Pukmis

Pukmis, also called Pookmis, is the spirit of a whaler drowned at sea, a being caught between life and death who wanders the coastal waters in gaunt, ghostly form. Painted a pallid white with a fish-like, half-decayed face and gills, and shaping a low wailing cry with pursed lips, he is feared by seafarers as an embodiment of the ocean's power to take the unready. Yet he also serves the community of the drowned: he is said to swallow the spirit of a lost whaler and carry it back toward the home village, releasing it during the memorial rites so the dead may be mourned. His likeness, kept in whalers' shrines and danced as a ceremonial mask, ties him to the perils and the ritual life of the whale hunt.

Domains

• sea and drowning
• spirits of the dead

Powers

• swallows and keeps the souls of drowned whalers

Epithets

• the Nearly-Drowned — the whaler lost at sea who did not truly dieDrucker, Philip. The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes. 1951. (secondary)

Sources

• Pukmis is the ghostly spirit of a drowned whaler, a pallid sea-being that keeps the souls of the drowned and returns them to their villages at memorial ceremonies; it is represented by a distinctive white, gaunt-faced mask.: Drucker, Philip. The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 144. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1951. (secondary); Ernst, Alice Henson. The Wolf Ritual of the Northwest Coast. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1952. (secondary)