-186 



THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 



smoothly carved and has a fragment of sky-blue glass inlaid to repre 

 sent the left eye and a bit of iron pyrites for the right. The flukes 

 have been split wholly oil and fastened on with a lashing of narrow 

 whalebone passing through a vertical hole in the &amp;lt;; small&quot; and round 

 the edge of the flukes. The flukes themselves have been split across 

 and appear to have been doweled together. This shows that the 

 owner attached considerable value to the object, or he would not have 

 taken the trouble to mend it when another could have been so easily 

 whittled out. In the middle of the belly is an oblong cavity, contain 

 ing something which probably adds greater power to the charm, What 

 this is can not be seen, as a band of sealskin with the hair shaved oft 

 has been shrunk on round the hinder half of the body and secured by a 

 seam on the right side. A double turn of sinew braid is knotted 



round the middle of 

 the body, leaving 

 two ends which are 

 tied together in a 

 loop, showing that 

 this object was 

 meant to beattached 

 somewhere about 

 the person. 



To this class also 

 probably belong the 

 skins or pieces of 

 animals worn as am 

 ulets, probably with a view of obtaining the powers of the particular 

 animal, as in so many cases in the stories related in liink s Tales and 

 Traditions. We frequently saw men wearing at the belt bunches of 

 the claws of the bear or wolverine, or the metacarpal bones of the 

 wolf. 1 The head or beak of the gull or raven 2 is also a common personal 

 amulet, and one man wore a small dried flounder. 3 



We collected a number of these animal amulets to be worn on the 

 person, but only succeeded in learning the special purpose of one 

 of them, No. 89532 [1307], from ITtkiavwin, which was said to be 

 intended to give good luck in deer hunting. It is a young unbranehed 

 antler of a reindeer, &amp;lt;i inches long, and apparently separated from the 

 skull at the &quot;bur,&quot; with the &quot; velvet&quot; skin still adhering, though most 

 of the hair is worn off except at the tip. A bit of sinew is tied round 

 the base. 

 No. 89522 [1573], from ITtkiavwin, is an amulet consisting of the last 



Fiji. 423. A.ueient whale amulet, of wood. 



Parry mentions bones of the wolverine woru as amulets at Fury and Hecla s Strait (second voyage, 

 p. 497). 



&quot;Compare the Greenland story told by Rink (Tales, etc., p. 195), when the man who has a gull for 

 his amulet is able to fly borne from sea because the gull seeks his prey far out at sea, while the one 

 whose amulet is a raven can not, because this bird seeks his prey landward.. Such an amulet as the 

 latter would probably be chosen with a view to making a man a successful deer hunter. 



3 Compare the (Ireenland story, where a salmon amulet makes a man too slippery to be caught by 

 his pursuers. (Kink Tales, etc., p. 182.) 



