220 



Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913-18 



Of the games that require special toys or implements one of the commonest 

 is "hoop and pole," played by the children in winter. The hoop, titkat or titka,t- 

 tak, is made of willow and has a diameter usually of some fifteen inches, while 

 the 'pole' is merely a stick two or three feet long. Sometimes they bowl their 

 hoops at random along the ground and throw their sticks through them, some- 

 times they fling the hoops into the air and try to catch them on their sticks as 

 they fall.i 



Fig. 63. Children making houses of pebbles, Colville hills 



Two other toys, the bull-roarer, imilguptak, and the buzz, nilitak, are also 

 confined to children. The buzz I know from description only, for I never saw 

 one in their possession. Juggling was another game I never observed, though 

 it is popular among the Eskimos both east and west of them. Cat's cradles, on 

 the other hand, is just as favourite a pastime here as it is elsewhere.^ Both 

 children and adults play a game called &shiag, ekaluktok. A number of small 

 bones from the flippers of a seal are placed in the toe of a shoe and a noose of 

 sinew set vertically in the heel. The opening is then closed with the left hand 

 and the bones are shaken down to the heel, when the noose is drawn tight and 

 taken out. An expert player will always snare one bone in the noose, and usually 

 several. 



Cup and ball is another favourite pastime with natives of all ages. The 

 Copper Eskimos use, as a rule, only the bone from the upper arm of the bearded 

 seal.' Holes are pierced in both ends of it and in the side of the larger end. 

 The peg is a short pointed stick of bone. The seal-bone is swimg counter-clock- 

 wise one half revolution, and impaled on the peg in any hole, while the player 

 counts,, "thumb, first finger, second finger, third finger, little finger," first for the 

 right hand, then for the left. If successful in all ten the player swings the seal- 

 bone one full revolution and catches it on the second, when the game is finished. 



iSee Stetansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 391. 

 ^A special monograph on Eskimo Cat's Cradles is in course of preparation. 



'Stefansson, Anthrop. Papers, A.M.N.H., Vol. XIV, pt. I, p. 125, has an illustration of a type that 

 I have never seen in Coroiiation gulf. 



