Tunghak

Also Known As: Yup’ik tuunraq, plural tuunrat; written down by nineteenth-century collectors on the Bering Sea coast as tunghak, plural tunghat; the word covers spirits in general, and in the singular is used of the moon-dwelling keeper of the game
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Inuit Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: He holds every animal of sea and land at his house on the moon and lets them go only when he is persuaded to.
Role in Mythos: He is the keeper of the game, the power a Yup’ik shaman must travel up to when the hunting and the fishing fail.
Relation to Humans: People reached him only through an angalkuq, a shaman, who went up in trance and had to sit through the Moon-dweller’s grotesque dancing without laughing, on pain of being cut open. A shaman who kept his countenance was sent home through the sky-hole with the season’s game granted.

A house on the moon, roofed with white deerskins, and the herds standing around it in the cold. That is where the animals are kept. Every seal under the shorefast ice, every caribou on the tundra behind the villages, every salmon that has not yet turned into the Yukon: they belong to the one inside, and they come down only when he lets them. So when the nets came up empty and the breathing holes stayed quiet, the people of the lower Yukon and the Kuskokwim did not put it down to weather. Somebody was withholding. Somebody would have to be asked.

The word is tuunraq, plural tuunrat, and the collectors who came through the delta in the 1870s and 1880s wrote it as they heard it, tunghak and tunghat. It is a wide word. It takes in the shades of the dead, the half-animal beings of the country between the villages, and the helping spirits an angalkuq gathered to himself and worked through. Not one creature, then, but a company, and a shaman’s standing was measured by how many of them he had. The greatest of the company, the one whose masks museum labels still gloss as the keeper of the game, lives in the moon.

He is master of all the animals. The white deerskin covering on the house is his, the ground around it is his pasture, and the herds that stand there in skyland are his stock, kept close and counted. He receives visitors by dancing for them. That is the extent of the domestic detail the record gives, and it is more than most spirits of that coast get.

Nobody left a description of his face that did not come to them through a mask. The masks make him all front and hollow behind, which is precision rather than laziness: the moon turns one side to the earth and never the other, so the being inside it is a face with no back to it. On a mask collected at Hooper Bay by W. B. Van Valin, now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the mouth is a wide upward curve set with stubby peg teeth, and it is only half a mouth. There is one eye. There is one nostril, because the nose has been laid flat in profile across the oval of the face. Above the nostril sits a dark painted concavity ringed with pale circles, which gives the single eye-hole a look that is hard to meet for long. A slender horn or spear rises from the forehead in line with the eye and the nostril, possibly the weapon he uses on guests who forget themselves. The disc is not a true oval but D-shaped, the half-moon phase. Nelson collected a close cousin of it in the same region for the United States National Museum, without the horn and without the crown of feathers. The Dallas Museum of Art holds another, wood and paint, late 1800s, from the Yukon River, catalogued as the face of a tunghak, keeper of the game. On masks of his lesser kindred the mouth is often flecked with red, drops of blood on the ones that hunt people.

How he came to be up there, the Bering Sea accounts do not say. What they record instead is the traffic between his house and this one, and the price of it.

When the animals went scarce the angalkuq had to make the climb. He put himself into trance by a technique that was his own property, went out through the hole in the sky and up. Two shamans usually went together, on the sensible principle that it is easier to keep a straight face when the man beside you is also keeping one. That is the whole difficulty of the visit. The Moon-dweller greets his guests with grotesque dancing, and a guest who laughs has his viscera carved out of him for it. A guest who holds his composure is given what he came for, a fresh supply of game for the country below, and is dropped back down through the sky-hole into the body that has been lying on the floor waiting for him.

Down in the house the drum has not stopped. The body on the floor draws a breath, and the man inside it comes back with the season in his hands.

The masks existed for this. A shaman told a carver what he had seen and the carver cut it out of wood and painted it, then hung it with feathers and bent hoops lashed on with sinew and gut cord. The dancing happened at Kelek, also called Itruka’ar and Agayuyaraq, the way of praying or requesting, which reached English as the Inviting-In Feast: a winter ceremony of masked dance, drum and song by which a village addressed the spirits of the game animals and the helping spirits of its shamans and asked for the coming year. A dancer did not put a mask on to imitate a spirit. He put it on to be one. Most masks were worn once. After that they were burned, or carried out and left on the tundra.

His power is absolute inside its own fence and does nothing at all outside it. Anything with meat on it is his to hold or release, and he never has to raise a hand against a village, because keeping the door shut is enough and hunger does the rest. Against that, he can be reached, and he can be argued with. The etiquette of the visit binds the host as tightly as the guest: entertain the man who has come all that way, and if he does not laugh, pay him. He has no answer to composure.

What eventually moved him was not another spirit. Moravian and other missionaries working the delta took the word tuunraq and built tuunrangayak out of it, and handed that to the Devil. Shamans were shunned, and some of the earliest converts had been shamans themselves, among them Uyaquq, called Helper Neck, who went on to invent a Yup’ik writing system to help translate the Bible. The masked dances were pushed under. Most of the masks that still exist are the ones that were sold to collectors before anybody could burn them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Tunghak?

Tunghak is the Yup’ik spirit who lives in the moon and controls every animal of sea and land. In the Yup’ik language the word is tuunraq, plural tuunrat, and it covers spirits in general, including the helping spirits that shamans worked through. Nineteenth-century collectors on the Bering Sea coast wrote it as tunghak, and museum labels gloss the moon-dweller as the keeper of the game.

Why did Yup’ik shamans travel to the moon?

Because Tunghak held the animals and would not release them unless he was asked. When hunting and fishing failed, an angalkuq entered a trance, went up through the hole in the sky and petitioned him for a fresh supply of game. Two shamans usually made the journey together.

What happened to a visitor who laughed at Tunghak?

Tunghak greeted his guests with grotesque dancing, and a visitor who laughed had his viscera cut out. A visitor who kept a straight face was granted the game he had come for and was dropped back through the sky-hole into the body he had left behind.

What does a tunghak mask look like?

A tunghak mask is carved as a D-shaped disc in the half-moon phase, with a single eye, a single nostril and a wide upward-curving mouth of stubby peg teeth that forms only half a mouth. The masks are made all front and hollow behind, because the moon shows the earth one side and never the other. The Hooper Bay example in the University of Pennsylvania Museum also carries a slender horn rising from the forehead.

What were tunghak masks used for?

They were danced at Kelek, the winter ceremony also called Agayuyaraq, the way of praying or requesting, and known in English as the Inviting-In Feast. A shaman described what he had seen, a carver made the mask, and it was usually worn once before being burned or left out on the tundra. The dancer wore it in order to become the spirit rather than to represent it.