Fig. 212.—Harpoon head, bone and stone.
The next step was to obtain greater penetration by substituting a triangular blade of stone for the barbed bone point, with its breadth still in the plane of the body barb. This blade was either of slate (No. 89744 [969] from Nuwŭk) or of flint, as in Fig. 212 (No. 89748 [928], also from Nuwŭk). Both of these are whale harpoons, such as are sometimes used even at the present day.
Before the introduction of iron it was discovered that if the blade were inserted at right angles to the plane of the body barb the harpoon would have a surer hold, since the strain on the line would always draw it at right angles to the length of the wound cut by the blade. This is shown in Fig. 213 (No. 56620 [199], a walrus harpoon head from Utkiavwĭñ), which has the slate blade inserted in this position. Substituting a metal blade for the stone one gives us the modern toggle head, as already described. That the insertion of the stone blade preceded the rotation of the plane of the latter is, I think, conclusively shown by the whale harpoons[329] already mentioned, in spite of the fact that we have a bone harpoon head in the collection, No. 89378 [1261], figured in Point Barrow report, which is exactly like No. 89379 [795], except that it has the blade at right angles to the plane of the body barb. This is, however, a newly made model in reindeer antler of the ancient harpoon, and was evidently made by a man so used to the modern pattern that he forgot this important distinction. The development of this spear head has been carried no further at Point Barrow. At one or two places, however, namely, at Cumberland Gulf in the east[330] and at Sledge Island in the west (as shown in Mr. Nelson’s collection), they go a step further in making the head of the seal harpoon, body and blade, of one piece of iron. The shape, however, is the same as those with the ivory or bone body.
Fig. 213.—Harpoon head, bone and stone.
All of the Eskimo race, as far as I have any definite information, use toggle harpoon-heads. There are specimens in the National Museum from Greenland, Cumberland Gulf, the Anderson and Mackenzie region, and from the Alaskan coast from Point Barrow to Kadiak, as well as from St. Lawrence Island, which are all of essentially the same type, but slightly modified in different localities. The harpoon head in use at Smith Sound is of the same form as the walrus harpoon heads used at Point Barrow, but appears always to have the shaft socket made by a groove closed with thongs.[331] In Danish Greenland, however, the body has an extra pair of bilateral barbs below the blade. The Greenlanders have, as it were, substituted a metal blade for the point only of the barbed blade portion of such a bone head as No. 89379 [795].[332]