Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 



475 



wood and bone, but also to cut mouthfuls of meat or blubber when 

 eating. — Fig. 183 is a knife with a curved iron blade {pilaaHaq 

 nee"'lJ^^'aatarteг) for hollowing out wooden plates or trays, the groove 

 of the throwing stick and similar things. Similar graver's tools are 

 not at all unknown among the Eskimo outside Greenland (specimens 

 known from Baffin Land and further west) ^). 



At the "dead house" Amdrup found seven working knives 

 (fig. 198) of the same type as Holm's with two-edged blades of hoop 

 iron, inserted in a hollow bone or a wooden handle. In some few 

 of the wooden hafts a series of rings or incisions is carved to give 

 a firm grip. Most of those in the collections of the Greenland Ad- 

 ministration are of the same type: either bones with inserted iron 

 blade — fig. 184/ has an iron blade of two pieces 

 inserted into a wooden haft which has a carved 

 seal-tail ornament at the end like the bone haft 

 of с — or a wooden haft with one-edged bone 

 blade fig. 184a. The hafts of a and / have a 

 whipping of skin thong round the socket, con- 

 taining the blade. 



Sheaths (pooän, p. 51) of furskin for the hunt- 

 ing knives are used, when the hunters go out 

 hunting on foot or on the sledge, on the ice or 

 on land. As a rule, the sheath with the knife 

 hangs in a sling round the neck under the skin 

 frock. The ornamentation of the sheaths in Holm's 

 collection (fig. 186) has been produced by sewing 

 together dark and light streaks from different 

 kinds of skin. In fig. 185 (J. Petersen's collection) Fig. 185. 



we can see the heads of some bone wound-plugs, Furskin sheath and 



which have been stuck into holes in the sides of ^^«»"i^ing knife 



Three 



wound plugs are stuck 

 the sheath, to stop up the holes in the inflated j^ holes in the skin 



seal. — The Eskimo outside Greenland also use (j. Petersen coll.). Ча. 

 skin sheaths for their working knives ^). 



Murdoch describes four types of two-edged men's knives (hunt- 

 ing knives) with stone blades from Point Barrow in Alaska^). The 

 kaiak knives of the Ammassalikers correspond most closely to his 

 third type with long, lanceolate and pointed blade, except that they 

 are narrower; at Point Barrow this type is found both with stone 



n Boas (1901) p. 30, figs. 35a and b. Mason (1897) p. 742, figs. 1, 15, 17 etc. 



2) Murdoch (1892) p. 158; Boas (1901) p. 87, fig. 126. 



3) Murdoch (1892) p. 151. Cf. Mason (1897). 



