At a private reception on Friday afternoon, sponsors of "Qayat" ("Kayaks"), a new exhibit at the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, will get their first look at one of its star attractions, a single-person Alutiiq kayak. The historic traditional watercraft was taken from Alaska around 150 years ago and only returned this spring.
The 14-foot-long watercraft is considered extremely rare, said Marnie Leist, the museum's curator of collections. "Normally, you'd have to go to the Smithsonian or Finland or Russia to see one of these," she said.
It was taken out of Alaska by U.S. Army Capt. Edward Fast, who had been assigned to survey the territory. Harvard University's Peabody Museum purchased it and other items from Fast in 1869.
"Apparently, it was stored in a pretty stable environment," Leist said. The ancient watercraft is in remarkably good condition considering its age. The sealskin covering of the driftwood frame has remained virtually intact. "That's very unusual," she said.
The kayak was languishing in storage in 2003 when the Alutiiq Museum's former director Sven Haakanson Jr. and Kodiak culture bearer Ronnie Lind stopped by the Boston-area museum to look at artifacts from Alaska.
"From a far distance, they recognized the prow and knew it was Alutiiq," Leist said.
The split (or forked, or bifurcated) prow is an unmistakable feature of kayaks from the Aleutians to the Gulf of Alaska. Experts are uncertain about the purpose of the design, but it may have helped increase the speed of the boat or improved stability.
It could also have added to the overall flexibility of the craft. "Everything is lashed together," Leist said. "Nothing is super-tight. It was meant to move."
The fact that it is a single-man kayak also makes it unusual. "After the Russians came, two- and three-man kayaks were the rule," Leist said. Traditionally, each kayak was made to fit one specific user. Under Russian rule, fur harvests became commercialized, requiring bigger and more uniform vessels for hunting expeditions and transportation. As a result, more recent two- and three-man designs are found in museums with some regularity.
The covering reveals a number of interesting details about the waterproof stitch used to connect the edges of the skins, Leist said. "There's hair and yarn woven into the stitch. Some of the yarn is in the traditional Alutiiq colors of red and black."
Other design features show the careful thinking and craftsmanship that went into its construction. There's a small groove at the prow where two pieces of skin met, for example. It was carved into the front to let the seam fit snugly in place and present a smooth surface at the point where the bow broke the water.
Soon after Lind and Haakanson identified the kayak, the Alutiiq and Peabody museums collaborated to get grants to study and repair it. Alfred Naumoff, one of the few men still making the traditional-style kayaks, was among the Kodiak people who traveled to Massachusetts to inspect the kayak and make recommendations concerning its restoration.
"There were some tears in the skin," Leist said. "So they fixed them. And they did a really good job. You can't tell it's been patched in most places."
As part of the collaboration, the Peabody agreed to loan the kayak to the Kodiak facility for 10 years. In the "Qayat" exhibit, it will be displayed opposite a classic frame built by Naumoff. The arrangement will let viewers see the inside and outside of the boat. Artifacts connected to the maritime culture of the Alutiiq people and old photographs will also be part of the exhibit.
In its documentation, the Peabody Museum stated the place where Capt. Fast acquired the kayak was not known. He was stationed in Sitka but traveled throughout the Gulf of Alaska and could well have visited Kodiak, the second-biggest Russian town in the territory at the time America acquired it.
The Indians of Southeast traditionally did not make kayaks, preferring canoes carved from single logs. However, there was a good deal of interaction between different parts of Russian America. Many Alutiiqs lived in the Sitka area and brought their kayaks with them.
Whether it was made in Sitka or Kodiak, the builder was almost certainly Alutiiq, and may have done the work a decade or more before Capt. Fast acquired it.
In the past century, the knowledge of how to construct these traditional vessels has almost died out. Only a handful of makers are still alive, according to the Alutiiq Museum. The museum's managers hope a new generation of potential kayak-makers in Alaska will study the old vessel, learn its secrets and how to replicate the design.
The exhibit will formally open to the public with a celebration May 6. Additional events like lectures, storytelling and workshops are scheduled to follow.
Arranging for the "homecoming" took several years. After the kayak was restored, it was carefully packed in a stout, 18-foot custom crate for its 5,000-mile trip. The journey involved a truck ride across the Lower 48 and transport on a big Matson cargo ship to Kodiak. Pretty hefty treatment for a little solo skin-and-skeleton marine craft that the Peabody says weighs just 39 pounds.
Leist responded with a laugh at the mention of the weight. "I don't know if we believe that," she said. "We've been working to get it into place all week, and it seems a lot heavier than 39 pounds to us."