Food 



99 



girl Kanneyuk to stay behind and cook a trout for me while the rest went 

 fishing. Kanneyuk lit a fire in the largest of our tents, but in the midst of her 

 cooking a sudden gale of wind snapped the tent-pole and the tent collapsed 

 on her head, upsetting the small pemmican can which served as a cooking pot. 

 She moved to another tent and lit another fire, but it was not until three hours 

 later that the cupful of water in which the fish was immersed approached the 

 boiling-point, so feeble was the flame from the okauyak fire; by that time too 

 the fish was so smoked that it was scarcely edible. 



Fig. 32. Haugak bringing in Dryas integrifolia for fuel, Colville hills 



It is no wonder therefore that the Eskimo frequently does not trouble to 

 cook at all. Dried meat or fish gives him a satisfactory breakfast, and if he is 

 fishing during the day he can always appease his hunger with the raw fish he 

 catches. If the fish is large he will content himself with the intestines, if small 

 he will probably devour it entire, sometimes not even excepting the bones. 

 In winter the wife occasionally boils some seal-meat while her husband lies in 

 bed, but frequently, more especially in the early half of the season when they 

 still have a stock of frozen fish or caribou-meat on hand, they make their 

 breakfast on that, after which both dress and the man goes off to his sealing 

 while the wife stays at home and sews. 



Owing to their manner of life there are no set hours for meals. Breakfast 

 is eaten as soon as they wake, then usually nothing more till the day's work is 

 over. In winter, when it is certain that the sealers will return as soon as it 

 grows dark, each wife has always a substantial meal ready for her husband, and 

 the smell of boiling seal-meat and steaming broth strike his nostrils as soon as 

 23335— 7i 



