The Material Culture of the Eskimo in West Greenland. 191 



X. Man's Tools. 

 The Bow-drill. 



The most important and most indispensable of the tools belonging 

 to the Eskimo man are the knife and the bow-drill. They can be 

 produced everywhere in the Arctic from the materials which are 

 found or can be procured there: stone, bone and rawhide. The first 

 Eskimo, who in primeval times came to the Arctic Sea, may have 

 brought with him metals from happier regions, but when these were 

 worn out a substitute could only be procured by lucky chance from 

 wrecks or from meteoric, and in a single district in West Greenland, 

 telluric iron. But these chances were so rare that they could not be 

 depended on, and therefore we see stone implements employed on a 

 large scale, even in the districts here in Disco Bay where telluric 

 iron is found. 



Not only are all the larger and smaller holes required by the 

 implements for riveting, joining with bone nails, sewing with sinews 

 and lashing with rawhide lines produced with the bow-drill, but also 

 the row of holes which are preliminary to the separation of the small 

 pieces of bone required from the large pieces. In a slightly altered 

 form it is used to produce fire. With bow-drill and knife made from 

 elementary materials all the complicated hunting weapons, vessels 

 and sledges, harness, household articles and instruments for the 

 dressing of skins for clothing can be produced. 



Even to this day the cleverest and most expert workers in 

 bone, wood and soapstone use the bow-drill, and often prefer it to 

 European instruments which they could easily obtain if they would. 

 Now, of course, the point itself is of iron or steel. The instrument 

 consists of the handle {niggit, 250) — a piece of curved bone about 

 a foot long, and generally of antler. In each end is a hole in which 

 is fixed that piece of line which has to set the boring shaft in rotation. 

 The drill, that is to say the point itself, {niortût, 250) which form- 

 erly consisted of bone or stone, is fixed in a shaft of wood or bone 

 15 — 20 cm. long. In the first instance this is often provided 

 with a bone button at the upper end, in order here to lessen wear 

 and friction. In order to guide the boring shaft and to give it the 

 necessary pressure, a small piece with a hollow in which the upper 

 end of it revolves is used. There is now always a casting of lead in 

 the mouth-piece in order to lessen the friction, so that the specially 

 required bone from the foot of a Caribou is no longer needed, and 

 the upper end of boring shafts need no longer be capped with bone. 

 This piece, which is held between the front teeth, {oqûmiâ, 266 or 

 kingmiâ, 186) is often a special bone, of suitable shape, from the foot 

 LI- 15 



