106 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



than boiled, but the Eskimo finds it palatable in any condition. A hunting 

 party often dispenses with a pot altogether, and uses instead an improvised 

 oven of stones. Ikpakhuak thus provided us with a good meal one day when 

 he and I were hunting, and had shot a caribou about ten miles from camp. 

 He collected a few flat slabs of dolomite for his oven and some dry willow 

 twigs for fuel. Then he constructed a hearth in the shelter of a turfy bank 

 about two feet high. First he made the windbreak, three stone slabs on edge 

 along the top of the bank. Beneath these, at the foot of the bank, lae set two 

 slabs on edge about two feet apart for the sides of the fireplace. A slab laid 

 flat on the ground between them made a good bottom for the fire, while another, 

 resting on the two side slabs, formed the top of the hearth, the whole structure 

 resembling very much a Dutch oven. He covered the top slab with a layer 

 of moss, poured water oVer it, then laid slices of meat and back-fat on the moss 

 and covered it all over with a large inverted grassy sod. A fire was soon made 

 by setting one of my matches to a little dry grass, holding it up in the wind 

 till it kindled to a blaze, then pushing it into the hearth and stoking willow 

 twigs on top of it. As soon as the meat was cooked on the under side he rolled 

 back the turf, poured a little more water on the meat, turned it over and replaced 

 the turf. In about twenty minutes the steaks were ready. They proved 

 delicious; the moss had given them a very shght flavour that was not at all 

 unpleasant. Ikpakhuak at the same time roasted part of the liver and two 

 of the leg bones in the fire itself, so that altogether we had an ample and varied 

 repast. 



Cleanliness or daintiness is not a characteristic of the Eskimos. In the fall 

 of the year they casually cache their caribou without removing the stomach. 

 The semi-digested vegetable contents ferment and taint all the flesh, but the 

 Copper Eskimo relishes both the smell and the flavour, though his more sophisti- 

 cated brother in the west pronounces them disgusting. I have seen a man take 

 a bone from rotten caribou-meat cached more than a year before, crack it and 

 eat the marrow with evident relish, although it swarmed with maggots. As a 

 rule such meat is fed to the dogs, but not infrequently the natives cook it for 

 themselves, especially when fresh meat is not available. Dried fish that have 

 become covered with mould are considered hardly inferior to freshly-dried. 

 The grubs of the warble fly, which bore through the skins of the caribou in the 

 spring, are picked out and eaten, either raw or boiled. Small birds, like longspurs, 

 are skinned and swallowed whole without being cooked at all, and it was not 

 uncommon to see a woman transfer the entrails of a freshly killed ptarmigan to 

 her mouth. Caribou droppings are eaten occasionally in the hunting field, 

 but I never saw them collected, as Mr. Stefansson relates, probably because 

 the natives were seldom short of food during the summer that I lived amongst 

 them. 



Their lack of cleanliness is shown also in their manner of eating. • Every 

 family has a stock of bird skins for use as towels and napkins. Theoretically 

 ptarmigan skins are preferred when eating deer^meat, and sea-gull . skins when 

 eating seal-meat, but in practice any skins at all are used ; the only discrimination 

 the natives make is that the same skin should not be used for both kinds of meat, 

 not because there is any taboo against it, but because seal-meat is so much more 

 oily. The same napkin is used by everyone until it is worn out. Food that 

 falls to the ground is picked up and eaten. The dishes are never washed, and 

 are used for human beings and dogs alike. Instead of a dish-mop or cloth, 

 the woman uses her fingers to drain the pot or to scour out a bowl or ladle. 

 Much of their uncleanliness is undoubtedly due to the difficulty of obtaining 

 water during the greater part of the year, but it extends far beyond anything 

 that can be ascribed to this cause alone. 



The only beverage of the natives, apart from water, is the broth in which 

 the meat or fish has been cooked, thickened when possible with blood. Parry 



