Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/667

 602 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., I, 1899

marks, who says that the Aleutians hunt whales with harpoons without lines. The whale dies after having received several mis- siles, and drifts ashore on one of the islands. The people of the village community who find it, first examine the wound in which the harpoon bearing the mark of the community who killed the whale will be found. The latter are at once advised of the stranding, and divide the whale with the finders.

Andree also quotes Holmberg, who says that the Konyags of Alaska place property marks on their sea-otter arrows. As the sea-otter is hardly ever killed by a single arrow, but receives four or five, which are shot by different hunters, the law provides that he whose arrow is nearest the head receives the game. I also found property marks of this kind on a set of sea-otter arrows from Koskimo. Andree states l that he saw a property mark on a sealskin buoy from the western coast of Vancouver island.

An examination of the available material shows that the same property marks are found on a great number of specimens; for example figure 17, c, occurs on six whaling harpoons. This shows that the marks (at least those on whaling harpoons) cannot be in- dividual, but must be communal. Sets of arrows found in quivers show always the same marks on their foreshafts. It is very in- teresting to note that harpoons and arrows of a certain form, and showing a certain decoration, always have the same property mark. It would seem that in each village the weapons of a certain group — a boat's crew, family, house community, or any other social unit — use a certain decoration for their implements, which, in connection with certain lines, forms their property mark. In harpoons showing the decoration figure 17, c % the Y-shape property mark is never absent. The same is true of the designs shown in figure 16, c,g y and the connected marks. In the detachable heads of deer arrows I find, in by far the majority of cases, a certain form of the head connected with a certain mark. Figure 24, a, b, are the forms that are of most frequent

1 Ibid., p. 84.

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