The Alaska State Museum September 2025 artifact of the month is an umiaq (skin boat). This large driftwood-framed boat is located in the permanent galleries, situated above the Western Alaska exhibit cases. The boat measures approximately 34 feet long and over 8 feet wide. It's typical of skin-covered watercraft that Indigenous people have used for at least 1000 years for hunting, trading, and transportation across the Bering Strait.
The frame is lashed together with rawhide thongs and wire. The wire appears to be the type used for telephone lines. There are very few nails holding the frame together. The frame has 4 plank seats spaced equally along the length of the boat, positioned about one foot from the bottom of the boat. There is another seat at the stern end for a steersman or motor operator. Located a quarter length of the boat from the bow is a circular mount used for a sail mast. The driftwood frame has been covered with split hide from four cow (female) walruses, attached using whale sinew (ligament or tendon).
The artifact of the month umiaq was built in the early 1920s by Jonathan Onalik at the Inupiaq village of Wales, Alaska, located on the westernmost point on the Seward Peninsula. It's one of the few surviving examples of the great two-masted umiaqs used for trading expeditions across the Bering Strait between Alaska and Asia. In more recent times, this umiaq was used to shuttle cargo from the famous supply vessel USMS North Star to the village of Wales.
In 1971, the Alaska State Museum hired eight St. Lawrence Islanders to cover the frame with walrus hides. John and Lillie Apangalook, Vivian and Lewis Igakitan, Thelma and Homer Apatiki, Fred Angi, and Flora Imergan, all from Gambell, made the long flight to Juneau with the fresh hides checked in their luggage. After soaking the hides in Gold Creek near the museums, they meticulously sewed them over the frame using a waterproof stitch.
Umiaqs outfitted with outboard motors are still used in the Arctic for whaling, hunting, and other subsistence activities. These skin boats have been made and used by the different cultures of the circumpolar region. The oldest known umiak was excavated at the Birnirk Birnirk archaeological site near Utqiagvik (formally Barrow) in the 1930s. Researchers at the University of Alaska Museum of the North used radiocarbon dating on some of the fragments from the site, which indicated they were over 1,000 years old.
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