652 W. Thalbitzer 



culture and they must have been of the same use in the north and the 

 south. Among the natives of to-day they are evidently only intended 

 to be used as toys for children ^). But it is not improbable that some 

 of the small ivory figures may have been used as dice in the games 

 of the grown-up people, which according to Boas is said to be the 

 case on Baffin Land in a game called "tingmiujang, i. e. images of 

 birds." It is played with ca. 15 figures of ivory, most of which re- 

 present birds but some also men and women. After these have been 

 thrown in turns between the two players (according to certain rules), 

 one of them in the end wins the game. Why should not this game 

 have been played in Greenland? Quite a similar game is played by the 

 Eskimo children both in and outside Greenland ; they call it inukwkat 

 (singl. inuwak) originally meaning 'toes of human beings or animals,' 

 but also 'dice,' because it is the bones in the toes of a seal that are 

 used as dice^). In the games or play these dice represent animals, 

 human beings, boats, houses etc. and are placed so that they form 

 I pictures of human settlements, sealing attire and 



I game. One after another these dice are lifted up 



I and dropped again and the position they now oc- 



I cupy decides which of the players they belong to. 



^^^tflHj^^^ Played in this way the game is known from Bering 

 ^^^^^^^^^ Straits to Greenland^). The small seal-bones (pha- 

 ' langes) seen in fig. 389, found by Amdrup in a 



Fig. 37o. Top. grave near Sarqarmiut, probably represent the same 

 ( о m CO .j. 4. ]^jj^{] Qf dice, having belonged to the deceased. The 

 word inuwak is derived from inuk 'man' and it is not improbable 

 that it refers to the Eskimo belief that in each finger and toe-joint 

 lives a small soul by means of which the divinatory significance of 

 the game would become clear^). 



The top {kaawtcar, p. 63, fig. 375) is a thin wooden disc with a 

 stick crosswise through the centre. It is set spinning by letting the 

 flat hands glide quickly past each other on each side of the stick. 



Buzz and BULL-ROARER are seen in fig. 376. a shows a buzz 

 made according to the mill-wing principle, which buzzes round if 



') There is no reason to believe that the small ivory carvings ornamented with 

 dots have been amulets; but as such Nordenskiöld designates some quite anal- 

 ogous animal carvings found by him in Chukchee near the Bering Straits (Vega- 

 färden II, pp. 146—147, figs. 1—8; Nordquist, Ymer, 1882 p. 36). 



2) Kleinschmidt (1871) p. 102. 



3^ Culin (1907) pp. 102—104; Boas (1901) p. 112; Preuss (Hantzch, 1913) p. 122. 



•*) Culin pp. 34 and 809 has made it probable that "the games of the North 

 American Indians as they now exist are either instruments of rites or have 

 descended from ceremonial observances of a religious character" and that such 

 observances "are almost exclusively divinatory." 



