de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 125 



on the ocean beach near Nessudat (fig. 13, d). This specimen is 29.5 

 cm. long, with a shouldered tang 10 cm. long and 1.7 cm. wide. 

 The blade has a maximum width of only 2.5 cm., and is lenticular in 

 cross section. According to the natives, the spear formerly used in 

 hunting bears had a double-edged blade like that of a dagger, about 

 14 inches long, that was attached to a handle 6 or 7 feet long. A 

 similar spear or lance, but with a handle only 4 feet long, was used 

 for other game and to dispatch wounded seals and other sea mammals. 

 The length of the spear used in war was not specified. 



A spear or lance for war and hunting is an ancient and widely 

 distributed weapon among the Northwest Coast Indians, and the 

 Pacific Eskimo and Aleut. It is reported ethnologically and repre- 

 sented archeologically by long blades of slate and bone (Birket-Smith, 

 1953, p. 182; Heizer, 1956, p. 49). Thus, all of the northern and cen- 

 tral Northwest Coast tribes used long spears for bears, and short 

 bone-tipped spears for war. The latter were also employed in hunting 

 mountain goats by the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and mainland Kwakiutl, 

 and in hunting sea lions by the Tlingit. The Nootka dispatched 

 whales with lances armed with a long, slender, bone point (Drucker, 

 1950, Traits 149, 168, 174, 189, 538, and 540). The Coast Salish 

 used war spears with slate or bone blades, and some also hunted the 

 porpoise with spears (Barnett, 1939, Traits 237, 1018-1020, 1022). 



BONE WEAPON BLADE 



A slender leaf-shaped bone blade with tangless rounded butt, 

 originally about 19 cm. by 2.8 by 1.3 cm., was found in Old Town III 

 (fig. 13, a). This specimen could have been for a dagger, knife, or 

 spear, like the bone weapon blades from Daxatkanada near Angoon 

 (de Laguna, 1960, p. 115, pi. 9, r-t). 



LARGE DOUBLE-EDGED SLATE BLADES 



Ground slate weapon blades were not numerous in the collections 

 from the Yakutat area, although several types were represented. 

 There are three fragments of large blades for flensing knife, dagger, or 

 spear; when complete they may have resembled the large bone blade 

 described above. Two pieces of the same slate blade were found in 

 Old Town II (fig. 14, h) ; the larger piece in the midden above the ruins 

 of the Storage House, the tip in Subsurface Pit 38 below the floor. 

 The broken blade is now (8.7) cm. long and (3.1) cm. wide, and 0.4 cm. 

 thick, but when complete was presumably much longer and somewhat 

 wider. A smaller fragment of a large faceted slate blade (fig. 14, c) is 

 from Old Town III. The third fragment is the butt end of what was 

 probably a large blade and comes from an unknown level at Old Town. 



Although these specimens are broken, we can assume that at 



