CHAPTER X 



LOST IN THE MACKENZIE DELTA 



We started on December first. This was my initial 

 winter journey and on it I learned a good many things 

 about winter travel. The first was how to dress. In 

 this I had been well coached both by Roxy and by Sten, 

 and the women had made me up a suitable outfit of 

 clothing. 



The ideal clothing for winter travel is made entirely of 

 caribou skin. We speak of it as being tanned because 

 we have no better word, but really it is not tanned at 

 all — only scraped. 



When I lived among the Dogrib and Yellowknife In- 

 dians of Great Bear Lake (1910-11), I found they had 

 an elaborate system of tanning. First they dried the skin 

 thoroughly, next they rubbed all over the surface a paste 

 made out of decayed caribou liver or decayed caribou 

 brains. Then they rolled the hide up and allowed it to 

 remain for a day or two. This was only one of several 

 processes through which they put the skin. At the end 

 it was soft, had a yellowish color on the flesh side, and 

 a pungent odor. The entire process took a week or more. 



A Mackenzie Eskimo woman gets better results with 

 one-fifth of the labor and in one-tenth of the time. She 

 just scrapes the skin with a blunt scraper, then dampens 

 it, dries it, and scrapes it a second time. This makes the 

 skin if anything softer than the Indian tan, a beautiful 

 pure white on the flesh side and without any odor. Fur- 

 thermore, the Indian process fills the pores of the skin 



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