Читать книгу Baleen Basketry of the North Alaskan Eskimo - Molly Lee - Страница 13

The Cultural Context of Baleen Basketry

The homeland of the Eskimos stretches eastward from the North Cape of Siberia through Alaska and Canada to Greenland, and southward along the Alaskan coast to Prince William Sound (fig. 1). The Eskimos are classified as a subgroup of the Mongoloid race and their languages form a discrete phylum, subdivided into two major stocks: Yup’ik, spoken by the Siberian, Bering Sea, and Pacific populations; and Inupiaq, the language used from Norton Sound eastward to Greenland. Despite its wide geographical occurrence, traditional Eskimo culture enjoyed a remarkable degree of racial, cultural, and linguistic homogeneity (Oswalt 1967).

The coastline of arctic Alaska was settled by 3000–4000 B.C., but to survey those aspects of North Alaskan Eskimo culture shaping the context of baleen basketry, it is necessary to reach only as far back as the Western Thule period immediately preceding European contact.

WESTERN THULE PERIOD, CA. 1100–1826

Because of the annual migrations of sea mammals to the arctic coast, large permanent settlements grew up there, and several of them have been inhabited continuously for the past 2,000 years. The oldest and largest is Point Hope, with a population possibly as great as 1,000 prior to the arrival of the Europeans (Rainey 1947). About A.D. 800, whale hunting had become the keystone for the common cultural and subsistence patterns of the arctic communities, and these same patterns have persisted in modified form to the present day (Larsen and Rainey 1948; Bockstoce 1976).

Until well after European contact, the basic socioeconomic unit in North Alaska was the extended family, a cooperative kinship group of fluctuating number (Spencer 1959; Burch 1975). The seasonal round of subsistence activities exploited both maritime and inland resources; these included winter ice hunting, spring whaling, summer walrus hunting, and fall migrations inland. There, family groups from the coast hunted caribou and traded with the riverine Eskimos and Athapaskan Indians (Murdoch 1892). Trade meetings were an integral part of the economic system, for maritime and interior populations each depended on products from the other’s habitat. The main purpose of barter was the exchange of whale blubber for caribou skins (Oswalt 1967). The summer dispersal and winter concentration characteristic of more easterly Eskimo populations (Mauss 1979) also pertained for Alaskan groups, but here the pattern was less sharply defined (Jenness 1918; Søby 1969; Burch 1981).

FIGURE 1. Homeland of North Alaskan Eskimos and location of baleen basketmaking communities.

Inextricably interwoven in the cultural fabric of the North Alaskan Eskimos is bowhead whale hunting. Linnean taxonomy classifies all whales into two orders depending on whether they have teeth (Order Odontoceti) or baleen (Order Mysticeti). The bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) is a baleen whale, as long as 65 feet and weighing up to 50 tons. Its range, distribution, and population size are all widely disputed, but the bowhead is the only great whale known to spend its entire life cycle in polar waters. Probably wintering in the western Bering Sea, the whales entered the Arctic Ocean for summer feeding from late April to early June, when the Eskimos of the coastal villages hunted them (Ellis 1980; Burch 1981). Traditionally, they used drag floats of inflated sealskin and toggle-headed harpoons for this purpose and pursued the whales in large, open skin boats (fig. 2). The whaling captain was the preeminent member of the community among this otherwise acephalous people (Murdoch 1892; Durham 1974). Whaling was the major communal activity, one surrounded by much public ceremony and celebration.

FIGURE 2. Eskimo whaling, about 1910. Photograph courtesy of University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, Gertrude Luske Collection, Accession No. 59-185-12.

The food supply, material culture, and social cohesion of the Eskimos all depended on the bowhead. None of the whale was wasted. Frozen in underground cellars for future use, its meat, blubber, and intestines furnished half a winter’s food supply (Bockstoce 1977). Blubber was also burned for fuel, and whale bone provided lumber for the semi-subterranean sod houses of the region. Because it did not collect frost, the tough, fibrous baleen figured prominently in fishing and hunting technology. It was bent into buckets (fig. 3), ice scoops, bows, and sled runners; shredded for fish line and lashings; shaved for boot insulation; and knotted into nets. Baleen was also fashioned into amulets and tightly coiled for mechanical toy springs and wolf killers (Ray 1885; Murdoch 1892; Rainey 1947; Ford 1959; Spencer 1959).

According to Eskimo belief, the bowhead allows itself to be killed. After capture, its skull is returned to the sea to ensure the immortality of its soul and the reincarnation of its body (Spencer 1959; Søby 1969; Pulu et al. 1980). Unlike the hunting of other sea mammals, whaling was highly ritualized (Nelson 1969). Its attendant ceremonial complex was directed at coercion of the animal and appeasement of its spirit. To this end, songs and amulets were as much a part of the Eskimo tool kit as the implements used in the hunt (Søby 1969). Whaling amulets included images of the bowhead in ivory, stone, or baleen; these were attached to hunting equipment or to the boat, or were hung about the whaler’s neck and clothing (Rainey 1947).

FIGURE 3. Traditional water container. Bent baleen, wood, and ivory. 8.5 × 8.5 cm. Collected in 1938 or 1939. Historical Society of Seattle and King County, Museum of History and Industry [1655-615]. Photograph by Howard Giske; courtesy of Historical Society of Seattle and King County.

Whale imagery figured prominently in myth, story, dance performance, and the plastic arts. In Eskimo culture, no distinction was made between art and technology (Ray 1977; Smith 1980), and art objects in the Western sense consisted of ceremonial paraphernalia such as masks and embellished utilitarian articles. However functional these objects were, aesthetics were a paramount consideration in their finish and decoration; one of the most consistently noted traits of Eskimo culture has been its remarkable degree of artistic and technical proficiency (Ray 1961). The distinctively Eskimo emphasis on detail and finish may be an outcome of the highly developed, uniquely adapted perceptual skills essential to survival in the bleak, monochromatic arctic landscape (Carpenter 1955, 1973; Ray 1961).

In the Arctic, Western Thule imagery, like the art of earlier periods, was dominated by zoomorphic representations. Nevertheless, its simple, austere, and realistic style bears little direct relationship to the more abstract art of the prehistoric Ipiutak and Birnirk cultures of the same region (Ray 1961; Giddings 1967).

In keeping with the strict division of labor in traditional Eskimo society, there was little sharing of artistic media between the sexes: men worked hard materials such as ivory, bone, wood, and baleen; women worked the softer, more flexible skins and furs (Giffen 1930; Ray 1961; Teilhet 1977). Women also made pottery on the arctic coast, but possibly because of sparse vegetation, basketry was probably unknown there prior to historic contact¹ (Murdoch 1892; Spencer 1959).

HISTORIC PERIOD, 1826–1982

European trade goods reached the Arctic as early as the seventeenth century. In 1816 the Russian expedition led by Otto von Kotzebue got as far north as Cape Krusenstern, but the first direct contact between westerners and the North Alaskan Eskimos occurred in 1826 and 1827, when Frederick W. Beechey, a British naval officer, explored the coastline in the search for Sir John Franklin. Beechey dispatched Thomas Elson and a crew in a smaller vessel to map the area. Elson’s party landed briefly both at Point Hope and Point Barrow (Murdoch 1892). Contacts between the Eskimos and explorers were minimal until 1848, however, when an American whaling vessel entered the Arctic Ocean in pursuit of the bowhead whale (Foote 1964; Bockstoce 1980). Lasting until about 1914, the era of commercial whaling was the first period of prolonged interaction between the Eskimos of these remote parts and members of an industrialized culture (Murdoch 1892). At first, American whalers took bowheads for their oil, but by 1875 petroleum was widely available and the focus of commercial whaling shifted toward the harvesting of baleen (Bockstoce 1978, 1980).

FIGURE 4. Bowhead jawbone with baleen plates. Photograph courtesy of University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, Baret Willoughby Collection, Accession No. 72-116-12.

FIGURE 5. Corset with baleen (“whalebone”) stays. From The Very Best English Goods, 1907. Photograph by Richard Serros.

Baleen is the fibrous material forming the sieve-like mouth parts of the plankton-eating whales. Called whalebone by the Yankees, it is, in fact, composed of keratin, the proteinaceous substance forming hair, horn, and fingernails. An extension of the upper gum, baleen hangs down on either side of the whale’s tongue in overlapping fronds called plates (fig. 4). A feeding whale moves through the water with mouth agape,² and the plankton are trapped on the inner surface of the baleen plates, where long, bristle-like hairs intertwine to form a coarse, tangled mat (Slijper 1962). Not the biggest mysticetous whale, the bowhead was nonetheless the one most highly prized by commercial whalers. Compared to other species, its larger jaw holds a greater quantity of bigger-sized plates. A single bowhead can yield as many as 700 plates up to 12 feet long; their total weight can be as much as 3,500 pounds (Scoresby 1820; Scammon 1874).

Strong and flexible, baleen in the nineteenth century was a valuable raw material comparable to present-day plastics. After soaking, it could be cut or split into pieces almost as fine as thread while retaining its tensile strength, and once heated, it could be permanently reshaped (Stevenson 1907; Tressler 1923). The most common commercial use of baleen was for women’s corset stays (fig. 5), but among the many other articles made from it were buggy whips, umbrella ribs, scrubbing brushes, trunk frames, fishing rods, and mattress stuffing (Ellis 1892; Flayderman 1972).

At first whalers came intermittently to the Arctic in search of bowhead baleen, but contact intensified after 1885, with the introduction of steam-powered whaling vessels (Leet 1974). About the same time some ships began wintering over at Point Hope for earlier access to the migrating herds, and onshore whaling stations were established in the region, primarily those at Point Hope and Point Barrow (Burch 1971; Bockstoce 1977). In the 1890s the first schools and missions were founded in the arctic communities, and within a generation, Christianity had been grafted onto the existing belief system (Milan 1964; Burch 1971).

The Yankee whaling period also brought about changes in the subsistence patterns and material culture in North Alaska. Although the Eskimos continued to hunt for the bulk of their food, modern firearms soon replaced their traditional hunting weapons. About the same time, north Alaskans began to develop a taste for imported foodstuffs³ such as coffee, tea, sugar, and flour; and soon, foreign household wares of metal and tin displaced those made locally of wood, bone, and pottery (Jenness 1918; Spencer 1959).

Before the 1950s, when currency came into common use (VanStone 1962), the Eskimos secured imported goods through barter. During the Yankee whaling period, baleen was their most valuable exchange commodity (Murdoch 1892). North Alaskans hired as crew members were sometimes paid in “whalebone” (Bailey 1921). Another resource for exchange was handmade objects of ivory and other indigenous materials. Long accustomed to trade with outside groups, Eskimos elsewhere in Alaska had as early as the eighteenth century made articles, such as model kayaks, especially for the nonnative market (Ray 1980). At Barrow they had begun making masks and ivory carvings expressly for this purpose by 1881 (Murdoch 1892).

Nevertheless, east of Point Hope, arts and crafts production has never flourished to the same extent as farther south around the Bering Sea (Ray 1977). In North Alaska, except in cases of old age or infirmity, arts production has been supplemental rather than full-time. Here, participation in arts and crafts occupations has increased only during economic depressions when other means of obtaining trade goods were lacking (Spencer 1959; Graburn 1979).

Between 1908 and 1914, commercial whaling gradually ceased. The drastic depletion of the bowheads⁴ and the invention of baleen substitutes such as spring steel and celluloid both contributed to its demise. In 1907 baleen was selling on the American market for $5 a pound; by 1912 the price had plummeted to 7 ½ cents, and soon after 1914 American whaling stopped entirely (Brower 1942; VanStone 1958; Bockstoce 1977, 1980). Subsequently, the Eskimos resumed both their traditional subsistence patterns and the cooperative social patterns they entailed (Spencer 1959). Even so, things were never again the same. During the whaling period, imported goods were incorporated into everyday life. A second economy, based on trade, now supplemented subsistence hunting; ever since, comfort and well-being in North Alaska have required successful participation in both these networks (VanStone 1962; Hippler 1969). Immediately following the collapse of Yankee whaling, the Eskimos endured a period of hardship. Itinerant trade vessels and local trading stations provided continued access to the coveted goods, but baleen, once so valuable as barter, now was worthless (Brower 1942).

Between about 1918 and 1929, the fur trade filled the economic vacuum to some extent, but this option was soon closed by the Great Depression, recognition of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent repeal of the embargo on Russian furs (Stuck 1920; Spencer 1959). In the next decade, arts and crafts became the most reliable trade resource (Spencer 1959). During this time production of baleen baskets began in earnest.

The Eskimos’ contact with the outside world continued in the form of visits from government officials and longer stays of schoolteachers and missionaries (VanStone 1962; Milan 1964). But not until the onset of World War II did economic relief first glimmer in the arctic villages. So pervasive was the cultural upheaval that the war years there have been described as “a Rubicon with the past” (Hughes 1965). Military bases were established along the arctic coast, and in 1946, at the Barrow installation, Eskimos were first hired as full-time wage employees (Roberts 1954). In the intervening years, local employment opportunities have continued to rise. Between 1953 and 1982 the population of Barrow has doubled. With more than 2,800 residents in 1982, it is the largest Eskimo settlement in the world.

The 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s have seen an ever narrowing gap between Eskimo and Western cultures. Besides wage employment, expanded public education, development of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, and enactment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act have all contributed to the changes. Among them are a shift from extended family groups to conjugal family units (Burch 1975), and the need of wage earners to confine subsistence hunting to weekends and vacations (Chance 1966; Nelson 1969).

Despite these cataclysmic changes the rudiments of Eskimo culture survive. Bowhead whaling is still the major yearly event and now the only cooperative activity left to reinforce group cohesion in the arctic villages (Marquette 1977). But the continuity subsistence whaling once provided is now severely threatened. The balance maintained between the Eskimos and bowheads for a thousand years was overturned in half a century of Yankee depredations. Future continuance of Eskimo whaling will depend on a satisfactory resolution to the present conflict⁵ between the bowhead’s endangered status and the fragile condition of Eskimo society, whose members continue to look to the whale for a source of bodily nourishment and a sense of cultural identity.