356 



mos, before they learnt the use of the kayak, perhaps did not 

 use harpoons with detachable foreshaft at all. These questions 

 may have significance for the solution of the whole problem 

 regarding the origin of the Eskimo culture. 



Of the lances I have only seen the kayak lance ; this has 

 a detachable foreshaft with firmly attached point. Its length is 

 a little less than that of the kayak harpoon, but it is thick and 

 heavy like the latter. The foreshaft is sometimes a long piece 

 of bone with an inserted, short and flat iron point, sometimes 

 quite a short piece of bone with a long iron point inserted on 

 it; the latter is filed out of a piece of iron bar. As this lance 

 is also used as a throwing implement from the kayak, a small 

 bladder may be fastened at the upper end of the shaft of the 

 lance, so that the lance floats on the water, when it breaks 

 loose from the animal struck. On fig. 36 this small bladder is 

 shown lying at the back of the kayak just in front of the large 

 hunting-bladder. 



With regard to the bow and arrow and the kayak, the 

 Polar Eskimos use them just as the Central Eskimos and 

 especially the Baffin Landers do, as it was from Ponds Inlet, 

 as I have shown above, that they have learnt the use of these 

 implements. The bow is what F. v. Luschan has called a "com- 

 posite and strengthened" bow to distinguish it from the true 

 "compound" bow, which has its finest representative in the 

 Asiatic, so-called Turkish bow. The Polar Eskimo bow consists 

 of 3 pieces of reindeer antler, the two meeting-places of which 

 are covered by an upper and under plate of the same material 

 and bound round by leather thongs ; on the back of the bow 

 there is also a number of longitudinal leather thongs or, in very 

 fine examples, strings formed from plaited tendons of the narwhal. 



The bow has now been displaced by the gun, but most of 

 the men have used the bow and arrow in the reindeer hunts 

 in their younger days, and they can still both manage and 

 make these things. In shooting the arrow is held between the 



