Native Hunters Research Articles

Walrus Protection in Alaska

As the principle of conservation of various species of our fast disappearing animal life spreads in all countries, we see reservations everywhere for the protection of land mammals, in whose welfare public interest has been aroused. But with the notable exception of the Pribilof Islands in Alaska, there are few reservations in the world for our sea mammals, which are disappearing with the same rapidity as the land mammals. The killer whale is an exception owing to the fact that it has no commercial value. Thirty or forty years ago in various places along the Alaskan coast walruses were known to haul in countless numbers. But when the white settlers came and saw that there was commercial value in the ivory, the extinction of the Alaskan walrus life began. Today although the walrus herds pass along the coast of Alaska on their route of migration northward, seldom do even a few walrus come to shore and when they do, they are soon frightened away by the native hunters. The result is that the walrus stay off shore, and the natives go out and hunt them on the ice. Although to the native the meat of the walrus has the greatest economic value, it is seldom that the Eskimos can bring anything but the ivory tusks ashore. Thus they sacrifice tons of good meat, highly prized by them, because it can not be landed. During the summer of 1923, while cruising along the Alaskan coast north of Point Hope to Wainright Inlet near Point Barrow, I examined a stretch of coast of over 200 miles from Cape Lisburne north. A westerly wind had washed ashore on that one part of the coast over a thousand bodies of walrus which had been killed among the ice floes by the Eskimos. One-third of the walrus bodies still had the ivory tusks, showing that the walrus had been shot and had slipped off the ice and sunk before the natives had reached them. These animals were a total loss as the meat was spoiled when the bodies came ashore. If a thousand walrus bodies reached shore, one may imagine how many thousand more were carried by the ice and current northward into the Arctic Ocean beyond Point Barrow. Not more than ten or twelve years ago this same situation existed at Ingshong, Siberia.' By wise methods in killing the walrus after they

A New Specimen of the Okapi

IN a letter from the Congo Free State, published in the Times of September 26, Major P. H. G. Powell-Cotton states that he has succeeded in obtaining the skeleton and skin of a fine male okapi. This animal was killed at Makala, in the Ituri forest, by the native hunter Agukki, who shot the two specimens taken to Europe by Dr. David. After careful inquiry, Major Powell-Cotton is Unable to satisfy himself that any European has hitherto killed an okapi. A Swiss official named Jeannet, in the employ of the Congo Government, was, however, in 1905 shown one of these animals by a native as it stood in thick covert, where it was shot by the latter. This the writer believes to be the first living okapi (or “kangi,” as it is called by the Makala natives) seen by a European.

Account of the birds collected in Sumba by Alfred Everett and his native hunters

Account of the birds collected in Sumba by Alfred Everett and his native hunters

The Mexican Atlatl or Spear-Thrower

THE note in NATURE of November 19 (p. 66) recording the important discovery at Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico, of “a modern atlatl (not altatl, as misprinted) well worn and old-looking, accompanied with a gig for killing ducks,” is very interesting. It may not be out of place to call attention to an exhaustive little memoir by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall on “The Atlatl or Spear-Thrower of the Ancient Mexicans,” published this summer in the third number of the first volume of the “Ethnographical and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum”(Cambridge, Mass., 1891). In this paper, which is illustrated with eighty figures of different kinds of atlatl, the author completely establishes the existence and practical use in warfare of the wooden spear-thrower or atlatl by the Mexicans at the time of the Spanish conquest, although some doubt had been expressed in the matter by such well-known authorities as Prof. E. B. Tylor and Mr. A. Bandelier, while Mr. H. H. Bancroft even stated that “he had not found any description of its form or the manner of using it.” Mrs. Nuttall, however, reproduces numerous illustrations of the many varied forms of the atlatl from different codices, accompanied by several descriptions of the manner of hurling the weapon, cited from old Spanish writers. Perhaps at this moment the most a propos is that from the ancient chronicles of Tezozomoc, who, in describing the drill of the soldiers, relates “how their chiefs ordered them out in canoes to practise throwing spears at flying ducks before engaging the enemy in warfare.” Mrs. Nuttall was enabled to trace, by means of a careful study of a MS. edition of “Sahagun's Historia,” preserved in the National Library at Florence, the complete evolution of the atlatl from the simple form used by the native hunter to launch the harpoon with two or three barbs at the fish or water-fowl of the lagoons. This had a cord attached to retrieve the game. “Minus the cord, the spear-thrower became part of the necessary equipment of every soldier of a certain grade,” and was used with fatal effect, as Bernal Diaz most distinctly states, in opposing the advance of the Spanish adventurers. Elaborately decorated forms first became the emblem of chieftainship, and ultimately symbolic of the Aztec deities, and were borne aloft by the chief-priestly warrior and representative of the gods in ceremonial processions. The maximum of development was attained in the symbolic “blue atlatl” or “blue serpents,” inlaid with gold and richly decorated with feather-work, described as “bishops' crosiers” by Cortes, who sent specimens presented to him by Montezuma II. to the Court of Spain. Some examples are still preserved in the Ethnographical Museums of Berlin and Vienna, and in the British Museum.