384 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 



keeping one ball constantly in the air. Some of the women are very 

 skillful at this, keeping the balls up for a long time. This play is 

 accompanied by a chant sung to a monotonous tune with very little 

 air, but strongly marked time. 1 never succeeded in catching the words 

 of this chant, which are uttered with considerable rapidity, and do not 

 appear to be ordinary words. It begins &quot; yut: yive yuka, yi iB yuB yuka ; &quot; 

 and some of the words are certainly indelicate to .judge from the une 

 quivocal gestures by which I once saw them accompanied. 



In the winter the young women and girls are often to be seen tossing 

 a snowball with their feet. A girl wets some snow and makes a ball about 

 as big as her two fists, which of course immediately becomes a lump of 

 ice. This she balances on the toe of one foot and with a kick and a 

 jump tosses it over to the other foot which catches it and tosses it back. 

 Some women will keep this up for a number of strokes. 



The young people of both sexes also sometimes play football, kicking 

 about an old mitten or boot stuffed with rags or bits of waste skin. I 

 never saw them set up goals and play a regular game as they did in 

 Greenland. 1 



The little girls also play with the skipping rope. I once watched 

 three little girls jumping. Two swung the rope and the other stood in 

 the middle and jumped. First they swung the rope under her feet to 

 the right, then back under her feet to the left, and then once or twice 

 wholly round under her feet and over her head, and then began again. 2 

 They also play at housekeeping, laying sticks round to represent the 

 sides of the house, or outlining the house by pressing up ridges of 

 snow between their feet. Sometimes they mark out a complicated laby 

 rinth on the snow in this way, and the game appears to be that one 

 shall guard this and try to catch the others if they come in, as in many 

 of the games of civilized children. 



I have already spoken of the formal children s dances. They often 

 also dance by themselves, beating on old tin cans for drums. One 

 night I saw a party of children having quite an elaborate performance 

 near our station. The snow at the time was drifted up close under the 

 eaves of the house. On the edge of the roof sat three little boys, each 

 beating vigorously on an empty tomato can and singing at the top of 

 his lungs, while another boy and a little girl were dancing on the snow 

 waving their arms and singing as usual, and at the same time trying to 

 avoid another girl about thirteen years old, who represented a demon. 

 She was stooping forward, and moving slowly round in time with the 

 music, turning from side to side and rolling her eyes fiercely, while she 

 licked the blade of an open clasp knife, drawing it slowly across her 

 lips. They seemed intensely in earnest, and were enjoying themselves 

 hugely. After dancing a while at the station they went over to the 

 village, and as they told me the next day spent the whole night singing 

 in a vacant snow-house. 



1 Sw Egedc, p. 161, and Crantz, vol. 1, p. 177. 

 3 Comparo Parry s Secoiid Voyage, p. 541. 



