Whale Bone
Spear Point
Tranquility Farm Site,
Frenchman Bay
11.8 cm long x 7 cm wide
This large spear point is made from
a piece of whalebone. Based on its size and thickness,
we think it was made from a rib bone, but it lacks any
diagnostic features to be able to say for sure. Nor
can we say what species of whale it is. There are at
least four large species of whale in the Gulf of Maine
today – finback, humpback, right whale and minke.
Native people on the Maine coast probably
did not hunt large whales, as Inuit people still do
in the Arctic. They did spear swordfish and probably
porpoises and seals. Whalebones are occasionally found
in sites, but in low numbers, suggesting that an occasional
beached whale carcass was scavenged for raw material.
Historically, porpoises were
very important to the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Sipayik,
on the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay, Washington County,
Maine. Hunters shot them from open birchbark canoes
and then the carcasses were rendered for oil and the
meat dried for food. Today, the Passamaquoddy Tribe
continues to assert their sovereign right to hunt sea
mammals. |
