Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 505 



erq'^aliarter) or a white one {iiimeq). Both kinds are hairless, having 

 been scraped on both sides, but in the first the grain has not been 

 removed whereas in the latter it has been loosened by the urine ^). 

 The hair of the skin is evidently removed in two different ways, to 

 judge from the different names given me for the scraped skins, 

 namely mat^tassimalin 'skins stripped of the hair by means of a 

 knife' and mikaicimalin 'skins the hairs of M'hich have been removed 

 by means of the teeth.' In order to make the white skin — which 

 is preferred e. g. as boat-skin — water-tight, the men give the boats 

 a coating of a kind of glaze made from boiled seal or narwhal 

 blubber which has been kept throughout the winter in a skin bag 

 till it has become thick and tough {utisaalisaa, oxidized blubber). 

 If the boat is covered with black skin it must be given a careful 

 coating with this liquid in order to tighten the seams. 



The dressing of seal skins among" the Central Eskimo (Igkilik) mainh^ 

 agrees with that described above from East Greenland. The women first 

 cleanse the skin with the ooloo (i. e. ulu or и/о), then they rub it with a 

 blunt scraper called sidkkut (probably the same as West Greenland sakko, 

 East Gr. cakki(n) ?), whereafter it is put into the urine vessel and left to steep 

 a couple of days"). — Also from Alaska the tanning of the seal skins in 

 urine is mentioned''). 



In the preparation of bear skins the man takes part in the work. 

 When the bear has been flayed, the skin is taken into the house 

 where his wife places it on the scraping-stool and carefully removes 

 the blubber with her knife. Afterwards the man carries it down 

 to the beach or to a fissure in the ice, where it is washed out in 

 salt water and rubbed in snow in order to completely get rid of 

 the blood and the blubber. It is then hung over a bar, with the 

 hairy side outwards, until dry, and in the following days the man 

 repeats this proceeding. Lastly it is stretched on a frame of bars 

 (tent-poles, paddles, oars etc.) specially made for the purpose, the 

 wife fastening it with straps along the edge. The frame is placed 

 against a rocky wall or boulder and here the skin hangs obliquely 

 with the hairy side outwards for a week or two until the frost, 

 wind and the sun have exercised their influence (fig. 221)^). Now-a- 

 days all the bear skins are sold to the store of the Administration 

 near Täseesaq, where the manager of the colony lives. There is a 



^) Similar descriptions of skin dressing in West Greenland are found In Glahn 



(1771) p. 252-254 (cf. 231); Saabye (1816) p. 114. 

 -) Parry (1824) p. 538. 



3) Mason (1888—1889) p. 565. Hatt (1911) p. 148. 

 *) From Baffin Land is mentioned exactly the same method of stretching and 



drying seal and bear skins by tying them with straps to large frames (Boas, 



1888, p. 523; Mason, Aboriginal skin dressing 1891, p. 565) as also from Alaska 



(Nelson, see Handbook Amer. Indians 1910, pp. 591 — 594). 



