Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

322 FIELDIANA: ANTHROPOLOGY, VOLUME 56as birch bark baskets (Oswalt and VanStone, 1967, p. 76). Althoughno comparable birch bark vessels were preserved at Tikchik,it seems certain that the can metal dishes from this site representa similar continuity of container manufacture.If)A rimfire cartridge case of undetermined caliber was perforatedat the proximal end and a cord passed through the hole. The casewas then strung as a bead separator to form a new type of necklace.Similar perforated cartridge cases were recovered at theCrow Village site (Oswalt and VanStone, 1967, p. 76) and it islikely that this form will eventually prove to be widespread inAlaskan historical sites.5) It is not surprising that light metal, particularly from cans,which is bright and shiny when first obtained, should be attractivefrom the standpoint of personal adornment. Perforated cantops and circular cut pieces of light metal in the Tikchik collectionwere almost certainly pendants or parts of necklaces and assuch were used traditionally in the same way that local materialswere used.6) Scrapers made from bottle glass resemble those of flinty materialsand this use for an imported material was doubtless commonthroughout Alaska (Ackerman, 1965, p. 46; Oswalt and VanStone,1967, p. 75), as well as in other parts of North America (Schaeffer,1961, pp. 275-276).It should be kept in mind that some trade goods which were acquiredand accepted by the people of Tikchik without apparentmodification may actually have been used in a manner far differentfrom that intended by the manufacturer of the artifact, a mannerwhich might, if evidence were available, further illustrate the persistenceof old ideas. For example, Eskimos at the village of PointHope along the coast of northwest Alaska informed me that whentheir fathers or grandfathers had first acquired bread in the form ofhard tack, they drilled holes in it and wore the seemingly indestructibleround biscuits as pendants. That the people of Tikchik wereessentially conservative in their attitudes toward trade goods seemscertain. A New Koliganek informant whose grandfather lived atTikchik reported that when his relative first had an opportunity topurchase a breech-loading rifle to replace his muzzle-loader, he refusedto do so because he doubted the ability of the new and unfamiliarweapon to kill game. If a strong conservatism applied to such ademonstrable improvement as a breech-loading rifle, it is easy to see