Weird Eskimo Powder Horn

Not sure if this is the proper subforum, but it's about a horn. I found this odd little horn with crude etchings with assorted Inuit and Yupik handicrafts at the local antique barn. It looks to me like something turned out to sell to tourists, and since the inside still had horn shavings in it I don't think it was ever used. The strap feels to me like moose. The horn has a bit of a yellow patina and underneath a considerable number of scrapes and scratches. These scratches are over the top of the etchings, at random angles and are covered by the patina. Therefore someone etched and did something with it sufficient to make the scratches. It then aged at least long enough to yellow up. How long that takes I don't know. I'm posting some pics here to see if anything looks familiar. The GIANT OCTOPUS is a new one to me LOL. That and the whaling scene look like something you'd see on scrimshaw ivory, not a powder horn. To me personally, if you've run into an OCTOPUS bit enough to warrant a wiff of roundball, the time has come to stop fishing for the day. Anyway any thoughts or opinions on this are welcomed. I just thought it looked strange enough to buy.

I bet it was lost by a hunter of shifty eyed octopuses.

Hard to say about the yellowing patina. That can be done by several methods to make a horn look old.

Anyway, if you didn't give too much for it you have something interesting to carry and as I've said before, All Muzzleloading stuff is good. :grin:

Very nice :thumbsup: Love all that different scribblin.

That collection looked like it was from someone who had served in the military up here in the cold war era. There were hundreds of little radar stations and village airports set up back then, most all shut down now and replaced. The locals liked to make a buck selling curios to the servicemen, as the do all over the world. So there was a cottage industry with native arts. I suspect some local native made this mixing crude scrimshaw with powder horns.

But I'm getting the opinion of an expert on native art, but I suspect he'll conclude it's a curio from that era. Not an antique, but from real natives and interesting.

It's not sealed up and the hole is too big, but it could be made functional with a little work.

I spent $50 for it, which was probably too much. But I had to have it after seeing little Cthulhu rear his head there. That's one of a kind!

I really don't know where a northern aboriginal would get a cow horn.
They (cows) are not very common, 300 miles north of the 49th parallel.
Old Ford

well, he probably gets it from the same place i do- this telephone gadget is great. i don't know about the radio, though: mine won't answer when i talk to it, even if i'm 'nice' and don't cuss too loud.

so, even if there's one telephone gadget it the whole village, you can bet that there's someone on it making an order for widgets, which they'll turn into thingamabobs, and sell at a modest profit, and send their kid to college...

(actually, when i worked for a law office in Philadelphia, there was a little Vietnamese fellow who sold rice and veggies from a stand on 6th and Chestnut, and one day i was standing there and a really well dressed fellow came up and they chatted for a minute in Vietnamese, and the guy got lunch and went away without paying, and since i was next in line, the guy told me that the fellow who didn;t pay was his son, and he was going to a job interview. The kid was wearing a University of Pennsylvania class ring)

I'll add another possibility. It may not be eskimo at all. Lots of possibilities in the whaling fleet of the 19th century and well into the 20th, maybe even the 21st. Kill guns were (and still are) used to finish off whales once they were exausted from fighting the initial strike and you got them alongside the boat.

Kill guns were MLs and fired and exploding dart. That horn could easily be used with one of those. It's not big enough to hold many charges for the darts, and from what little I know those were loaded and assembled before a hunt. But it would be darned handy for reloading the kill gun if the first dart missed or misfired.

After that, it would be up to a native art expert to decide whether it was used by a blue-eyed visiting whaler or a local native. It doesn't look like native art to me, but what do I know. Could be, might not be.

In either case, I'd place high odds it authentic and quite a score.

Here you go. Kinda redefines "big bore" and muzzleloading for most folks, I bet!

Edit:

This page is even better.

There's no sign it was ever used for powder and it's not sealed, so I doubt it was the real thing. It could be reworked and tightened up with a new spout, but I won't do anything with it until I confirm it's just a tourist item.

More likely a kid toy derived from watching Davy Crockett TV shows. Never seen anything like it for tourists up here, new or old.

The home-made kid's toy idea has a great deal of merit to it. It would explain the impractical spout, the wear patterns, the crude odd designs and the patina. If it was made for some local kid back in the 50's or 60's, carved on by the kid, banged around in play, and then left in a box until the next generation found it. Obviously it wasn't storebought.

The whaling scene also makes it unlikely whoever carved it knew details of whaling. The man is holding a barbed harpoon, even though the whale is already hooked to a line and is exhausted in the water. The man should be holding a long lance for the kill stroke.