Punishment for ignoring or violating these regulations depends on the power of the living thing and the gravity of the offense. Spirit vengeance can be as severe as death or decades of bad luck in catching a species. Disregarding the prohibitions against eating certain foods usually causes clumsiness or other physical problems. Only old people who no longer hunt can eat red-necked grebe, for instance, because this bird is awkward on land. A young person who ate it would become slow and clumsy or would have children with these shortcomings. I never understood whether animal spirits cause such “contagious” reactions, but the innumerable food taboos are generally respected as an important way of protecting health and well-being.
Many of the rules apply to everyone, regardless of age or sex. But a large number of special restrictions apply to women between puberty and menopause. Koyukon women are skilled and active providers – they hunt, fish, trap, and gather on their own or along with men. Although they are competent and productive, they are somewhat limited by their possession of special power that can easily alienate or offend natural spirits.
The menses (hutlaa) has its own spirit that contains the essence of femininity, and it can bring bad luck with animals, feminize men and alienate animals from them, or even cause sickness or death. To avoid these dangers, Koyukon women were traditionally secluded during menstruation (some pubescent girls are still briefly sequestered at the first menstruation), and they continue to follow a multitude of special taboos regulating their use of animals and their behavior toward them.
Spirits of the Physical World
Elements of the earth and sky are imbued with spirits and consciousness, much in the way of living things, and there are codes of proper behavior toward them. Certain landforms have special powers that must be placated or shown deference, for example. Even the weather is aware: if a man brags that storms or cold cannot stop him from doing something, “the weather will take care of him good!” It will humble him with its power, “because it knows.”
In falltime you’ll hear the lakes make loud cracking noises after they freeze. It means they’re asking for snow to cover them up, to protect them from the cold. When my father told me this, he said everything has life in it. He always used to tell us that.
The earth itself is the source of a preeminent spiritual power called sinh taala’ in Koyukon. This is the foundation of medicine power once used by shamans, and because of it the earth must be shown utmost respect. One person who was cured by medicine power years ago, for example, still abides by the shaman’s instructions to avoid digging in the earth. Berry plants have special power because they are nurtured directly from the earth. “People are careful about things that grow close to the ground,” I was told, “because the earth is so great.”
The Manifestations of Luck
Luck is the powerful force that binds humanity to the nature spirits and their moral imperatives. For the Koyukon people, luck is a nearly tangible essence, an aura or condition that is “with” someone in certain circumstances or for particular purposes. Luck can be held permanently or it can be fleeting and elusive. It is an essential qualification for success – regardless of a person’s skill, in the absence of luck there is no destiny except failure.
The source of luck is not clearly explained, but most people are apparently born with a certain measure of it. The difficulty is not so much in getting it as in keeping it. Luck is sustained by strictly following the rules of conduct toward natural things. People who lose their luck have clearly been punished by an offended spirit; people who possess luck are the beneficiaries of some force that creates it. Koyukon people express luck in the hunt by saying bik’uhnaatltonh – literally, “he has been taken care of.”
If a person has good luck, catches game, it is because something created the world, and that is helping him to get what he needs.
Luck, or the absence of it, is specific to particular animals or even certain activities. A woman who violates tanning taboos may fail in preparing hides. Each person is possessed (or dispossessed) of luck for all the entities he or she interacts with. Thus a man told me that he had always been lucky hunting bears until he inadvertently treated one the wrong way. For many years afterward his luck was gone – he never took a single bear. Finally the effect wore off and since regaining his luck he has killed at least one bear each season.
Luck can be passed along to others, but it is a lot like money. The one who gives it up may be left with nothing. To illustrate, when beaver snaring was made legal years ago, it was very hard for young people to learn how to do it. The older men knew but were reluctant to reveal their ways, because telling someone how to make a trapping set also gives him your luck. Eventually people reach an age of inactivity, when their measure of luck becomes superfluous. Then they can confer their luck on others by simply wishing it so. This is why children often present their first-killed game to elders, and why young hunters give liberal shares of their catch to old men who no longer go out onto the land.
Possessions like sleds, fishnets, rifles, or snowshoes are also infused with luck. A man lamented to me that one of his high-caliber rifles had failed to kill a bear coming out of its den although it was at close range. He had to use another gun to finish the animal. This gun was “out of luck,” he explained, and he suspected that a young woman had rendered it useless by stepping over it.
Putting on another person’s mittens can either take away his luck or give him yours. Once I was traveling with a man whose hands became painfully cold, so I offered him my extra mittens. He finally took them, explaining that since I was leaving Huslia I could get along without luck in things like trapping. But a short while later he decided to take them off and endure the cold instead.
Luck is a finite entity, specific to each natural thing or even to certain activities. It can be lost, transferred, and recovered. Luck binds people to the code of proper behavior toward the natural world. And so success in living on the land involves far more than a mastery of technical skills. It requires that a sensitive balance be maintained between each person and the conscious forces of the environment ….
The Koyukon View of Nature
For traditional Koyukon people, the environment is both a natural and a supernatural realm. All that exists in nature is imbued with awareness and power; all events in nature are potentially manifestations of this power; all actions toward nature are mediated by consideration of its consciousness and sensitivity. The interchange between humans and environment is based on an elaborate code of respect and morality, without which survival would be jeopardized. The Koyukon, while they are bound by the strictures of this system, can also manipulate its powers for their own benefit. Nature is a second society in which people live, a watchful and possessive one whose bounty is wrested as much by placation as by cleverness and craft.
Moving across the sprawl of wildland, through the forest and open muskeg, Koyukon people are ever conscious that they are among spirits. Each animal is far more than what can be seen; it is a personage and a personality, known from its legacy in stories of the Distant Time. It is a figure in the community of beings, once at least partially human, and even now possessed of attributes beyond outsiders’ perception.
Not only the animals, but also the plants, the earth and landforms, the air, weather, and sky are spiritually invested. For each, the hunter knows an array of respectful gestures and deferential taboos that demand obedience. Violations against them will offend and alienate their spirits, bringing bad luck or illness, or worse if a powerful and vindictive being is treated irreverently.
Aware of these invisible forces and their manifestations, the Koyukon can protect and enhance their good fortune, can understand signs or warnings