Eskimo Artifacts, Wooden Objects

Rattle
Carved wood with insert Walrus ivory eyes. Ca. 1880's
Collected Skagway Alaska, 1980's H. 7 in

For Eskimo tribes on the coast of the Bering Sea, "wood" meant driftwood. In a treeless landscape, it was a seasonal commodity which arrived with no particular regularity and on it's own schedule. Rainfall and flooding in Alaska's wooded interior might provide a glut of driftwood on the coast many months later. Some years there was no wood at all.Perhaps because of this scarcity, driftwood became one of the Eskimo's most expressive toolmaking mediums. Masks, tools and utilitarian objects such as floats for fishing nets were carved of it, because it was lightweight and easily shaped with stone tools. Because of wood's fragility, carved objects from the South Bering Sea cultures are extremely rare.

The net floats shown here are masterpieces of woodcarving and when seen from a even a near distance on the surface of the ocean, perfectly suggest the presence of the animals the carver has portrayed. This served to honor the "Inua" or spirit of the animal that was portrayed and visually reassured the fish approaching the net that all was well.

Fishing net float in the shape of a seal.
Carved wood with ivory insert eyes. L. 4.33 in

Fishing net float in the shape of a seal.
Carved wood with ivory insert eyes. L. 4.50 in

Fishing net float in the shape of a seal.
Carved wood with ivory insert eyes. L. 4.33 in

Fishing net plug in the shape of a warriors head
Carved wood with glass bead insert, H. 5 in

Many of the items shown here were collected in the latter part of the 19th Century, long before replicas were created for trade and souvenirs. The area was largely unknown and completely unexplored until well after the American Civil War. When the first expedition to the Upper Bering Sea was mounted in the late 1870's, the inhospitable terrain offered it's leader, Michael Nelson of the Smithsonian Museum, many unexpected challenges, many of them directly related to the scarcity of wood.

Fishing net float with the face of a man
Carved wood with trade glass bead insert. L. 4.33 in

When Nelson established his base in St. Michaels near Stuart Island, fuel for heating was a major problem, since the windswept coast of the Bering Sea. was treeless for hundreds of miles in all directions.

Expeditions to the forested interior of the mainland were never easy and rarely provided much useful fuel, because the green Alaska timber required months of aging and drying before it would burn. One night, the men of the expedition were awakened by a noise coming from the Unalakleet River near their basecamp, "Which sounded like a hundred locomotives."

Fishing net float with the head of a man and a seal
Carved wood .W. 5.33 in.

The next morning they awoke to the sight of thousands of large trees littering the beach directly in front of their encampmant and the sound of dozens of Eskimos hacking away at the pile with stone and metal axes, quickly stowing it into their boats. By the end of the day, the tide came in and "Completely cleared the beach of anything the Eskimos had left."

Fishing net float in the form of a seals head.
Carved wood with Walrus ivory inserts.
W. 6.75 in.

Fishing net float in the form of a seal
Carved wood with Walrus ivory net hanger and trade glass bead eyes. L. 4.33 in.