2001
2001
Oscar Koutchak: It looks like a seal. Nassiŋuaq [play seal].
Theresa Nanouk: Atalaa una ugruk.
(It looks like a bearded seal.)
Oscar Koutchak: Ugruk [bearded seal], yes. For these little dots, they might have used something [to make the holes] and then put that color on the inside. The same color. At first I thought it was ughaq [rock used to color wood red], but it’s not. It’s something else. It comes from the rock, and you can color things with it. But I forget the exact Eskimo name for it.
Theresa Nanouk: It’s red rock that’s used for coloring.
Oscar Koutchak: I think it’s just an ornament, this one here. It’s nice carving.
Theresa Nanouk: Now we’ve start collecting all these ornaments.
Iñupiaq people used charms to attract animals, and amulets for protection against harm or illness. However, the two terms overlap in meaning and are often used interchangeably. According to Ron Brower, Sr., of Barrow, a tuunġaq [charm, devil, helping spirit of a shaman] has “the power of killing,” whereas an aanġuaq [amulet] has the “power of bringing” animals. Froelich Rainey—reporting from Point Hope in 1940—learned that “a tupitkaq is a simple charm worn on the body or clothing, while an angoak is a charm kept in a special place, as, for example, the bow of a whaling boat.” He found that by 1940 the two terms were used interchangeably but “angoak” was more commonly used. A man’s “angoaks” associated him spiritually with various animals that, in addition to assisting him when hunting, acted as “guardians” who would “protect him in war or fighting, and rescue him from danger.”
Along the North Alaska coast, hunters used charm figures—animals carved of ivory, bone, stone or wood—to gain the assistance of animal spirits.
They wore the small carvings around their necks, on belts, and in their clothing, and fastened others to hunting equipment and boats. The charms had various powers—to guide hunters to game or to give them sharper vision, to attract animals, or to make weapons more effective. Charms and amulets could include other kinds of items, such as old ivory harpoon heads, special stones, raven skins, eagle feathers, seal claws, wolverine tails, wolf teeth, or polar bear noses.
In Norton Sound, people often wore charms representing men, animals, and fish, carved from beluga whale teeth or walrus ivory. William H. Dall—who visited Norton Sound during 1866-67—observed that men put ivory carvings of birds, walrus or seals on their kayaks. In a report from Port Clarence in 1894, Miner Bruce stated that men decorated their tools and weapons with ivory carvings, including seal heads “lashed to their harpoons or strung on the seal thongs stretched over their canoes.” One “charm for good luck” reported by John Murdoch—in the Barrow area from 1881 to 1883—was a tern bill secured in the lashings of a seal harpoon.
A boy told him that it would help a hunter to catch “lots of seals,” and Murdoch supposed that the beak was selected to guide the harpoon to “plunge down upon the seal with as sure an aim as the tern does upon its prey.” Murdoch reported that many carvings of bowhead whales and seals were made in the Barrow area, which hunters used for good luck.
In his book People of Kauwerak, Iñupiaq Elder William Oquilluk discussed the use of animal figurine amulets as well as dried noses and claws. These were carried or worn by men, women and children who “thought that if they called on the spirits of the dolls or charms they would protect them from evil spirits. They kept these things with them always. It seemed they believed anyone that had them was safe.” He explained that the use of charms faded away at the beginning of the twentieth century with the arrival of missionaries.
Carved figures had other uses, including dolls and animal toys for children. Murdoch reported that some carvings were made just for sale to collectors.
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