326 



THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT 



[ETH. ANN. 18 



it was said, was due to the dog's hain-bone which he had with him, and 



thereafter he carried this bone and adopted a mark to represent it in 



place of his totem 

 sign, as did his sou 

 after him. 



At Sabotnisky, on 

 the lower Yukon, I 

 saw an oval door of 

 hewn boards in a 

 storehouse, on which 

 was marked,with red 

 ocher, the outline of 

 an extended wolfskin 

 with the rude figure 

 of a wolf outlined on 

 the skin and sur- 

 rounded by a circle 

 (figure 117). In reply 

 to a question, one of 

 the villagers told me 

 that it was the fam- 

 ily mark of one of the 

 villagers. "All of our 

 people," he added, 

 "have marks which 

 have been handed 

 down by our fathers 

 from very long ago, 

 and we put them on 

 all of our things." 



Another man at 

 this village said that 

 his ancient namesake 



had been a famous bowman, and once while hunting, having nothing 



but blunt-head arrows, such as are used for killing rabbits and other 



small game, came across a large red bear, which he immediately began 



to shoot; finally he broke all of the 



bear's bones and killed it. After this 



he adopted the red bear as his sign and 



his descendants still use this mark. 

 Figure 118 represents a thin board, 



on which tobacco is cut, which was 



Tig. 118 — Tobacco board -witli bear and loach sigua. 





Fig. 119 — Figures on a grave box. 



obtained at Sabotnisky. There is a 



broad, shallow groove along each side, 



succeeded by a small groove along its inner edge. The broad groove has 



two incised curved marks representing bear claws. On each side and 



y 



