de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 117 



Northwest Coast, naturally (and artificially?) baked red and yellow 

 shales were used in Kachemak Bay III (de Laguna, 1934, p. 117; 

 1947, p. 220), but the Chugach seem to have found hematite that 

 needed no further preparation than the addition of fat or oil. This 

 was probably true of most Yakutat paint. 



Another type of reddish paint, worn by women to protect their 

 faces from the sun, was made from the bark of the red cedar (?), pieces 

 of which sometimes float ashore on the ocean beach. This was ground 

 to powder on a rough whetstone, and mixed with pitch and tallow. 

 A broken sandstone slab from Old Town II has one surface smeared 

 with a fibrous red pigment, apparently of this type. 



Such protective paint corresponds to that described by Niblack 

 (1890, p. 259) for the northern Northwest Coast, which was brownish- 

 black in color and was made from charred fungus and grease. Some 

 kind of paint worn on the hands and face to protect them against 

 sunburn and mosquitoes was universal on the Northwest Coast 

 (Drucker, 1950, Trait 649). Chugach women also prized a light 

 complexion, preserved by such means (Birket-Smith, 1953, p. 71). 

 In general, Tlingit face paint, worn against the sun or for mourning, 

 is described as black. 



At Yakutat, white powder for whitening skins, and also white 

 paint (?), was made from white clay found near the head of Dis- 

 enchantment Bay. Black paint was presumably soot mixed with 

 fat, although our informants had little to say about it. 



Unfortunately, we have no archeological examples of painted 

 designs. Presumably, implements and utensils were painted in 

 Northwest Coast style in the past, as they were until recently, but 

 that these designs may have been simpler is suggested by the carved 

 archeological specimens. Painting in Northwest Coast style was 

 practiced by the Copper River Eyak, Chugach, and Koniag, although 

 we do not know the antiquity of this style in southwestern Alaska, 

 nor, for that matter, where it actually originated. One Chugach 

 pictograph (de Laguna, 1956, fig. 22, c), in which the eye is reminiscent 

 of this style, suggests that it was practiced on Prince William Sound 

 in prehistoric times. No pictographs were seen or reported in the 

 Yakutat area, although they occur among the Tlingit, and are not 

 uncommon on Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet (de Laguna, 

 1934, pp. 149-154; 1956, pp. 102-109; 1960, fig. 7, pp. 73 ff.). 



STONE LAMPS AND FIRE MAKING 



STONE LAMPS 



In the collections there are 35 lamps, 12 unfinished specimens, and 

 4 specimens that may be toys. The regular lamps faU into two 



693-818—64 9 



