THE RIGHT WHALE AND BOWHEAD 



As far back as tradition goes, the Eskimos of 

 northern Alaska have been a race of mighty hunters 

 and whalemen. At the largest villages, near every 

 cape and headland, the passing of the dark days of 

 winter marked the preparations for the great ''devil 

 dance," the invariable prelude to the spring whale 

 hunt. About April i, all the able-bodied men of the 

 village would build across the ice to the water a road 

 over which they might haul their boats and sleds. 

 Their gear, consisting of a few fathoms of walrus- 

 hide line fitted with sealskin bladders and tied to a 

 short flint-headed spear, was primitive enough, but ef- 

 fective. 



On the appearance of a bowhead all the boats took 

 up a position in some comfortable nook along the 

 edge of the ice-floe. When the whale came near a 

 boat, the head man, whose place was usually in the 

 stern, turned the canoe head-on toward the ice and 

 sang the great death song, handed down from some 

 famous whale-killing ancestor. This consumed fifteen 

 or twenty minutes and then the harpooner thrust his 

 flint-headed spear into the whale, doing little except 

 frighten it nearly to death. 



As it passed the next canoe the same performance, 

 without the song, was repeated, continuing until the 

 number of skin pokes made it impossible for the whale 

 to dive. Then the natives paddled up to finish the 

 animal with their flint-headed killing lances. 



When the whale was dead a slip, or runway, had to 

 be cut to the edge of the water and the carcass se- 

 cured by walrus-hide lines passed round a rude wind- 



251 



