The skull image is commonly associated with the Hamatsa ceremony. Hamatsa is a secret society dedicated to ceremonial cannibalism and the return to humanity.
For the purpose of initiation, young people aged 25 are kidnapped and held in a secret place in the forest, where they teach the secrets of the Hamatsa society. After that, at the festival of winter dances, the spirit of a giant cannibal is invoked, and the initiate dresses in spruce branches, claps his teeth and even bites. Then the initiate is pacified by a shaman wearing a skull-shaped headdress and with the help of a skull-shaped rattle. Then everyone dances around the fire.
At the final stages of the ceremony, ritual feeding of the skull is carried out using special spoons.
The centerpiece of the ceremony is the legend of the brothers who got lost while hunting and found a strange house with red smoke from the roof. They found that the owner was not at home, but one of the pillars was a living woman with her feet rooted in the floor. She warned of the dreaded owner of the house, whose name was Baxbaxwalanuksiwe. It was a terrible man-eating giant with four terrible man-eating birds. According to one version, the giant was covered with mouths all over his body.
According to another version, the brothers lured Baxbaxwalanuksiwe into a pit and stoned him to death. Then people took away his mystical power and his magical treasures: wooden whistles, a bear mask, bird masks.
Finally, members of society manage to tame a new "cannibal".
In general, they ate ordinary animal meat, imitating humans. But sometimes they ate human things (either slaves or freshly buried were used for this). Moreover, according to the anthropologist Boas, they did it without chewing meat, swallowing large pieces whole. They then drank large amounts of seawater to induce vomiting and flush out harmful toxins.
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All those bitten during the ceremony were presented with expensive gifts. Gifts are also given to all other participants so that they remember the honors that need to be given to a new member of the community.
