Container
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1880
name: label: Donor Name
content: Edward W. Nelson
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Box for fungus ashes." Listed on page 30 in "The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915", in section "Arts of the Western Eskimo".
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=99 , retrieved 12-29-2021; see web page for additional information: Container, Inupiaq. Chewing tobacco was mixed with ashes made by burning a fungus that grows on birch trees. Fungus ash may have been stored in this bowl, or it might have been a mortar used for grinding tobacco into snuff. Before direct trade with Russian fur companies and American whaling vessels, peoples in northwest Alaska obtained Russian leaf tobacco from the Chukchi through exchange networks and trade fairs in Alaska and eastern Siberia. When visiting villages in the Bering Strait region in the 1880s, Edward Nelson observed local custom by giving headmen gifts of tobacco. He also traded tobacco and other items such as needles and buttons for Native-made objects. Nelson observed that a man's smoking implements-pipe, flint and steel, tinder and pouch of tobacco-and snuff implements-snuff box and tube-were usually placed in his coffin. Both men and women used snuff or chewing tobacco, while most smokers were men. To make chewing tobacco, the leaves were chopped, mixed with ash, and kneaded into balls-also called quids or plugs-that were kept in small boxes. The ash was made by burning birch tree fungus, obtained through trade with Athabascan peoples of interior Alaska. Tar scraped from the inside of pipe stems was also added. Chewing tobacco was held in the cheek and the juice swallowed. To make snuff, tobacco leaves were cut, dried, and ground into powder in a pestle and wooden mortar. The powder was sifted and kept in a small box. Snuff was taken by inhaling the powder into the nose through a tube. Snuff tubes were usually hollow wing bones of geese or ducks, engraved with designs. Small amounts of snuff were sometimes carried in little seal-intestine pouches tied with sealskin string, usually with the snuff tube attached. Men made small boxes to store ash, quids, and snuff. Tobacco boxes came in a variety of shapes and were often decorated with engravings, animal and human figures, bone or ivory inlays, and beads.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 29 Dec 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Unalakleet, Norton Sound, Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Eskimo, Inupiaq
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 80A00050
label: USNM Number
content: E43804-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Container