

ABORIGINAL SKIN-DRESSING. 583 



This is grasped iu the haiid, bottom up, and drawn across the hide until 

 a quantity of fat is secured, which is deftly conveyed to the stone lamp 

 or some convenient receptacle. (Plates LXXX-LXXXI.) 



In connection with the making of moccasin is the art of tanning 

 deer-skins. It is done with the brain of the deer, the tanning properties 

 of which, according to tradition, were discovered by accident. The 

 brain is mingled with moss, to make it adhere sufficiently to be formed 

 into a cake, which is afterwards hung by the fire to dry. It is thus 

 preserved for years. When the deer skin is fresh, the hair, and also 

 the grain of the skin are taken off, over a cylindrical beam, with a 

 wooden blade or stone scraper. A solution is then made by boiling a 

 cake of the brain in water, and the moss, which is of no use, being re- 

 moved, the skin is soaked in it for a few hours. It is then wrung out 

 and stretched, until it becomes dry and pliable. Should it be a thick 

 one, it would be necessary to repeat the process until it becomes 

 thoroughly penetrated by the solution. The skin is still porous and 

 easily torn. To correct both, a smoke is made, and the skin placed over 

 it in such a manner as to inclose it entirely. Each side is smoked in 

 this way until the pores are closed, and the skin has become thoroughly 

 toughened, with its color chauged from white to a kind of brown. They 

 also use the brain of other animals, and sometimes the backbone of the 

 eel, which, pounded up and boiled, possesses nearly the same properties 

 for tauniug. Bear-skins were never tanned. They were scraped and 

 softened, after which they were dried, and used without removing the 

 hair, either as an article of apparel or as a mattress to sleep upon. 

 (Lewis H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 1851, pp. 301, 362.) 



After flaying the seal, the Eskimo often finds the inner surface of the 

 skin coated with fat, and the first operation is to remove this by means 

 of a special tool, which we may call the fat-scraper. By means of this 

 the fat is scraped clean from the hide and placed in the soap-stone lamp, 

 for which purpose some of the forms are specially adapted. These im- 

 plements occur in the Eskimo area all the way from Ungava to Kodiak 

 and are of three forms, the spoon-shaped, the cylindrical, and the cup- 

 shaped scraper. The simplest form is a segment of reindeer scapula 

 (Rangifer tarandm), so cut as to have the inferior border at the back of 

 the knife and the thin part between this border and the spine for the 

 blade. This implement is also used for scaling and opening salmon and 

 is a most efficient tool. Almost as simple as the foregoing, is a fat- 

 scraper made of the split antler of the reindeer. The spongy part is 

 scraped out and the borders brought to the proper edge. Some speci- 

 mens of this type are ingeniously worked out, so as to have one of the 

 small prongs for a handle, while the spoon or scraping portion is from 

 the split portion of the antler. Bits of walrus-tusks are also carved 

 into the shape of a long-bladed spoon. From the long spoon-shaped 

 scraper, branches off, in the region between Behrings Strait and Norton 

 Sound, a very dainty ladle-shaped implement with projections on the. 



