204 Morten P. Porsild. 



a type which Mason has not reproduced; in the present work it is 

 figured in Fig. 45, No. 3 and corresponds with Mason's type from 

 South Alaska: indeed from each individual district from which a 

 series of specimens of ancient and recent times is forthcoming we 

 can demonstrate all Mason's types, and thereby fully establish the 

 inaccuracy of his deduction. And again his explanation of the 

 influence of European whalers and traders on the forms from Ang- 

 magsalik cannot be accepted without question, as it is well known 

 that such an influence had not been exerted there at the time when 

 Holm visited it. 



We must therefore try to агпл^е at an understanding of the forms 

 in some other way. By following our ordinary method we ap- 

 parently get no further, as at the outset the first question "What 

 is the object of the implement?" is not so readily answered, since 

 the objects are so manifold; the implement before us being one for 

 universal employment. 



Hence, the question must be approached in a somewhat round- 

 about manner. We find that wherever the white man appears and 

 establishes a regular trade with the Eskimo, a type of Ulo of a 

 distinct form arises, shown in Fig. 45, 1, and it is immaterial which 

 Eskimo tribe is under consideration, and also by whom the imple- 

 ments were supplied. For it is of course not the purveyor who 

 decides how the article is to be fashioned, but the buyer or consumer, 

 in this case the Eskimo woman. We can solely on this account de- 

 signate this form as the ideal form; and all other forms are thus 

 only attempts at reaching the ideal form which are more or les& 

 successful according to the possibility of access to suitable materials. 

 On the other hand, the most primitive forms, produced before iron 

 was accessible, are everywhere the same.. 



We will now try to get to the bottom of the purpose of the Ulo,. 

 especially in its ideal form, and request, for example, a skilled West 

 Greenland housewife to cut up and quarter a seal in our presence, 

 asking that it be done "in the proper manner." This little addition 

 will cause her to place the seal on her newly-scoured wooden floor, 

 and to put on her Sunday clothes. The sleeves of her newly-washed^ 

 gaily-coloured jacket of European stuff are rolled up above the elbow, 

 her long boots of coloured skin have on the front fine embroidered 

 ornaments of bits of coloured skin, and if she be young and un- 

 married she has round her knee a broad piece of fine white linen 

 embroidered with coloured silk. It is now her aim to demonstrate 

 that the whole of the cutting up and the quartering of the big animal 

 can be accomplished without staining her garments with blood. We 

 shall witness a work of dissection where each separate incision gives 

 proof of the experience of generations, handed down from mother 

 to daughter. The Ulo used is the ideal form bought ready-made. 



