Amusements 



223 



or two small holes in the skin were left unpatched, as the drum when tested 

 proved to be sufl&ciently resonant. The Eskimos never tune their drums to 

 any particular note, but if they show sings of slackness and loss of resonance 

 they rub a little water over the surface. The drum-stick is an ordinary heavy 

 baton, perfectly plain; the one used by the Coppermine natives was 33 cm. 

 long. The Eskimos often cover it with seal-skin where it strikes the rim; for 

 the musician, who holds the drum above his head, strikes not the parchment, 

 but the wooden rim on its under side, first on one side of the handle, then on the 

 other. 



fPhoto by G. H. Wilkins.) 

 Fig. 64. Angivraima, a Coppermine river native, beating a drum 



All the songs of these Eskimos, except incantations and a few children's 

 rhymes, are dancing songs. They are divided into two classes: the aton and 

 the pisik. A pisik is sung when the dancer himself wields the drum, an aton 

 when the drum is either dispensed with altogether or is beaten by some one 

 in the ring, the audience sustaining the song while the dancer executes a kind 

 of jig in the centre; the distinction, however, is not always preserved. Both 

 kinds of dancing, together with the ceremonial circling of "dancing-associates" 

 around each other, took place at Bernard harbour when the Eskimos of Bathurst 

 inlet met those of Dolphin and Union strait. 



Many of their songs have what may be called standard tunes, to which the 

 native will often improvise words of his own instead of the regular words. Thus 

 the day after we reached their settlement the Coppermine river Eskimos had a 

 song about us, which was simply a new set of words adapted to an old tune. 

 Ikpakhuak was so amused over an adventure of mine with a wolf that before I 



