TRADITIONAL USE
OF BIRDS
of the Chugach Region
Written by Carolyn S. Morton, John M. Morton, and Willow Hetrick
Bird illustrations by Kim McNett
Bird maps by Tricia S. Littlejohn
Interested in reading the “Bird Ethnography of the Chugach Region” book?
Harvesting
A 1932 archeological excavation on Yukon Island in Kachemak Bay revealed that various bird species, including gulls, were hunted with snares, slingshots, and bow and arrow. Indeed, birds were hunted with bows and arrows even into the 1930s (Birket-Smith 1953). Yellow cedar was preferred for bows, although red cedar and western yew were also used. The typical bow had a narrow grip and flattened wings. Hunters often added a backing of sinew to strengthen the tool as it aged (Alutiiq Museum).
Arrows of cedar and other straight-grained woods were carved and held in cylindrical quivers decorated with painted designs. Each arrow had a slender wooden shaft carved from spruce, cedar, or hemlock and was painted red and fletched with eagle feathers. This shaft supported a sharply pointed head fashioned from bone, wood, and even copper obtained through trade with the Athabaskan people. Arrows for land hunting had fixed heads and people carried them in a skin quiver. Although neither blunt nor multipronged arrows were used (Birket-Smith 1953), arrows with detachable heads attached to the shaft by a line were used to hunt sea otters and birds. People carried their arrows in cylindrical wooden quivers that could be lashed to the deck of a kayak. In Prince William Sound, hunters held their bows parallel to the ground. An archer gripped the bow in his outstretched arm, palm up. He then used the middle finger of his other hand to pull the bowstring while his thumb and forefinger held the arrow’s nock (Alutiiq Museum). Each hunter marked his arrow by notching the feathers used as vanes or marking them with a special sign such as Ɯ, X…, or M (Birket-Smith 1953).
In Alaska, bolas (a Spanish word meaning “ball”) were once widely used to hunt birds. A bola typically has several narrow lengths of cord tied together and weighted on the ends. A hunter swings the tool in a circle over their head, aims, and releases it, with the goal of entangling the bird. The Yup’ik made bolas from pieces of ivory attached to woven grass lines with a grip of feathers. It is not clear if bolas were used by the Chugach people. Elders recall people hunting with bolas and use the word pelluquq to describe them. Speakers in both Prince William Sound and Kodiak currently use this word for a slingshot, so perhaps the word for bola was applied to this more recently introduced technology (Alutiiq Museum).
Birket-Smith (1953) described a different method of throwing stones with a cleft stick. An implement of this kind, now in the Copenhagen Museum, was made by Nuchek Elder Makari Chimovitsky. It consisted of a narrow piece of wood about 2 feet long, one end forming a slightly curved handle, whereas the other end was split in two, carved on the inside to accommodate a flat stone, and afterward lashed together again. Similarly, a spirit in one of the stories had a stone sling made of a seal pelvis fastened to a wooden handle, and the stone was placed in the femoral socket (Birket-Smith 1953).
Before the availability of shotguns, one way to capture sea birds was to net them at nesting sites. A hunter lowered a net over a cliff face attached to a long wooden pole. When the startled birds flew into the net, the hunter pulled a string to form a bag around the flapping animals. Gulls and waterfowl were sometimes taken on a gorge, a single 3-pronged piece of wood or pointed stick to which a cross-stick was tied. A gorge from Chenega was pierced by the attachment of a string at the point where the three slightly curving prongs met.
Gulls could also be harvested with a gull hook, essentially a large fishhook with a straight shank and a barbed or unbarbed point attached at an acute angle (Birket-Smith 1953). The Chugach also used baited traps to catch gulls and other sea birds on the water.
Although Chugach people apparently had guns in the Russian era, their arrows and lances were better hunting weapons, even being used well into the 1930s. The loud report of muskets frightened the game, and their iron parts corroded quickly in the rain and salt spray. Most muskets survived in Russian America for only a few years. More widespread use of guns began in the 1860s when muzzle-loaded percussion cap lock guns replaced flintlock muskets. Like arrows and lances, Alutiiq hunters often fired percussion guns from double-holed kayaks (qayaq or baidarka). The person in the front seat operated the gun, while his partner used a paddle to steady the boat from the rear (Alutiiq Museum).
When eggs were gathered at the bird rookeries, the Chugach people would only pick a few eggs per nest to keep the colony alive. These islets were also used as refuge in times of war. As the summer begins and the seagulls start nesting, it is still practiced to only take an egg from a nest with one or two eggs. If there are three, leave it be. Seagulls will continue laying eggs up to fifteen times or until they reach three eggs in their nest. By responsibly gathering eggs, we ensure that future bird populations are not harmed.
Birds also provided other uses to the Chugach people. The weathermen could tell the weather by what direction the birds flew. When the robins arrived in the spring, they signaled it was time to strip the bark off the trees, as the sap was starting to run.
Traditional Uses
Besides eating birds or their eggs, which are documented elsewhere in this book, other parts of the bird were used for clothing, bedding, cooking utensils, jewelry, rattles, or other ceremonial objects. There are numerous references to the traditional uses of feathers in Birket-Smith (1953), including basket weaving, arrow fletching, as entire wings attached to ceremonial staffs, feathers attached to ceremonial masks, colorful feathers inserted into fur headbands, or a feather shaft used as a nose ornament. Brooms were made of swan wings. Cordova elder Bud Jansen also talked about modern uses of wild bird feathers in art and in fishing flies.
When contact was made by Captain Cook and other early explorers, it was noted that the Chugach people would put bird feathers on a pole when they were trading. One hunter from Chenega would carry a dried hummingbird on the front of his qayaq as a good luck charm when hunting. A Tlingit woman from Pete’s Point in Controller Bay wove a basket and added eagle claws on it to remember the drowning of two young boys in Katella.
Feathers were sometimes woven into baskets. The ordinary basket-making technique was twined weaving, and the texture was so fine that it was completely watertight; in some cases, feathers might be inserted between the strands, typically spruce roots. Similarly, feathers were woven into two sleeping mats collected from Chenega. They are made of twined weave with three longitudinal and two transversal strands. In the latter specimen, small tufts of dark birds down and of red worsted alternate in the stripes, whereas in the former there are only some remnants of woolen material left (Birket-Smith 1953).
Puffin beak rattle on display at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Nosepins and labrets were perhaps the ornaments that first attracted the curiosity of early observers. The nosepin was worn by both sexes, the septum of the nose being pierced shortly after birth. It might be a feather shaft, a piece of bark or bone, or a thong with a Dentalium shell; beads were also used (Birket-Smith 1953).
Women, and probably men as well, had a headband made of beads. At feasts, feathers, sometimes dyed with cranberry and blueberry juice, were put in the headband, but afterward, they were removed. They also took the eagle down at feasts and blew it into the air (Birket-Smith 1953).
Very scanty information about the costume of the Chugach can be obtained from early authors. Captain James Cook saw outer garments reaching the knees or ankles made of sea otter, seal, fox, raccoon, American marten, and bird skins (Cook and King 1785). Similarly, Birket-Smith (1953), almost 200 years later, reported that the outer coats of both men and women were made of marten, mink, ground squirrel, land otter, or bird skin, but sealskin was regarded as being too cheap for clothing (Birket-Smith 1953).
In addition to providing protection from the weather, clothes symbolized an Alutiiq person’s place in society. The animal skins and decorative elements used in a garment reflected the age, gender, and social position of the wearer. Members of the wealthy ruling class wore elegantly decorated parkas of sea otter, fox, or ground squirrel pelts or furs imported from the mainland.
Puffins, cormorants, and other seabirds provided the primary raw materials for elaborately decorated parkas. Bird hides were not formally tanned like sealskins but were scraped and cleaned to soften the pelts. The number of pelts needed for each parka varied by species and garment design. As many as 150 cormorant neck skins, which are shimmering black and very smooth, were needed to create a snow-falling parka, the style of garment worn by many Alutiiq dancers today. The eagle parka in the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum was made from approximately 24 eagle skins. The large number of bird hides needed for clothing each year illustrates the importance of birds. Communities in the Chugach Region must have harvested thousands of seabirds annually (Alutiiq Museum).
Eagle down parka of the Leif Jacobbsen collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Men’s merganser bowl of the Leif Jacobbsen collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Bird rattles of the Leif Jacobbsen collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Birds were also incorporated into eating utensils. The most developed type of wooden eating bowl, represented by two specimens collected from Chenega and Nuchek, were carved in the shape of a merganser. The broad rim of the bowl and the tail are decorated with grooves and inlaid beads. Spoons were made of wood or mountain-goat horn with handles carved to represent birds or other animals, and sometimes painted (Birket-Smith 1953).
There were two different types of rattles that involved birds. One consisted of one or more concentric wooden rings to which puffin beaks or barnacle shells were attached, fastened to a cross grip of thin sticks. The other kind of rattle was of a sub-spherical or bird-shaped container with a few pebbles inside and a short handle. During the dances, the rattles were used in pairs (Birket-Smith 1953).
Men’s merganser bowl of the Leif Jacobbsen collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Bird rattles of the Leif Jacobbsen collection at the Ethnological Museum Berlin. Photo collected by the Ilanka Cultural Center / Native Village of Eyak in October 2023.
Birds were also incorporated into eating utensils. The most developed type of wooden eating bowl, represented by two specimens collected from Chenega and Nuchek, were carved in the shape of a merganser. The broad rim of the bowl and the tail are decorated with grooves and inlaid beads. Spoons were made of wood or mountain-goat horn with handles carved to represent birds or other animals, and sometimes painted (Birket-Smith 1953).
There were two different types of rattles that involved birds. One consisted of one or more concentric wooden rings to which puffin beaks or barnacle shells were attached, fastened to a cross grip of thin sticks. The other kind of rattle was of a sub-spherical or bird-shaped container with a few pebbles inside and a short handle. During the dances, the rattles were used in pairs (Birket-Smith 1953).
Elders on Kodiak recall that every Alutiiq hunter had at least two helping animal spirits, one for land hunting and one for sea hunting. These spirits provided luck and assistance and were frequently birds. The frequent use of bird imagery in Alutiiq art symbolizes this guiding relationship. Beaks and other bird images are commonly found on Alutiiq masks and hunting hats, particularly bentwood hats, objects that symbolize spiritual communication and transformation. Alutiiq people believe that every being has a human consciousness, a person inside that can show itself. Many of the masks once used to ritually conjure and honor spirits had beak-like mouths on an otherwise human face. These beak features suggest that the masks were images of birds unveiling their human-like spirit. Eagle down (and perhaps feathers) were sometimes glued around the mask edges (Birket-Smith 1953). The story of a boy who became an eagle illustrates this connection between birds and sea mammal hunting. The boy traveled to the land of the eagle, where he became an eagle by putting on an eagle skin. He was then able to capture whales and carry them home to feed his village (Alutiiq Museum).
Contemporary
Uses
Chugach people traditionally harvested mostly marine mammals and salmon for food (as they do today), but birds were clearly important components of their economy. Today, birds are not harvested for utensils, clothing or as ornaments. Only 1% of almost 270 pounds of fish, wildlife and wild plants harvested annually per person in Chenega, Cordova, Nanwalek, Port Graham and Tatitlek are birds or eggs. Nonetheless, birds remain an important subsistence resource, particularly in early spring when other sources of meat may be less available.
