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| Added Date:
Aug 15, 2018 @ 12:47pm |
| Gallery:
Zhimaa'igan |
| Price: $110.00
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Status:
Sold
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These are replicas of Northwest Coast-style Composite Toggling Harpoons, inspired by some recent field work I did on the coast in BC. The larger is designed for hunting marine mammals, and the smaller for salmon. They are designed to penetrate inwards, and then turn askew when the line is pulled back, anchoring the tip sideways in the animal.
For sea mammals, hunters would set out in canoes to hunt from the water. Animal-skin floats would be attached to the line, so that when the animals dive, they have to fight the buoyancy, and tire quickly, needing to come up for air, and then another would be launched, and another, until the quarry is exhausted and can be finished with a long-bladed lance. The finished animal would then be towed to shore.
For salmon, whose plentiful spawning runs were once the backbone of west coast diets, the line was hauled back directly to retrieve the quarry. These such points would be used at weirs on rivers and in shallower waters. Valves and points from many such composite heads are found at many coastal archaeological sites in the west.
The larger has a fine-grained basalt cutting head, made from stone from BC,Canada, affixed in place with spruce pitch. The valves are made from deer antler. The wrapping and leader are made from elk sinew.
The smaller has a moose-bone point, and deer antler valves, wrapped with stinging nettle cambium, attached directly to a +20' line of reverse-twisted stinging nettle cordage.
The foreshaft, which fits both heads, is made from moose metapodial bone.
There is no main-shaft, for the sake of shipping. The foreshaft can easily be affixed to a split and wrapped pole. |
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