INUIT PEOPLE, ALASKA

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This rare bow drill was one of many essential survival tools for Northern Indigenous carvers in the nineteenth century. It was used by attaching a piece of leather or cord through the holes at both ends, which was itself wrapped around a wooden shaft positioned between the holes. When the shaft was held in place by a special mouthpiece or by an assistant, quick lateral movement of the bow caused the shaft to whirl with great speed, allowing the shaft to act as a firestarter or hole-borer.

Although many items of bone or ivory received decoration, bow drills were often worked with the most extensive detailing. This bow drill is profusely decorated on one side with an incised tableau depicting herds of caribou and a solitary hunter in the center. On the reverse are scenes of men hunting in umiaks and wielding harpoons, as well as multiple images of caribou with their young. In winter, the Inuit hunted marine mammals (seals, walruses, and cetaceans) and in summer they moved inland from the coast, hunting caribou, fishing in the rivers and lakes, snaring birds and taking their eggs, and gathering berries and herbs.  

Bow drills were used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the scenes with which they were decorated provided a record of everyday life as well as the changes and interactions that came from contact with Europeans and Americans. Their prevalence began to diminish with the establishment of American trading companies following the Alaska Purchase in 1867. These enterprises expanded the trade in engraved curios, reselling them to growing markets along the Inside Passage of southeast Alaska and on the west coast of the United States. By the late nineteenth century, demand for engraved ivory had shifted to forms better suited to the souvenir industry, and bow drills eventually ceased to be produced.

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