Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 447 



At Point Barrow the "retrieving harpoon" is called nauliga; this name 

 corresponds to the Greenland word naiiligaq (from naulipj)0(j 'to hari)Oon a 

 marine animal'), which means there 'a boy's har|)Oon, a miniature harpoon 

 lor throwing on land (as boys do for practice).' In this weapon and designa- 

 tion of the Greenland boys we have obviously an old tradition or a reminis- 

 cence of a form of the weapon which has become obsolete. In the life of 

 the adult Greenlanders, however, the original weapon has assumed a more 

 extensive role, to be thrown with the throwing stick from the kaiak, 

 and connected with the sealing float. The meaning of its West Greenland 

 name unaaq is not quite fixed. Commonly it means 'a knob harpoon,' but 

 according to Kleinschmidt's dictionary (p. 395) the designation is used in 

 some districts for 'a short harpoon shaft, only 4 feet long and without 

 throwing stick.' 



The Greenland knob harpoon has also some resemblance with the thrust- 

 ing harpoon from Point Barrow, which is used for the capture of seals on 

 the ice as they come up for air to their breathing holes ^). This ice sealing 

 harpoon from Alaska is in reality only a variety of the unarpak and retriev- 

 ing harpoon, but with a longer "loose shaft" (which is named in Alaska 

 igimû, W. Greenland igimaq, E. Greenland eemaa). In the Greenland iiip- 

 parteq harpoon for sealing on the ice, the "loose shaft" has been laid aside 

 but the weapon is otherwise quite like the Alaskan. The Greenland kaiak 

 harpoon thus seems to be nearly related to the ice sealing harpoon, as 

 both have been derived from West Eskimo forms, which are less differenti- 

 ated from the common, original type in Alaska than they became later in 

 Greenland. 



Kaiak harpoons of a type similar to that of the Greenland harpoons 

 are also used on the western coast of Alaska (Norton Sound) for taking the 

 larger seals, walrus and white whale. We find here, according to W. Nelson's 

 descriptions, large harpoons showing the same main characteristics as the 

 Greenland weapons: the detachable iron-pointed toggle head with a basal 

 barb, the loose shaft of bone, the bone foreshaft, the pointed bone weight 

 (a bone pick) at the butt end, and the harpoon line which connects the 

 loose head with the inflated sealskin float, which is placed on the float- 

 board just behind the man-hole. It is not quite clear, however, from Nel- 

 son's description, if this latter contrivance in Alaska is combined with the 

 large harpoon of the type just mentioned, or only with the smaller spears 

 of another type which are used for hunting the same kinds of animals. 

 The large sealskin float is in use, he says, from Kotzebue Sound to Bristol 

 Bay (West Alaska about 57°— 67° N.lat.). Throwing sticks are not used with 

 these weapons, but they are, on the other hand, in general use for casting 

 the lightest kind of spears used by the Alaskan Eskimo for the capture of 

 the small seal. This kind of spear has a detachable barbed head with a 

 pointed butt end, set directly into the foreshaft, which when detached re- 

 mains connected only by the sealskin line to the shaft; as the line unwinds, 

 the shaft is drawn crosswise after the retreating seal and serves as a drag^). 

 The shaft of this spear often has bird feathers on the butt end where they 

 are fixed in slits (three in a circle round the shaft, or in two sets at different 

 distances from the end). 



1) Murdoch 1. с p. 233—235, figs. 227 and 229. 



'-) Nelson (1899; pp. 138—139. Notice especially his description of fig. 6 on PI. LV, a 



(harpoon from Norton Sound) and figs. 7 — 8 ibid., fig. 10 on PI. LIV. 

 3) Id. ibid. p. 136—137. 



