Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 543 



to face the difficulty that in the oldest French authors, namely in 

 the Jesu Society Relations (1612 — 1614) the people were called Ex- 

 comminquois ox Excomminqui or Escoumins, words that point in quite 

 another direction, as they seem to be derived from to excommunicate 

 and to have indicated a group of people that had been excluded 

 from the church and banished by the missionaries. This might thus 

 be the original meaning of the name, due either to a casual episode 

 or the missionaries' general impression of these remote heathens. In 

 Hans Egede's Relations (1738, p. 257) we hear about excommunicated 

 Greenland Eskimo. Not until about 1700 does the form Eskimaux 

 (Lahontan) occur, being possibly an Algonkin Indian's version of the 

 French name, corrupted and etymologized according to his own 

 language as "raw-meat eater" or "living meat eater." It is at any 

 rate a fact that we get quite different explanations of the word, if 

 we trace it back to the older literary sources or place it in connec- 

 tion with the language of the Algonkins, as has hitherto been done 

 in the traditional explanation of the name. 



Blubber forks or carriers and meat 

 TURNERS. — Fig. 261 b shows a flat one-pronged 

 fork provided with two barbs cut out of a 

 piece of narwhal tooth. The description given 

 to Amdrup regarding its use corresponds ex- 

 actly to what Glahn writes about this kind ''■ ,„ ,^''^°" ° ^°^^ 



'' stone. (Holm coll.). ^ia. 



of fork from West Greenland : 



"It is not only together with tlie caplins but also with angelica, black 

 crowberries etc., that the Greenlanders eat a piece of fresh blubber, for 

 which reason they are often seen walking about in tlie open air with a small 

 stick with a piece of blubber at the one end, from which they eat off a 

 small piece whilst gathering the berries. Such a stick is called oksorsar- 

 bingvoak." ') 



It is probably a similar fork, though only a little more worn, 

 that is seen in fig. 261 a (triangular in transverse section, lateral view 

 so that the barbs are indistinct on the figure); с is probably an im- 

 plement of the same kind. The curved stick or fork [atcätaalin) 

 with which the woman turns the meat in the pot is not provided 

 with barbs; it only consists of a bone of a suitable form, pointed 

 at the lower end, while the thick end forms the handle. Fig. 266 

 shows an implement of this kind from the "dead house;" in Johan 

 Petersen's collection I saw a couple of them, somewhat more curved 

 at the point and made of seal-ribs. Up at Scoresby Sound Amdrup 

 found a similar fork (or blubber carrier) with serrated edge, and 

 near the Skærgaard Peninsula a more simple form with a much 



1) Glahn (1771) p. 207. 



