Fig. 206.—Harpoon head.
Fig. 207.—Harpoon head.
Fig. 208.—Ancient bone harpoon head.
The body is sometimes cut into faces so as to be hexagonal instead of elliptical in section as in Fig. 207 (No. 89791 [873]), and intermediate forms are common. When such a head is mounted for use a bight of the line or leader, a short line for connecting the head with the main line, runs through the line hole so that the head is slung in a loop in the end of the line. The tip of the shaft is then fitted into the shaft socket and the line brought down the shaft with the parts of the loop on each side resting in the line grooves and is made fast, usually so that a slight pull will detach it from the shaft. When the animal is struck the blade cuts a wound large enough to allow the head to pass in beyond the barb. The struggles of the animal make the head slip off the tip of the shaft and the strain on the line immediately toggles it across the wound. The toggle head of the whale harpoon is called kia¢ron, of the walrus harpoon, tukɐ, and of the seal harpoon, naulɐ. They are all of essentially the same pattern, differing chiefly in size.
There is in the collection an interesting series of old harpoon heads, showing a number of steps in the development of the modern pattern of harpoon head from an ancient form. These heads seem to have been preserved as amulets; in fact one of them is still attached to a belt. They are not all of the same kind, but since the different kinds as mentioned above practically differ only in size, their development was probably the same. The earliest form in the collection is No. 89382 [1383], Fig. 208, from Nuwŭk, which is evidently very old, as it is much worn and weathered. It is a single flat piece of fine-grained bone 3 inches long, pointed at the end and provided with a single unilateral barb. Behind this it is narrowed and then widened into a broad flat base produced on one side into a sharp barb, in the same plane as the other barb, which represents the blade, but on the opposite side. The line hole is large and irregularly triangular, and there are no line grooves. Instead of a shaft socket bored in the solid body, one side of the body is excavated into a deep longitudinal groove, which was evidently converted into a socket by a transverse band, probably of sealskin, running round the body, and kept in place by a shallow transverse groove on the convex side of it. A harpoon head with the socket made by inclosing a groove with thongs was seen by Dr. Kane at Smith Sound.[327]