Unalaska Island / Unalaska, Aleutian Islands / Unalaska Quad / Fox Islands, Alaska, United States, North America
Accession Date:
3 Mar 1894
Notes:
FROM CARD: "IN BOAT NO. 76280 [i.e. came associated with kayak # E398277]. #168,519--SEE LINE DRAWING IN PHOTO FILE UNDER ALEUT." Boat no. 76280 is Catalogue No. E398277.
2 parts: wooden dart/harpoon shaft and bone and glass dart/harpoon head. Note re photos: Neg. # 99-20255 is an image of bone and glass harpoon head only (wooden shaft is not in photo).
Traditional bone Aleut harpoon head has been combined with a new material introduced by the Russians: glass, used as the point of the harpoon head; has sinew lashing. Presence of glass dates it to after 1750. Artifact was collected in Unalaska circa 1892.
Dart head is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=650, retrieved 5-8-2014: Dart To spear fin and humpback whales, hunters in kayaks threw poison-coated darts with bone heads and points made of obsidian (volcanic glass). Whales died after several days as the slow-acting poison paralyzed their fins or tails, causing them to drown. The poison used was aconite, extracted by soaking and boiling the roots of the monkshood flower. Aconite-covered darts were also employed as deadly weapons for human warfare.
