Saturday, June 12, 2010

Today it is raining again, but we are going to a museum so we won't get wet. It's the Alaska Museum of Art and History. We're not interested in the art, just the history part of it. I always thought the Alaskan native was an Eskimo; but that was just 1 of their natives. There were several groups that made up their natives; I guess because the land is so big. So far I have seen: 1. Tlingits- which also spread into Canada, 2. Aleuts- on the outer islands, 3. the natives from the St. Lawrence Island which was really close to Russia and was probably part of the land bridge between Russia and Alaska 4. Athabascans from the interior south and southeast, 5 Eskimos from the far, far north.
Whenever these natives fished or hunted they used all parts of the animal. Nothing was wasted. Their kayaks were made out of willow branches covered with seal skins or sea lion skins. They made their parkas and boots out of of seal guts(intestines and esophagus es) double seamed to hold out water and sewn together in lateral strips with whale or fish sinew, which would swell up when wet and make the article waterproof. To decorate these items they would add caribou tufts from their fur or add shells from the beach. For a small child they made a jacket, pants and boots out of rabbit furs. The snowshoe hare was plentiful and easy to catch. When they doubled the furs with the fur sides on the outside and against the skin, it kept the babies and children very warm in their extremely cold winters. But since the rabbit skins were so often used, it became commonplace that the more affluent used mink, marten, seal or otter to show they had more.
They believed the sea otters were descended from people because they showed emotions close to ours. They would float on the seas with their babies on their stomachs and get very upset when a hunter would hurt their baby. They would jeopardize their own lives to save their offspring. Sea otter pelts were the most prized in all the world, which is why Russia tried to keep Alaska for herself until the sea otters were fished out to almost extinction. The natives also felt that the sea otters' spirits were the result of incest between the brothers and sisters of the natives. That is a hard concept to fathom! Their knives they used were called ulus and they used them to do everything: eat, skin animals, scale fish, cut bones, etc. These knives are still used today and are sold in most of these stores here.
The little girl natives had dolls to play with made out of skins. They weren't allowed to take them outside of the huts in fall, winter and spring because of the weather. They had to wait until they saw the red bird in late spring. When they started puberty, the girls were placed into a room to make baskets for 40 days. When they came out, it was a sign that they were ready for marriage. So the whole village knew she had started menstruating. That really seems weird! Then they also gave away their dolls because they could have babies of their own and didn't need the dolls anymore. So they gave them to younger children. All of the children's' toys were imitations of their adult life; even for the boys.
The young girls before puberty had to learn how to sew for their adult life. They made these fabric cloths with many pouches and a variety of stitches (similar to our samplers of the colonial period) that were rolled up and tied together to hold their sewing tools. This they kept with them for their whole lives. Once this was finished it showed the village that she can sew and help a husband. So this is another sign that she is ready for marriage. It is always about tradition, keeping the culture intact and the race producing for survival. Some of these traditions are still used today.