452 W. Thalbitzer 



The use of the hinged toggle in sealing is special to Greenland^). 

 It is an arrangement which may have been transferred by analogy 

 from the salmon spear to the sealing weapon and the invention is 

 probably due to a native in Greenland, since we find no trace of it 

 west of the Davis Strait. The idea might readily arise, as the salmon 

 in the northern parts of the coast appear at the mouths of the rivers 

 just at the period when the seals beging to creep up on to the ice 

 to sun themselves'^). The ittuartin harpoon head with the long basal 

 barb is indeed only a slightly larger form of the salmon toggle. 



The Greenland fishing spears belong to the most original of the 

 Eskimo weapons. We find almost unchanged the same two types 

 — the barbed two-pronged fork and the three-pronged fork^) — 

 through the Central Eskimo regions to the southern coasts of Alaska^) 

 (where however they are now rare), and the name of the last is 

 everywhere the same as in Greenland (Greenland kakippaak, Labra- 

 dor kakkivak , Baffin Land kakivang ^), Iglulik and Winter Island 

 kakiwai^), Alaska kakibua'^)), though it must be remarked, that the 

 hinged toggle heads, used instead of barbs, are not found among 

 the Eskimo outside Greenland. On the other hand, salmon spears 

 with toggle heads are used far beyond the Eskimo boundaries. In 

 addition to among the Indian tribes referred to by G. Holm p. 54 (foot- 

 note 2), the use of double-headed toggle harpoons is mentioned, for 

 example, among the Chilkotin Indians in Western Canada, and among 

 the Indians of Sacramento Valley in California^). It is possible, con- 

 sequently, that the occurrence of the hinged toggle on the salmon 

 spear in East Greenland is to be explained as the last relict of an 

 old tradition from the west, which has been lost among the inter- 

 vening Eskimo tribes. 



M Mason (1900) pp. 237—238. 



-) A passage in Bendix Thostrup's diary from North-east Greenland (in Geografisk 

 Tidsskrift, Vol. 21, København 1912, p. 191) lias suggested this remark. Thostrup 

 gives the following sketch of the coming of summer at the coasts in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Dove Ваз', into which a river opens from Sælsø: "On the ice of 

 the sea off the mouth of the river the seals have collected in large numbers; 

 — these animals are very clever salmon fishers. A few days previously there 

 Avere no seals at this place, now there are many sunning themselves along the 

 cracks in the ice. It must in former times have been of great importance for 

 the Eskimo, that the salmon thus attract quantities of seals together off the 

 large rivers." - Salmon caught by means of seal-hunting weapons in Tugtulik 

 fjord are mentioned by G. Holm, in this volume p. 111. 



3) Described already by Hans Egede (1741) p 60. Cf. О. Fabricius (1812| p. 266. 



') Nelson 1899) pp. 174—176, PI. LXVII; Murdoch (1892) fig. 278. 



a) Boas (1888) p. 512, fig. 453. 



'■•) Parry fl824) p. 509; Lyons (1824) p. 326. 



'j Murdoch 1892) p. 286. 



*) Mason 1900) pp. 222 and 232. 



