Amusements 



219 



companion. The child then opens his eyes and glances round to see where it 

 lies. If he fails to find it immediately, his rival will point it out with a whoop 

 of dehght, then close his eyes in his turn. 



Often they have silence competitions. A child says ika, and everyone 

 keeps perfectly quiet. The first to break the silence is greeted with roars of 

 laughter and loses the game.' Then there are competitions in drinking seal 

 broth, the last one to drain his. cup being ridiculed and called by the name of 

 some decrepit old person. 



Fig. 62. Children playing "tag", Dolphin and Union strait 



The children naturally have many pastimes that imitate the actions of 

 their elders. Girls make dolls out of scraps of skin, and clothe them like real 

 men and women. Their mothers Micourage them, for it is in this way that they 

 learn to sew and to cut out patterns. Both boys and girls play at building 

 snow houses. In summer, with only pebbles to work with, they simply lay out 

 the ground plans, but in winter they borrow their parents' snow-knives and 

 make complete houses on a miniature scale. They trace too figures of men and 

 animals in the snow, and carve them out of single blocks; for example, two 

 small boys one day set up a snow-rabbit on top of a hill; one ran and stabbed it 

 through the heart with his kiiife, while the other completed its demolition by 

 slicing off its head. Sometimes they make toy sleds of ice, like the real ones 

 that are used by their parents in emergencies. One of their games in which the 

 adults sometimes join imitates the killing and cutting up of a bearded seal. 

 A child lies flat on the ground while the others gather around him and pull him 

 about as though they were hewing him to pieces. In Victoria island the children 

 spent an idle summer's day partly in splashing about in a neighbouring lake, 

 partly in setting up rows of stones and turf, inyukhuit, as for a caribou drive, 

 and digging shallow pits, tallut, from which they launched their shafts at imagin- 

 ary deer. 



'At Barrow, Alaska, when a child says mak or tarn all the rest must keep silence. The first to break 

 it loses the game; if a boy he will marry an old woman, if a girl an old man. 



