INGALIK

Athabascan-speaking Indian tribe of interior Alaska, in the basins of the upper Kuskokwim and lower Yukon rivers. Their region is mountainous, with both woodlands and tundra, and is fairly rich in fish, caribou, bear, moose, and other game on which the Ingalik subsistedfish, fresh or dried, being central to their diet. Much of their culture was strongly influenced by Eskimo customs and technology: they wore parkas, trousers, and other Eskimo apparel; built semisubterranean sod houses similar to those of the western Eskimo; and used harpoons, spear throwers, and other weapons like those of the Eskimo. They favoured birch canoes over skin-covered boats. The various groups of Ingalik lived in villages, some permanent and some seasonal, such as summer fish camps for one or two families and winter settlements for an entire group. The centre of village life was a large semisubterranean lodge called a kashim, which served primarily as a sweathouse for daily use by the men but which also served as a council chamber, entertainment club, funeral home, religious house for the rituals of medicine men or shamans, and a centre for various other public activitieslargely for men only. Women remained in the several family dwellings. The Ingalik were much given to games and sports, ceremonies, and potlatches, the last being gift-giving festivities for marking such events as marriage and death and especially for acquiring prestige. Although the Ingalik believed in a creator, in a devil, and in other worlds beyond the living, they were more concerned with a kind of supernatural spirit that pervaded all things animate and inanimate in the world. There were several ceremonies, taboos, and superstitions relating to animals and the hunt and to the care of tools and other economic items; survival and success required good relations with the things of nature. Only a few hundred Ingalik remain, mostly assimilated to modern Western culture.