Alaska Native Collections – Sharing Knowledge

2002 (1)

Ron Brower, Sr.: Nuvuŋmiut tainnaasiñik tavsiqapiksuaġuumaruat.

(People of Point Barrow were known to wear these belts.)

Kenneth Toovak: Mm-hmm.

Ron Brower, Sr.: This is Point Barrow style. These are normally women’s belt.

Doreen Simmonds: For carrying a baby.

Ron Brower, Sr.: No, for your clothes.

Doreen Simmonds: Dancing maybe.

Ron Brower, Sr.: Yes, it’s a dancing belt.

[From discussion with Jane Brower, Ron Brower, Sr. (Iñupiat Heritage Center), Doreen Simmonds (Commission on Iñupiaq History, Language & Culture) and Kenneth Toovak at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, 2/04/2002-2/06/2002. Also participating: Karen Brewster, Wanda Chin and Terry Dickey (University of Alaska Museum) and Aron Crowell (NMNH).]

1. Entry includes information from the discussion of caribou teeth belt 122500.000.

In the Bering Strait region, belts with caribou teeth were made by men and worn by women.(1) Sets of caribou or reindeer incisors were cut from the animals’ jaws and sewn in close rows along a strip of hide.(2) A caribou teeth belt was a source of pride for a man and his family because they demonstrated his skill as a hunter.(3) The belts were valued family heirlooms and believed to have curative powers that increased with age.(4)

The belts were also worn in areas north of Bering Strait. In the 1850s, Dr. John Simpson reported seeing them “much in use” at Kotzebue Sound, made from “fifty to sixty rows of teeth.”(5) Captain F. W. Beechey collected a reindeer teeth belt made with seventy sets of teeth north east of Icy Cape in 1826 or 1827.(6) They were not generally known in the North Slope region so it is likely that this belt, collected from Point Barrow in 1923, was acquired through trade.

Women in the Barrow area—as well as most men and boys in Northwest Alaska—wore belts made from wolverine skin with the clawed feet, tail, and sometimes head attached.

Wolverine belts were highly valued and thought to give the animal’s powers to those who wore them.(7)

1. Dall 1870:141-142; Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:108, 146; Michael 1967:112; Nelson 1899:59

2. Dall 1870:141-42; Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:146; Nelson 1899:59

3. Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:146; Ray 1981:143

4. Fitzhugh and Kaplan 1982:146; Nelson 1899:435; Ray 1966:38; Ray 1977:33

5. Simpson 1875:244

6. Bockstoce 1977:95

7. Murdoch 1892:136-38; Nelson 1899:62; Simpson 1875:241, 244; Thornton 1931:35