224 



THE POINT BAKROW ESKIMO. 



and acts as a drag on his movements until he is &quot;played&quot; enough for 



the hunters to come up and dispatch him. 

 This weapon is called u nakpuk, &quot;the great 

 u na or spear.&quot; U na (unak, u nan) appears 

 to be a generic term in Eskimo for harpoon, 

 but at Point Barrow is now restricted to the 

 harpoon used for stabbing seals as they come 

 up to their breathing holes. 



We collected six of these walrus harpoons 

 complete and forty-two separate heads. Of 

 these, No. 50770 [534], Fig. 214, has the most 

 typical shaft and loose shaft. The shaft is 

 of spruce 71 inches long, roughly rounded, 

 and tapering from a diameter of 1 inches at 

 the tip to 0-8 at the butt. The foreshaft is of 

 white walrus ivory, G-7 inches long, exclusive 

 of the wedge-shaped tang which fits into a 

 cleft in the tip of the shaft. It is somewhat 

 club-shaped, being 1-6 inches in diameter at 

 the tip and tapering to 1-3 just above the 

 butt, which expands to the diameter of the 

 shaft, and is separated from the tang by a 

 square transverse shoulder. The shaft and 

 foreshaft are fastened together by a whip 

 ping of broad seal thong, put on wet, one end 

 passing through a hole in the foreshaft one- 

 quarter inch from the shaft, and kept from 

 slipping by a low transverse ridge on each 

 side of the tang. In the tip of the foreshaft 

 is a deep, round socket to receive the loose 

 shaft, which is a tapering rod of walrus ivory 

 4-4 inches long, shouldered off at the butt, 

 which is 0-7 inch in diameter, to a blunt, 

 rounded tang 0-9 inch long. It fits loosely 

 , into the foreshaft up to the shoulder, and is 



5 secured by a piece of narrow seal thong 



which passes through a transverse hole one- 

 half inch above the shoulder. The end is 

 spliced to the standing part with double slits 

 about inches from the loose shaft, and the 

 other end makes a couple of turns outside of 

 the lashing on the shaft mentioned above and 

 is secured with two half-hitches. 



The line catch (ki lerbwlii) is a little, blunt, 

 backward-pointing hook of ivory inserted in 

 the shaft 17 inches from the tip and projecting 



about one-third inch. Ten and one-fourth inches farther back and 90 



