Also called: unaaq “spear, harpoon” Language:Qawiaraq Iñupiaq
A heavy harpoon for bearded seals, beluga whales, and walrus, with a toggling head that penetrated the animal and then turned sideways so it would not pull out. Even after hunters switched to guns, they used harpoons to fasten lines to wounded animals.
Culture:Iñupiaq Region:Northwest Alaska Object Category:Hunting Object Type:Harpoon Dimensions:Length 168cm Accession Date:1892 Source:J. H. Turner (collector) Museum:National Museum of Natural History Museum ID Number:E153727
Theresa Nanouk: This is another spear, for bigger animals like whales, right?
Oscar Koutchak: Yes, this is a spear, maybe for a bearded seal, maybe for a beluga. And it seems to be in pretty good order.
Art Ivanoff: Is that [shaft] wood?
Oscar Koutchak: Yes. There’s bone over here [socketpiece and foreshaft], but there’s also metal.
Theresa Nanouk: Oh, look at this [finger rest]. It’s made out of bone.
Anna Etageak: For when they put them on the kayak.
Oscar Koutchak: That’s to hold it [harpoon] steady against the incline of the kayak to keep it from rolling over.
That’s a good thing.
Anna Etageak: Maybe when at the edge of the ice, they just use this [ice pick at end] when they want to get out of the kayak. So they won’t tip over.
Oscar Koutchak: Yes. If I was sitting in a kayak and there was ice over here, I’d put my weight over here [on ice] and then come out. That’s leverage for the person that’s going to get out. And this [line] is that babiche.(1)
Retrieving seals
Art Ivanoff: So he’d spear it, and this [line] would come off and unravel.
Oscar Koutchak: Right. When you shoot a mammal, like for instance a bearded seal, they weigh about four or five hundred pounds. Sometimes you shoot them with a twenty-two [caliber rifle] and you kind of stun them. And they take a deep breath, and they hold their breath, and they stay afloat a little while.
Theresa Nanouk: They always sink.
Oscar Koutchak: Yes. There’s a chance for him to spear it. Otherwise, they’ll just sink. But if they hold their breath for just one minute or so, he’ll get a chance to retrieve them with this [harpoon]. Then they could sink, but it’ll hold them up.
Theresa Nanouk: They sink because their blubber is thin. But when their blubber is thick, they don’t sink.
Oscar Koutchak: Yes, some of them. But there’s not enough line over here I don’t think. Usually there’s long line. It’ll unravel real fast. This [line] will be going like this [fast spiraling] while they’re sinking.
[From discussion with Frances Charles, Anna Etageak, Art Ivanoff (Native Village of Unalakleet), Oscar Koutchak, Theresa Nanouk and Branson Tungiyan (Kawerak, Inc.) at the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian, 5/07/2001-5/11/2001. Also participating: Aron Crowell, Bill Fitzhugh and Stephen Loring (NMNH) and Suzi Jones (AMHA).]
1. According to Frances Charles, babiche is “sealskin rope, sealskin line” and is made from strips of scraped, untanned sealskin. The word is adapted from Canadian French and originally from Algonquian.
Harpoons, used for hunting seals, walrus, beluga whales, and bowhead whales, were the heaviest Iñupiaq weapons. They have thicker wooden shafts than the lightweight darts that were used for seals, and unlike darts were always thrust or thrown by hand rather than launched with a throwing board.(1) Harpoons have “toggling” points (heads) rather than the slender barbed points seen on darts.
The basic parts of a harpoon are the detachable head, foreshaft, socket piece, wooden shaft, and harpoon line. Toggling heads were made of bone, ivory, or antler, with a slot at the end to hold a thin stone or metal blade. This type is spurred at the base and has a hole for insertion of the slender foreshaft.(2) It was connected to the harpoon line with a short leader, which enabled quick replacement of the head if it broke.(3) The foreshaft—which improved penetration of the harpoon head—fit into the socket piece and was tied to the shaft so that it would not be lost. The heavy socket piece was made from bone or ivory, and its weight helped the weapon to hit with great force.
(4) The length of a harpoon shaft ranged from approximately four to nine feet depending on the size of the prey—shorter ones for small seals and longer, heavier ones for larger sea mammals.(5)
When a harpoon struck an animal the head penetrated well below the skin, came off the foreshaft, and turned sideways under tension from the harpoon line. In open water hunting, the shaft dragged behind the fleeing animal, slowing its escape.(6) Sealskin floats were often tied to the harpoon line for greater drag when hunting whales and other large mammals.(7) When hunting seals at the ice edge or breathing holes the hunter would hold on to the line rather than letting it go.(8) Harpoons like this one have a finger rest on the side of the shaft to help in making long throws.(9) The foreshaft on this weapon is relatively long, to penetrate the skin and blubber of bearded seals, beluga whales, and other larger sea mammals.(10)
By the turn of the 19th century, the use of harpoons had begun to change.
E. W. Nelson noted that by 1881, men in the Bering Strait region still hunted with harpoons but had begun to use firearms to kill sea mammals.(11) By 1905, George Gordon reported that seal, walrus and whale harpoons were still in general use, but the stone harpoon blade was replaced by a metal one. Gordon noted that overall, firearms had begun to replace many Native-made weapons.(12) Harrison Thornton—who lived in Wales from 1890 to 1893—reported that seal harpoons were used only occasionally to deliver the final blow to a seal after shooting it with a gun.(13) John Murdoch—in the Barrow area from 1881 to 1883—reported that seals and walrus were often shot with rifles, while walrus were killed with a combination of rifle and large harpoon.(14)
1. Curtis 1930:142; Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988:160-61; Murdoch 1892:214-40; Nelson 1899:135-40; Oquilluk 1973:215; Rainey 1947:264-65; Ray 1966:63; Ray 1885:40; Thornton 137-142, 174
2. Bockstoce 1977:33; Fitzhugh and Crowell:160; Murdoch 1892:218-21, 225-26; Nelson 137-40, 148
3. Murdoch 1892:227
4. Murdoch 1892: 223, 229; Nelson 1899:137, 139, 148
5. Murdoch 1892: 223, 230; Nelson 1899:137, 138; Thornton 1931:142
6. Bockstoce 1977:33; Murdoch 1892:218, 223; Nelson 1899:137; Thornton 1931:142-43
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