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Hats of Wood: The Intriguing Masks of Alaskan Sea Hunters
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10645 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1993 |
2,826 Words |
| Author
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Lydia T. Black
Lydia T. Black is professor of anthropology at the University
of Alaska and has written on the art of the Aleut people.
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Shortly after the Russians claimed Alaska as their territory in 1741 and the Aleutian Islands were mastered by Russian fur traders, Europe's museums began to acquire very unusual artifacts: wooden hats or helmets worn by the native peoples when traveling on the sea. Eventually, these artifacts came to be called Aleut hunting hats, taking the name from the ethnonym applied to the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands since the eighteenth century. Today, native Alaskans are relearning how to make these ancestral artifacts. Rapidly, these hats are becoming one of the dominant symbols of Aleut identity.
The Aleutian Islands stretch like a chain for over fifteen hundred miles from the Alaskan Peninsula in the east westward, toward Kamchatka, in Russia. These islands have been called a bridge between the continents and stepping-stones from Asia to America. In World War II, the Aleutians were the only part of the United States to suffer major attacks by the Japanese following Pearl Harbor. Dutch Harbor, the port on Unalaska Island, was bombed. The village of Attu, on Attu Island, far in the west of the Aleutian chain, was taken by the enemy and the people made prisoners of war.
The islands are a chain of volcanoes that rise from a submerged ridge platform. They form a huge arc, a part of the Ring of Fire. Some of the volcanoes are ancient, and some are growing beneath the surface of the Bering Sea even today. There are more than forty active volcanoes in the Aleutians. The ridge separates the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean. The islands are treeless, and there are no land animals except for foxes, ground squirrels, and rats on some of the eastern Aleutians.
In the interior, snowcapped peaks reach the sky. One can see them on a lucky clear day. Most of the time the summits are hidden by low, thick clouds. Dense fogs obscure the horizon. In summer, it rains almost constantl. The winds are incessant, summer and winter, often blowing with hurricane force. The shores are rock-bound, the seas dangerous. In the inter-island passes and near shore, riptides threaten the unwary mariner.
Harsh life no deterrent
Yet people have lived in this harsh, inhospitable environment since time immemorial. They lived on the bounty from the sea, on fish, birds, and sea animals. Driftwood, local rocks and minerals, and products of the sea mammals they hunted were their only sources of technological materials. Life was hard. Neighbors fought over resources, for
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