The last kayak: 1860 Alutiiq boat hold clues to an Alaskan culture

The last kayak: 1860 Alutiiq boat hold clues to an Alaskan culture

Read more: The last kayak: 1860 Alutiiq boat hold clues to an Alaskan culture - Dedham, Massachusetts - The Dedham Transcript http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x121060111/The-last-kayak-1860-Alutiiq-boat-hold-clues-to-an-Alaskan-culture#ixzz1rXQdURzf
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Around 1860 near Kodiak Island off the south coast of Alaska, an Alutiiq warrior built a streamlined kayak by stretching and sewing the hides of five female sea lions around a sophisticated wooden frame.

A warrior and whaler, he gave his kayak the biurficated, or double bow, his people favored to slice through the rough seas of the Gulf of Alaska to hunt whales with javelin-sized harpoons.

For reasons still unknown, the Alutiiq stitched into the kayak’s surface near its prow several strands of human hair.

Perhaps the last of its kind, the 14-foot, 7-inch kayak is being conserved in a special gallery at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University so visitors can watch.

“This is a really unique object,’’ said T. Rose Holdcraft, head conservator at the Peabody. “We’re conserving it so people can learn from it.’’

After completion of the project, the Peabody plans to loan the kayak to the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository for 10 years.

Donated to the museum in 1869, the kayak’s unique significance came to light in 2003 when tribal members Sven Haakanson and Ronnie Lind saw it in a high storage shelf and recognized it by its double prow as a rare artifact of their culture.

Based on Alutiiq oral history, Haakanson, then a doctoral student who’s now executive director of the Alutiiq Museum, and Lind, a tribal elder, thought the human hair and other details signified a warrior’s kayak.

“Over 7,000 years of our people’s living knowledge went into construction of this kayak. There is no known kayak of its age today. It’s unique and holds so much information,’’ said Haakanson by phone from Kodiak Island. “We hope in time to bring it back home to put this information into a living context so our youth can learn and understand from it.’’

He said the Alutiiq, whose name means “the human beings,’’ are also called Pacific Yupik or Sugpiaq and have lived in Alaska for more than 7,500 years. Now numbering about 4,000 people, most live on or near Kodiak Island and belong to 10 tribes.

Haakanson regards the kayak as a “sacred object’’ because of the human hair, the meaning of which remains elusive.

While some speculated the hair was akin to a trophy-like scalp, he’s tending toward the idea the hair was attached to the kayak because “it embodied the spirit of somebody powerful who could help or protect (the kayak’s owner) on whale hunts or war.’’

Read more: The last kayak: 1860 Alutiiq boat hold clues to an Alaskan culture - Dedham, Massachusetts - The Dedham Transcript http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x121060111/The-last-kayak-1860-Alutiiq-boat-hold-clues-to-an-Alaskan-culture#ixzz1rXQxFKoe



Read more: The last kayak: 1860 Alutiiq boat hold clues to an Alaskan culture - Dedham, Massachusetts - The Dedham Transcript http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x121060111/The-last-kayak-1860-Alutiiq-boat-hold-clues-to-an-Alaskan-culture#ixzz1rXQtuNVw