Hunting Hat
date: label: Accession Date
content: 27 Jan 1910
name: label: Donor Name
content: U.S. Department Of Interior
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Hunting-helmet trimmed with ivory & bone carvings."
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact https://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=315 , retrieved 11-7-2018; see web page for additional information: Hunting hat, Yup'ik. Men of southern Norton Sound, Nunivak Island, and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta wore conical bentwood hats for hunting seals amid floating sea ice. According to John Phillip Sr., the pointed shape was to make the hats "look like ice," disguising the hunter. They were decorated with feathers, paint, or ivory carvings, which here include a seal and several long, toothy fish. The fish are marked with nucleated circles, a symbol of enhanced spiritual vision and of the movement of people and animals between levels of the cosmos. Hats provided protection against weather and waves and collected sound from the watery environment, improving the hunter's ability to hear. Bentwood hats and other clean, new hunting gear were thought to attract seals and empower hunters. In a story told by Yup'ik Elder Paul John of Nelson Island, "The Boy Who Went to Live with the Seals," a hunter puts on a bentwood hat and becomes a seabird (ciguraq, or Kittlitz's murrelet) in the eyes of the seals he is pursuing. As the disguised bird/hunter approaches, he breathes out a fog that puts the seals to sleep. Bird images-painted on the hats or added in the form of feathers and ivory carvings of beaks, heads, and wings-refer to this change from human to avian form, and similar images were added to hunting visors. Men dressed in bentwood hats when they took part in ceremonies, such as launching kayaks in the spring, celebrations for the first bearded seal catch of the year, and the Bladder Festival. During Nakaciuryaraq, the Bladder Festival, the bladders of all seals taken by hunters during the year were returned to the sea through a hole cut in the winter sea ice. The return of the bladders-which in Yup'ik belief contain the animals' souls-ensured that the seals would reappear in the spring, clothed in new bodies. During a Bladder Festival observed by Edward W. Nelson at Kushunuk (Qissunaq) in 1879, all of the men placed their hunting hats in the center of the qasgiq [men's community house] beneath hanging seal bladders and hunting weapons, and men wearing hunting hats danced the motions of various birds. In 1991, Elder Billy Lincoln recalled participating in these dances at Bladder Festivals on Nelson Island. Anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan concluded that, "Here, in the presence of the bladders by the symbolic hole in the ice, the hunters donned their hunting helmets and acted out the part of the birds in whose form the seals perceived them ...."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 12 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Nushagak River, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Yup'ik
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 051115
label: USNM Number
content: E260555-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Hat
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 46 cm