![]() ![]() ![]() The harpoon consisted of a copper or iron head, with horn barbs, tied to a rope of whale sinew and fastened to a wooden staff. Makah whaling canoes carried eight men - a harpooner in front, one to steer in the rear, and six paddlers. All whalers underwent rigorous spiritual training, including prayer and ritual cleansing and purification, as well as practice in techniques of the hunt. Only certain families were eligible to lead hunts, and whaling crews were led by the heads of those families. Since even a single whale supplied many needs, and because a whale hunt required substantial resources, whalers occupied positions of high prestige in Makah society. These twice-yearly migrations historically brought thousands of gray whales past the Makah hunting grounds off Cape Flattery every spring and fall. After feeding off the coast of Alaska during the summer, the whales travel up to 5,000 miles from the Bering Sea to the coastal lagoons of Baja California, where the females give birth. Pacific gray whales make the longest migration of any mammal. These baleen whales, which feed by passing water and mud through large baleen plates in their mouths to strain out food, average 35 to 45 feet in length, and 20 to 35 tons in weight. The Makah hunted several varieties of whale, but concentrated on the gray whale. Early white observers commented on the Makahs' great skill as canoeists and as whale hunters. Paddling large cedar canoes carved from the trunk of a single tree, Makahs regularly hunted and fished 30 or 40 miles, and sometimes more than 100 miles, out to sea. These are usually obtained far out to sea, and the Makah were renowned for their seafaring tradition. Traditions passed down to contemporary Makahs, reports of early visitors to Makah territory, and the discoveries at Ozette all confirm that pre-contact Makah had a well-developed technology and economy based largely on resources from the ocean, principally halibut, fur seals, and whales. ![]() Archeological research has documented well over 2000 years of Makah life and culture at the village of Ozette, about 15 miles south of Cape Flattery. For generations, they inhabited a large portion of the Olympic Peninsula, extending from Cape Flattery at the tip of the Peninsula for many miles south along the Pacific coast and east along the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In their language, the Makah are "people of the cape" (Sullivan, 23). A 2000 hunt was not successful, and court decisions put further authorized hunts on hold (although five whalers killed a whale without permission in 2007) as the Makah, who continue to assert their treaty right to hunt whales, seek federal approval to continue their tradition. Following legal battles and physical confrontations with protestors, Makah whalers landed their first whale in more than 70 years on May 17, 1999. Some animal rights activists bitterly denounced the Makah, but other groups, from advocates for indigenous rights to the United States government, supported the tribe's right to hunt. The decision ignited worldwide controversy. Makahs had not whaled since the 1920s, when commercial whaling nearly wiped out whale populations, but the tribe announced it would resume whaling after the gray whale was removed from the Endangered Species List in 1994. The Makah, whose whaling tradition dates back thousands of years, are the only tribe in the United States with a treaty guaranteeing the right to hunt whales. In 19, after a hiatus of seven decades, Makah Indian whalers again hunted gray whales from their ancestral lands around Cape Flattery on the Olympic Peninsula. ![]()
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