Messages Across Time and Space: Inupiat Drawings from the 1890s at Columbia University

a digital companion to an exhibition at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, September-November 2015

a. Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack) and Guy Kakarook

An analysis of their work as part of the Inupiat graphic tradition.

Note: Neither Angokwazhuk nor Kakarook are from the village of Kingigan and neither worked with the Lopps.  They are from Ayasayuk, village in Cape Nome, andAtnuk, a small village 75 miles north across Norton Sound from St. Michael, respectively.  While it is important to acknowledge the the Inupiat are not a monolithic homogenous culture, it is meaningful to draw comparisons across their communities because of broadly shared cultural traditions and a long history of exchange within their territories. Work remains to be done identifying differences and specificities in the tradition amongst artists and communities, as has been done by some scholars for the artists discussed below.  

— Christopher Green

 

Angokwazhuk, better known as Happy Jack, and Guy Kakarook are two of the best known artists working with ivory engravings, among other mediums, at this moment of commercial engraving and school-inspired art at the end of the nineteenth century. These men similarly expanded their graphic repertoires to include Western pictorial styles of engraving and drawing in the case of Kakarook. Both artists incorporated the stylistic treatment of subject matter copied from illustrations or photographs, often furnished by their customers, as well as visual sources such as playing cards and scrimshaw. Ray has written that the explosion in new ivory engraving forms and school drawings developed a Western pictorial style in parallel and simultaneously in the 1890s (Ray 1977, 43), but through the works of Happy Jack and Kakarook I would like to bring those categories together. Even though neither Happy Jack nor Kakarook went to school, the style which the two artists appropriated to produce some of the most popular souvenir art in the Bering Strait region connects them to the artists producing drawings in mission schools at this time. By investigating the visual sources from which Happy Jack and Kakarook appropriated this form of representation one might find similar material as an influence or source for the draftsmen who produced those school drawings.

Happy Jack was born in Ayasayuk, village in Cape Nome, probably around 1870. After his father died, at the age of fifteen Happy Jack moved to Big Diomede with his mother, sister, and new brother-in-law. Known as a great hunter in his youth, his artistic career began after a tragedy left him crippled and unable to pursue the usual subsistence activities. On a hunting trip he was stuck on an ice flow for a month. By the time he was rescued his feet had suffered from severe frost bite and upon seeing Happy Jack’s blue feet his mother diagnosed them as having “blood poison” and ordered a man to cut them off (Ray 2003, 29).

By the time Happy Jack arrived in Nome in 1900, he was a well accomplished artist. Considered the first professional Alaskan Eskimo artist, Happy Jack earned a substantial income from his art, to the extent that he was able to pursue it full time creating a variety of engravings for eager gold prospectors and tourists. Prior to his arrival in Nome he had spent two trips aboard whaling ships in the early 1890s where he no doubt learned the engraving techniques of the Yankee scrimshanders to enhance his own techniques of Inupiaq engraving tradition, learned while rendered sedentary by his amputation. Amongst his earlier works are tusks engraved with figures possibly copied from playing cards or Gothic illustrations (Ray 2003, 29). For example a possibly early Happy Jack tusk engraving features a long line of curiously dressed figures, animals, and creatures [Fig. 1]. The figures wear heavily patterned outfits and have comical expressions and poses. Ray calls these playing card figures, and playing cards were most definitely present amongst sailors and the general public in the Arctic at this time.[1] Their flat profiles and composite perspective certainly evokes the style of late nineteenth century playing cards, and Happy Jack was an excellent copyist capable of translating virtually any image to ivory.

Fig. 1: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), playing-card people on three pieces of ivory tusk pegged together. 70cm. The Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts. From Ray 2003, 29.

Fig. 1: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), playing-card people on three pieces of ivory tusk pegged together. 70cm. The Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Massachusetts. From Ray 2003, 29.

A later tusk featuring the words “CARVED BY HAPY JACK BIG DIIKE” identifies the artist and the depicted village, located on Big Diomede [Fig. 2]. The figures within the village’s rock-construction houses closely resemble the simple pictographic forms of people in earlier Inupiaq engravings. But on the ends of the tusk are much larger figures, rendered in a much more detailed form with some attention to volume (such as in the curve of the blanket in the woman’s hands). On the other side of the village is a figure holding a crab and dressed in fanciful garb; what at first appears to be a parka hood is in fact more likely a kind of halo, given the unusual patterning and hair style. Ray identifies these figures again as playing card people, but there is also a certain Byzantine quality to the flattened treatment of the figures. In comparison to the nearby rabbit (a favourite animal of Happy Jack’s) and the pictographic figures amongst the village buildings, these playing card people have a floating quality and are much more ambiguous in space, not unlike Byzantine-style icons which were present in Alaska through the Russian Orthodox church.[2]

Fig. 2: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), engraved ivory tusk signed "Hapy Jack," with playing card people, a village on Big Diomede Island, and a rabbit. Private collection. From Ray 2003, 18.

Fig. 2: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), engraved ivory tusk signed “Hapy Jack,” with playing card people, a village on Big Diomede Island, and a rabbit. Private collection. From Ray 2003, 18.

While Happy Jack’s playing card people are unique, his best known accomplishment is the introduction of photographic exactitude into the Inupiaq souvenir ivory engraving repertoire. Many of his tusk engravings were done from photographs, and his ability was so great that with a fine needle he could simulate newspaper halftones and textile textures. See, for example, a cribbage board with two of Happy Jack’s popular images: a howling dog sled team and a reindeer herd [Fig. 3]. The images on this particular board were faithfully copied from two photographs found on postcards which slightly predate the carving [Figs. 4]. Happy Jack has copied the photographs down to the hats of the reindeer herders, though he allowed himself some variation, for example the addition of a few extra dogs to fill out the tusk’s tip. Another carved walrus tusk by Happy Jack features three dog teams on one side and a reindeer herd on the other. The far left dog team was again copied from a photograph, this one a photo taken by B.B. Dobbs titled Milton Weil with his Malamute Chorus, Nome Alaska (Ray 1996, 122-127).

Fig. 3: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack) detail of Cribbage board with engraved scene of reindeer herd, dog team, ptarmigans, and polar bear hunting walrus, 1915. 71 cm. long. Museum of History and Industry, Seattle. From Ray 2003, 30.

Fig. 3: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack) detail of Cribbage board with engraved scene of reindeer herd, dog team, ptarmigans, and polar bear hunting walrus, 1915. 71 cm. long. Museum of History and Industry, Seattle. From Ray 2003, 30.

Fig. 4: Howling Dog Team, postcard, 1906. Photograph by F. H. Nowell. Iris Magnell Collection. From Ray 1996, 124.

Fig. 4: Howling Dog Team, postcard, 1906. Photograph by F. H. Nowell. Iris Magnell Collection. From Ray 1996, 124.

Happy Jack’s copying ability extended to portraiture. In a large tusk from about 1915, Happy Jack engraved a convincing portrait of Theodore Roosevelt underneath an eagle flying with the American flag in its claws, no doubt copied from a photograph of the president. On the reverse of the tusk is a portrait of a prospector panning for gold [Fig. 5]. This was also likely engraved from a photograph, given the position of the prospector on the bank of a river with his feet in the water, but it is easy to imagine the prospector approaching Happy Jack with a photo in hand, hoping to memorialize his gold-rush experience on some ivory as a souvenir of the north. The vertical rather than horizontal format is unusual for Happy Jack, and the tusk has a hole in the tip by which it might be hung. Ray notes that this style of engraving is reminiscent of the way Yankee whalers engraved walrus tusks (Ray 1996, 117). As mentioned above, Happy Jack spent time aboard whaling ships, and it is likely he learned this scrimshaw technique then. He made at least two trips to San Francisco before the gold rush on a whaling or trading vessel, where he is said to have made his first walrus ivory cribbage board (Ray 1977, 44). Scrimshaw, then was an influence on Happy Jack’s art practice, and it has been suggested that the pictorial tradition of whaler scrimshanders has had an impact on indigenous art traditions in other areas. Mary Malloy, for example, has discussed the connection between Haida carving and Yankee scrimshaw in the context of the Northwest Coast fur trade.[3]

Fig. 5: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), detail of reverse of a walrus ivory tusk engraved with the portrait of a prospector, about 1915. 22''. From Ray 1996:,118

Fig. 5: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), detail of reverse of a walrus ivory tusk engraved with the portrait of a prospector, about 1915. 22”. From Ray 1996:,118

Happy Jack’s portrait work sealed his fame in the Bering Strait region, and it is no surprise that he turned the engraving needle on himself. Self portraits by the artist, featuring just himself or in one instance his first wife [Fig. 6], show us that Happy Jack was not just engraving ivory for commercial sale. Nor was he creating works for just a non-Inupiaq clientele – by depicting himself, Happy Jack shows that the style he adapted to a graphic engraving tradition from the copying of photographs, illustrations, playing cards, and scrimshaw techniques was one which could serve his self-expressive needs. Even these self-portraits may have been copied from photos (the oval medallions in which Happy Jack’s and Malinda’s heads sit suggests as much), but to copy for Happy Jack was to create. Even his signature, the sign of his artistic agency, was engraved from a copy provided to him; Happy Jack was illiterate and could only recreate the words he saw in his own style.

Fig. 6: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), ivory cribbage board with Happy Jack's self-portrait, n.d. Private collection. From Ray 2003, 31.

Fig. 6: Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack), ivory cribbage board with Happy Jack’s self-portrait, n.d. Private collection. From Ray 2003, 31.

Much like Happy Jack, Guy Kakarook never attended school, but unlike Jack he was well acquainted with the medium of pen and pencil on paper provided by schools. Born in the 1860s in Atnuk, a small village 75 miles north across Norton Sound from St. Michael, Kakarook’s long relationship with traders and their goods at St. Michael helped him to similarly expand a traditional Inupiaq graphic style to the new forms entering Inupiaq art in the 1890s (Ray 2003, 20). Kakarook came to St. Michael to trade and to find work on the many Yukon River steamers owned by traders and Russian missionaries. His familiarity with the town is reflected in the bird’s-eye views of St. Michael he produced on both paper and ivory. An engraving of St. Michael done in 1896 [Fig. 7] is executed from a remarkable aerial position, particularly when one considers that there is no hill high enough in the town’s vicinity to provide such a point of view (Ray 1977, 234). The execution of this busy scene of the town, with numerous boats and steamers in the harbor, suggests an intimate knowledge of the town’s spatial layout. Kakarook’s ivory engraving ability is apparent when the scene on the tusk is compared to a very similar watercolor of St. Michael done by the artist [Fig. 8]. One can see that while Kakarook has altered the scene slightly to fit his respective supports of tusk versus paper, the buildings are drawn so that they are being viewed from essentially the same perspective, if at a greater distance in the engraving than in the watercolor. The engraving even includes more of the town than the watercolor: the original Russian fort and trading post are visible on the engraving’s upper cluster of buildings (the principal scene of the watercolor) while the later American warehouses and docks are in the lower part of the scene (Ray 1977, 234).

Fig. 7: Guy Kakarook, engraved ivory tusk with view of busy Saint Michael, 1896. 36 1/2''. Constantine Collection, Agnes Etherington M 69-21. From Ray 1977, 234.

Fig. 7: Guy Kakarook, engraved ivory tusk with view of busy Saint Michael, 1896. 36 1/2”. Constantine Collection, Agnes Etherington M 69-21. From Ray 1977, 234.

Fig. 8: Guy Kakarook, Sketch of Saint Michael, n.d., watercolor and crayon, 8 x 9 3/4'' (20 x 24.3 cm). From Ray 1977: 235.

Fig. 8: Guy Kakarook, Sketch of Saint Michael, n.d., watercolor and crayon, 8 x 9 3/4” (20 x 24.3 cm). From Ray 1977: 235.

Ray has cited the influence of Western illustrations in this expansion of engraving and drawing styles to the bird’s-eye view by Kakarook:

“Guy Kakarook was the first Eskimo that I know of who interpreted the world around him from real life in the style of Western illustration…No doubt that he was influenced by printed illustrations, but he did not copy directly from photographs of books as Happy Jack did.” (Ray 2003, 25)

There is no doubt that printed materials which may have contained bird’s-eye views of cities or landscapes were readily available in St. Michael, and Kakarook could have obtained such illustrations from any number of traders, teachers, missionaries, or scientific expeditions. Kakarook continued engraving throughout his career, and given the large number of similar scenes on paper by Kakarook he must have seen an opportunity for greater expression or commercial benefit with paper than with the relatively confining surface of ivory tusks.[4]

While illustrations of bird’s-eye views were likely sources of inspiration for Kakarook’s own adoption of the style, one which I must add likely had significant tourist appeal, I would like to suggest another possible visual source for these high-angled views of towns and landscapes. Photography was a visual source for Happy Jack, and no doubt the same must have been true for Kakarook. Ray has noted other instances in which views of towns, specifically the town of Nome depicted on turn of the century cribbage boards , have been copied from photographs to engravings (Ray 1996, 111). Indeed some of the cribbage boards she discusses  bear a resemblance to Kakarook’s engraving and drawing of St. Michael. Other photos of Alaskan settlements [Fig. 9] show striking formal similarities to the elevated views by Kakarook, and photographs of distant ships on the horizon at sea could be potential visual sources for the ships on the horizons of Kakarook’s busy St. Michael port.

Fig. 9: John M. Justice, Unalaska, 1895. Lopp Family Photograph Collection, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks. From Smith 2001 , 25.

Fig. 9: John M. Justice, Unalaska, 1895. Lopp Family Photograph Collection, Alaska and Polar Regions Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks. From Smith 2001 , 25.

Kakarook’s drawing career was extensive, as several notebooks of signed drawings at the Smithsonian attest. These notebooks contain page after page of scenes taken from the banks of the Yukon River, often with a stern-wheel steamer ship passing by. Drawings of animals, birds, and people are drawn from life in what is recognizable as both summer and wintertime. In fact some of the drawings depict the same area in different seasons, suggesting Kakarook sailed past these places at different times. Ray suspects that the infamous minister Sheldon Jackson had a hand in these notebooks, providing the materials to Kakarook and encouraging him to draw these scenes while traveling on the Yukon River. The notebooks were among the 690 items that Jackson’s daughter, Leslie Jackson, sold to Smithsonian in 1921, and Sheldon Jackson was known for using artworks by Alaskan native students to drum up support for his work in the Arctic (Ray 2003, 22-23). Regardless of whether Kakarook was a protégé of Jackson, these drawings show how proficient Kakarook had become in his adoption of Western pictorial styles. This is the kind of style Jackson and his missionary teachers would have pushed Inupiaq artists to adopt as a sign of ability to the Euro-American viewer, but if Kakarook was selling such works or being paid by Jackson then it was to his benefit to be drawing scenes of the Yukon in the style the teachers and tourists wanted to see. And Kakarook at no point left behind his Inupiaq roots; a drawing of a sawmill, for example [Fig. 10], very closely resembles an ivory engraving Kakarook likely made around the same time [Fig. 11]. So even while being encouraged to produce work in a “Western” style, Kakarooks practice continued graphic art traditions through engraving and always saw these landscapes through a particularly Inupiaq eye.

 

Fig. 10: Guy Kakarook, Untitled, Sawmill at Fort Cudahy, drawing in winter, 1895, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 316,702. From Ray 2003, 27.

Fig. 10: Guy Kakarook, Untitled, Sawmill at Fort Cudahy, drawing in winter, 1895, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 316,702. From Ray 2003, 27.

Fig. 11: Guy Kakarook, engraving of an ivory scene similar to a drawing of Sawmill at fort Cudahy, collected by Charles L. Hall from the "Lower Yukon or NW Behring Sea, 1894-1901", 23.7 cm long. Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology. From Ray 2003, 27.

Fig. 11: Guy Kakarook, engraving of an ivory scene similar to a drawing of Sawmill at fort Cudahy, collected by Charles L. Hall from the “Lower Yukon or NW Behring Sea, 1894-1901”, 23.7 cm long. Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology. From Ray 2003, 27.

In the catalogue of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art’s 2003 exhibition Eskimo Drawings, artist David Mollett writes that he sees many of Kakarooks works as nothing more than copies. Describing Eskimo drawings of the period, Mollett says an “aspiration to artistic accomplishment such as spatial depth or textural illusionism is secondary or even nonexistent in many of these works.” Referencing a drawing by Kakarook of a steamer loading firewood [Fig. 12], Mollet says

“While many of the early images by Eskimo artists are the result of keen observation of nature or excellent memories thereof, it seems likely that some of the early pieces were copied from books, newspapers, and magazines. There is of course a long history of artist inspiration stemming from another’s work, but unless the artist personalizes and reworks the image, it remains a mere copy. Turn-of-the-century artist Guy Kakarook’s works often have the air of copy about them. His bird and animal images appear lifted from naturalist illustrations, and his ships seem a little too good to be true, especially compared to some of his figures where he clearly relies on his own skills.” (Mollett 2003, 185)

Fig. 12: Guy Kakarook, Untitled, loading firewood on paddle wheeler, n.d., 20.3 x 25.4 cm. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 316,702. From Ray 2003, 23.

Fig. 12: Guy Kakarook, Untitled, loading firewood on paddle wheeler, n.d., 20.3 x 25.4 cm. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 316,702. From Ray 2003, 23.

It would be easy to dismiss Mollett offhand for his prescription to the very Western value judgements of relative original skill versus “mere copy.” But Mollett, in addition to giving us some suggestions for places Kakarook may have appropriated his images from (Mollett suggests Audubon and Currier and Ives prints of landscapes and natural history), sets up an important point. For Kakarook to copy a printed illustration in an illusionistic style is a choice by the artist. To make the choice to copy is exceptional, for it is in that moment of copying that artists like Kakarook expansively open up the boundaries of Inupiaq graphic art and take into it all of those styles, Western, illusionistic, bird’s-eye views, or otherwise,  which they might have copied or drawn inspiration from. And all the while he is copying, Kakarook is continuing to make works that demonstrate his grounding in the graphic arts of engraving tradition. Two drawings of Inupiaq and Siberian families by Kakarook show the close attention to details Kakarook could pull from life with his exceptional powers of observation [Fig. 13]. Those same families, we realize, are depicted on an engraved tusk which is decorated with illusionistic walruses, these figures in full figure, and the more geometric buildings recognizable from earlier pictographic art [Fig. 14]. The attention to the difference in costume at even the miniscule size of the engraving suggests how important such details were to Kakarook. As we look towards those Inupiaq artists who produced predominantly drawings in the school system, we must keep Kakarook in mind as an example of the coming together of the traditional and commercial practice of ivory engraving and the expansion of the graphic tradition into the realm of drawing on paper. 

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Fig. 13: Guy Kakarook, Untitled, Eskimo (Inupiaq) family with conical tent and fish rack, and Siberian couple and an umiak shelter, both 1903, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 316,702. From Ray, 2003, 28.

Fig. 14: Guy Kakarook, Engraved tusk signed by Kakarook with figures similar to those in drawings (Figs. 33 and 34), c. 1904. 57.8 cm long. University of Alaska Museum, Dorothy Jean Ray Collection. From Ray, 2003, 28.

Fig. 14: Guy Kakarook, Engraved tusk signed by Kakarook with figures similar to those in drawings (Figs. 33 and 34), c. 1904. 57.8 cm long. University of Alaska Museum, Dorothy Jean Ray Collection. From Ray, 2003, 28.

 

            Given artists such as Happy Jack and Guy Kakarook, who expanded the graphic tradition of Inupiaq ivory engraving to include a variety of forms, mediums, and means of representation and expression, it seems clear that artists who have been typically associated with the commercial ivory trade were doing more than simply producing objects for consumption by Euro-American traders. Yet Susan Fair, against the example of a figure like Kakarook and the sons and students who followed in his and Happy Jack’s footsteps, maintains a division between those artists who worked in ivory and those who drew on paper. The longevity and excellence of the graphic tradition of ivory engraving, coupled with the increased availability of pen and paper, would suggest, Fair admits, that a switch to graphics on paper might have been a natural one. “But painting and drawing did not catch on with most ivory carvers and engravers, in part because of the impermanent nature of paper.” (Fair 2006, 49) Instead, she says, it was the reindeer-herding and school-attending Inupiaq men who produced drawings, paintings, and woodcuts on paper between 1892 and the early 1900s along the Saniq coast between Wales and Cape Espenberg. Fair draws a distinction between the ivory engravers, no doubt meaning commercial ivory engravers such as Happy Jack, and the school attendees of Wales. Yet even though less ivory carving was historically done at Wales than more southern locations such as Nome and St. Michael because walrus were not as abundant there (Fair 2006: 37), Wales undoubtedly had its own manifestations of the Inupiaq graphic tradition in ivory engraving, and such a distinction is artificial.

 

Sources for this entry:

Bernardi, Suzanne R. “Whaling with Eskimos of Cape Prince of Wales.” The Courier Journal (October 20th, 1912): 1-12.

Fair, Susan W. Alaska Native Art: Tradition, Innovation, Continuity. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2006.

Malloy, Mary. Souvenirs of the Fur Trade: Northwest Coast Indian Art and Artifacts Collected by American Mariners 1788-1844. Cambridge: Harvard  University Press, 2000.

Mollett, David. “Rendering the Arctic: Artistic Considerations in the Eskimo Graphic Arts.” In Suzi Jones, Eskimo Drawings. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 2003.

Ray, Dorothy Jean.  Eskimo Art: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.

—– A Legacy of Arctic Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

—–“Happy Jack and Guy Kakarook: Their Art and their Heritage,” in Suzi Jones, Eskimo Drawings (Anchorage: Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 2003: 16-33.

Smith, Kathleen Lopp and Verbeck Smith, eds. Ice Window: Letters from a Bering Strait Village 1892-1902. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001.

Endnotes:

[1] In a letter to her mother dated June 14, 1892, Ellen Kittredge Lopp notes the presence of playing cards on the whaler Newport which travelled from San Francisco to Dutch Harbor. Kathleen Lopp Smith and Verbeck Smith, eds., Ice Window: Letters from a Bering Strait Village 1892-1902 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001): 22.

[2] St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska, was built between 1844 and 1848, and while Happy Jack likely did not see the cathedral’s Byzantine interior decoration himself it is in the realm of possibility that images in that style were circulating in the area. Ioann Veniaminov, later named Bishop Innocent, the first Orthodox bishop in Alaska, was working on Unalaska as early as 1824. See R. R. Rathburn, “The Russian Orthodox Church as a Native Institution among the Koniag Eskimo of Kodiak Island,” Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1981): 12-21.

[3] Mary Malloy, Souvenirs of the Fur Trade: Northwest Coast Indian Art and Artifacts Collected by American Mariners 1788-1844 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). In particular, Malloy challenges the hypothesis of Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau who has written in detail about the connection between Haida argillite carving and the shipboard scrimshaw of American whalers. Malloy points out that while there was a exchange between the whalers and Haida of carved goods, Barbeau erred in placing Yankee whaleships in the vicinity of the Northwest Coast as early as 1820. The earliest documentable pieces of engraved American scrimshaw are roughly the same age as the earliest documentable argillite carvings, and thus the kind of scrimshaw which Barbeau suggests influenced the Haida was a phenomenon that postdated the advent of Haida argillite carving. See Malloy, 150, note 57.

[4] I want, however, to push back against the medium-determinist reading of Kakarooks work which Ray suggests. After all, there were mediums available to the Inupiat that were not paper but which were larger than ivory. For example, figure painting was executed on the large sides of umiaks prior to whaling and the boat owners painted scenes of the crews attacking whales or spearing seals. Paddles for the whaling expeditions were also decorated with black painted figures, and such painting was likely related to ceremonies for catching whales. This figure painting may have originated in customs of body and face painting for ceremonial purposes, translating from the body to the umiak and whaling accoutrements. In 1891, at Cape Prince of Wales, mission school teacher Harrison Thornton saw the first umiak go into the strait to hunt whales. He recounts seeing, from a distance, “its new and curiously painted paddles and oars, its fetish charms attached, its buoys in place.” Harrison R. Thornton, Among the Eskimos of Wales, Alaska 1890-93 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1931) : 165. Suzanne R. Bernardi, another teacher at Wales, wrote that each new paddle made for whaling was “decorated with black painted figures.” Suzanne R. Bernardi, “Whaling with Eskimos of Cape Prince of Wales,” The Courier Journal (October 20th, 1912): 1-2.

 

1 Comment

  1. Ted Sitting Crow Garner

    January 17, 2017 at 9:35 pm

    Your figure 6 is noted as being a representation of “his first wife”, but it is actually him. There is a picture of him wearing that depicted parka in the collection of the Alaska State Library, NEXT to his wife, who’s wearing different regalia. He does display himself fully standing, thus again separating himself from cruel reality, and creating his own myth.
    I own that piece, descended from my father’s purchase of it- sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. I also have a letter to my father from Dorothy Jean Ray dated (as I remember, from 1961 or 1962) congratulating him on finding it. Her husband Verne, had been a “running buddy” of my dad’s earlier in the ’40’s & ’50’s, and one of his few published articles was co-written with Verne. BTW, my father’s name was James C. Garner.
    When D J R published her article on Happy Jack in American Indian Art Magazine in the 1980s, from where the photo that you reproduce comes, the attribution of “from a private collection” was specifically done at my father’s request.
    BTW- the rabbits on the reverse side are SPECTACULAR!

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