Fig. 396.—Ivory carving, three human heads.
The best of our human figures from Point Barrow show much greater art, both in workmanship and design, than those just mentioned, but can not compare with the elegant figures in the museum from the more southern parts of Alaska. The four remaining ivory carvings represent the human face alone. No. 89342 [989], Fig. 396, from Nuwŭk, is a thick piece of walrus ivory 3.3 inches long and 1.6 wide, carved into three human faces, a man in the middle and a woman on each side, joined together at the side of the head. Though the workmanship is rough, the faces are characteristic. The man has labrets and a curved line of tattooing at each corner of the mouth, indicating the successful whaleman, and the women, the usual tattooing on the chin. The eyes, nostrils, mouths, labrets, and tattooing are incised and blackened as usual. This specimen, though apparently modern, does not seem fresh enough to have been made for sale. The seller called it “a man and his two wives” without giving them any names. It may be intended as a portrait of some celebrated whaleman.
Fig. 397.—Human head carved from a walrus tooth.
Fig. 397 is one of a pair of very rude faces (No. 56523 [52] from Utkiavwĭñ), 1½ inches long, which were made for sale. It is simply a walrus-tooth cut off square on the ends and on one side rudely carved into a face, with the eyes and mouth incised and filled in with dark colored dirt. Fig. 398 (No. 89343 [1124] from Nuwŭk) is a flat piece of ivory (a bit of an old snow shovel edge), 4 inches long and 1.2 inches wide, roughly carved and covered with incised figures. The upper edge is carved into five heads: First, a rude bear’s head, with the eyes and nostrils incised and blackened as usual; then four human heads, with a face on each side. The front faces have the noses and brows in low relief and the eyes, nostrils, and mouths incised and blackened; the back ones are flat, with the last three features indicated as before. At the end is a rude figure of a bear, heading toward the right, with the ears in relief, the eyes and mouth roughly incised and blackened, and the legs indicated by roughly incised and blackened lines on the obverse face. Both faces are covered with rudely incised and blackened lines.
On the obverse there is a single vertical line between each pair of heads. Below the bear’s head is a bear heading toward the right; under the first human head, an umiak with four men; under the second, a “killer” (Orca) heading toward the right; under the third, two of the usual conventionalized whales’ tails suspended from a cross-line; and under the last, a “killer” with very large “flukes” heading toward the left.