MURDOCH. ] STONE POTS. 91 
in both pots are holes showing where they have been mended by whale- 
bone stitches, fragments of which are still sticking in one pot. This 
method of mending soapstone vessels by sewing is mentioned by Capt. 
Parry as practiced at Iglulik.! 
No. 89883 [1097] (Fig. 21) is a small pot of a quite different shape, 
best understood from the figure. Round the edge are eight holes for 
strings nearly equidistant. The outside is rough, especially on the 
bottom. One of the sides is much gapped, and the acute tip has been 
broken off obliquely and mended with a stitch of whalebone. The care 
used in mending these vessels shows that they were valuable and not 
easily replaced. I can 
find no previous mention 
of the use of stone ves- 
sels for cooking on the 
western coast, and there 
are no specimens in the 
National Museum collec- 
tions. The only Eskimo 
stone vessels are a couple 
of small stone bowls from 
Bristol Bay. These are 
very much the shape of 
the wooden bowls above described, and appear to have been used as oil 
dishes and not for cooking, as the inside is crusted with grease, while the 
outside is not blackened. On the other hand, stone cooking pots are 
very generally employed even now by the eastern Eskimos, and have 
been frequently described.?, The close resemblance of the pots from 
Point Barrow to those described by Capt. Parry, taken in connection 
with Dr. Simpson’s statement? that the stone lamps were brought from 
the east, renders it very probable that the kettles were obtained in the 
same way. The absence of this utensil among the southern Eskimo of 
Alaska is probably due to the fact that being inhabitants of a well 
wooded district they would have no need of contrivances for cooking 
over a lamp. 
I obtained three fragments of pottery, which had every appearance 
of great age and were said to be pieces of a kind of cooking-pot which 
they used to make “long ago, when there were no iron kettles.” The 
material was said to be earth (nu/na), bear’s blood, and feathers,‘ 
and appears to have been baked. They are irregular fragments (No. 
Fic. 21,—Small stone pot. 
12d Voyage, p. 502. 
*T need only refer to Crantz, who deseribes the ‘‘ bastard-marble kettle,” hanging ‘by four strings 
fastened to the roof, which kettle is a foot long and half a foot broad, and shaped like a longish box” 
(vol. 1, p. 140); the passage-from Parry’s 2d Voyage, referred to above; Kumlien, op. cit., p. 20 (Cum- 
berland Gulf); Boas, ‘Central Eskimo,” p. 545; and Gilder, Schwatka’s Search, p. 260 (West Shore 
of Hudson Bay). 
8Op. cit., pp. 267-269. 
4Compare the cement for joining pieces of soapstone vessels mentioned by Boas (‘Central Eskimo,” 
p. 526) consisting of ‘‘seal’s blood, a kind of clay, and dog’s hair.” 
