Natural Resources

Lithograph of

The natural resources collections offer centuries of evidence about how Americans have used the bounty of the American continent and coastal waters. Artifacts related to flood control, dam construction, and irrigation illustrate the nation's attempts to manage the natural world. Oil-drilling, iron-mining, and steel-making artifacts show the connection between natural resources and industrial strength.

Forestry is represented by saws, axes, a smokejumper's suit, and many other objects. Hooks, nets, and other gear from New England fisheries of the late 1800s are among the fishing artifacts, as well as more recent acquisitions from the Pacific Northwest and Chesapeake Bay. Whaling artifacts include harpoons, lances, scrimshaw etchings in whalebone, and several paintings of a whaler's work at sea. The modern environmental movement has contributed buttons and other protest artifacts on issues from scenic rivers to biodiversity.

Date: 1870s

Scrimshaw Whale Bone Food Chopper

Simply carved and without any engraving, this food chopper, or mincer, was made in two pieces from a sperm whale’s jawbone. Its blunted, curved blade was used to chop soft foods such as bread dough, fruits, sausage, and animal fats.
Description
Simply carved and without any engraving, this food chopper, or mincer, was made in two pieces from a sperm whale’s jawbone. Its blunted, curved blade was used to chop soft foods such as bread dough, fruits, sausage, and animal fats. This example was donated by former Secretary of the Institution Spencer F. Baird (1823–1887) to the Smithsonian, where it became one of the earliest objects in the maritime collections.
date made
1800s
purchased
1876-11-30
ID Number
AG.024909
catalog number
24909
accession number
2009.0157

New England Whale Ship

This model represents a typical Massachusetts whaleship of the mid-19th century, fully rigged and ready for a long cruise that might last for as much as four years. The name “U.S.
Description
This model represents a typical Massachusetts whaleship of the mid-19th century, fully rigged and ready for a long cruise that might last for as much as four years. The name “U.S. Grant, Edgartown” on the ship’s stern is fictional—no ship by that name ever sailed for the whaling fleet. The ship’s bottom is lined with copper sheathing, to keep out the teredo navalis, a tropical worm that bored into the wood of ship’s hulls and weakened the structure, as the termite does to wooden structures on land.
The whaleboats are the most prominent features. After whales were sighted by lookouts perched at the mast tops, the boats were dropped over the sides of the mother ship to chase them. Also over the side are the cutting stages, where the whale’s fat, or blubber, was sliced off the body in long strips.
The main feature on the ship’s deck is the try-works, or giant pots set into a brick framework, where the whale’s blubber, was boiled down into oil. After the blubber became liquid, it was drawn off to cool and then poured into heavy barrels and stored below in the ship’s cargo hold.
This model was purchased in 1875 at Edgartown, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.; it was one of the first objects in the Smithsonian’s National Watercraft Collection.
Date made
1875
model was purchased
1875
ID Number
TR.025726
catalog number
025726
accession number
4353

Ship Model, Chesapeake Bay Log Canoe

This model of a Chesapeake Bay log canoe was built in 1880 and displayed at the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883. It shows a two-masted log canoe with a mustard-colored hull.
Description
This model of a Chesapeake Bay log canoe was built in 1880 and displayed at the Great International Fisheries Exhibition in London in 1883. It shows a two-masted log canoe with a mustard-colored hull. Although this model may look more like a recreational sailboat than a traditional paddling canoe, its roots can be traced back to the dugouts built and used by American Indians. Native Americans along the bay used dugouts, made by hollowing out a single tree trunk, to spear fish, gather oysters, and travel from one village to another. Europeans adopted the log-canoe technology shortly after arriving in the region in the early 1600s. By the start of the 18th century, colonists had modified the standard, single-log dugout, by hewing and shaping several logs and fitting them together to enlarge the craft. They added masts and sails, providing the means to travel farther and giving the vessels their distinctive appearance.
Despite the widespread use of frame-and-plank shipbuilding techniques around the Chesapeake, watermen continued building and using log canoes well into the 20th century. The canoes were ideal for oyster tonging in the many protected creeks and rivers that flow into the bay. This model includes a pair of hand tongs of the sort made by local blacksmiths for oystermen. A waterman would anchor his canoe over an oyster bed and lower the tongs into the water. With a scissoring motion, he would rake the tongs together until the iron basket was full and ready to be lifted onboard.
In terms of construction, the log canoe is the forerunner to the bugeye, which is essentially an enlarged canoe built of seven or nine logs with a full deck added over the hold. While log canoes are no longer used in commercial fishing, they can still be seen in special sailboat races on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake.
date made
1880
Date made
1875
ID Number
TR.25003
catalog number
025003
accession number
4586

Bait Knife

This knife has a long, narrow, steel blade with a single edge and a pine handle. The blade is 8.5 inches long and the handle adds another 6 inches. It was made in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1877, and was displayed in 1883 at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London.
Description
This knife has a long, narrow, steel blade with a single edge and a pine handle. The blade is 8.5 inches long and the handle adds another 6 inches. It was made in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1877, and was displayed in 1883 at the International Fisheries Exhibition in London. In a catalog of the exhibition, the knife is described as “the earliest style of knife used by Cape Ann fishermen to prepare slivers of menhaden for cod, haddock, or mackerel bait” (p. 840).
Menhaden are herring-like fish, that spawn in large runs. At the time this knife was in use, menhaden were abundant and typically caught for bait in seines or stationary pound nets near the shore. Schooner captains fishing Georges and the Grand Banks purchased bait at ports in the Canadian Maritimes. The bait was frozen and kept on ice, which eased the work of slivering the fish.
Describing baiting operations in the 1940s, Capt. R. Barry Fisher wrote, “The bait was used carefully. It was stood on its head, your hand holding the tail, and then with a bait knife you sliced down along the belly side toward the head. The two pieces together were placed side by side on a cutting board and you chopped away the head. Then you chopped these halves so as to get about twelve to sixteen usable pieces of bait. The tails and the heads were discarded. Four to six herring or mackerel were needed to bait one line of gear.” (A single line would have 52 to 54 hooks; a two-man dory crew would set about 30 such lines at a time in what was called a "trawl line.") A Doryman’s Day (Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House, 2001) pp. 29-35.
Date made
1877
ID Number
TR.029407
catalog number
29407
accession number
12679

Engraved woodblock of a “Fault with thrown beds flexed upward”

This engraved woodblock of a “Fault with thrown beds flexed upward” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1875 as Figure 71 (p.184) in Report of the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries.
Description
This engraved woodblock of a “Fault with thrown beds flexed upward” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the print was published in 1875 as Figure 71 (p.184) in Report of the Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries. Explored in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872, under the direction of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution by John Wesley Powell (1834-1902).
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1875
1875
printer
Government Printing Office
publisher
Bureau of American Ethnology
author
Powell, John Wesley
ID Number
1980.0219.0101
catalog number
1980.0219.0101
accession number
1980.0219

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