Beautiful tools
Carver Donald Gregory passes on the ancient art of making halibut hooks
As the shavings piled up before the aspiring carvers, the rich smell of yellow cedar filled the room.
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Saturday afternoon, Native artist Donald Gregory showed 14 students at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum how to fashion an ancient and effective Tlingit tool - the hand-carved halibut hook.
Unrecognizable to the uninitiated, the traditional halibut hook is nothing like the curved and sharpened wire most people stick bait on. Far larger, the hook is fashioned from two 6- to 8-inch pieces of wood tied together at a 30-degree angle. The lower arm is attached to the line; the upper arm holds the barb.
In ancient times, the hooks were carved with knives made of beaver teeth and were sanded smooth with dried shark skin. A needle-sharp shard of bone was lashed in as a barb, and the two arms of the hook were bound together with spruce-root cord.
Gregory, whose Tlingit name is Héendei, passed several hooks he'd made around the room. The lower arm of each hook was ornately carved with Northwest Coast formline designs. A raven's head on one was inlaid with mother of pearl.
"For the Tlingit people, it was important to decorate their tools," Gregory said. "I'm Raven-Beaver, so I tend to put ravens on my work."
It's the art, not the fishing, that has brought these aspiring carvers to the city museum.
"I started learning to carve masks and paddles and I wanted to learn halibut hooks. I'm 57 and I just started two years ago," student Bob Turner said. "I'm on my fifth mask now."
Turner has studied carving with Lonnie Accord and Ray Watkins, Native carvers - like Gregory - who are passing on their knowledge.
Across the table, Lisa Oliver sat with her 8-year-old son Derek and his young friend Hunter. Derek whittled the cedar with an X-Acto knife, which Gregory called one of his favorite carving tools.
"That's what I wanted," Gregory said, nodding toward Derek. "That's when I started carving, at Capital School. I wanted to give back."
Gregory grew up in Juneau. He said Ray Peck and Mick and Rick Beasley came to his grade school and taught Tlingit wood carving when he was a kid. At Juneau-Douglas High School in the mid-1980s, master carver Amos Wallace taught as an artist in the school. Gregory worked with Wallace, and the Tlingit elder made a lasting impression on Gregory. Walter Bennett, Ed Kunz, Barry Smith and Victor Austin were also big influences, Gregory said.
Carved hooks by skilled artists fetch hundreds and even thousands of dollars in galleries. But traditionally they were tools - effective at targeting the 90-to-150-pound halibut the Tlingit prized.
The baited hook floated a few feet off the bottom, tied with a slip knot to a stone weight. At the surface, the line was tied to a wooden or seal gut float. Fishermen did not attend their lines directly, but left them as a trapper leaves a series of traps in a trapline.
The upper arm of the hook, its sharpened barb baited, was swallowed by the fish. When it pulled, the line slipped off the rock weight, and the fish fought the float. Gregory said that as the halibut tired they often moved into shallow water. A fisherman in a canoe looked for his float to find his fish.
Because the arm of the hook with the barb wound up inside the fish's mouth, it tended to wear out and need replacing. The other arm, attached to the line, received the most ornate carving.
Gregory is teaching the class through the city museum in two four-hour sessions. The second half continues Saturday. Gregory has collected spruce roots and will show students the traditional method for lashing the hook together.
The class cost about $75, which included all materials and instruction.
The city museum has a slate of activities planned for the winter. Gregory is helping coordinate a Native arts and crafts fair at the museum Dec. 6 and 7, with demonstrations and displays as well as wares for sale. Artist Sue Kraft will be featured in the museum's gallery in December.
Riley Woodford can be reached at rileyw@juneauempire.com.