Exhibit Label

The tall fin, a special mark of the killer whale, is often pierced with a round hole, or marked with a circle. One Tlingit story explains that the man who first carved killer whales of yellow cedar (he tried unsuccessfully to make them of cottonwood bark, alder, hemlock, and red cedar) carved holes in their dorsal fins and, using them as handholds, was towed away from an island on which his brothers-in-law had marooned him. Later he sent his spirit whales to revenge him by smashing their canoe. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)