310 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
IMPLEMENTS FOR PROCURING AND PREPARING FOOD. 
Blubberhooks (ni‘ksigt),—For catching hold of pieces of blubber or 
flesh when ‘cutting in” a whale or walrus, or dragging them round on 
shore or on the ice, or in the blubber rooms, they use hooks made by 
fastening a backward-pointing prong of ivory on 
the end of a wooden handle, which is bent into 
a crook at the other end. Those specially in- 
tended for use in the boats have handles 7 or 8 
feet long, while those for shore use are only 2 or 
3 feet long. These implements, which are com- 
mon all along the Alaskan coast, may 
sometimes be used as boathooks, as ap- 
pears to be the case farther south, though 
I never saw them so employed. We 
brought home two short hooks and one 
long one, No. 56766 [126], Fig.311. This 
has a prong of walrus ivory fastened to 
a spruce pole, 7 feet 7? inches long, to 
the other end of which is fastened a 
short crook of antler. The pole is ellip- 
tical in section. The crook is a nearly 
straight “branch” of an antler with a 
transverse arm at the base made by cut- 
ting out a piece of the “beam” to fit 
against the pole, and is held on by three 
neat lashings of whalebone of the usual 
pattern. The upper two of these are 
transverse lashings passing through cor- 
responding holes in the pole and crook. 
The lowest, which is at the tip of the 
arm, is at right angles to these, pa 
through wood and antler. The lashing 
of whalebone close to the tip of the crook, 
passing through a hole and round the 
under side of the latter, is to keep the 
Loe blab band from slipping off. The prong is 
ber hook. held on by two lashings of small seal 
thong, each passing through a large transverse 
hole in the prong and a corresponding one in 
the pole. The upper pair of holes do not exactly 
match. There are also two unused holes, one py. 312. Short-handled blubber 
in the pole below the upper hole and one above hook. 
the upper hole in the prong. These holes and the new appearance of 
the lashings indicate that the prong is part of another hook recently 
fitted to this pole. The two lashings are made by a single piece of thong. 
ssing 
