Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 



471 



Technical names: pitcaq the bow (the whole weapon); qaartua, 

 qaartainnaait the wooden arm; attmaa^"ta, attinaa"'ciartaa the string; 

 naalaartaa the arrow; nusuttaa^"taa the small strap for letting the 

 string loose. — The string is tied round the notched ends of the arm 

 (cross-piece) of the bow. Another 

 strap is stretched along the outer 

 side of the arm, being drawn 

 through a transverse perforation 

 in the stock. When the bow is 

 bent the string is sunk in a trans- 

 verse groove in the distal part 

 of the stock, at the same time 

 pressing a small strap down under 

 it. It is brought out of the 

 groove by pulling and tightening 

 this strap, whereby the arrow is 

 shot off. 



Amdrup found no specimen 

 at the "dead house," where many 

 other kinds of playthings were 

 found. But in the southern parts 

 of West Geeenland cross-bows' are 

 well-known from earlier times. 

 Both Fabricius and Glahn mention 

 them ^). It is a question, whether 

 their occurrence goes far back in 

 the early history of Greenland. 

 They do not seem to occur on 

 the American side; they are not 

 mentioned in Culin's "Games of 

 the North American Indians." I 

 really think the existence of this 

 form of a bow in South Green- 

 land is to be explained in a sim- 

 ilar way as that suggested by 



H. Balfour with reference to the origin of the West African cross- 

 bows^). They may have been brought to Greenland in the 17th 

 or 18th centuries by Dutch or Norw^egian whalers, either as imita- 

 tions of their whaling bows or directly introduced as playthings. 



Fig. 180. Cross-bows. (Holm coll.). 



1) Fabricius (1818) p. 242. Glahu (1771) p. 230. Ryder (1895) p. 129. 

 ^) H. Balfour: The origin of West African cross-bows. Annual Report of Smith- 

 sonian Institution (1910) pp. 635—650. 



