MURDOCH. ] BASKETS. Bo 
workmanship of these baskets, and the statement that one of them 
came from the ‘great river, south,” I am well convinced that they were 
made by the Indians of the region between the Koyukuk and Silawik 
Rivers, and sold by them to the Kuwtntmiun, whence they could easily 
find their way to Point Barrow through the hands of the “ Nunatan- 
miun” traders. 
The Eskimo of Alaska south of Bering Strait make and use bas- 
kets of many patterns, but east of Point Barrow baskets are exceed- 
ingly rare. The only mention of anything of 
the kind will be found in Lyon’s Journal.'! He 
mentions seeing at Iglulik a “small round bas- 
ket composed of grass in precisely the same 
manner as those constructed by the Tibboo, in 
the southern part of Fezzan, and agreeing with 
Aah ‘ them also in its shape.” Now, these Africans 
A RAN make baskets of precisely the same “coiled” 
work (as Prof. Mason calls it) as the Tinné, so 
that in all probability what Lyon saw was one 
of these same baskets, carried east in trade, 
like other western objects already referred to. 
The name 4ma applied to these baskets at 
Point Barrow (the other two names appear to 
be simply ‘*bag” or receptacle) corresponds to 
the Greenlandic amat, the long thin runners 
from the root of a tree, ‘at present used in the 
plural also for a basket of European basketwork,” (because they had no 
idea that twigs could be so small)—Gr@nlandske Ordbog. 
No. 89799 [1329] from Utkiavwin, is a peculiar bag, the only one of 
the kind seen, used for the same purpose as the boxes and baskets just 
described. It is the stomach of a polar bear, with the muscular and 
glandular layers removed, dried and carefully worked down with a skin 
scraper into something like goldbeater’s skin. This makes a large, 
nearly spherical bag 74 inches in diameter, of a pale brownish color, 
soft and wrinkled, with a mouth 6inches wide. A small hole has been 
mended by drawing the skin together and winding it round tightly on 
the inside with sinew. 
J 
Fic. 337.—Small basket. 
'P. 172, 
