Dular, One of the Last Solon Ewenki Shamans

In the warm summer of 1994, a dusty road in the remote Hulunbuir region of Inner Mongolia drew two researchers towards a small village called Yiming Gatsa. Richard Noll, an American psychologist with a passion for the inner worlds of shamanism, and his colleague Kun Shi of Ohio State University, had travelled thousands of kilometres to meet the last living bearers of an ancient tradition. Their aim was to document the shamans of the Tungus people before they disappeared for good – a tradition that had fascinated explorers for nearly 500 years.

Dular's Encounter with the Spirit

Inside a concrete building behind a prosperous family's home sat Dular, a 75-year-old woman with a wrinkled face and eyes that bore the traces of a long life marked by alcohol and old age. Her name was Dular in Ewenki, Ao Yun Hua in Chinese, and she was one of the last Solon Ewenki shamanesses. The room was clammy and hot, filled with flies buzzing around an altar by her bed: a plate of rotting meat as an offering to the spirits, wooden sticks with horse heads, a drum and – most mysterious of all – a copper mask covered with bear fur. Dular sipped beer as she told her story, her voice a low murmur that blended with the buzzing of the flies.

She was born in 1920, weak and frail since childhood. At the age of 20 – or perhaps 18, according to local accounts – she was struck by an initiation illness that tore her to pieces. Her body ached, she was thin as a branch, and the pain spread like the shadows of the wilderness. Her father sent her to a lama, but he pointed towards a Mongolian shaman named Jamusu. This healer, who operated in what is today the Ewenki region, healed her and took her as an apprentice. For the first three years she learned to dance and sing by imitating the master, but journeys to the upper or lower worlds were reserved for the more experienced. Only at the age of 25 or 26 did she perform her first great healing ritual.

Dular's guardians included ancestors, a dog, a snake and a wolf – spirits that would later manifest in her visions. During rituals she trembled when she called the spirits down, fell into ecstasy and saw the fox, the wolf with three bound legs and the dog dancing in a misty veil. She differed from the forest reindeer-Ewenki in the north; plains Ewenki like her did not learn visions from masters, but they came nonetheless, spontaneous and inevitable.

The Hidden World of the Solon Ewenki People

The Solon Ewenki, the largest subgroup of the Ewenki people in China with nearly 25,000 members in the 1980s, lived in the bends of the Imin and Hui rivers near Hailar. They spoke a Tungusic language, but were bilingual in Daur Mongolian, which created a cultural melting pot. Shamanism mixed with Buddhist Lamaism, especially among the elderly in the north and west. Even Shirokogoroff, the legendary ethnographer of the 1910s, had little to say about the Solon shamans – only that there were probably over 20 active among them.

In the 1990s only three female shamans remained: Dular, Niula and Modege. Women often dominated, especially those who mastered the spirit Abagaldai. The mask of this bear spirit, made of copper with bear fur for hair and beard, was a rare ritual object. The only known earlier photograph was from 1931, of a Daur shaman. Dular's mask had survived the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), hidden away from the Red Guards who screamed "ox spirit! Snake spirit!" and destroyed her drum. During the Revolution she was persecuted, but continued in secret to visit oboo shrines by the rivers.

Her rituals took place at night. For children with shock or seizures she required the mother to press the chest to coax the soul back. Adults received food offerings. She healed many, but refused to journey to the lower world herself – she only called the souls home with chants and the names of eldenkan, the Mongolian word for the underworld.

The Secret of the Mask and the Ritual Demonstration

After hours of questions about visions and psychological experiences – Noll was testing hypotheses about mental image cultivation from his own article in Current Anthropology from 1985 – they asked to see the mask. Dular hesitated, suspicious after decades of persecution. But at last she put it on. The copper face gleamed, the bearskin framed the eyes that stared blankly outward, and a lump of animal fat sat clenched in the mouth like an impudent tongue. She demonstrated the ritual: the mask represented Abagaldai, a barkan spirit known among the Ewenki, Evenki, Buryats and Mongols. Female shamans mastered it, wearing it every third year during ominan rituals.

She also had two orange-painted horse-head whips, sorbi in Ewenki, with small bells. These were "whips for the spirits," fed with tea or wine, and helped her foretell the future or see the invisible while in trance. A large medallion with Chinese astrology hung around her neck on Lamaist beads – a sign of Mongolian and Buddhist influence. The mask was damaged, one eye missing its cover, but its age gave it an aura of authenticity.

The researchers photographed her in the mask, the first known images of a shaman wearing an Abagaldai actively. "A privilege," they later wrote. Dular's daughter and son-in-law, prosperous mine owners with a new Jeep Cherokee, posed willingly for pictures, proud of the heirlooms.

A Race Against Time

Noll and Shi's fieldwork in 1994, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, covered the Oroqen, Manchu and Solon Ewenki. They documented Dular's life as part of a larger effort to understand shamans' cognitive style – the use of inner visual and auditory imagery. Although the data did not fully confirm the hypotheses, the meeting with Dular produced one of the most detailed accounts of a Tungus shaman ever printed.

Richard Noll, a professor at DeSales University, had specialised in shamanism after work on the history of psychiatry and Jung. His 1985 article in Current Anthropology marked a turning point, praised by anthropologists such as Tanya Luhrmann. Kun Shi, with a doctorate in cultural anthropology, had researched shamanism since 1987. Together they published the field notes in the journal Shaman (2007), with colour photographs showing Dular in the mask.

This was part of a broader documentation of the death of shamanism. F. George Heyne wrote about reindeer-Ewenki shamans such as Olga Kudrina (died 1944) and Njura Kaltakun (died 1998). The Oroqen shaman Chuonnasuan (Meng Jin Fu) was also captured in their notes. Solon shamanism was little studied; even Shirokogoroff had only vague reports.

Legacy and Relevance Today

Dular's story mirrors a tragic extinction. Shamanism, originally from the Tungus people – the word "shaman" is their gift to the world – was suppressed under communism. Yet traces survive: in folklore collections by Mongolian and Chinese scholars, such as Mandu Ertu, and in cross-fertilisation with Daur rituals such as ominaan.

For us at home, the parallels are clear. Her initiation illness recalls the noaidi calling; the mask, Norse helmets and runes; the guardian spirits, the draugr and totem animals. In a time of revitalisation – like the Daur shamans reviving rituals after the Cultural Revolution – she inspires us to preserve living cultural heritage.

What became of the mask? Is Dular still alive? The questions hang in the air like swarms of flies in her warm room. But through the lens of Noll and Shi she lives on, a bridge between the wilderness and our world, a reminder that shamanism does not die – it only whispers in the shadows.

Sources

Noll, Richard & Shi, Kun (2007). "A Solon Ewenki Shaman and her Abagaldai Shaman Mask". SHAMAN, Vol. 15, Nos. 1-2, pp. 167-174. Field notes from 1994 with a detailed biography of Dular, photographs and analysis of the mask.

Shirokogoroff, Sergei I. (1935). The Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul. Classic ethnography of Tungus shamanism, including brief references to the Solon Ewenki.

Heyne, F. George (2003a). "Frauen, die Geister beherrschen. Geister und Schamaninnen bei Ewenken in den Grossen Hinggan Bergen Nordostchina". Anthropos, 98, pp. 319-330. Documentation of the last reindeer-Ewenki shamanesses.

Heyne, F. George (2003b). "The social significance of the shaman among the Chinese Reindeer-Ewenki". In Chilson, Clark & Knecht, Peter (eds.), Shamans in Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, pp. 31-50.

Diszegi, Vilmos (1967). "The origins of the Evenki shaman-mask". Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 20, pp. 171-201. Analysis of Abagaldai masks among the Ewenki and neighbouring groups.

Humphrey, Caroline with Urgunge Onon (1996). Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Descriptions of Abagaldai as a bear spirit in Daur rituals.

Noll, Richard (1985). "Mental imagery cultivation as a cultural phenomenon: The role of visions in shamanism". Current Anthropology, 26(4), pp. 443-461. Theoretical basis for Noll and Shi's psychological fieldwork.

Noll, Richard & Shi, Kun (2004). "Chuonnasuan (Meng Jin Fu): The last shaman of the Oroqen of Northeast China". Journal of Korean Religions, 6, pp. 135-162. Related fieldwork on an Oroqen shaman.

Mandu Ertu (1999). "Ewenke zu juan" (Ewenki volume). In Lu Dajie & He Yaohua (eds.), Zhongguo ge minzu yuanshi zongjiao ziliao jicheng. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, pp. 79-183. Chinese folklore collection with information about Dular.

Janhunen, Juha (1996). Manchuria: An Ethnic History. Helsinki: The Finno-Ugrian Society. Demography and ethnic context for the Solon Ewenki.