik in 1934. Indians were not strange; their drums had reverberated through a
quarter of my life. What I needed and sought for was an informant with a photo-