Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442Murdoch, John
History
Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442
Murdoch, John
Eskimos -- Alaska -- Barrow, Point, Region
Horn dippers of the same general pattern as these are common
throughout Alaska. The Museum collection contains a large series of
such utensils, collected by Mr. Nelson and others. The cups and
dippers of musk-ox horn found by Parry at Iglulik are somewhat
different in shape.[N193] Those made of the enlarged base of
horn[N194] have a short handle and a nearly square bowl, while the
hollow top of the horn is used for a cup without alteration beyond
sometimes bending up the end, which serves as a handle.[N195]
Curiously enough, cups of this last pattern appear not to be found
anywhere else except at Plover Bay, eastern Siberia, where very
similar vessels (as shown by the Museum collections) are made from the
horn of the Siberian mountain sheep. An unusual form of dipper is
beautifully made of fossil ivory. Such cups are rare and highly
prized. We saw only three, one from each village, Nuwŭk, Utkiavwĭñ,
and Sidaru, and all were obtained for the collection. They show signs
of age and long use. They differ somewhat in shape and size, but each
is carved from a single piece of ivory and has a large bowl and a
straight handle. No. 56535 [371] (Fig. 40), which will serve as the
type of the ivory dipper (i´musyû, kĭlĭgwû´garo), is neatly carved
from a single piece of fine-grained fossil ivory, yellowed by age. The
handle, polished by long use, terminates in a blunt, recurved,
tapering hook, which serves the purpose of the peg in the horn dipper.
The rounded gap in the brim opposite the handle is an accidental
break. Another, No. 89830 [1259], from Sidaru, is a long trough-like
cup, with rounded ends and a short flat handle at one end, made of a
short transverse section of a rather small tusk, keeping the natural
roundness of the tusk, but cut off flat on top and excavated. A wooden
peg, like those in the horn dippers, is inserted in the end of the
handle. This cup is especially interesting from its resemblance to the
one obtained by Beechey (Voyage, Pl. I, Fig. 4) at Eschscholtz Bay,
from which it differs only in being about 2 inches shorter and deeper
in proportion. Thomas Simpson speaks of obtaining an ivory cup from
some Point Barrow natives at Dease Inlet exactly like the one figured
by Beechey, but with the handle broken off.[N196] Fig. 41, No. 89833
[933], from Nuwŭk, has a large bowl, nearly circular, with a broad,
straight handle and a broad hook. The part of the bowl to which the
handle is attached, a semicircular piece 3 inches long and 1¾ wide,
has been split out with the grain of the tusk, and mended with three
stitches, in this case of sinew, in the usual manner. There was an old
gap in the brim opposite to the handle, and the edges of it have been
freshly and roughly whittled down. The ornamentation of the outside
and handle, consisting of narrow incised lines and small circles, each
with a dot in the center, is well shown in the figure. These
engravings were originally colored with red ocher, but are now filled
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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