95 



knife" is used. This convenient utensil is put to a variety of uses; 

 for cutting out skin clothing, for cutting and chopping up meat, 

 and for scraping the hair off skins and also the dark coloured 

 outer skin if "white" boots are desired. The skin scrapers 

 described are specialized utensils, but the ulu is an all-round 

 handy tool in the hands of an Eskimo woman. It appears in 

 our modern civilization in the saddler's knife. 



The shape of the blade is semi-lunar, and may appear with 

 or without a handle. It finds its prototype in a roughly trian- 

 gular piece of slate or a thin slab of chipped stone with one side 

 sharpened (Plate XXII Be). In the older specimens, 

 particularly of the Central and Western Eskimo, the handle is set 

 directly on to the blade. An evidently later type has an inter- 

 vening piece, forming a T-shaped handle, which is riveted to the 

 blade. The modern knife follows this shape (Plate XXI I B b). 

 Mason has given us a very careful study of the ulu. 1 His divi- 

 sions, however, appear to me to be more theoretical than practical. 

 It is very hard to distinguish between the adoption of white 

 material to native ends and strictly native work among the 

 Eskimo. One should hesitate in modern collections to say that 

 a stone-bladed knife was older than an iron-bladed one, or that 

 a bone-hafted implement was more truly native than a wooden- 

 hafted one, unless one took into account the location from which 

 the implement came and the supply of material. The stone 

 scrapers figured from Chesterfield inlet are quite recent. The 

 wonderful conservatism of the Eskimo in material culture 

 appears to apply to form rather than to material, as witness his 

 use of copper, iron, stone, or tin for knife blades in various 

 localities, and bone, ivory, wood, or deer horn for handles. As 

 in the house of snow, stone, whalerib, or driftwood in different 

 sections of the Eskimo world, adaption of the material at hand 

 to a persistent pattern appears the underlying motive. 



The ulu is also found among the Indian tribes bordering on 

 the Eskimo, as the Cree and Montagnais. 



While no one has disputed the Eskimo origin of the ulu, 

 or woman's knife, considerable discussion has arisen as to whether 



1 O. T. Mason, The ulu or woman's knife of the Eskimo, Rep. U. S. National Museum, 

 1890. 



