MURDOCH.) UMIAKS. 331) 



loops of thong as in the diagram Fig. , 544. To keep the oar from chaf 

 ing the skin on the gunwale, they lash to the latter a long plate of 

 bone. No. 89&amp;lt;&amp;gt;9&amp;lt;&amp;gt; [1197] from Utkiavwln is one of these plates. Two 

 of these oars are commonly used in an umiak, one forward and one aft, 

 and the women row with great vigor, swinging well from the hips, but 

 do not keep stroke. The use of oars is so unusual among savages that 

 it would be natural to suppose that these people had adopted the cus 

 tom from the whites. If this be the case, the custom reached them 

 long ago, and through very indirect channels. 



When Thomas Simpson, in 1837, bought an umiak from some Point 

 Barrow natives at Dease Inlet, he bought with it &quot;four of their slender 

 oars, which they used as tent poles, besides a couple of paddles; lifted 

 the oars with lashings, and arranged our strange vessel so well that the 

 ladies were in raptures, declaring us to be genuine Esquimaux, and not 

 poor white men.&quot; 1 The custom, 

 moreover, appears to be wide 

 spread since Lyon speaks of see 

 ing in 1821, &quot;two very clumsy 

 oars with flat blades, pulled by 

 women.&quot; in the umiaks at Hud 

 son Strait. 2 It was practiced at 

 a still earlier date in Greenland; 1 



While at Point Barrow the oars have very narrow blades and the 

 double paddles very broad ones, the reverse seemed to be the case in 

 Greenland, where the double paddle, as already noticed, has blades not 

 over 3 or 4 inches broad. Crautz describes the oars as &quot; short and 

 broad before, pretty much like a shovel, but only longer, and * * 

 eon fined to their places on the gunnel with a strap of seal s leather.&quot; 

 (Vol. 2, p. 149 and pi. VI ) Although both oars and sails are un 

 doubtedly quite ancient inventions (Frobisher in his description of Meta 

 Incognita in Hakluyt s Voyages (1589) pp. 621 and C28, speaks of skin 

 boats with sails of entrail), 4 I am strongly inclined to believe that they 

 are both considerably more recent than the paddles, not only on general 

 principles, but from the fact that the whaling umiaks -t Point Barrow 

 use only paddles. There is no practical reason agaius t using either 

 oars or sails, and in fact the latter would often be of great advantage 

 in silently approaching a whale, as the American whalemen have long 



1 Narrative, p. 148. 



Journal, p. 30. Compare also Chappell, &quot; Hudson Bay,&quot; p. 57. 



3 See Eged* , Greenland, p. 111. 



These passages beiug, as far as I know, the earliest description of the umiak und kaiak are worth 

 quotation: &quot;Their boats are made all of Seale skins, with a keel of wood within the skinne; the 

 proportion of them is like a Spanish shallop, sane only they be flat in the hottome, and sharp at both 

 endes &quot; (p. fil!l, 157ti). Again: &quot;They haue two sorts of boats made of leather, set out on the inner 

 side with quarters of wood, artificially tyed with thongs of the same; the greater sort are not much 

 unlike our wherries, wherein sixt&amp;lt;-ene or twenty men may sitte; they have for a sayle, drest the 

 guttes of sueh beasts as they kill, very fine and thinne, which they aewe together; the other boate is 

 but for one man to eitte and rowe in, with one oarc &quot; (p. 628, 1577). 



