409 
the Pacific coast. The Xootka of \'ancoiiver island, like tlie Plskinio, 
attacked even tlie inig;hty whale, lioth Indians and Eskimo employed 
fundamentally the same methods, wliicli were indeed but adapta- 
tions of fishing devices and of tlie methods of hunting animals on 
land; but under the stress of a peculiar environment the Plskimo 
elaborated them in several ingenious ways. Let us consider first 
their methods of hunting seals. 
In Alaska, and in the region of the Mackenzie delta, the Eskimo 
set nets under the ice to capture seals, although, unlike the Indians, 
they never employed fish-nets until they came into direct or indirect 
contact with Europeans. Fragments of sealing-nets, made of baleen, 
have been discovered in Hudson bay and noi'theastern Clrecnland, 
so that they may once have been used throughout most of the Arctic. 
The Greenland Eskimo, and those living near the Magnetic Pole in 
Canada, sometimes adopted another “fishing” device. Two men 
went out together; one, lying flat on the ice, peered through a hole 
from which he had brushed away all snow, thus enabling the light to 
shine through to the water beneath; and liis companion stood above 
him, ready to strike with a long harpoon as soon as the watcher 
signalled the presence of a seal. Other Plskimo living on the Back 
river, and several Indian tribes. s]X^ared fish in the same way, but in 
fishing one man performed both functions — he both peererl through 
the hole and plied the spear. ^ 
I he usual method of capturing seals in winter, one practised by 
every coastal group from Bering strait to Greenlainl, seems to have 
been evolved from this “peep-hole” method. Knowing that the seal 
must rise to the surface to breathe, and that it maintained several 
holes in the ice that covered the .sea from October or November 
until IVIay or June, the native searched out one of its breathing holes 
and harpooned the animal the moment it broke water. Only the 
trained eye of an Eskimo, or the keen scent of a dog, could detect 
the tiny hole concealed beneath a foot or more of snow; and even 
when the hunter discovered it, there was no certainty that the seal 
would visit this particular one for several hours, or, if it did rise 
there, that the harpoon, aimed blindly at the dark centre of the hole, 
would unerringly strike its mark. Most hunters used cunningly 
1 One imy still sw Tsirnsliian In.Iians 'pfiinns s.-ilrnoii by this inethod in the shallow Kisniox river 
aunnft the months of February' ami March. Fut they now ii.se a hire (often a piece of coloured cloth) 
to attract the Hsh, and do not trouble to awin' tlie snow from around tlie liole, 
86959— 27 J 
