Walrus ivory

“ The commonest material for the handle is walrus ivory. Only two out of the twelve are of antler. They are usually about 5 inches long (the longest is 5.4 inches and the shortest 4.6) . Handles with grooves for the fingers and sometimes for the thumb seem to be quite as common as the plain handles. Fig. 385a represents an ivory handle from Nuwŭk (No. 89267 [898] ) , which has a groove for each finger and a shallow one on the right side for the thumb. It is 5 inches long. ”

“ The carving of walrus ivory passes many an hour of the long winter. As a rule the carvings are rude representations of various animals and other animate objects, and have no high value as objects of art, but occasionally there arises a real artist, who when encouraged will produce wonderfully artistic models of the various animals, men, dog-sleds and almost anything suggested to him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From his face also extend the tusks, which on the larger animals are often thirty inches in length, and are prized as ivory. Altogether the walrus is a fierce-looking creature, with a tough hide and an ugly temper.
Like the seal, the walrus has to come to the surface of the water to breathe. So Dr. Kane and his Eskimo friends tried to find open water, or, at least, a place where the ice was thin. The walrus has a habit of bellowing as he lies on the ice, so that hunters are guided by this strange and terrible sound. Every few minutes the hunters took off their fur hoods to listen. ”

“ The ivory of walrus, narwhal, or elephant is more readily wrought into many desirable forms, and is less liable to fracture, than the intractable flint or stone; and all those materials are abundant in the most rigorous winters, when flint and stone are sealed up under the frozen soil. Tools and weapons of bone and ivory may therefore be assumed to have preceded all but the rudest stone implements ”

“ Fig. 403b (No. 89334 [1067] , from Utkiavwĭñ) is exceedingly rude. The eyes, nostrils, and mouth are incised and blackened as usual, and the vibrissæ (“whiskers”) are represented by rather large round pits on the snout, also filled in with black dirt. It is 2.9 inches long, and appears 401 to have been dipped in the oil-bucket to make it look old. Both the images bear a strong resemblance to the rude carvings of walruses from Siberia figured by Nordenskiöld.517a No. 89570 [1271] from Nuwŭk is of soapstone, 2 inches long, with tusks rudely carved from walrus ivory. ”

“ Fig. 418.—Engraved ivory: (a) piece engraved with figures; (b) development of pattern.
Fig. 418a (pattern developed in Fig. 418b, No. 56530 [220] ) represents the first of these. It is made of solid white walrus ivory. The workmanship is quite rude, and the cap has been broken off and neatly fastened on with a wooden dowel. The other, Fig. 419a, 419b (No. 56529 [254] ) is 3.7 inches long.
Fig. 419.—Engraved ivory: (a) piece with engraving; (b) development of pattern.
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Fig. ”

“ This animal, sometimes called the sea-horse, is large, powerful, and often vicious. It is considered valuable both as food and for the supply of ivory which its immense tusks yield. The walrus is hunted chiefly from the kyack, either in open water, in the neighborhood of sandy shores, or about the edge of floating ice, upon which it delights to lie and bask in the sunshine.
A special equipment is required for this kind of hunting. It comprises, besides the kyack and paddle, a large harpoon, a heavy line and box in which to coil it, a large inflated seal-skin float, and a long lance. ”

“ The walrus is found in largest numbers on the north coast, in the true Arctic region, affording some valuable 170oil, together with considerable ivory, in carving which the natives are very expert. Though the fur-trade of the land is by no means equal to that of the sea, still its aggregate results are very considerable. It employs numerous hunters and gives profitable business to many white traders, nearly all of whom make a permanent home in the Territory. ”

“ The walrus is necessary for the subsistence of the northern Eskimo and his dogs. The flesh is strong and sustaining, the blubber is abundant and good, while the tusks are of great use for shoeing sleds and the manufacture of spears and harpoons, and other hunting and domestic gear. The present value of the walrus to civilization is small. Oil is made from the blubber, and the skins are used chiefly for ‘buffing’ metal goods. The ivory of the tusks is inferior, and only worth about fifty cents a pound. ”

“ It is principally for its ivory tusks and the accumulated fat which comes from heavy eating that the Walrus is now being exterminated by whalers and hunters. To the Eskimo the Walrus means life itself. He eats the flesh, burns the fat for fuel and light, makes his boats, houses, harness and harpoon lines from the hide and trades what ivory he has not made into implements for the guns and whisky so acceptable to primitive man. The extermination of the Walrus will probably mean the extermination of the Eskimos, or at least an entire change in their habits of life. ”

“ In the water he is more at home, and though it does not require a high degree of strength and skill to dig clams, that being his daily occupation, yet he is able to keep very fat on the fruits of his industry and has much leisure to swim about or doze on ice floes and sea beaches.
It is only in the arctic regions that Walrus are found. Before the attacks of whalers and ivory hunters they were found as far south as Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. ”

“ Ivory is really dentine—that substance, not unlike bone, of which teeth principally consist. By usage it is restricted to the dentine of those teeth which are large enough for industrial purposes—viz., the tusks of the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal, and some varieties of whales. These forms of ivory differ about as the hard woods differ: the elephant ivory, by its size and quality, is best suited for all purposes ”

“ The female will defend her young to the last, and at the expense of her own life, whether in the water or upon the ice; nor will the young one quit the dam, though she be dead; so that if one be killed the other is certain prey." The long pendent tusks, bristly whiskers, small bloodshot eyes, and great size lent colour to the terrifying tales of the walrus. ”

“ Several hunters told me of exciting and dangerous encounters they had experienced with mother walruses. If the young are attacked, or even approached, the mother does not hesitate to charge furiously. The hunters confess that on such occasions there is no option but to paddle for their lives. Occasionally an old walrus is unusually vindictive and, after forcing a hunter to take refuge on the ice, will remain patrolling the vicinity for a long time, roaring and menacing the object of her anger. ”

“ As it breaks up a good many times in the same place, these ice mountains are piled higher and higher, until they get so large we cannot see over them or round them at all. Each time the ice breaks up, there is an open space where the water is free from ice, and the walruses and seals come up to breathe. Sometimes a walrus will crawl away from this opening far enough for the hunters to head him off and kill him. The walrus is hard to kill, for he is so watchful, and there is no way to call him as they do the seal. But when killed he is quite a prize. ”

“ The young are born in the spring, and generally on the ice floes, but being born fat the ice floes are probably as warm to them as is a nest to a little mouse. The mothers show great affection for their young, and will not abandon them in danger, even allowing themselves to be speared while protecting their offspring. As the Walrus are social by nature, wandering about in great herds, and as they also show a marked sympathy for each other’s misfortunes, it is very dangerous to wound one in the water lest the whole herd join in a common defense. ”

“ However eagerly she may try by blows and cuffs to get her young under water or lead her pursuers astray by diving with it under her forepaw, she is generally overtaken and killed. Such a hunt is truly grim, but the walrus-hunter knows no mercy in following his occupation. The walrus, especially the old solitary male, sleeps and rests during autumn, when the drift-ice has disappeared, also in the water, with his head now above the surface, now under it, and with his lungs so strongly inflated that the body is kept floating, with part of the back projecting out of the water. ”

“ The eyes seem to move, rotating in every direction when the creature is startled, giving the face of this monster a very extraordinary attraction, especially when studied by an artist. The expression is just indescribable. The range of sight enjoyed by the walrus out of water, I can testify, is not well developed, for, after throwing small chips of rock down upon the walruses near me, several of them not being ten feet distant, and causing them only to stupidly stare and give vent to low grunts of astonishment, I then rose gently and silently to my feet, standing boldly up before them ”

“ We very quickly skinned the smaller of the walruses; it was easy to manipulate compared to those we were accustomed to. The other, however, was a great fellow that could not be easily turned over in the hollow in the snow where he lay; so we contented ourselves with skinning one side from head to tail, and then went home again with our blubber and skins. We now thought we should have blubber enough for winter fuel, and had also abundance of skins for covering the roof of our hut.
“I Photographed Him and the Walrus”
The walruses still kept near us for some time. ”

“ It is in the North Pacific that the walrus attains its great size—nine feet in length, broader across its back than any animal known to the civilized world. These piebald yellow monsters lay wallowing in herds of hundreds on the ice-fields. At the edge lay always one on the watch; and no matter how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the ice-drift. ”

“ The walrus lives in the northern Polar seas, where it is sometimes met with in herds of a thousand to two thousand head. They either swim about in the water or lie basking in the sun upon ice-floes. When they are about to sleep one remains awake as sentinel. They [206] attract whole herds to their assistance by their terrific roaring, which can be heard for several miles; in all directions their black heads, with red, dilated eyes, and gleaming tusks, emerge from the water. The walrus is hunted for its tusks, skin and oil. ”

“ In spring, or the breeding-season, when the walrus is in his glory, he is taken in two ways. Sometimes he has risen by the side of an iceberg, where the currents have worn away the floe, or through a tide crack, and, enjoying the sunshine too long, finds his retreat cut off by the freezing up of the opening; for like the seal, the walrus can only work from below at his breathing-hole. When thus caught, the Esquimaux, who with keen hunter-craft are scouring the floes, scent him out by their dogs and spear him. ”

“ The upper canines are developed in adults of both sexes into immense tusks, each from 15 inches to 2 feet long and weighing 10 pounds and upward. In some individuals the points converge toward, and in others they diverge from each other. The most important function of these tusks is digging shell fish, the favorite food of the walrus, out of the banks and mud of shoal water. They also raise the body out of the water, by digging into ice floes, which probably gave rise to the legend of the rosmarine ”

“ It brings forth its young in the same manner, preys on the same kinds of fish, and, like the seal, ascends the ice, (more rarely the land,) to bask in the sun.
The walrus is a very valuable animal, yielding frequently half a tun of oil, equally valuable with that of the whale. The tusks are said to be more [Pg 87] valuable than those of the elephant, as being more compact and hard, and consequently taking a finer polish: the skin, which is nearly an inch thick, is used to cover the masts or yards of ships, where they cross each other, to prevent their being injured by the friction. ”

“ This parental affection is shamefully misused by man, for it is a common artifice of the walrus-hunters to catch a young animal and make it grunt, in order to attract a herd.
The walrus is confined to the coasts of the Arctic regions, unless when drift-ice, or some other accident, carries it away into the open sea. Its chief resorts are Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, North Greenland, the shores of Hudson’s and Baffin’s bays; and on the opposite side of the Polar Ocean, the coasts of Bering’s Sea, and to the north of Bering’s Straits, the American and Asiatic shores from Point Barrow to Cape North. ”

“ Sometimes an inflated seal-skin, called an ah-wah-tah, is attached to the end of the line, that buoys it up and soon exhausts the wounded walrus. This is a very good plan, but is not considered advantageous when working in loose ice unless hunting from a boat, for the wounded animal is apt to get beyond the reach of the hunter. After the ice disappears walruses are then killed on the small islands, to which they resort to sleep, and are sometimes found in great numbers. ”