Whaling Dart Heads
date: label: Accession Date
content: 4 Jan 1887
name: label: Collector
content: William J. Fisher
label: Donor Name
content: William J. Fisher
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "One with handles. Point broken. One ornamented." Two darts and one sheath Illus. Fig. 163, p. 167 in Crowell, Aron, Amy F. Steffian, and Gordon L. Pullar. 2001. Looking both ways: heritage and identity of the Alutiiq people. Fairbanks, Alaska: University of Alaska Press.
label: Notes
content: Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on dart E127759, # 1 of 3 (original # 83), though all objects in catalogue number are described in the entry: http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=226, retrieved 8-28-2012: Whaling Dart Head, Sugpiaq (Alutiiq), Koniag. ulukarsuuq "whaling dart blade" - Language: Koniag Sugpiaq (Kodiak Island dialect) Whales were once an important resource for Sugpiaq communities, providing meat, blubber, intestines for waterproof clothing, baleen, bone, and sinew. Whalers set out in kayaks to kill humpback and fin whales, armed only with slender, poison-tipped darts or spears.(1) These men were ahhuhsulet [shamans who hunt whales] who summoned spiritual power for the hunt through special songs, talismans, and complex, secret rituals.(2) Sugpiaq whalers coated the stone blades of their darts and spears with aconite poison that was boiled from roots of the monkshood plant.(3) The fragile blades of their weapons-like this slate point-were designed to break off and stay inside the whale. The small amount of poison that could be painted on the blade did not kill the animal but was strong enough to paralyze its tail or flipper.(4) Unable to swim properly, the wounded whale eventually drowned. When its drifting body was found, often two or three days later, markings on the blade identified the hunter. The two blades are both engraved with one man's personal pattern of chevrons and dots. The broken blade, perhaps already used to kill a whale, was encased in a sheath made from a hollow plant stem. Human fat was mixed into the whale poison to give it magical potency.(5) To obtain this ingredient, the corpses of whalers and other prominent people were taken to caves and soaked in water before rendering out the fat over a fire.(6) Whalers also trailed slicks of human fat across the mouths of bays where they hunted, believing that a whale would not cross the slick to escape to the open ocean.(7) Whale poison was considered to be incredibly strong and dangerous. In Prince William Sound, it was said that birds that flew over a kayak where it was stored would fall dead from the sky.(8) On Kodiak Island, where the last traditional whaling took place before about 1920, the late Larry Matfay was taught never to drink water from a stream that trickled down from a whaler's cave, for fear that it would be contaminated from the soaking of bodies. Kodiak Elders grew up with warnings from their parents to never touch old artifacts, for fear that shamans had rubbed the objects with poison. According to Sven Haakanson, Sr., "But they said that the reason why we weren't supposed to touch them is some of the shamans used to have some awful strong poisons. They even poisoned the whales or paralyzed the whales with stuff they used . . . And I've heard many stories where people touched them and they got sick or hands start rotting until they put them back."(9) 1. Crowell 1994; Crowell et al. 2001:166-168; Davydov 1977:223-224; Gideon 1989:67-68; Holmberg 1985:47-49; Lisianskii 1968:202, 209; Merck 1980:105-106 2. Crowell et al. 2001:166-168; Desson 1995:75-125 3. Sauer 1802:177-78 4. Crowell 1994 5. Davydov 1977:223; Gideon 1989:60 6. Demidoff 1962; Desson 1995:79-88; Gideon 1989:60; Lisianskii 1968:174 7. Hrdlicka 1944:126 8. Birket-Smith 1953:34
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027; one dart head only, #1 of 3, original number 83, is on loan. Second dart head (with broken tip), # 2 of 3, original number 84, and sheath/case, # 3 of 3, not included on loan.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 8 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 3
place: label: Place
content: Kodiak Island / Karluk, Kodiak Islands, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Alutiiq (Sugpiaq), Koniag
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 018490
label: USNM Number
content: E127759-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Dart / Sheath
physicalDescription: label: Length - Dart, # 1 Of 3 (Original # 83)
content: 25 cm
label: Length - Dart, # 2 Of 3 (Original # 84)
content: 19.3 cm
label: Length - Sheath, # 3 Of 3
content: 25.5 cm