INNUIT LIFE AND LAND. 411 



mented with pieces of red cloth and bits of tails of that rodent. The 

 women wear no head-covering except in the depth of winter, when 

 they pull the hoods of reindeer parkas over their heads. The men 

 wear caps, made of the skin of an Arctic marmot, resembling in shape 

 those famous Scotch "bonnets," so commonly worn by Canadians. 



Many young men wear a small band of fur around the head, 

 into which they insert eagle and hawk-feathers on festive occasions. 

 A former custom of this tribe, of inserting thin strips of bone or 

 the quills of porcupines through an aperture cut in the septum, 

 seems to have become obsolete, though the nasal slit can still be 

 seen on all grown male individuals. Their ears are also universally 

 pierced for an insertion of pendants, but these seem at present to 

 be worn by children only, who discard them as they grow up. In 

 fact, all ornamentation in the shape of beads, shells, etc., appears to 

 be lavished upon their little ones, who toddle about with pendants 

 rattling from ears, nose, and lower lip, and attired in frocks stiff 

 Avith embroidery of beads or porcupine-quills, while the older girls 

 and boys run almost naked, and the parents themselves are imper- 

 fectly protected against cold and weather by a single fur garment. 



The use of the true Eskimo kayak is universal among the Kus- 

 kokvagmute, but in timbered regions of the upper river, in the 

 vicinity of Kolmakovsky, the birch-bark canoe also is quite com- 

 mon. The latter, however, is not used for extended voyages or for 

 hunting, but is reserved chiefly for attending to fish-traps, for the 

 use of women in their berrying and fishing expeditions, and for 

 crossing rivers and streams. 



The only indigenous fruit which this large population of the 

 Lower Kuskokvim can enjoy is that of the pretty little " moroshkie," 

 or red raspberry,* which grows in great abundance on its short, 

 tiny stalks throughout all swales and over rolling tundra. These 

 berries are saturated in rancid oil, however, before they are eaten 

 to any great extent, being air-dried first and pressed into thin cakes ; 

 then, as wanted, they are pounded up in mortars and boiled, or 

 simply thrown into a wooden basin (or kantag) of oil. Then the 

 fingers, or rude horn spoons, are dipped in by happy feeders, who 

 apparently relish this ill-savored combination just as keenly as one 

 of our Gothamitic gourmands appreciates the flavor of a Chesapeake 

 terrapin stewed in champagne. 



* Rubua chamwmorus. 



