88 Canadian Arctic Expedition j 1913-18 



where he can urge on the dogs from behind; the son has a place beside his father, 

 the daughter beside her mother. In the summer packing, the man generally 

 carries the tent, with his tools and weapons on top of it; the woman has her 

 own and her husband's sleeping gear, the lamp, if one is carried, and the cooking 

 pot, while the children carry their own sleeping bags and their bows and play- 

 things. 



All the cooking and sewing fall on the women. In summer this often 

 includes the gathering of fuel, though the children are usually sent out for this 

 purpose. A man rarely condescends to gather fuel, and then only when he is 

 alone with his family. Occasionally, in summer, he will cook a pot of meat 

 if his wife is engaged for the moment in some other occupation, such as dressing 

 skins, and he himself has nothing to do. The men often help their wives to 

 scrape the skins, especially in the fall, when the daylight is short and new clothes 

 are urgently needed for the approaching winter. Sometimes too they do a 

 little sewing on their own account. An old man named Tusayok made a pair 

 of water-boots for himself in the spring of 1915; the women were quite surprised 

 at the excellence of his sewing, and talked about it for a long time afterwards. 



Vice versa, a few of the women take part in the hunting and sealing. The 

 eldest of Uloksak's three wives, indeed, was quite a noted caribou hunter. The 

 same woman sometimes went sealing, as did also Milukkattak, Avranna's wife. 

 The two of them went out together one day, leaving their husbands to mind 

 the huts, and they often taunted the men with this afterwards. During my 

 stay with Ikpakhuak the old man was teaching his little step-daughter to seal. She 

 was only twelve years old at the time, and when she did finally transfix a seal 

 in the winter of 1916 she had to call to one of the other hunters to help her drag 

 her victim on to the ice. It is only the younger women, however, who go out 

 hunting, though everyone, men, women and children, have to take part in the 

 organized caribou-drive. Everyone, too, has to fish with rod and line through 

 holes in the ice during the spring and fall. Even in their fishing, though, there 

 are certain distinctions. Everyone uses the rod and lin'e, but only the men as 

 a rule employ spears. When the salmon are trapped in weirs during the late 

 spring the men race about in the water jabbing at them with their spears^ while 

 the women catch them with their hands in the little stone caverns where they 

 take refuge and string them on long seal-skin lines. 



Very few women, I believe, can manage a kayak. Higilak attempted 

 to paddle her husband's kayak one day, but she was unable to turn it round 

 without capsizing it, and had great difficulty in making the land again. Few 

 women too can build a snow hut, though all of them can make a perpendicular 

 wall of snow five or six feet high. They know exactly how the hut should be 

 built, however, even though they are unable to do it themselves. I saw an old 

 woman directing a youth how to produce the spiral in the second tier of blocks, 

 though the same woman, when called upon to make a short extension to the 

 passage, was as awkward in fitting the blocks together as the merest novice. 



Peoperty. 



Such a division of labour is naturally accompanied by a division of property. 

 Roughly speaking three kinds of property, may be distinguished, personalj 

 family, and communal. Personal property comprises everything that is employed 

 by the individual in his daily life. Most of these articles have been made 

 by their owner, or else acquired by barter. In the case of a man they include 

 his tools and his weapons, the tent and the sled, together with some or all of 

 the dogs that drag the sled. The wife's property similarly comprises her house- 

 hold utensils and implements, the pot and the lamp with the boards and poles 

 that support them (but not the table, it would seem), her knives, her fire-making 

 apparatus, her sewing-kit, her fishing rod, and her walking stick. Some of 



