114 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



Everyone crowds round as the seal is drawn to the surface in order to obtain 

 a share of the meat. Heedless of the value of the skin, heedless even of each 

 other's hands, they hack away, not infrequently cutting each other as each 

 man in his greed tries to hew off as large a portion as possible. The Rev. Mr. 

 Girling, writing in 1918, said: "There have been a great number of cases of 

 maiming this winter arising from their ridiculous system of going ternporarily 

 mad when they strike an ugyuk (bearded seal) and all stabbing their knives 

 in to get what they can grab; our surgical outfit has been kept busy." Yet 

 they know that when they return home both the raw meat and a portion of 

 what is cooked must be distributed amongst the other families, so that all they 

 gain for their exertions is a strip of the skin. Even that is often eaten, so that 

 the only outcome of their folly is a number of severe wounds.^ 



If the day is far spent when he strikes his quarry the hunter usually returns 

 home without waiting for his companions; but if it be still early either he sends 

 his dogs to camp with the seal, (a toggle is passed through the nostril and 

 attached to the trace of the dog), or he drags it around with him until he finds 

 another seal-hole, when the same performance is gone through again. Generally 

 the whole party return together, and are met a little way out by the children. 





Fig. 36. The return from the sealing-grounds, the dogs dragging home the seals 



who fall on the seals and pretend to stab them to death, thereby bringing good 

 luck, as they think, to the hunters. The dogs know their own huts, and each 

 drags its burden to the entrance of the passage, where the housewife is waiting 

 to receive it. The man puts away his sealing-gear, setting his harpoon upright 

 in the snow wall outside the hut, while his wife drags the seal indoors and lays 

 it on its back in the middle of the floor.- Sometimes she skins it herself, some- 

 times a little girl is allowed to skin it, and thus be trained in one of her duties 

 in later life. First a little fresh water is poured into its m'outh, for ser.ls, these 

 Eskimos say, have an intense desire for water, and bad luck would attend the 

 hunter who did not administer to their wants.' Sometimes small pieces of the 

 bluljber are cut from the breast and handed round as tit-bits. The bulk of it, 

 however, is stripped off in long slices, and thrown across the board that supports 

 the table, or into the empty space at the back of the lamp. The skin is folded 



iMr. Stetansson's account (My Lite with the Eskimo), p. 269, is not quite accurate, at least not for 

 the Dolphin and Union strait Eskimos. 



^On Dec. 6, 1914, a Noahognik native geared a large rough seal, the first that was caught that winter' 

 His wife, who was standing at the entrance of her hut when he returned, merely remarked, kowanna nat- 

 semmun, "Hurrah for the seal", and went inside the house again. The dogs dragged it into the passage, 

 and she unhitched them and drew it inside the hut. Before skinning it she cut a few small pieces of sWn 

 and blubber from its breast and gave each of us one as a tit-bit. 



•I could find no definite belief concerning the rebirth of seals and their gratitude in the new life fbr the 

 water they received in the old, such as Mr. Stefansson attributes to the natives of Baillie island and Point 

 Atkinson (Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 351). Nor do Copper Eskimos keep the bladder 

 or nose skins, like their neighbours. The catching of seals in nets was unknown to them, as indeed were 

 nets of any kind. 



