Wooden Whaling Charm, For Umiak Seat
date: label: Accession Date
content: 20 Dec 1929
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. Henry B. Collins Jr.
label: Donor Name
content: Dr. Henry B. Collins Jr.
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "For attaching to the bottom of the seat on which the captain of the umiak sits in the whale hunt. Two tapering upcurving wings. At the center is a well carved figure of a whale in relief. Perforations through the ends of the wings. Small slot on the base. (Excavated by Eskimos. Purchased.) Compare with similar specimens 346658-59 from Pt. Hope."
label: Notes
content: Illus. Fig. 107 p. 93 in Chaussonnet, Valerie. 1995. Crossroads Alaska: native cultures of Alaska and Siberia. Washington, D.C.: Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Identified there: "Whale effigy to take along. Inupiaq wooden whale effigy from Little Diomede Island, Alaska, from the 1800s ... Ritually potent quartz crystals were inserted into the blow-hole and the eyes, and there is a space under the board in the center where a large crystal was kept. The board was lashed on the umiak through the holes on the sides, for good luck in hunting."
label: Notes
content: Whale carved on object identified by Dr. Erica Hill, University of Alaska Southeast, as a bowhead whale, its blowhole symbolized with a piece of obsidian. In the Iñupiaq language, seats of whaling boats are called either iktuġat or aqutim aksivautana, depending on dialect. Using Iñupiat oral histories and ethnographies recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries, Hill found that this and other iktuġat were meant to be placed in a boat with the likeness of the whale facing down, toward the ocean. The meticulously rendered art was thus meant not for humans, but for whales - to flatter them and call them to the hunters. - see "When Whales and Humans Talk" by Krista Langlois, Hakai Magazine, April 3, 2018, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/features/when-whales-and-humans-talk/ .
label: Record Last Modified
content: 10 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Little Diomede Island, Teller Quad / Diomede Islands, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 104800
label: USNM Number
content: A347918-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Figure