ESKIMO ETHNOLOGICAL MATERIAL 



I 9 7 



11,025, which are 7.2 inches long by .8 inch wide, covered with 

 small figures upon a convex surface and deeply hollowed upon 

 the opposite side, where a number of incised lines suggest that 

 they have been intended for hunting scores. 



Fire Bags. These are not so important a part of the parapher- 

 nalia of the Eskimo as of the Indian or m£tis. The only one 

 in the collection, No. 10,892, was obtained at Herschel Island. 

 It is of caribouskin, dressed with the hair on, with a sealskin 

 top and a sinew drawing-string. It contains three small pieces 

 of flint, a small pouch of soft leather, containing willow catkins 

 for tinder, and a slender link of steel made from an old file. 



Ladles. Ladles of various sizes are made of bone, wood, and 

 horn. The collection contains one, No. 10,908, from Herschel 

 Island, of the horn of a mountain sheep. It is 2 feet in length 

 and 6 inches across the bowl. A short crack in the rim has 

 been closed with an iron rivet. 



Needle Cases. One of these, No. 11,016, from the Diomedes, 

 is of walrus ivory, 2.8 inches long and .7 of an inch in diameter. 

 It is polished and stained with use. The cylinder is ornamented 

 with 6 encircling lines. The strap is 8 inches long and has a 

 metal trousers button at one end to keep it from slipping 

 through. The other end forms a loop for attachment at the 

 girth. 



Omiaks. The Eskimos are obtaining whaleboats from the 

 vessels at all the settlements on the Arctic coast as far east- 

 ward as Cape Bathurst^ so that the large skin boats, or omiaks, 

 are now seldom used in whaling. Nearly every family at Her- 

 schel Island which did not have a whaleboat owned an omiak. 

 The frame is made of spruce driftwood, of which there is an 

 abundance along that coast. The boats, or canoes, as the 

 whalemen call them, are light and easily beached. The cov- 

 ering is of walrus, seal, or even bearskin, sewed in a double 

 seam with a blind stitch. I saw only a few of them in use, but 

 all required occasional bailing. I noticed both men and 

 women in them on several occasions; the women pulling inde- 

 pendently of each other at the short and narrow oars, and the 

 men paddling and pushing aside ice floes. 



The collection contains an omiak model, No. 10,999, from 

 Point Barrow. It is 33.5 inches long, with a depth of 4 inches, 

 and a 9 inch beam; being proportionately too broad, as an 



