Baleen Basketry of the North Alaskan Eskimo. Molly Lee
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