For those of us who routinely troll eBay for rare and elusive treasure, Sunday nights seem to be the best time for checking for new items. As a historian living in the Aleutian Islands, I’ve used eBay as a vital source for books, photos and maps. Many of the things I’ve found on eBay, I bought for a steal from some unknowing seller. Like every eBayer, I dream of finding some ultra-rare item listed by someone who has no idea of its value.
I have had some luck with some undervalued finds: a 1788 map of the North Pacific for $29, an out-of-print book translated from Russian going for $100 on booksellers’ sites bought for $9, a rare WWII book for $5 (“Dude, you’re way too excited about this book,” the seller wrote me) and my favorite, a 1780s engraving of Captain Cook in the Aleutians for $19. These retail for $300. The seller wrote me asking, “Do you know how much this is worth?” “Yes,” was my one-word reply.
After years of scanning the hundreds of Aleutian Island–related items each Sunday night, I thought I had seen it all and bought most of it. Ogarook the Aleut—got it; The Whalers of Akutan—got it (for $30—it retails for $200 plus); WWII patches—got ’em all, doubles of most; 1869 Chart of Unalaska Bay (the first by the U.S. government)—I don’t even look at it unless it’s hand colored. You get the picture. My apartment looks like a museum of Aleutian material.
Then one Sunday in December 2005, I was knocked for a loop. The item title was “Hand-carved Aleut object.” That got my attention, although such listings usually amount to low-grade stone flakes some fisherman picked up and was passing off as arrowheads. The photo was small and unclear, so I opened the file. I sucked in a quick breath and held it. If this was real, it was big. Really big.
It was clear from the description that the seller was clueless as to its importance. The starting bid of $7 proved he didn’t know what he had. “This could be part of a sled or mask,” he guessed. It was wood and finely worked, the two main pieces lashed together. The pictures had it upside down. My eBay dream had come true.
It was the bow piece from an Aleut baidarka. For kayak historians and designers, nothing is as mystical as a true Aleut iqyax, as the baidarka is called in their language. These were the boats in which Aleuts met the first Russian explorers, and from which they fought the early Russian fur traders. In these boats, Aleut men routinely made epic trips that today require huge funding and months of planning. Fleets of hundreds of baidarkas paddled along the coast of Alaska nearly exterminating the sea -otter.
I had stumbled on a piece of history. Of course, the question of validity leapt to the forefront. Three scenarios could end the excitement early: First, if the bow piece came from a burial cave, where hunters were often entombed with their boats; second, if it was a stolen artifact; or third, if it was a leftover from a recent baidarka building class so popular in the Pacific Northwest. So where did it come from?
The seller said that 20 years ago, he had arrived late at the estate sale of anthropologist Ted Banks and was only able to acquire a few books and two unidentified artifacts. He had recently decided to sell the two artifacts, the bow and a bailer for a baidarka, though he didn’t know what they were.
Ted Banks was a (in)famous anthropologist in the Indiana Jones genre. Stationed here in the Aleutians in WWII, he returned to the islands in 1948 as part of a two-man expedition to collect plants, rocks and any artifacts he could get his hands on. This began a 40-year career of less-than-scientific archaeology and exploration. One famous incident, which he writes about in one of his many books, was his discovery of a burial cave. He reached into the small opening, feeling a mummy covered in an exquisite woven grass mat (Aleuts are considered to be the best weavers in the world). He yanked on it and tore a piece off. His expeditions sometimes consisted of dropping graduate students off on remote beaches saying, “Explore” as he motored away. Most of his collections are now housed in the Museum of the Aleutians.
If Banks had grabbed this bow piece out of a burial cave, by federal law, it would have to be returned. In fact, if it had been taken from the local people by any less-than-ethical method, it should be repatriated.
I threw out a bid of $15 and began a short investigation of Bank’s history, searching for a reference to the piece. At the University of Alaska library in Anchorage, where all of Bank’s papers are stored, there was nothing about collecting a bow piece from a cave or anywhere else for that matter. Several calls and emails to archaeologists and historians turned up no mention of the object. Things were looking up. I raised my bid to $75 just to keep in the game. You can set a bid limit on eBay to automatically increase to your maximum.
There are some tricks to bidding on eBay. The first is to keep bids low until the end. You don’t want to allow someone a week to get used to a high bid—you hit hard and fast at the end, a practice called “poaching” or “sniping.” In my small hometown of Unalaska, there’s an added courtesy of not outbidding a local who has dibs on something. (I unknowingly did this once and got in a bidding battle with someone trying to give me the item as a gift.)
In the post office Monday, I was told that someone else in town really wanted the bow piece for her husband’s Christmas gift. This was a terrible blow to me as it meant two things: One, I was going to have to crush a friend of mine, because I wanted it badly and wasn’t willing to step aside; and two, the secret was out. Foolish me—I thought I was the only one who had seen it. Let the war begin, I thought.
The seller had no idea what was happening in this remote Alaskan community. He had committed one major faux pas in setting up his auction. He had started it at 9 A.M. Michigan time, which meant it would end a week later, at 5 A.M. Alaska time. He wouldn’t get top dollar because there wouldn’t be much poaching on this one. I was lucky that I was on Christmas break and would be able to sacrifice a good night’s sleep to get in on the final hours of the auction.
The bidding started out mellow, $75 to $100 in the first two days. By the end of the week, it was still lowballed at $200. Someone must have told the seller what he had because the word baidarka appeared in the item description. Fortunately, the word was misspelled, so it wouldn’t bring in whole other segments of bidders using baidarka as an eBay search word. Nice.
I stepped things up with a $400 shot to get rid of the amateurs. It was nearly immediately topped by a bidder identified as “arcticarchaeologist.” He’s a good friend, and I knew this was getting serious. I smirked when I saw his bid trumped by “bitsofak.” Arcticarchaeologist came back raising the ante by another $250. I could hear the seller gurgling with joy. With one day left, the bids slowed. I was waiting to snipe the archaeologist in the end, but then a new player entered a yet higher bid. He even upped his own bid by $100 to $700 after he placed it. Perhaps right before his bedtime.
Down to the Wire
I came home from a Christmas party at midnight. Time to play hardball, I bid $1,002—another eBay trick, adding a few dollars to a round number—and hit the sack. When the alarm rang at 4:45 A.M. a heavy snow was falling. This meant my satellite dish would be full of snow and the Internet link it provided would not be working. Another option was my cable modem, but when I logged in, my access was denied—there was snow in the cable company’s dish as well. I called a friend who was monitoring the action on a landline link. “Dude, you’re on top with 43 seconds to go!” Seems my rivals slumbered too late. Forty-three seconds later, I was the proud owner of a genuine late 1800s Aleutian baidarka bow piece.
When the piece arrived, I was surprised at how small it was. The second thing that struck me was the presence of nails and a large brass screw, neither of which were traditionally used in kayak construction. But all that paled when taking in its delicate beauty and fine craftsmanship.
The piece is a textbook example of an Aleut bow shape. It is known as a bifid bow because of the open slot, which allowed the skin covering to take a more seaworthy shape. Bows from the Aleutians differed from their neighbors to the east, the Pacific Eskimos, in that the bow was made in two pieces and lashed together—in this case, with split spruce root.
The most unusual characteristic of this specimen is that the lower piece was lashed to the keelson. In most recorded examples of Aleut kayak bows, the lower piece is carved to include the forward segment of the keelson. In this one, it attaches with a hooked scarf joint, a characteristic of all Pacific Eskimo boats but incorporated only late in the 1800s in Aleut uluxtux, or double-cockpit kayaks. These two-man kayaks were made by the Alaska Commercial Company and sold to the hunters. (A full frame with an identical bow piece is in the Burke Museum in Seattle.)
Another unusual feature is the upper piece. The upper part of the Aleut bow flares to add buoyancy and is traditionally all one piece. On this Banks-collected piece, however, the top plate is nailed on to the flared piece. Metal fasteners are rare in Aleut boats. The upper bow piece is the most difficult to shape, and this variation seems to be an unusual but effective solution to its construction.
The commonly recognized upturned curve of the lower bow piece is just one variant of Aleut boats and the most frequently used by those re-creating the baidarkas. The earliest recorded Aleut kayaks had straight horizontal and parallel bows. This required lashing a stick across the opening to prevent seaweed and other debris from getting caught in it. In later designs, the upturned lower bow piece performed in the same capacity as the stick.
On two- and three-hole boats, the top plate also had an upward-turned projection. Its function is unknown but may have allowed a gun or spear case to be tied off to it. The piece I’d purchased is missing that horn, and the brass screw is in the place where it would have been attached.
Traditionally, Aleut kayak frames were painted with red ochre to preserve the wood and to symbolize the blood of the “living” boat. The Banks bow has some traces of red on it but most seems to have faded into a dark patina. The curved part apparently had been worked on, as the wood is free from any coloration.
The design, crafting and assembly of the bow piece connects us with the greatest kayakers in the world—the Aleuts of the past. I often sit and stare at the piece, noticing new subtleties in color, nuances of shape and tool marks showing techniques, and daydream, especially during the cold of winter, of digging out my pale plastic descendant of this amazing craft and paddling the same waters as the original owner of this piece.