Part 36

These bone tubes are apparently older than the neat ivory cylinders, and it is not unlikely that the belt hook was not invented till the former was mostly out of fashion. No. 89361 [1239], Fig. 328_b_ from Utkiavwĭñ, is one of these which has for knob one of the large dark blue glass beads which used to bring such enormous prices in the early days of Arctic trading, and which are still the kind most highly prized. The end of the strap is cut narrow, passed through the bead, and knotted on the end. This case carries a half-dozen of the old-fashioned bone needles, which appear to be genuine. It is 3.7 inches long and, roughly speaking, 0.4 in diameter. No. 89369 [1201], also from Utkiavwĭñ, resembles the above, but has a wolverine’s toe sewed to the end of the strap. No. 89371 [1276], from Utkiavwĭñ, also has the toe of a wolverine for a knob, and has a belt hook with two tongues made of reindeer antler. No. 89366 [1137], from Utkiavwĭñ, is a highly ornamented case of this pattern, which has a short cylindrical knob, also ornamented. No. 89368 [1089], from Utkiavwĭñ, is not made of bird’s bone, but is a piece of a long bone from some mammal, and has a brown bear’s toe for a knob. No. 89367 [1339], from the same village, is roughly made of a branch of antler, 3.9 inches long and 0.8 wide, hollowed out. It has a knob of whale’s bone, but no belt hook, the end of the strap being knotted into a leather thimble of the first pattern. Of the six specimens of this pattern in the collection only the first is a genuine old implement. All the others are merely commercial imitations rather carelessly made.

This kind of needle case is very commonly used throughout Alaska, as is shown by the enormous collections in the National Museum brought home by various explorers, Nelson, Turner, Dall and others. The needle case from Iglulik, figured by Capt. Lyon,[N423] resembles the second or older pattern, being of bone, not tapered at the ends, and having neither knob nor belt hook. To the ends of the strap are hung thimbles “and other small articles liable to be lost.”[N424] Dr. Simpson[N425] speaks of the needle case in use at Point Barrow, but merely describes it as “a narrow strip of skin in which the needles are stuck, with a tube of bone, ivory, or iron to slide down over them, and kept from slipping off the lower end by a knob or large bead.” This appears to refer only to the second or older pattern.

[Footnote N423: Parry’s Second Voyage, pl. opposite p. 550, Fig. 25.]

[Footnote N424: Ibid., p. 537.]

[Footnote N425: Op. cit, p. 245.]

The old-fashioned ring thimbles were usually carried on the belt hook of the needlecase, but modern thimbles require a box. These boxes (kigiunɐ), which are usually small and cylindrical, also serve for holding thread, beads, and all sorts of little trinkets or knickknacks, and many of them are so old that they were evidently used for this purpose long before the introduction of metal thimbles. Little tin canisters, spice boxes, etc., are also used for the same purpose nowadays. We brought home thirteen of these boxes, of which No. 89407 [1158] Fig. 329_a_ has been chosen as the type. It is a piece of the beam of a stout antler, 4.3 inches long, cut off square on the ends and hollowed out. Into the large end is fitted a flat bottom of thin pine, fastened in by four little treenails of wood. The cover is of the same material. It is held on by a string of sinew braid about 11 inches long, which passes out through the lower of the two little holes on one side of the box, being held by a knot at the end, in through the upper, then out and in through two similar holes in the middle of the cover, and out through a hole on the other side of the box. Pulling the end of this string draws the cover down snugly into its place.

Some of the remaining boxes are made of antler, and vary in length from 4.7 to 8 inches. The last is, however, unusually large, most of the others being about 5 inches long. The covers are generally held on by strings much in the manner described, and the ends are both usually of wood, though two old boxes have both ends made of antler, and one has a top of hard bone. The last is a specimen newly made for sale. These boxes are sometimes ornamented on the outside with incised lines, colored red or blackened, either conventional patterns as in Fig. 329_b_ (No. 89405 [1335], from Utkiavwĭñ) or figures of men and animals as in Fig. 329_c_ (No. 56615 [41] from the same village). The former is a new box, 4.7 inches long, and has the wooden ends both shouldered to fit tightly. The cover is worked with a string.

No. 56615 [41] on the other hand is very old, and has lost its cover. The wooden bottom is shouldered and held in with treenails. The surface is elaborately ornamented with incised and blackened figures. It is divided by longitudinal lines into four nearly equal panels, on which the figures are disposed as follows (the animals all being represented as standing on the longitudinal lines, and facing toward the right, that is, toward the open end of the box): On the first panel are 4 reindeer, alternately a buck and a doe, followed by a man in a kaiak, and over his head two small “circles and dots,” one above the other. All the deer on this box are represented strictly in profile, so as to show only two legs and one antler each. On the second panel are 4 deer, all does, followed by a man with a bow slung across his back. On the third, a man in the middle appears to be calling 2 dogs, who, at the left of the panel, are drawing a railed sled. Reversed, and on the upper border of the panel, is a man pushing behind a similar sled drawn by 3 dogs. The head dog has stopped and is sitting down on his haunches. The dogs, like the reindeer, are all strictly in profile and rather conventionalized. In the fourth panel are 3 reindeer followed by a man in his kaiak, and upside down, above, a deer without legs, supposed to be swimming in the water, and a very rude figure of a man in his kaiak. These figures probably represent actual occurrences, forming a sort of record.

Fig. 330_a_ (No. 89408 [1371] from Sidaru) is a piece of stout antler, 4.7 inches long, which has the bottom of pine fitted tightly in without fastenings. The cover is of wood, covered, to make it fit tight, with parchment, apparently shrunk on and puckered on the upper surface. A thick hank of untwisted sinew is fastened as a handle through the middle of the cover. This box is old and dirty, and contains an unfinished flint arrow-head. No. 56505 [59] from Utkiavwĭñ, is a new box, closed at the ends with thick shouldered plugs of pine wood. The tube is 8 inches long and ornamented with a conventional pattern of incised lines colored with red ocher.

Fig. 330_b_ (No. 89402 [1359] also from Utkiavwĭñ), is peculiar from the material of which it is made. It is of about the same pattern as the common antler boxes, but is made of the butt end of the _os penis_ of a large walrus, cut off square and hollowed out, and has ends of hard whale’s bone. Its length is 4.2 inches. No. 89403 [1425] Fig. 331 from Sidaru, is made of the hollow butt of a good-sized walrus tusk, 3.2 inches long. It has a neatly fitted wooden bottom, held in with 6 treenails, two of ivory and four of wood. The box has been cracked and split and mended with stitches of sinew and whalebone. Peculiar conventional patterns are incised on the box and cover. A peculiar box is shown in Fig. 332 (No. 56583 [37] from Utkiavwĭñ). This is of compact white bone, with a flat wooden bottom. I do not recollect seeing any other boxes of the same sort.

Fig. 333 (No. 89409 [1372]) is the tip of a walrus tusk cut off and hollowed out into a sort of flask, 3.8 inches long, closed at the large end by a flat wooden bottom, fastened in with treenails and at the small end by a stopper of soft wood.

The most peculiar box of all, however, is shown in Fig. 334 (No. 56512 [2] from Utkiavwĭñ), the only specimen of the kind seen. It is 5.5 inches long, made of reindeer antler, and very neatly carved into a most excellent image of a reindeer lying on its left side, with the head, which has no antlers, turned down and to the left. The legs are folded up against the belly, the forelegs with the hoofs pointing backward, the hind hoofs pointing forward. The eyes are represented by small sky-blue glass beads, and the mouth, nostrils, and navel neatly incised, the last being particularly well-marked. The tips of the hoofs are rounded off, which, taken in connection with the attitude and the well marked navel, lead me to believe that the image is meant to represent an unborn fetus. The whole of the body is hollowed, the aperture taking up the whole of the buttocks, and closed by a flat, thick plug of soft wood. A round peg of wood is driven in to close an accidental hole just above the left shoulder. The box is old and discolored, and worn smooth with much handling.

Rarely these little workboxes are made of basketwork. We obtained four specimens of these small baskets, of which No. 56564 [88] Fig. 335, workbasket (águma, áma, ipiáru), will serve as the type. The neck is of black tanned sealskin, 2½ inches long, and has 1 vertical seam, to the middle of which is sewed the middle of a piece of fine seal thong, a foot long, which serves to tie up the mouth. The basket appears to be made of fine twigs or roots of the willow, with the bark removed, and is made by winding an osier spirally into the shape of the basket, and wrapping a narrow splint spirally around the two adjacent parts of this, each turn of the splint being separated from the next by a turn of the succeeding tier. The other basket from Utkiavwĭñ (No. 56565 [135]) is almost exactly like this, but larger (3.5 inches in diameter and 2.2 high), and has holes round the top of the neck for the drawstring.

Two baskets from Sidaru are of the same material and workmanship, but somewhat larger and of a different shape, as shown in Fig. 336, No. 89801 [1366], and Fig. 337, No. 89802 [1427]. This was the only species of basketwork seen among these people and is probably not of native manufacture.

Prof. O. T. Mason, of the National Museum, has called my attention to the fact that the method of weaving employed in making these baskets is the same as that used by the Apaches and Navajos, who have been shown to be linguistically of the same stock as the Athabascan or Tinné group of Indians of the North. The first basket collected, No. 56564 [88], was said by the owner to have come from the “great river” in the south. Now, the name Kuwûk or Kowak, applied to the western stream flowing into Hotham Inlet, means simply “great river,” and this is the region where the Eskimo come into very intimate commercial relations with Indians of Tinné stock.[N426] Therefore, in consideration of the Indian workmanship of these baskets, and the statement that one of them came from the “great river, south,” I am well convinced that they were made by the Indians of the region between the Koyukuk and Silawĭk Rivers, and sold by them to the Kuwûñmiun, whence they could easily find their way to Point Barrow through the hands of the “Nunatañmiun” traders.

[Footnote N426: Dall, American Association, Address, 1885, p. 13.]

The Eskimo of Alaska south of Bering Strait make and use baskets of many patterns, but east of Point Barrow baskets are exceedingly rare. The only mention of anything of the kind will be found in Lyon’s Journal.[N427] He mentions seeing at Iglulik a “small round basket composed of grass in precisely the same manner as those constructed by the Tibboo, in the southern part of Fezzan, and agreeing with them also in its shape.” Now, these Africans make baskets of precisely the same “coiled” work (as Prof. Mason calls it) as the Tinné, so that in all probability what Lyon saw was one of these same baskets, carried east in trade, like other western objects already referred to. The name áma applied to these baskets at Point Barrow (the other two names appear to be simply “bag” or receptacle) corresponds to the Greenlandic amåt, the long thin runners from the root of a tree, “at present used in the plural also for a basket of European basketwork,” (because they had no idea that twigs could be so small)--Grønlandske Ordbog.

[Footnote N427: P. 172.]

No. 89799 [1329] from Utkiavwĭñ, is a peculiar bag, the only one of the kind seen, used for the same purpose as the boxes and baskets just described. It is the stomach of a polar bear, with the muscular and glandular layers removed, dried and carefully worked down with a skin scraper into something like goldbeater’s skin. This makes a large, nearly spherical bag 7½ inches in diameter, of a pale brownish color, soft and wrinkled, with a mouth 6 inches wide. A small hole has been mended by drawing the skin together and winding it round tightly on the inside with sinew.

MEANS OF LOCOMOTION AND TRANSPORTATION.

TRAVELING BY WATER.

_Kaiaks and paddles._--Like all the rest of the Eskimo race, the natives of Point Barrow use the kaiak, or narrow, light, skin-covered canoe, completely decked over except at the middle, where there is a hole or cockpit in which the man sits. Although nearly every male above the age of boyhood owns and can manage one of these canoes, they are much less generally employed than by any other Eskimo whose habits have been described, except the “Arctic highlanders,” who have no boats, and perhaps those of Siberia and their Chuckche companions. The kaiak is used only during the season of open water, and then but little in the sea in the neighborhood of the villages. Those who remain near the villages in the summer use the kaiak chiefly for making the short excursions to the lakes and streams inland, already described, after reindeer, and for making short trips from camp to camp along the coast. At Pernyû they are used in setting the stake-nets and also for retrieving fowl which have fallen in the water when shot.

According to Dr. Simpson[N428] the men of the parties which go east in the summer travel in their kaiaks after reaching the open water “to make room in the large boat for the oil-skins.” We obtained no information regarding this. It is at this time, probably, that the kaiak comes specially in play for spearing molting fowl and “flappers”, and for catching seals with the kúkiga. They manage the kaiak with great skill and confidence, but we never knew them to go out in rough weather, nor did we ever see the practice, so frequently described elsewhere, of tying the skirts of the waterproof jacket round the coaming of the cockpit so as to exclude the water.

[Footnote N428: Op. cit. p. 264.]

It should, however, be borne in mind that from the reasons above stated our opportunities for observing the use of the kaiak were very limited. At all events it is certain that the people depend mainly on the umiak, not only for traveling, but for hunting and fishing as well, which places them in strong contrast with the Greenlanders, who are essentially a race of kaiakers and have consequently developed the boat and its appendages to a high state of perfection.

We brought home one complete full-sized kaiak, with its paddle, No. 57773 [539], Fig. 338_a_ and _b_, which is a very fair representative of the canoes used at Point Barrow. This is 19 feet long and 18 inches wide amidships. The gunwales are straight, except for a very slight sheer at the bow, and the cockpit is 21 inches long and 18½ inches wide. It has a frame of wood, which appears to be all of spruce, held together by treenails and whalebone lashings, and is covered with white-tanned sealskins with the grain side out. The stoutest part of the frame is the two gunwales, each 3¼ inches broad and ½-inch thick, flat, and rounded off on the upper edge inside, running the whole length of the boat and meeting at the stem and stern, gradually tapered up on the lower edge at each end. The ribs, of which there are at least forty-three, are bent into nearly a half-circle, thus making a U-shaped midship section, and are ¾-inch wide by ⅓-inch thick, flat on the outer side and round on the inner. Their ends are mortised into the lower edge of the gunwale and fastened with wooden treenails. They are set in about 3 inches apart and decrease gradually in size fore and aft. Outside of these are seven equidistant streaks running fore and aft, ¾ inch to 1 inch wide and ¼ inch thick, of which the upper on each side reaches neither stem nor stern. These are lashed to the ribs with a strip of whalebone, which makes a round turn about one rib, above the streak, going under the rib first, and a similar turn round the next rib below the streak (Fig. 339).

There is a stout keelson, hemi-elliptical in section, under the cockpit only. This is 4½ feet long, about 2 inches deep, and 1½ inches wide, and is fastened in the middle and about 1 foot from each end by a strip of whalebone, which passes through a transverse hole in the keelson, round the rib on one side, back through the keelson, and round the rib on the other side twice. The end is wrapped spirally round the turns on one side and tucked into the hole in the keelson. The deck beams are not quite so stout as the ribs and are mortised into the upper edge of the gunwales a little below the level of the deck. The ends are secured by lashings or stitches of some material which are concealed by the skin cover. They are about as far apart as the ribs, but neither exactly correspond nor break joints with the latter.

At the after end of the cockpit is an extra stout beam or thwart to support the back, 1¾ inches wide and three-quarters inch thick, with rounded edges, the ends of which are apparently lashed with thong. The first beam forward of the cockpit is rounded, and appears to be a natural crook forming a #U#-shaped arch, and is followed by seven #V#-shaped knees, thickest in the middle and enlarged a little at the ends, successively decreasing in height to the seventh, which is almost straight. This makes the rise in the deck forward of the cockpit.

Every alternate deck beam is braced to the gunwale at each end by an oblique lashing of whalebone, running from a transverse hole in the beam about 1 inch from the gunwale to a corresponding hole in the gunwale, three-quarters inch from the lower edge. The lashing makes three or four turns through these holes and around the lower edge of the gunwale, and the end is wrapped spirally round these turns for their whole length. Above these beams a narrow batten runs fore and aft amidships from cockpit to stem and stern, mortised into the two beams at the cockpit, and lashed to the others with whalebone. The coaming of the cockpit is made of a single flat piece of wood, 1¾ inches broad and one-quarter inch thick, bent into a hoop with the ends lapping about 6 inches and “sewed” together with stitches of whalebone. Round the upper edge of this, on the outside, is fitted a “half-round” hoop, which appears to be made of willow, three-quarters by one-third inch, with its ends lapped about 4 inches, this lap coming over the joint of the larger hoop. It is fastened on by short stitches of whalebone about 5 or 6 inches apart, leaving room enough between the two hoops to allow a lacing of fine whalebone to pass through. The coaming is put on over the edge of the skin cover, which is drawn up tight inside of the coaming and over its upper edge and fastened by a lacing of whalebone, which runs spirally round the outer hoop and through holes about one-half inch apart in the edge of the cover.

The coaming fits over the crown of the arch of the forward deck beam and rests on the middle of the thwart aft, and is secured by lashings of whalebone, which pass through holes in the coaming and over its upper edge. The forward lashing makes three turns, which pass round the beam with the end wrapped spirally round the parts between beam and coaming; the after lashing, four similar turns, which pass through a hole in the thwart and around its forward edge. On each side is a stout vertical brace of wood 3¼ inches long, 1 inch wide, and one-half inch thick, with rounded edges and corners. The ends are cut out parallel to the breadth, so that one end fits on to the upper edge of the gunwale, while the other receives the lower edge of the coaming, protruding on the outside through a hole in the cover.

The cover is of six sealskins, put together heads to tails, so that there is only one longitudinal seam, which runs irregularly along the deck. The transverse seams, which run obliquely across the bottom are double and sewed with a blind stitch, like the seams already described on the waterproof boots, from the inside. These seams are nearly 2 inches wide. The longitudinal seam is sewed in the same way from the outside, but not so broadly lapped, with the edge turned over into a roll. There are two pieces of stout thong stretched across the deck, one forward of the cockpit and the other aft, which serve to fasten articles to the deck. The thong passes out through a hole in the gunwale, one-half inch from the upper edge and 6 inches from the cockpit, on the starboard side forward and on the port side aft, and is secured by a knot in the end inboard. The other end passes in through a corresponding hole in the other gunwale and is loosely knotted to the deck beams, so that the line can be slackened off or tautened up at pleasure. Three feet from the bow is a becket for holding spears, etc., fastened into two little holes bored diagonally outward through the edge of the gunwales. It is of two parts of seal thong, one part twisted round the other, but is broken in the middle, so that only one-half of it is left. The weight of this kaiak in its present dry condition is 32 pounds.

This is about the ordinary pattern of kaiak used at Point Barrow, and is a medium-sized one. These boats are made to fit the size of the owner, a youth or small man using a much smaller and lighter kaiak than a heavy adult. They are never made to carry more than one person, and I have never heard of their being used by the women. In carrying the kaiak across the land from lake to lake, it is held horizontally against the side with the bow pointing forward, by thrusting the forearm into the cockpit. We never saw them carried on the head, in the manner practised at Fury and Hecla Straits.[N429]

[Footnote N429: Lyon, Journal, p. 233. See also Capt. Lyon’s figure in Parry’s 2d Voy., pl. opposite p. 274.]

In entering the canoe the man takes great care to wipe his feet clean of sand and gravel, which would work down under the timbers and chafe the skin. The canoe is launched in shoal water, preferably alongside of a little bank, and the man steadies it by sticking down his paddle on the outer side and holding it with his left hand, while he balances himself on his right foot, and with his free hand carefully wipes his left foot. He then steps with his left foot into the kaiak, and still balancing himself with the help of the paddle, lifts and wipes his right foot before he steps in with that. He then pushes his feet and legs forward under the raised deck, settles himself in a proper position for trimming the boat, and shoves off. As elsewhere, the kaiak is always propelled with a paddle.