Listen to sounds recorded by Waldemar Jochelson on wax cylinders,
ca. 1903, during the Jesup North Pacific Expeditions.
Download and listen to a Yakut shaman singing to summon spirits
(.WAV
format, 8mb).
Or, listen to a Yakut woman singing a Russian Wedding
song.
(.WAV
format, 7mb).
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The diorama seen here depicts a healing ceremony of the Yakut, of Eastern
Siberia. This is not an imaginary re-creation but a faithful record of a
ceremony held in the late nineteenth century and described by Museum
anthropologist Waldemar Jochelson.
A shaman has come to heal a sick woman, whose soul has been captured by evil
spirits. He has put himself into a trance by inhaling tobacco, dancing, and
beating his drum. Now his soul will travel to the spirit world and do battle in
order to retrieve the woman's soul and thus restore her. His assistant, on the
right, holds the shaman by a chain so that if he gets lost or trapped in the
spirit world he can be pulled back.
Some of the flat iron pendants on the shaman's robe might represent bird
feathers, which allow the shaman's soul to fly. Iron disks symbolize aspects of his journey: the hole in the center of the one shown represents the ice hole through which he descends to the realm of evil spirits; the others represent
the sun and the moon, which light his path once he is there. As the shaman
dances, the noise made by these pieces and by the copper bells and rattles on
the robe, as well as the sound of his drum and singing, help summon the
spirits. The icon on the wall tells us that the Yakut were pressured to accept
Orthodox Christianity by their Russian overlords; they nevertheless maintained
their own religious practices.
Jochelson was a member of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, the Museum's
first great expedition across the North Pacific rim, from the Pacific Northwest
deep into Asia. The purpose of the expedition was to test the theory that
Native Americans first came to North America across the Bering Strait from
northeast Siberia thousands of years ago. Thanks to the work of people like
Jochelson and of the many anthropologists working today, we are able to
appreciate the great complexity and variety of these cultures.
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