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Aboriginal
Whaling
Aboriginal
subsistence hunting: Unlike the commercial Yankee whaling industry
where animals were killed for the purpose of providing commodities
to be bought and sold, subsistence whaling was (and remains) centered
around food, clothing and shelter. Subsistence whaling is an ancient
human endeavor. The earliest pictorial whaling evidence consists
of crude rock carvings in Northern Norway dating from approximately
2200 B.C. showing a person in a small boat pursuing a seal and
two small whales. More sophisticated rock carvings from approximately
the same period are located on a cliff in the southeastern portion
of the Korean peninsula around Ban-gu Dae just north of Pusan
dating from about the same period clearly depict the hunting of
great whales from small boats. In North America several groups
of people historically were engaged in subsistence whaling. With
a tradition dating back possibly as far as 4 or 5 thousand years,
Eskimos in the Eastern and Western Arctic hunted great whales,
bowhead whales and possibly humpbacks, as an integral part of
their communal existence. The animals were hunted from large skin
boats called umiaks using a highly evolved system of toggling
ivory/bone harpoons on wooden shafts and skin floats. Smaller
whales like narwals and seals were hunted from the small skin
boats called kayaks or baidarkas that usually contained one or
two people.
Etching by Johann Marie Fosie, Danish (1726-1764). [Greenlanders
Whale Fishing] from Hans Egede, Description et Histoire Naturelle
du Groenland (Copenhagen, 1763), opp. P. 78, based upon lost sketches
of Poule or Hans Egede, Danish missionaries to Greenland, 1721-1736.
Likewise, native peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America
pursued great whales, namely gray whales (Eschristus robustus)
as the animals proceeded up the coast in their autumn migration.
 Book
illustration based on a drawing by Henry Wood Elliot, American
(1846-1930), "The Whale Fishery. Makah Indians whaling at
entrance to Fuca Straits," from George Brown Goode, The Fisheries
and Fishery Industries of the United States, Section V, History
and Methods of the Fisheries (Washington, 1887).
Charles
Melville Scammon described the native whale hunt in his book Marine
Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America (San Francisco,
1874). He writes: "The Indian whaling canoe is thirty-five
feet in length. Eight men make the crew, each wielding a paddle
five and a half feet long. The whaling gear consists of harpoons,
lines, lances and seal-skin buoys, all of their own workmanship.
The cutting material of both lance and spear was formerly the
thick part of a mussel-shell, or of the "abelone;" the
line made from cedar withes, twisted into a three-strand rope.
The buoys are fancifully painted, but those belonging to each
boat have a distinguishing mark. The lance-pole, or harpoon-staff,
made of the heavy wood of the yew-tree, is eighteen feet long,
weighing as many pounds, and with the line attached is truly a
formidable weapon." Given the abundance and quality of timber
surrounding the lands of the Makah, Nootka and Coastal Salish,
wood was put to primary use in boat building, architecture, tool
making and even clothing. The flesh from marine mammals was eaten
but the bones of the animals do not appear to have had the same
extensive use as in the Arctic where wood was scarce. Eskimo people
use the entire whale carcass bones included. Animal bones including
the large bones from whales were used in a wide variety of tools,
weapons, personal ornaments, boat building and architecture. Alaskan
and Canadian Eskimos continue their hunting today from small boats,
although they have adapted technology from the 19th
century Yankee whaling industry mainly bronze shoulder guns and
bomb lances in order to insure a clean kill.
The
International Whaling Commission Definition of Aboriginal Subsistence
Whaling:
The
Report of the International Whaling Commission Special Issue 4,
1982, p. 83) states:
Aboriginal
subsistence whaling means whaling, for the purposes of local aboriginal
consumption carried out by or on behalf of aboriginal, indigenous
or native peoples who share strong community, familial, social
and cultural ties related to a continuing traditional dependence
on whaling and on the use of whales.
Local
aboriginal consumption means the traditional use of whale products
by local aboriginal, indigenous or native communities in meeting
their nutritional, subsistence and cultural requirements. The
term includes trade in items which are by-products of subsistence
catches.
Subsistence
catches are catches of whales by aboriginal subsistence whaling
operations.
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