138 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 192 



Chugach specimens do we find the slit socket, corresponding to the 

 open mouth on the Yakutat carving (de Laguna, 1956, pp. 174 ff.). 

 The short socket piece made in two parts, also mentioned by our 

 Yakutat informants, was apparently the earliest or one of the earliest 

 forms in southwestern Alaska, while the one-piece form diffused some- 

 what later from the north (de Laguna, 1934, pp. 130, 195; Birket- 

 Smith, 1953, pp. 180 ff.). The most modern socket piece for sea otter 

 harpoon arrows used by the Aleut and Pacific Eskimo is a very long, 

 heavy, one-piece device, again quite different in style from either the 

 prehistoric Chugach or Yakutat specimens. (However, see Heizer, 

 1956, pp. 55 f., for a somewhat different interpretation.) Among 

 both prehistoric and modern northern Alaskan Eskimo we occasionally 

 find socket pieces for harpoons that are carved to represent an animal's 

 head with open mouth. The Yakutat specimen in this respect has 

 a very Eskimo appearance. 



BOWS AND ARROWS 



The bow was used in hunting land animals, birds, and sea otter. 

 It was described as made of hard, springy, hemlock wood, about 

 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and perhaps 4 to 4K feet long. It lacked 

 both the sinew backing of the Eskimo and the projecting wooden device 

 to catch the bowstring found on Athabaskan bows. In the middle, 

 the bow was narrowed for a grip, where the first and second fingers 

 of the left hand steadied and aimed the arrow. Such bows are 

 illustrated by Niblack (1890, pi. xxvi, figs. 109, 110 Yakutat; 112 

 Sitka). The bowstring was reported to be of braided porpoise sinew. 



According to our informants, aU arrows had a feathered shaft 

 like that already described for the harpoon arrow (p. 135). Arrowheads 

 of all types were said to have been detachable from the shaft, although 

 only the head for the sea otter arrow had a line for retrieving the 

 quarry. When a land animal was shot, the hunter simply picked 

 up the arrowshaft and fitted it with a new head from a supply which 

 he carried in a bag slung under his left arm. Tlingit informants at 

 Angoon (de Lagima, 1960, p. 114) also said that their unbarbed arrow- 

 heads were detachable, and we suspect that this feature was more 

 common on the Northwest Coast than has been specifically reported. 

 It would lessen the danger of breaking the shaft, or of jerking the 

 head from the wound and so cause external bleeding, likely to frighten 

 the animal into flight. Drucker (1943, p. 41, cf. type BII points) 

 mentions that Northwest Coast informants "tell of arrow points 

 which detached from the shaft, and 'worked around' in the quarry's 

 body," although he suspects that this description applies to a special 

 type of weapon point not found at Angoon or Yakutat. 



Although our informants mentioned wooden arrows with enlarged 



