Peter De Smet
Nijmegen, Netherlands

Asymmetrical masks of indigenous Alaskan peoples have been interpreted time and again as representations of facial paralysis in the biomedical literature.^1-8 Among the arguments in favor of this view is that otitis media once was a health concern in Alaska and could have been an important cause of facial paralysis there.³

However, cultural experts in the field of Alaskan masks do not offer facial paralysis as interpretation^9-11 and have even contested this possibility.¹² The intention of indigenous mask carvers may be far removed from a desire to accurately portray a specific disease. Biomedical doctors looking at indigenous masks should be aware of the risk that a non-pathological feature (such as a stylistic characteristic, ornamental detail, or unintentional damage) may be erroneously mistaken for a sign of pathology.^13,14

This risk of biomedical misinterpretation has been coined as pseudopathology by Calvin Wells. He mentions the association between facial paralysis and asymmetrical False Face masks of the North American Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people as an example.¹⁵ These masks were worn in healing rituals performed by a medicine society called the False Face Society. One type of False Face mask displays a crooked nose and twisted mouth.^16,17 It is not reproduced here because Haudenosaunee policy forbids any public display of their ritual masks. This mask type has been interpreted in biomedical sources as the portrayal of facial paralysis¹⁸ or hemifacial microsomia.^19,20 In reality, however, it represents a spirit known as “The Great One,” who controlled high winds and watched over pestilence that might destroy the people. His broken nose and crooked mouth express the pain he suffered when his face was struck by a mountain, as he was defeated in a contest with another spirit about who should rule the world.

Masks of this type were intentionally designed to look terrifying in order to frighten away disease.^16,17 While this mythological story does not rule out the possibility that distorted False Face masks may have been inspired by facial paralysis,¹⁷ its foremost message is that it is important to explore the cultural background of artistic representations that seem to depict a biomedical disease. For this reason, the concise review below offers a cultural perspective on asymmetrical Alaskan masks, most of which originate from one of the following cultural groups^9,21:

• the Yup’ik people of southwestern Alaska around the Kuskokwim River and Bristol Bay areas (Fig 1a-f).
• the Iñupiaq people in the northwestern and far northern parts of Alaska, including King Island (Fig 2a-c).
• the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people living in the insular and peninsular parts of southwestern Alaska, such as Kodiak Island (Fig 2d-f).

The masks of these Alaskan peoples are often divided into two major types: religious shamanic masks and secular comic masks.^9,22,23

Religious shamanic masks

Shamanic Yup’ik masks show a wide variety of styles and shapes. They were worn for dances during winter ceremonies and festivals, usually only once, whereafter they would be burned or buried in the ground. They portray spiritual beings such as deities (sun and moon), evil spirits (tunghat or a similar term), spirits of game animals, and shamans’ helper spirits. Their appearances were derived from shamanic visions or traditional shamanic knowledge. The masks may seem human-like or animal-like, but can also make a less realistic impression, such as a half-human/half-animal being (ircenrrat). The Yup’ik believed that men and animals were able to transform themselves into other beings (men into animals, animals into men, and animals into other animals). When Yup’ik shamans traveled there to propitiate the spirits controlling the universe, to ward off evil spirits, or to ask the animal spirits for success in hunting, their masks related to human audiences what was going on in their communication with the supernatural world.^9-11,22-25

Facial distortion is regularly seen in the corpus of Yup’ik dance masks^10,11,26; see also objects II-A-1451, II-A-1452, II-A-5412, SJ-II-B-28, SJ-II-B-82, and SJ-II-B-109 on the website of the Alaska State Museums.²⁷ This feature already exists in precontact specimens (Fig 1a). The example in Fig 1c depicts an evil mountain spirit that likes to hunt people and has red dots around its mouth to symbolize drops of blood.^28,29 Such evil spirits were believed to control the supply of game animals and are labeled as tunghat (or a similar term) in art historical sources.^11,24,26 The soiling of the mouth with blood is a common feature of such masks and is also evident in Fig 1d¹¹ and Fig 1e.

The twisted face of the mask in Fig 1b reflects the lunar theme of the “old man in the moon.” The Yup’ik believed that a tunghak (singular form of the plural tunghat) lived in the moon and was in the control of animals. It was to him they sent their shamans to plead for game and to ask other favors.²⁴

The mask in Fig 1f is not face mask but a so-called finger mask (its wooden part only measures 11.5 cm). Maskettes of this type were usually waved in pairs, one in each hand, by dancing Yup’ik women.⁹ According to a culturally grounded source, they depict evil spirits (tunghat) and their twisted faces (taruyamaarutet) may portray “muscular distortions possibly resulting from seizures.”¹⁰ Another source explains that contorted face masks could refer to muscular distortion resulting from the seizures, which shamans could experience when they underwent transformation.²⁶ According to a field study, the Siberian Yupik on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea clearly conceived the difference between nonpathological shamanic seizures and various kinds of seizures that were defined as illness. The distinguishing characteristic of the shamanic seizures was possession.³⁰

The Iñupiaq people of northwestern Alaska are another well-documented source of shamanic masks displaying facial distortion to express shamanic vision experiences^9,31-33; see also objects II-A-1542, II-A-5669, II-A-6109, and SJ-II-C-2 on the website of the Alaska State Museums.²⁷ The example in Fig 2a represents a spiritual being that was half-man and half-animal. The man part is depicted by the downturned half of the mouth and the animal part by its upturned mouth.¹² Thefemale version (yeyehuk) of this half-man and half-animal being is portrayed by the mask in Fig 2b.⁹ The mask in Fig 2c has been described as an “uncanny conception of the supernatural.”³¹

Secular comic masks

Besides shamanic masks, Alaskan peoples also carved nonreligious masks that were danced by laymen to entertain the audience and tell stories. This secular type also comprised asymmetrical masks that were often intended to provoke laughter, e.g., because they ridiculed “a physical peculiarity of a person or group of persons.”^9,23 A telling early description of such a comic mask is given by Ernest Hawkes: “The mask was made lop-sided, with one cheek higher than the other, and the mouth and eyebrows twisted to one side. One eyelet was round, the other being in the shape of a half moon. A stubby moustache and beard of mink fur, and labrets of green beads, completed the ludicrous effect.”²²

Two examples of asymmetrical Alutiiq/Sugpiaq masks that may also have been humorous are presented in Figs 2e and 2f. The collector of the mask in Fig 2e did not leave any field notes about its iconography or function, and it has been erroneously classified as a religious tunghak mask.³⁴ When the mask was shown to a contemporary group of Alutiiq elders, one of them (Nick Alokli) noticed that the mask seems to be giving a wink (Sven Haakanson, personal communication, Mar 2025). This interpretation is also given elsewhere.³⁵ A winking gesture may also be represented in the Alutiiq dance mask in Fig 2f. This mask was reportedly used in “social festivals,”³⁶ which would fit well with the possibility that it could have served as a comic mask. A third possible example of a winking mask (not shown here) was collected from the Hooper Bay area and depicts the filmmaker Al Milotte, who made a Walt Disney film called The Alaskan Eskimo in the mid-twentieth century. The mask was carved by the Yup’ik artist Sam Hunter and is now in the Alaska State Museum, Juneau (object II-A-5412).

Another asymmetrical Yup’ik mask portraying a cultural outsider is shown in Fig 3a. This mask has been identified as the caricatural portrait of the white trader Jim Brown, who apparently suffered from facial nerve paralysis (Fig 3b). The mask depicts the characteristic features of this pathological condition: “the twisted nose, the dislocated and half-closed left eye, the displaced mouth, and the reduced left cheek.”³⁷

Discussion

It is difficult to rule out the possibility that there are religious Yup’ik and Iñupiaq masks that may have been inspired by facial paralysis. However, such shamanic masks were not meant to accurately reflect a specific clinical picture, but to portray impressive spiritual beings that were based on shamanic visions or traditional shamanic knowledge. What is more, cultural grounded sources suggest that the distorted face masks could have reflected muscular seizures that shamans could show when undergoing transformation.

There is one well-documented example of a comic Yup’ik mask that indisputably represents a white outsider with facial paralysis. The consulted literature has not yielded other irrefutable examples of facial paralysis in comic Alaskan masks, but there is a humorous dance mask from East Greenland in the Musée du quai Branly, Paris that deserves to be mentioned here (Fig 3c). Masks of the Tunumiit (formerly Ammassalimmiut) people living there often show facial distortion and have sometimes been provided with descriptive names such as “twisted mouth,” “twisted nose,” and “falling eye.”^38,39 What sets the mask in Fig 3c apart from these other masks is that it is the only one whose exaggerated features are explicitly reported as “suggesting facial paralysis.”³⁸ Interestingly, an old photographic record in the Musée (inv.no. PP0147023) states that its carver presented this mask as being the portrait of a European.

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the help of Sven Haakanson (Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle); Amanda Lancaster and Amy Steffian (Alutiiq Museum, Kodiak); Angèle Martin (Musée du quai Branly, Paris); and Anna Mossolova (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo).

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