Alutiiq Word of the Week

A mortar is a cup or bowl designed for grinding or crushing. There are two Alutiiq words for mortar. Milliwik comes from the root word miili- meaning grind, and ciiwik from the root word cii- for smashing. Both words can be used to describe similar tools. This dichotomy is also found in the Autiiq terms for pestles. If you are going to grind tobacco to make snuff, you would use a miiliwik and a millisuun—a place for grinding and a tool for grinding. However, if you were crushing berries or fish eggs for cooking, you would use a ciiwik and a ciisuun—a place for mashing and a masher.

These terms and clues from archaeological finds suggest that there were once different types of mortars. Alutiiq people carved large mortars from sea mammal bone, hollowing out whale vertebrae to make bowls with a rough surface for grinding. Elders remember these tools being used to make iqmik, a mixture of tobacco, wood ash, and plants used as snuff. A much smaller sea mammal bone mortar from Karluk is cup-shaped, with tall, sloping sides and a wooden plug in the bottom that could be removed to let the contents out. Smaller pieces like this one may have been used for mashing medicinal plant materials or grinding pigments for paint.