Hunting Hat
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1879
name: label: Collector
content: Edward W. Nelson
label: Donor Name
content: Edward W. Nelson
notes: label: Notes
content: Illus. Fig. 4, p. 14, in Fitzhugh, William W., and Aron Crowell. 1988. Crossroads of continents: cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Identified there: "Bentwood Hunting Hat, Bering Sea Eskimo. This hunting hat collected by Edward W. Nelson from Kaialigamut in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta depicts a bird spirit with supernaturally spiked head and red-circled eye against a white background. The spirit portrayed may be Raven, the trickster and demiurge prominent in Siberian and Alaskan mythology. Similarities in Raven mythology were cited by Boas and his Jesup Expedition collaborators as an indication of ethnic links between Siberian and North American cultures. Raven images are rare in Bering Sea Eskimo art, perhaps because of the powerful and unpredictable nature of this being."
label: Notes
content: Photo and description in Fienup-Riordan, Ann. 2007. Yuungnaqpiallerput, The Way We Genuinely Live: Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival. Seattle: University Of Washington Press, p. 129
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=90 , retrieved 10-21-2021; see web page for additional information: Hunting hat, Yup'ik. This wooden hat, worn for spring seal hunting, is painted with white clay and the image of a red-eyed bird with a long beak. The pale colors of the hunter's hat, clothes, and boat helped to conceal him amidst floating ice. John Phillip, Sr. said that the bird might be a grebe, painted on the hat as a helping spirit or to signify a Yup'ik rule that a deceased person's relatives can only go down to the sea after migrating grebes arrive in spring. Men of southern Norton Sound, Nunivak Island, and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta wore conical bentwood hats for seal hunting, a practice that continued into the 1950s in some places. Many of the older hats were decorated with ivory carvings, feathers, or painted figures. Bentwood hats were part of a man's gear for hunting seals on ocean ices floes in spring, or in open water among the ice. Men often painted the hats with urasquq [white-gray clay]. On Nunivak Island in 1940, "the men endeavored to have their kayak cover very white, all gear clean and freshly painted blue, white, and light ocher; they wore a clean gut parka, fishskin mittens, and wooden hunting hat painted white and blue. Although all this was done principally to please the seals, which were supposed to like cleanliness, it also provided an effective disguise in the midst of blue sea and white ice floes." 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 (specifically a 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 [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 ..." "This is a creature of the sea, a bird, and what he's thinking is that this is a helping spirit. That kind of a bird is a creature of the sea, and it can facilitate a better hunt." - Joan Hamilton, translating for John Phillip, Sr., 2003.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 30 Jan 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Kaialigamut, Yukon & Kuskokwim Delta, 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: 008133
label: USNM Number
content: E38717-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Hat
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 31 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 27 cm
label: Diameter - Object
content: 23 cm