Historical Methods of Hunting Beluga Whales in Cook Inlet. The Susi Kaq “sand island mouth” (the Susitna Delta area, including Big Island and the west channel of the lower Susitna)(Xxxx 1987) was an important spring camping area on the Inlet at the mouth of the Susitna River. Xxxx’xxx gathered to xxxx beluga, ducks, and geese, to fish for salmon and eulachon, and to trade. Beluga whales were hunted between May and August at the mouths of the rivers and streams (Xxxx, 1987). It required several hunters to successfully harvest the beluga whale. The upper Inlet Xxxx’xxx method of catching the small white beluga seems to be unique in North America, not borrowed from the Eskimo or Alutiiq people (Xxxx, 1987). The Xxxx’xxx used the tidal flats in the Susitna Delta to xxxx beluga whales. According to Xxxx’s (1987) description, the hunters erected a yuyqul (beluga spearing trees), which are dead spruce trees, root side up, in the mud during a low tide. Each spruce tree had many ropes extending from it and five or more people would pull on each rope to lift the tree up. The sinew ropes were then secured to stakes. The hunters climbed into the “nest” formed by the tree roots (Fall et al., 1984) to wait for the beluga that would swim by with the incoming tide. The hunters had harpoons fitted with a toggle point and attached with braided sinew ropes (about 25 fathoms long) to floats (usually inflated sealskin). Similar gear was used to xxxx Xxxxxxx sea lions at Kachemak Bay. During the incoming tide, the belugas would chase the salmon and the hunters would strike the beluga many times as it came by (Xxxx, 1987). The struck whales with the attached floats were pursued by the hunters in boats until the whales tired and could be killed by a hunter with a boneheaded spear. The whales were then taken to shore and butchered. With the introduction of firearms around the turn of the century, the Xxxx’xxx abandoned the yuyqul and xxxx methods for beluga whale hunting, and used boats and firearms to shoot beluga whales at the shallow river mouths. The three-man skin kayaks and baidarkas were used on the Inlet, as late as the turn of this century, to xxxx seal, beluga whales, ducks and to collect clams (Kalifornsky, 1991). Beluga whales were hunted in Kachemak Bay, at Halibut Cove in the 1920's (Xxxxxx, 1996). Hunters would line up along the point and shoot the belugas and seals as they swam in with the tide. The animals were retrieved from the lagoon where they floated, from the beaches where they stranded, and from the shallow waters ...
