14 CAVE RELICS OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS. 



yoke, above mentioned, would take a very large amount of space, and, I fear, 

 give but a very inadequate idea of it even then. It needs to be carefully studied 

 to be appreciated. In order to give some notion of it it is necessary to describe 

 the materials used in similar but less delicate work by the Innuit of Norton 

 Sound. These ornamental bands are commonly used by all tribes of the Eskimo 

 stock, though none approach in perfection that work done by the early Aleuts. 

 Something similar, but of a totally different style, is used by the Tinneh Indians, 

 whose material is restricted to deer skin, moose hair, and porcupine quills. The 

 Innuit girl, for her work bag, requires the skin of the cod, or other smooth- 

 skinned fish, stretched and dried, which presents somewhat such an appearance 

 as grey marbled paper. Next, the skin of the young hair-seal, scraped and 

 dressed very thin, and made as white as possible. Part of this has the hair cut 

 evenly and closely till it is not longer than the pile of silk velvet. Another part 

 is entirely deprived of the hair, and is as white as fine kid. Then of the gullet 

 of the same seal is made a stout parchment, either white or yellow, or frequently 

 colored red, black, or green with native pigments : oxide of iron, charcoal and 

 oil, and a green mould found in decaying birch wood (Peziza.) Then the skin of 

 fur animals is taken, and, while the soft fur is untouched, the inside, after being 

 dressed, is colored as above ; a narrow strip thus forming a pretty fringe. The 

 white belly, throat, and leg patches of the reindeer, in summer, are carefully 

 selected for those parts with the whitest and finest hair, which is cut to a uniform 

 shortness. With these, and plenty of whale or deer sinew for making thread, 

 and with needles, her repertory is nearly complete. These articles are cut in 

 narrow strips ; the finer the work the narrower must be the strip, or they may be 

 made, by cutting into little squares, into a chequered pattern ; and even here the 

 ornamentation does not stop, for in the seam itself are frequently inserted 

 feathers or deer hairs, such as have been previously described. Very few 

 civilized work-women could rival the finer kinds of this work, even with the 

 most delicate needles, and when we recollect that the ancient Aleiit women 

 worked with awls formed of bird s bones, ground on a stone, the delicacy and 

 minuteness of their stitches becomes more wonderful still. In the present 

 case the yoke is an inch wide, exclusive of the fringe, and one of the strips is a 

 quarter of an inch in width, leaving for the twelve other strips, of which it is 

 composed, (and which are to be distinguished only by the aid of a glass,) scarcely 

 more than six-hundredths of an inch each. Two of these strips are further 

 ornamented, one being black with white reindeer hair stitches so intersected as 

 to form a succession of small white crosses on a black ground ; the other with 

 the intersections of the white stitches at the upper edge, instead of the middle, 

 forming a continuous zigzag line on a red base. The order of the strips, 

 reckoning from above, is as follows : 1, finely trimmed hair-seal with the hair on, 

 but cut to five-hundredths of an inch in length ; 2, red colored parchment ; 3, 



