Identifying & explaining
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Throwing
2002
Identifying & explaining
Kenneth Toovak: Natchiqsiuqtitkii qayaġmik. Satkuuruq.
([Used by] seal hunters with a kayak. It’s a hunting item.)
Ron Brower, Sr.: Taammauvva natchiqsiuġunmarra.
(This is for seal hunting.)
Kenneth Toovak: Ii. Aapaga qauriuraġama unaaqpauraqaġuuŋaruaq tainna.
(Yes. My father had this kind of harpoon for as long as I can remember.)
Ron Brower, Sr.: This is a seal hunting spear. It would have the harpoon point that would be attached to a float.
Kenneth Toovak: Uqumaitquvlugu pisuugaat.
(They want the point heavy [to its balance weight].)
Ron Brower, Sr.: Mm-hmm. The foreshaft is normally made out of heavy bone to add weight to the harpoon and so that it would pierce the skin of the animal.
Ron Brower, Sr.: This first part [grips shaft one-third back from front end] is for throwing at the animal that’s in closer range. Then you have the atlatl [throwing board] that would be here [back end of shaft] for throwing this at far range. And that’s what’s missing here.
Aron Crowell: Is it for the small seals like for spotted seals?
Ron Brower, Sr.: Mm-hmm.
Kenneth Toovak: You’ve got to have a longer line coiled up that you hang on your [non-throwing hand]. And you can throw it a long way with it [throwing board]. Just hang onto that line there at the end.
Ron Brower, Sr.: When the point comes out, this [line on shaft] will unravel.
It [shaft] is intended to slow and act like a drag. But also at the end of the line you have a small float. Some of those are made from bladders to keep the seal from going far. There would be another line that would be attached, which you can either hang onto or—normally you don’t hang on to it in the qayaq [kayak]—you have a float attached to it, so you can follow the seal and dispatch it fairly quickly.
Aron Crowell: Have you seen one used?
Kenneth Toovak: Oh yes. My father used to have one just about same design, there’s an ice chipper on the other end.
Throwing
Before firearms, Iñupiat used a wide variety of traditional weapons to hunt sea mammals. The selection depended on the size of the prey, its distance, and prevailing water or ice conditions. The weapon shown here is a seal dart, although the related English terms “harpoon” and “spear” are used in the Elders’ discussion. Unlike spears, darts have detachable points. They are distinguished from harpoons by their lighter weight and by being designed for long-distance use with a throwing board. They were usually deployed in open water from kayaks, against small targets such as hair seals.
The construction of a dart is nonetheless fairly similar to that of a harpoon. A bone or ivory socket piece is lashed with sinew to the fore end of a wooden shaft approximately four to five feet in length. The rear section of the shaft is sometimes fletched like an arrow, and its end is shaped to articulate with the pin of a throwing board. A detachable barbed point fits loosely into the socket piece, and is connected to the shaft with sinew or sealskin line.
This dart has a small finger rest lashed midway on the shaft, which would have aided in throwing the weapon by hand if the target was close.
When a dart struck a seal, the barbed point lodged beneath the animal’s skin and popped out of the socket piece. The shaft—still attached to the point by the sinew line—dragged crossways through the water behind the seal as it tried to dive and swim away. The hunter could soon catch up to the exhausted animal and kill it. A small float was sometimes attached to the dart shaft to increase the drag effect.
While in the Bering Strait region in 1827, Captain F. W. Beechey described men using “a dart about five feet in length, furnished with a barb, which is disengaged from its socket when it strikes the animal, and being fastened by a line to the centre of the staff, the harpoon acts as a drag. This instrument is discharged with a throwing board, which is easily used, and gives very great additional force to the dart, and in the hands of a skilful person will send a dart to a considerable distance.”
Elder Kenneth Toovak remembered that a hunter could tie a long line to the dart, holding the free end in his hand and using it to haul in the wounded seal. This resembles Murdoch’s description of how a “retrieving harpoon” (a slightly different weapon) was used to recover seals in open water after shooting them with a rifle.
Curved knives were used to fashion and finish dart shafts. A chisel-like tool was applied to make grooves and slits for fastening lashings and inserting feathers. Hunters painted ownership marks on the shafts, as well as animal totems such as the gyrfalcon, which was indicated by bars of red that resembled markings on the bird’s tail.
By the turn of the 19th century, the use of darts had begun to decline. George Gordon reported that by 1905 darts were used only occasionally in the Bering Strait area, and firearms were beginning to replace many Native-made weapons.
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