MURDOCH.] SNOWSHOES. 351 



used by the writer on many short excursions around the station 

 during the winters of 1881- 8U and 1882- 83. They were old when pur 

 chased. 



1 had but one opportunity of seeing the process of making the frames 

 of the snowshoes. Ilubw ga, the &quot;inland&quot; native frequently mentioned, 

 a particularly skillful workman, undertook to make a pair of snow- 

 shoes for Lieut. Bay at our quarters, but did not succeed in finishing 

 them, as the ash lumber which we brought from San Francisco proved 

 too brittle for the purpose. Having a long piece of wood, he &quot;got out&quot; 

 the whole rim in one piece. Ordinarily the splice at the toe must be 

 made, at least temporarily, before the frame can be bent into shape. 

 He softened up the wood by wrapping it in rags wet with hot water. 

 Some of the other natives, however, recommended that the wood 

 should be immersed in the salt water for a day or two, from which I 

 infer that this is a common practice. After slowly bending the toe, 

 with great care, nearly into shape, he inserted into the bend a flat block 

 of wood of the proper shape for the toe and lashed the frame to this. 

 A poijited block was also used to give the proper shape to the heel; 

 the bars being inserted in the mortises before the ends were brought 

 together. The temporary lashings are kept on till the wood dries into 

 shape. The toes are turned up by tying the shoes together, sole to 

 sole, and inserting a transverse stick between the tips of the toes. 



The use of finely finished suowshoes of this pattern is of compara 

 tively recent date at Point Barrow. Dr. Simpson 1 is explicit concern 

 ing the use of snowshoes in his time (1853- 5f&amp;gt;). He says: Snowshoes 

 are so seldom used in the north where the drifted snow presents a hard 

 frozen surface to walk upon, that certainly not half a dozen pairs were 

 in existence at Point Barrow at the time of our arrival, and those were 

 of an inferior sort.&quot; 1 have already mentioned the universal employ 

 ment of these suowshoes at the present day, so that the custom must 

 have arisen in the last thirty years. The pattern of shoe now used is 

 identical with those of the Tinne or Athabascan Indians (as is plainly 

 shown by the National Museum collections), and 1 am inclined to be 

 lieve that the Point Barrow natives have learned to use them from the 

 &quot;Nunatafimiun,&quot; from whom, indeed, they purchase ready-made snow- 

 shoes at the present day, as we ourselves observed. The &quot;Nunatan- 

 miun,&quot; or the closely related people of the Kuwftk River, are known to 

 have intimate trading relations with the, Indians, and even in Simp 

 son s time 2 used the, Indian shoe, sometimes at least. The fact that in 

 recent times families of the &quot;Nunatanmiun&quot; have established the habit 

 of spending the winter with the people of Point Barrow and associat 

 ing with them in the winter deer-hunt, would explain how the latter 

 came to recognize the superior excellence of the Indian shoe. 



This is more likely than that they learned to use them from the east 

 ern natives, whom they only meet for a short time in summer, though 



Op. cit., p. 243. Op. cit., p. 2J4. 



