Alaska Native Collections – Sharing Knowledge

2003

Using

Aron Crowell: So what kind of basket is this?

Daria Dirks: How they used to gather food.

Maria Turnpaugh: It could be for anything—any kind of fish, shellfish or kelp.

Mary Bourdukofsky: Gathering seafood along the beach.

Maria Turnpaugh: That’s why it’s got the open weave, so the—

Mary Bourdukofsky: Water drains.

Aron Crowell: Does that kind of basket have a special name?

Mary Bourdukofsky: Chuumyan [kelp] basket.(1)

Weaving

Daria Dirks: This is biggest [basket] I’ve seen.

Maria Turnpaugh: They could be bigger, but I don’t think I’ve seen any bigger ones than this.

Mary Bourdukofsky: You know in the Kodiak museum, there was one similar to this. Her name was on it, Alexandra Hope.

Daria Dirks: It says Kashega on there [museum catalog card]—Aleutian Islands, Kashega. It’s near Unalaska.

Maria Turnpaugh: Look how they weaved.

Mary Bourdukofsky: Yes, a big weave.

Maria Turnpaugh: They weave those two together and when you come around you weave the next ones.

Mary Bourdukofsky: It’s weaved a little tighter and then spreads out.

Maria Turnpaugh: They start adding.

Daria Dirks: So you think they kept weaving and then just braided it [along top edge]?

Mary Bourdukofsky: As they weaved, they must have left little loops. When you braid it, you catch them.

[From discussion with Mary N. Bourdukofsky, Vlass Shabolin, Maria Turnpaugh and Daria Dirks (Tanadgusix Foundation) at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, 4/07/2003-4/11/2003. Also participating: Aron Crowell and Bill Fitzhugh.]

1. Mary Bourdukofsky later called this type of basket a ayg^ag^esix^ [carrying basket] and a chuumyam ayg^ag^esix^ [kelp carrying basket].

The quantity of provisions which they procure by hunting and fishing being far too small for their wants, the greatest part of their food consists of sea-wrack and shell-fish, which they find on the shore.

- Russian fur merchant Ivan Solov’ev, 1764 (1)

Baskets with a loose, open weave, like this example from Unalaska Island, allow for the drainage of wet contents such as sea urchins, mussels, and chitons.(2) Open weave bags were also used for carrying fish and are often called “fish baskets.”(3) In 2003, Mary Bourdukovsky (St. Paul) and Maria Turnpaugh (Unalaska) suggested that at least one of the uses for this particular bag was gathering seaweed, which is part of the traditional Aleutian Islands subsistence diet.(4)

Seaweed and shellfish were especially important in the past when bad weather kept hunters from going to sea in their kayaks. Vasyutinsky’s 1764 report on the Andreyanovsky Island group (Kanaga, Adak, Atka, Amlia, and Seguam) says that “when the weather becomes stormy and continues so for several days, it is not possible to set out to the sea and famine strikes them and their wives and children.

In order to prevent starvation they go to the sea-coast, gather sea-weed and different shells, bring them home and eat them raw.”(5) The long stems of kelp were also used to make fishing lines.

1. Coxe 1966:152

2. Laughlin 1980:48

3. Black 2003:166-67; Shapsnikoff and Hudson 1974:56-57

4. Beaglehole 1967:460; Coxe 1966:152; Jochelson 1933:8

5. Jochelson 1933:8