Alaska Innuit Mummies The practice of preserving the bodies of those belonging to the whaling class—a custom peculiar to the Kodiak Innuit—has erroneously been confounded with the one now described. The latter included women as well as men, and all those whom the living desired particularly to honor. The whalers, however, only preserved the bodies of males, and they were not associated with the paraphernalia of those I have described. Indeed, the observations I have been able to make show the bodies of the whalers to have been preserved with stone weapons and actual utensils instead of effigies, and with the meanest apparel, and no carvings of consequence. These details, and those of many other customs and usages of which the shell heaps bear no testimony *** do not come within my line. Figure 5, copied from Dall, represents the Alaskan mummies. Martin Sauer, secretary to Billings’ Expedition,36 speaks of the Aleutian Islanders embalming their dead, as follows: They pay respect, howeve...
History of Native American Indian