Fig. 260 (No. 89701 [763], from Utkiavwĭñ) represents one of these specimens. I do not recollect ever seeing goggles of this material in actual use. No. 89703 [754], Fig. 261, is an unusual pattern, having along the top a horizontal brim about one-half inch high, which serves for an additional shade to the eyes. Above this are two oblique holes opening into the cavity inside, which are probably for the purpose of ventilation, to prevent the moisture from the skin from being deposited as frost on the inside of the goggles or on the eyelashes. I do not remember having seen such goggles worn. Dall figures a similar pair from Norton Sound, and those brought by Mr. Turner from Ungava have a similar brim and ventilating holes. The snow goggles mentioned in Parry’s Second Voyage (p. 547) as occasionally seen at Iglulik, but more common in Hudson’s Strait, appear to have resembled these, but had a brim 3 or 4 inches deep.
Fig. 262.—Marker for meat cache.
We purchased a couple of little ivory rods, each with a little bunch of feathers tied to one end, which we were told were used by the deer hunters to mark the place where they had buried the flesh of a deer in the snow. This implement is called tû´kusia.
Fig. 262, represents one of these (No. 89531 [978] from Nuwŭk). It is a flat, slender rod of white walrus ivory, 11½ inches long, and evidently broken off at the tip. The other end is cut into ornamental notches, and ornamented with an incised pattern colored with red ocher, consisting of conventional lines and the figure of a reindeer on each face, a buck on one face and a doe on the other. Tied by a bit of sinew to the uppermost notch are four legs and three wing tips (three or four primaries, with the skin at the base) of the buff-breasted sandpiper (Tryngites subruficollis). This was evidently longer when new and perhaps was originally used for a seal indicator (which see above). Fig. 263 (No. 89453 [1581] from Utkiavwĭñ) is a similar rod, the tip of which has been brought to an edge so that it can be used as a “feather-setter” in feathering arrows. The remains of two wing tips of some small bird are tied to one of the notches at the upper end.
Fig. 263.—Marker for meat cache.
Having now described in detail all the weapons and other implements used in hunting, I am prepared to give an account of the time and methods of pursuing the different kinds of game.
Bears are occasionally met with in the winter by the seal hunters, roaming about the ice fields at some distance from the shore. They usually run from a man and often do not make a stand even when wounded. Occasionally, however, a bear rendered bold by hunger comes in from the sea and makes an attack on some native’s storehouse of seal meat even in the midst of the village. Of course, in such a case he has very little chance of escape, as the natives all turn out with their rifles and cut off his retreat. Two bears were killed in this way at Utkiavwĭñ in the winter of 1882-’83. The bear is always attacked with the rifle, often with the help of dogs to bring him to bay. The umiaks when walrus hunting sometimes meet with bears among the loose ice. If the bear is caught in the water, there is very little difficulty in paddling up close enough to him to shoot him.
The wolf can hardly be considered a regular object of pursuit. Wolves are often seen and occasionally shot by deer hunters in the winter, and one family in the summer of 1883 managed to catch a couple of young wolf cubs alive, somewhere between Point Barrow and the Colville. These they brought home with them and kept them picketed on the tundra just outside of the village, with a little kennel of snow to shelter them, carefully feeding them till winter, when their fur had grown long enough for use in trimming hoods. They were then killed with a stone-headed arrow, which we were told was necessary for the purpose, and their skins dressed and cut into strips which were sold around the village. Superstition required that the man who killed these wolves should sleep outside of the house in a tent or snow hut for “one moon” after killing them. We did not learn the reason for this practice beyond that it would be “bad” to do otherwise.
Foxes are sometimes shot, but are generally taken in the traps described above, which are usually set some distance from the village so as to avoid catching prowling dogs. Though generally exceedingly shy, the fox is sometimes rendered careless by hunger. One of the women at the deer-hunters’ camp in the spring of 1882 caught one in the little snow house built to store the meat and killed him with a stick.
Reindeer are comparatively scarce within the radius of a day’s march from Point Barrow, though solitary animals and small parties are to be seen almost any day in the winter a few miles inland from the seacoast. In the autumn, which is the rutting season, they occasionally wander down to the lagoons back of the beach. Nearly every day in the autumn and winter, when the weather is not stormy, one or more natives are out looking for reindeer, usually traveling on snowshoes and carrying their rifles slung on their backs. The deer are generally very wild and often perceive a man and begin to run at a distance of a mile or two, though a rutting buck will sometimes fancy that a skin-clad Eskimo is a rival buck, and come toward him, especially if the hunter crouches down and keeps perfectly still.
The usual method of hunting is to walk off inland until a deer is sighted, when the hunter moves directly toward him at a rapid pace, without regard to the wind or attempting to conceal himself, which would be almost hopeless in such open country. As soon as the deer starts to run, the hunter quickens his pace—to a run, if he has “wind” enough—and follows the game as long as he can keep it in sight, trusting that the well known curiosity of the deer will induce it to “circle” round, in order to see what it is that is following him with such pertinacity. Should the deer turn, as often happens, especially if there is more than one of them, the hunter alters his course so as to head him off, and as soon as he gets within long rifle range opens fire, and keeps it up till the animal is hit or escapes out of range. Strange as it may seem, a number of deer are killed every winter in this way.
If a deer be killed, the hunter usually “butchers” him on the spot, and brings in as much of the meat as he can carry on his back, leaving the rest, carefully covered with slabs of snow to protect it from the foxes, to be brought in as soon as convenient by a dog sled, which follows the hunter’s tracks to the place.
During the spring the deer retire some distance from the Point, and the does then drop their fawns. At this season nearly all the natives are busily engaged in the whale fishery, and pay little attention to the reindeer, so that we did not learn where they went to. When the fawns are perhaps a month old a small party, say a young man and his wife, sometimes makes a short journey to the eastward to procure fawn skins for clothing. They say that the fawns at this age can be caught by running them down. During the summer again the deer come down to the coast in small numbers, taking to the water in the lagoons, or even in the sea, when the flies become troublesome.
Sometimes in warm, calm weather the flies are so numerous that the deer is driven perfectly frantic, and runs along without looking where he is going, so that, as the natives say, a hunter who places himself in the deer’s path has no difficulty in shooting him. Flies were unusually scarce both summers that we were at the station, so that we never had an opportunity of seeing this done. When a deer is seen swimming he is pursued with the kaiak and lanced in the manner already described. In July, 1883, one man from Utkiavwĭñ made a short journey inland, “carrying” his kaiak from lake to lake, and killed two deer in this way without firing a shot. I believe this method of hunting is frequently practiced by the parties who go east for trading in the summer, and those who visit the rivers for the purpose of hunting.
The natives seemed to expect deer in summer at the lagoons, as along the isthmus between Imê´kpûñ and Imêkpûnĭglu they had set up a range of stakes, evidently intended to turn the deer up the beach where he would be seen from the camp at Pernijû. Only one deer, however, came down either summer, and he escaped without being seen. This contrivance of setting up stakes to guide the deer in a certain direction is very commonly used by the Eskimo. Egede gives a curious description of the practice in Greenland in his day: They “chase them [i.e., the reindeer] by Clap-hunting, setting upon them on all sides and surrounding them with all their Women and Children to force them into Defiles and Narrow Passages, where the Men armed lay in wait for them and kill them. And when they have not People enough to surround them, then they put up white Poles (to make up the Number that is wanted) with Pieces of Turf to head them, which frightens the Deer and hinders it from escaping.”364 Pl. 4, of the same work, is a very curious illustration of this style of hunting.
A similar method is practiced at the Coppermine River, where the deer are led by ranges of turf toward the spot where the archer is hidden.365 Franklin also noticed between the Mackenzie and the Colville similar ranges of driftwood stumps leading across the plain to two cairns on a hill,366 and Thomas Simpson mentions a similar range near Herschel Island,367 and double rows of turf to represent men leading down to a small lake near Point Pitt, for the purpose of driving the deer into the water where they could be speared.368 This is similar to the practice described by Schwatka369 among the “Netschilluk” of King William’s Land, where a line of cairns as high as a man and 50 to 100 yards apart is built along a ridge running obliquely to the water. When deer are seen feeding near the water the men form a skirmish line from the last cairn to the water and advance slowly. The deer mistake the cairns for men and take to the water, where they are easily speared.
The most important deer hunt takes place in the late fall and early spring, when the natives go inland 50 or 75 miles to the upper waters of Kuaru and Kulugrua, where the deer are exceedingly plentiful at this season. Capt. Herendeen, who went inland with the deer hunters in the autumn of 1882, reports that the bottom lands of Kulugrua “looked like a cattle yard,” from the tracks of the reindeer. They start as soon as it is possible to travel across the country with sledges, usually about the first of October, taking guns, ammunition, fishing tackle, and the necessary household utensils for themselves and their families, and stay till the daylight gets too short for hunting. In 1882, many parties got home about October 27 or 28. At this season there is seldom snow enough to build snow huts, so they generally live in tents, always close to the rivers from which they procure water for household use. The men spend their time hunting the deer, while the women bring in the game, attend to drying the skins and the household work, and catch whitefish and burbot through the ice of the rivers, which are now frozen hard enough for this purpose. Some of the old men and those who have not a supply of ammunition engage in the same pursuit.
A comparatively small number of the people go out to this fall deer hunt, which appears to be a new custom, adopted since Dr. Simpson’s time. It was probably not worth while to go out after deer at seasons when there was not enough snow for digging pitfalls, since they depended chiefly on these for the capture of the reindeer before the introduction of firearms. Fully half of each village go out on the spring deer hunt, as they did in Maguire’s time, the first parties starting out with the return of the sun, about January 23, and the others following in the course of two or three weeks, and remain out till about the middle of April, when it is time to come back for the whale fishery. The people of Utkiavwĭñ always travel to the hunting grounds by a regular road, which is the same as that followed by Lieut. Ray in his exploring trips. They travel along the coast on the ice wherever it is smooth enough till they reach Sĭ´ñaru, and then strike across country, crossing Kuaru and reaching Kulugrua near the hill Nuasu´knan. (See map, Pl. II.)
The people from Nuwŭk travel straight across Elson Bay to the south till they reach nearly the same region. Some parties from Nuwŭk also hunt in the rough country between Kulugrua and Ikpĭkpûñ. As the sledges are heavily laden with camp equipage, provisions and oil for the lamps, they travel slowly, taking four or five days for the journey, stopping for the night with tolerable regularity at certain stations where the first party that travels over the trail build snow huts, which are used by those who follow them. At the rivers they are scattered in small camps of four or five families, about a day’s journey apart. As well as we could learn these camps are in regularly established places, where the same people return every year, if they hunt at all. It even seemed as if these localities were considered the property of certain influential families, who could allow any others they pleased to join their parties.370 It is certain, at all events, that the people of Utkiavwĭñ did not hunt on the Ikpĭkpûñ with the men of Nuwŭk. At this season they live entirely in snow huts, often excavated in the deep drifts under the river bluffs, and the men hunt deer while the women, as before, catch fish in Kuaru and Kulugrua. None are taken in Ikpĭkpûñ. (See above, p. 58.)
Deer are generally very plentiful at this season, though sometimes, as happened in February, 1883, there comes a warm southerly wind which makes them all retreat farther inland for a few days. They are generally hunted by chasing them on snowshoes, in the manner already described, but with much better chances of success, since when a number of hunters are out in the same region the deer are kept moving, so that a herd started by one hunter is very apt to run within gunshot of another. The natives have generally very good success in this spring hunt. Two men who were hunting on shares for the station killed upward of ninety reindeer in the season of 1883. A great deal of the meat is, of course, consumed on the spot, but a good many deer are brought home frozen. They are skinned and brought home whole, only the heads and legs being cut off. The latter are disjointed at the knee and elbow. These frozen carcasses are usually cut up with a saw for cooking. At this season the does are pregnant, and many good-sized fetuses are brought home frozen. We were told that these were excellent food, though we never saw them eaten. For the first two or three days after the return of the deer hunters to the village all the little boys are playing with these fetuses, which they set up as targets for their blunt arrows.
Before starting for the deer hunt the hunters generally take the movable property which they do not mean to carry with them out of the house and bury it in the snow for safe keeping, apparently thinking that while a dishonest person might help himself to small articles left around the house, he could hardly go to work and dig up a cache without attracting the attention of the neighbors. If both families from a house go deer hunting, they either close it up entirely or else get some family who have no house of their own to take care of it during their absence. During the season, small parties, traveling light, with very little baggage, make flying trips to the village, usually to get a fresh supply of ammunition or oil, and at the end of the season a lucky hunter almost always sends in to borrow extra dogs and hire women and children to help bring in his game. The skins, which at this season are very thick and heavy, suitable only for blankets, heavy stockings, etc., are simply rough dried in the open air, and brought in stacked up on a flat sled. Lieut. Ray met a Nuwŭk party returning in 1882 with a pile of these skins that looked like a load of hay. With such heavy loads they, of course, travel very slowly. A few natives, especially when short of ammunition, still use at this season the snow pitfalls mentioned by Capt. Maguire.371
The following is the description of those seen by Lieut. Ray in 1883: A round hole is dug in the drifted snow, along the bank of a stream or lake. This is about 5 feet in diameter and 5 or 6 feet deep, and is brought up to within 2 or 3 inches of the surface, where there is only a small hole, through which the snow was removed. This is carefully closed with a thin slab of snow and baited by strewing reindeer moss and bunches of grass over the thin surface, through which the deer breaks as soon as he steps on it. The natives say that they sometimes get two deer at once.
This method of hunting the reindeer appears uncommon among the Eskimo. I find no mention of it except at Repulse Bay,372 and among the Netsillingmiut, where dogs’ urine is said to be sprinkled on the snow as a bait to attract the deer by its “Salzgehalt.”373 Lieut. Ray was informed by the natives that the “Nunatañmiun” also captured deer by means of a rawhide noose set across a regular deer path, when they discovered such. The noose is held up and spread by a couple of sticks, and the end staked to the ground with a piece of antler. A similar method was practiced by the natives of Norton Sound.374 A few parties visit the rivers in summer for the purpose of hunting reindeer, but most of the natives are either off on the trading expeditions previously mentioned or else settled in the small camps along the coast, 3 or 4 miles apart, whence they occasionally go a short distance inland in search of reindeer.
The flesh of the smaller seals forms such a staple of food, and their blubber and skin serve so many important purposes, that their capture is one of the most necessary pursuits at Point Barrow, and is carried on at all seasons of the year and in many different methods. During the season of open water many seals are shot from the umiaks engaged in whaling and walrus hunting or caught in nets set along the shore at Elson Bay. This is also the only season when seals can be captured with the small kaiak darts.
The principal seal fishery, however, begins with the closing of the sea, usually about the middle of October. When the pack ice comes in there are usually many small open pools, to which the seals resort for air. Most of the able-bodied men in the village are out every day armed with the rifle and retrieving harpoon, traveling many miles among the ice hummocks in search of such holes. When a seal shows his head he is shot at with the rifle, and the hunter, if successful, secures his game with the harpoon. This method of hunting is practiced throughout the winter wherever open holes form in the ice. A native going to visit his nets or to examine the condition of the ice always carries his rifle and retrieving harpoon, in case he should come across an open hole where seals might be found. The hunt at this season is accompanied with considerable danger, as the ice pack is not yet firmly consolidated and portions of it frequently move offshore with a shift of the wind, so that the hunter runs the risk of being carried out to sea. The natives exercise considerable care, and generally avoid crossing a crack if the wind, however light, is blowing offshore; but in spite of their precautions men are every now and then carried off to sea and never return.
The hunters meet with many exciting adventures. On the morning of November 24, 1882, all the heavy ice outside of the bar broke away from the shore, leaving a wide lead, and began to move rapidly to the northeast, carrying with it three seal hunters. They were fortunately near enough to the village to be seen by the loungers on the village hill, who gave the alarm. An umiak was immediately mounted on a flat sled and carried out over the shore ice with great rapidity, so that the men were easily rescued. The promptness and energy with which the people at the village acted showed how well the danger was appreciated.
At this season of the year a single calm night is sufficient to cover all the holes and leads with young ice strong enough to support a man, and occasionally before the pack comes in the open sea freezes over. In this young ice the seals make their breathing holes (adlu), “about the Bigness of a Halfpenny,” as Egede says, and the natives employ the stabbing harpoon for their capture. At the present day this is seldom used alone, but the seal is shot through the head as he comes to the surface, and the spear only used to secure him. Seals which have been shot in this way are sometimes carried off by the current before they can be harpooned. As far as I can learn, this practice of shooting seals at the adlu is peculiar to Point Barrow (including probably the rest of the Arctic coast as far as Kotzebue Sound), though the use of the una, as already stated, is very general.
This method of hunting can generally be prosecuted only a few days at a time, as the movements of the pack soon break up the fields of young ice, though new fields frequently form in the course of the season. After the January gales the pack is so firmly consolidated that there are no longer any open holes or leads, and when the spring leads open young ice seldom forms, so that this method of hunting is as a rule confined to the period between the middle of October and the early part of January.
With the departure of the sun, about the middle of November, begins the netting, which is the most important fishery of the year, but which can be prosecuted with success only in the darkest nights. The natives say that even a bright aurora interferes with the netting. At this season narrow leads of open water are often formed parallel to the shore, and frequently remain open for several days. The natives are constantly reconnoitering the ice in search of such leads, and when one is found nearly all the men in the village go out to it with their nets. A place is sought where the ice is tolerably level and not too thick for about a hundred yards back from the lead, at which distance the nets are set, often a number of them close together, in the manner already described, so that they hang like curtains under the ice, parallel to the edge of the open water. When darkness comes on the hunters begin to rattle on the ice with their ice picks, scratch with the seal call, or make some other gentle and continuous noise, which soon excites the curiosity of the seals that are swimming about in the open lead. One at length dives under the ice and swims in the direction of the sound, which of course leads him directly into the net, where he is entangled.
On favorable nights a great many seals are captured in this way. For instance, on the night of December 2, 1882, the netters from Utkiavwĭñ alone took at least one hundred seals. Such lucky hauls are not common, however. As the weather at this season is often excessively cold, the seals freeze stiff soon after they are taken from the net, and if sufficient snow has fallen they are stacked up by sticking their hind flippers in the snow. This keeps them from being covered up and lost if the snow begins to drift. I have counted thirty seals, the property of one native, piled up in this way into a single stack. The women and children go out at their convenience with dog sleds and bring in the seals. A woman, however, who is at work on deerskin clothing must not touch a hand to the seals or the sled on which they are loaded, but may lend a hand at hauling on the drag line. When the seals are brought to the edge of the beach they must not be taken on land till each has been given a mouthful of fresh water. We did not learn the object of this practice, but Nordenskiöld, who observed a similar custom at Pitlekaj, was informed that it was to keep the leads from closing.375
When the lead keeps open for several days, or there is a prospect of its opening again, the hunter leaves his gear out on the ice, sometimes bringing his ice pick, scoop, and setting pole part way home and sticking them up in the snow alongside of the path. In 1884 a lead remained open for several days about 3 or 4 miles from the village, and the natives made a regular beaten trail out to it. When we visited the netting ground the lead had closed, but nearly all the men had left their gear sticking up near it, with the nets tied up and hung upon the ice picks. They had built little walls of snow slabs as a protection against the wind. The season for this netting ends with the January gales, which close the leads permanently.
Later in the winter the seals resort to very inconsiderable cracks among the hummocks for air, and nets are set hanging around these cracks, so that a seal can not approach the crack without being caught. There was such a crack just in the edge of the rough land floe, not half a mile from Utkiavwĭñ, in February, 1883, from which two men took several seals, visiting the nets every day or two. Those men who do not go off on the deer hunt keep one or more seal nets set all winter, either in this way or in the third method, which can be practiced only after the daylight has come back, when the ice is thick. At this season there are frequently to be found among the hummocks what the natives call i´glus, dome-shaped snow houses about 6 feet in diameter and 2 or 3 feet high, with a smooth round hole in the top, and communicating with the water. These are undoubtedly the same as the snow burrows described by Kumlien,376 which the female seal builds to bring forth her young in.377 They are curious constructions, looking astonishingly like a man’s work. The natives told me that nets set at these places were for the capture of young seals (nĕtyiáru). It appears that these houses are the property of a single female only until her young one is able to take to the water, as a net is kept set at one of these holes, as well as I could understand, sometimes capturing several seals. The net is set flat under the hole, the corners being drawn out by cords let down through small holes in a circle round the main opening, through which the net is drawn. A seal rising to the surface runs his head through the meshes of the net. The small holes and sometimes the middle one are carefully covered with slabs of snow.
The officers of the revenue steamer Corwin, who made the sledge journey along the northeast coast of Siberia in the early summer of 1881, saw seal nets set in this way, flat, under air holes in the ice, with a hole for each corner of the net. When a seal was caught the net was drawn up through the middle hole with a hooked pole.378 In 1883 they began setting these nets at Point Barrow about March 4, and probably about the same date the year before, though we did not happen to observe this method of netting until considerably later.
In June and July, when the ice becomes rotten and worn into holes, the seals “haul out” to bask in the sun, and are then stalked and shot. They are exceedingly wary at this season. The seal usually taken in the methods above described is the rough or ringed seal (Phoca fœtida), but in 1881 a single male ribbon seal (Histriophoca fasciata) was netted, and in 1882 a native shot one at the breathing hole, but it was carried away by the current before he could secure it. The natives said that they sometimes caught the harbor seal (P. vitulina) in the shore nets in Elson Bay. The bearded seal (Erignathus barbatus), whose skin is especially prized for making harpoon lines, boot soles, umiak covers, etc., is never very abundant, and occurs chiefly in the season of open water, when it is captured from the umiak with harpoon and rifle, but they are sometimes found in the winter, as two were killed at breathing holes in the rough ice January 8, 1883.
The walrus occurs only during the season of open water, and is almost always captured from the umiak with the large harpoon and rifle. The whaling boats usually find a few, especially late in the season, and after the trading parties have gone in the summer the natives who remain are generally out in the boats a good deal of the time looking for walrus and seals. As a general thing walrus are especially plenty in September, when much loose ice is moving backwards and forwards with the current, frequently sleeping in large herds upon cakes of ice. The boats, which are out nearly every day at this season with volunteer crews, not regularly organized as for whaling, paddle as near as they can to these sleeping herds and try to shoot them in the head, aiming also to “fasten” to as many as they can with the harpoon and float as they hurry into the water. A harpooned walrus is followed up with the boat and shot with the rifle when a chance is offered. Swimming walruses are chased with the boat and “fastened to” by darting the harpoon. When a walrus is killed it is towed up to the nearest cake of ice and cut up on the spot. We never knew of the kaiak being used in walrus-hunting, as is the custom among the eastern Eskimo.
The pursuit of the “bowhead” whale (Balæna mysticetus), so valuable not only for the food furnished by its flesh and “blackskin” and the oil from its blubber, but for the whalebone, which serves so many useful purposes in the arts of the Eskimo and is besides the chief article of trade with the ships, is carried on with great regularity and formality. In the first place all the umialĭks (boat-owners) or those who are to be the captains of whaling umiaks, before the deer hunters start out in January, bring all the gear to be used in the whale fishery to the kû´dyĭgĭ, where it is consecrated by a ceremony consisting of drumming and singing, perhaps partaking of the nature of an incantation.
Capt. Herendeen was the only one of our party who witnessed this ceremony, which took place at Utkiavwĭñ on January 9, 1883, and he did not bring back a detailed account of the proceedings. During part of the ceremony all the umialĭks were seated in a row upon the floor, and a woman passed down the line marking each across the face with an oblique streak of blacklead. As soon as the deer hunters return in the spring they begin getting ready for the whales, covering the boats, fitting lines to harpoons, and putting gear of all sorts in perfect order. Every article to be used in whaling—harpoons, lances, paddles, and even the timbers of the boats—must be scraped perfectly clean.379 This work is generally done by the umialĭk himself and his family, as the crews do not enter on their duties till the whaling actually commences. The crews are regularly organized for the season, and are made up during the winter and early spring. They consist of eight or ten persons to each boat, including the captain, who is always the owner of the boat, and sits in the stern and steers, using a larger paddle than the rest, and the harpooner, who occupies the bow. When a bombgun is carried it is intrusted to a third man, who sits in the waist of the boat, and whose duty it is to shoot the whale whenever he sees a favorable opportunity, whether it has been harpooned or not. The rest are simply paddlers.
When used for whaling, the umiak is propelled by paddles alone, sails and oars never being even taken on board. Men are preferred for the whaling crews when enough can be secured, otherwise the vacancies are filled by women, who make efficient paddlers. Some umialĭks hire their crews, paying them a stipulated price in tobacco and other articles, and providing them with food during the season. Others ship men on shares. We did not learn the exact proportions of these shares in any case. They appear to concern the whalebone alone, as all seem to be entitled to as much of the flesh and blubber as they can cut off in the general scramble. At this season exploring parties are out every day examining the state of the ice to ascertain when the pack is likely to break away from the landfloe, and also to find the best path for the umiaks through the hummocks.
In 1882 the condition of the ice was such that the boats could be taken out directly from Utkiavwĭñ, by a somewhat winding path, to the edge of the land floe about five or six miles from the shore. This path was marked out by the seal-hunters during the winter, and some of the natives spent their leisure time widening and improving it, knocking off projecting points of ice with picks and whale spades, and filling up the worst of the inequalities. Much of the path, however, was exceedingly rough and difficult when it was considered finished. In 1883 the land floe was so rough and wide abreast of the village that no practicable path could be made, so all the whalemen with their families moved up to Imê´kpûñ and encamped in tents as already described (see p. 84) for the season. From this point a tolerably straight and easy path was made out to the edge of the land floe. The natives informed me as early as April 1 that it would be necessary for them to move up to Imê´kpûñ, adding that the ice abreast of the village was very heavy and would move only when warm weather came. This prediction was correct, as the season of 1883 was so late that no ships reached the station until August 1.
About the middle of April the natives begin anxiously to expect an east or southeast wind (nígyǝ) to drive off the pack and open the leads, and should it not speedily blow from that quarter recourse is had to supernatural means to bring it. A party of men go out and sit in a semicircle facing the sea on the village cliff, while one man in the middle beats a drum and sings a monotonous chant, interrupted by curious vibrating cries, accompanied with a violent shaking of the head from side to side. This ceremony is conducted with great solemnity, and the natives seemed disinclined to have us witness it, so that we learned very little about it. They, however, told us that the chant was addressed to a tuaña or spirit, requesting him to make the desired wind blow.380 It does not appear to be necessary that the man who delivers the invocation should be a regular magician or “doctor.” A succession of unsuccessful attempts were made in 1882, some of them by men who never to our knowledge practiced incantations on other occasions. During this period, and while the whaling is going on, no pounding must be done in the village, and it is not allowable even to rap with the knuckles on wood for fear of frightening away the whales.381 It is interesting to find that at Norton Sound, where the whale is not pursued, this superstition has been transferred to the salmon fishery, one of the most important industries of the year. Mr. Dall382 says: “While the fishery lasts no wood must be cut with an axe, or the salmon will disappear.”
As soon as the lead opens, and sometimes before when the prospect looks promising, the boats are taken out to the edge of the land floe and kept out there during the season, which lasts till about the last week in June, when they are brought in and got ready for the summer expeditions. When the lead closes, as often happens, the boats are hauled up on the ice and many or all of the crews come home until there are prospects of open water. When there is open water, the boats are always on the lookout for whales, either cruising about in the lead or lying up at the edge of the floe, the crews eating and sleeping when they can get a chance and shooting seals and ducks when there are no whales in sight. The women and children travel back and forth between the village and the boats, carrying supplies of food for the whalemen.
In 1883, there was a regular beaten trail along the smooth shore ice between Imê´kpûñ and Utkiavwĭñ, where people were constantly traveling back and forth. When the boats are out no woman is allowed to sew, as was noticed by Dr. Simpson.383 To carry the umiak out over the ice it is lashed on a flat sled and drawn by dogs and men. A description of one of these boats which I accompanied for part of its journey out to the open water, will show how a whaleboat is fitted out. The rifles, harpoons, lances, and other gear of the party were sent on ahead on a sled drawn by half a dozen dogs, with a woman to lead them. After these had made a short stage, they were unfastened from this sled and brought back and harnessed to the flat sled on which the umiak was lashed. The party, which consisted of five men and two women, one of whom remained with the sled load of gear, then started ahead, the women running in front of the dogs and the men pushing at the sides of the boat. The boat travels very easily and rapidly on smooth ice, but among the hummocks the men have hard work pushing and scrambling, and occasional stops have to be made to widen narrow places in the path and to chisel off projecting points of ice which might pierce the skin cover of the boat. When they came up to the first sled the women were again sent on with this while the men rested. The inflated sealskin floats, five or six in number, the whale harpoon, and whale spades, and ice picks were carried in the boats.
A whaling umiak always carries a number of amulets to insure success. These consisted in this case of two wolf skulls, a dried raven, the axis vertebra of a seal, and numerous feathers. The skin of a golden eagle is considered an excellent charm for whaling, and Nĭkawaalu was particularly desirous to secure the tip of a red fox’s tail, which he said was a powerful amulet. The captain and harpooner wore fillets of mountain sheepskin, with a little crystal or stone image of a whale dangling at each side of the face, and the captain’s fillet was also fringed with the incisor teeth of the mountain sheep. Both wore little stone whales attached to the breast of the jacket, and one woman and one or two of the men had streaks of black lead on their faces.384
When they are on the watch for whales the great harpoon is kept always rigged and resting in a crotch of ivory in the bow of the boat. When a whale is sighted they paddle up as close as possible and the harpooner thrusts the harpoon into him. The whale dives, with the floats attached to him, and the shaft, which is retained, is rigged for striking him when he rises again. The other boats, if any are near, join in the chase until the whale is so wearied that he can be lanced or a favorable opportunity occurs for shooting him. All boats in sight at the time the whale is struck, as I understood, are entitled to an equal share of the whalebone.
As soon as the whale is killed he is towed up to the edge of the land floe and everybody standing on the edge of the ice and in the boats begins hacking away, at random, at the flesh and blubber, some of them going to work more carefully to cut out the whalebone. The “cutting in” is managed without order or control, everybody who can be on the spot being apparently entitled to all the meat, blubber, and blackskin he or she can cut off. The same custom was practiced in Greenland, and is to this day in eastern Siberia.
While they are very particular in all superstitious observances regarding the whales, they are less careful about certain things, such as loud talking and firing guns at seals and fowl when they are waiting for whales, which really hurt their chances with the timid animals. They are less energetic than one would suppose in pursuit of the whale, according to Capt. Herendeen, who spent several days each season with the whaleboats. Instead of cruising about the lead in search of whales they are rather inclined to lie in wait for them at the edge of the floe, so that when the open water is wide many whales escape.
When the leads are very narrow the whales are sometimes shot with the bombgun from the edge of the ice. Success in this appears to be variable. In 1882 only one small whale was secured, and in 1883 one full-grown one, though several were struck and lost each season. The veteran whaling-master, Capt. L. C. Owen, informs me that one season the boats of these two villages captured ten. The season of 1885 was very successful. The natives of the two villages are reported to have taken twenty-eight whales. Capt. E. E. Smith, however, informs me that only seven of these were full-grown.
When actually engaged in whaling the umialik exercises a very fair degree of discipline, but at other times he seems hardly able to keep his men from straggling off to go home or to visit their seal nets, etc., so that he sometimes has to chase a whale “short-handed.”
Nowhere else among the Eskimo does the whale fishery appear to be conducted in such regular manner with formally organized crews as upon this northwest coast. From all accounts the animal is only casually pursued elsewhere with fleets of kaiaks or umiaks manned by volunteer crews.385
The beluga or white whale is only casually pursued, and as far as I could learn is always shot with the rifle. It is not abundant.
During the winter months a few ptarmigan are occasionally shot, but the natives pay no special attention to birds until the spring migrations. The first ducks appear a little later than the whales, about the end of April or the first week of May, and from that time till the middle of June scarcely a day passes when they are not more or less plenty. The king ducks (Somateria spectabilis) are the first to appear, while the Pacific eiders (S. v-nigra) arrive somewhat later, and are more abundant towards the end of the migrations. At this season all women and children, and many men, go armed with the bolas, and everybody is always on the lookout for flocks of ducks. On four or five favorable days each season, at intervals of a week or ten days, there are great flights of eiders coming up in huge flocks of two or three hundred, stretched out in long diagonal lines. These flocks follow one another in rapid succession and keep the line of the coast, apparently striking straight across Peard Bay from the Seahorse Islands to a point four or five miles below Utkiavwĭñ, and most of them fly up along the smooth shore-ice to Pernyû or Point Barrow. Some flocks always fly up among the hummocks of the land floe, and a few others turn eastward below the village and continue their course to the northeast across the land.
On the days between the great flights there are always a few flocks passing, and some days when there is no flight along shore they are very abundant out at the open water, where the whalemen shoot them in the intervals of whaling. When a great flight begins the people at the village hasten out and form a sort of skirmish line across the shore ice from the shore to the hummocks, a few sometimes stationing themselves among the latter. They take but little pains to conceal themselves, frequently sitting out on the open ice-field on sealing stools or squares of bearskins. The ducks generally keep on their course without paying much attention to the men, and in fact one may often get a shot by running so as to head off an approaching flock. Firing, however, frightens them and makes them rise to a considerable height, often out of gunshot. Many ducks are taken with guns and bolas in these flights.
Rather late in the season the old squaws (Clangula hyemalis) pass to the northeast in large flocks, but usually go so high than none are taken. A good many of these, however, with a few eiders, geese, brant, and loons, remain and breed on the tundra, and are occasionally shot by the natives, though most of them are too busy with whaling and seal and walrus hunting to pay much attention to birds. Small parties of two or three lads or young men, sometimes with their wives, make short excursions inland to the small streams and sand islands east of Point Barrow, after birds and eggs, and the boys from the small camps along the coast towards Woody Inlet are always on the lookout for eggs and small birds, such as they can kill with their bows and arrows or catch in snares. They say that the parties which go east, and those which visit the rivers in summer, get many eggs and find plenty of ducks, geese, and swans, which have molted their flight feathers so that they are unable fly.
About the end of July the return migration of the ducks begins. At this season the flocks, which are generally smaller and more compact than in the spring, come from the east along the northern shore, and cross out to sea at the isthmus of Pernyû, where the natives assemble in large numbers to shoot them as well as to meet with the Nunatañmiun. All the people who have been scattered along the coast in small camps gradually collect at this season at Pernyû, and the returning eastern parties generally stop there two or three days; while, after they have brought their families back to the village, the men frequently walk up to Pernyû for a day or two of duck shooting. The tents are pitched just in the bend of Elson Bay, and north of them is a narrow place in the sandspit over which the ducks often pass. Here the natives dig shallow pits in the gravel, in which they post themselves with guns and bolas. A line of posts is set up along the bend of the beach from the tents almost to the outlet of Imêkpûniglu.
When a light breeze is blowing from the northeast the ducks, no matter how far off shore they are when first seen, always head for the point of land on the other side of this outlet, probably with the intention of following the line of lagoons and going out to sea farther down the coast, as they sometimes do. When, however, they reach this critical point they catch sight of the posts, and the natives who are watching them sharply set up a shrill yell. Frightened by this and by the line of posts, nine times out of ten, if the cry is given at the right moment, the ducks will falter, become confused, and, finally, collecting into a compact body will whirl along the line of posts, past the tents, flying close to the water, and turn out to sea at the first open space, which is just where the gunners are posted. This habit of yelling to frighten the ducks and bring them within gunshot has been observed on the Siberian coast in places where the ducks are in the habit of flying in and out from lagoons over low bars.386 Should the wind blow hard from the east, however, or blow from any other quarter, the ducks do not fly in such abundance, nor do they pay much attention to the posts or the yelling, but often keep on their course down the lagoons, or head straight for the beach and cross wherever they strike it. The latter is generally the habit with the old squaws, who come rather late in the migrations, while the black brant (Branta nigricans) are more apt to go down the lagoons. A few pintail ducks (Dafila acuta), are occasionally shot at this season, and are sometimes found in the two little village ponds (Tûseraru). The shooting at Pernyû usually lasts till the middle or end of September, during which month the natives also shoot a good many gulls (Larus barrovianus and Rhodostethia rosea) as they fly along the shore.
The streams and lakes in the immediate neighborhood of Point Barrow contain no fish, and there is comparatively little fishing in the sea. When the water first closes in the autumn narrow tide cracks often form at the very edge of the beach. At these cracks the natives frequently catch considerable numbers of Polar cod (Boreogadus saida) and small sculpins (Cottus quadricornis and C. decastrensis), with the hook and line. The tackle for this fishing consists of a short line of whalebone, provided with a little “squid” or artificial bait of ivory, and fastened to a wooden rod about 18 inches or 2 feet long. The lure, which is apparently meant to represent a small shrimp, is kept moving, and the fish bite at it. We brought home two complete sets of tackle for this kind of fishing, two lines without rods and twelve lures or hooks. No. 89548 [1733] Fig. 264, has been selected for description.
The line is 40 inches long and made of four strips of whalebone 0.1 inch wide, fastened together with what appear to be “waterknots.” Two of these strips are of black whalebone, respectively 4½ and 9 inches long; the other two are of light colored whalebone and 15½ and 11 inches long. The light colored end is made fast to the eye in the small end of the hook as follows: The end is passed through the eye, doubled back and passed through a single knot in the standing part, and knotted round the latter with a similar knot (Fig. 265). This knot is the one generally used in fastening a fishing line to the hook. The other end is doubled in a short bight into which is becket-hitched one end of a bit of sinew thread about 3 inches long, and the other end is knotted into a notch at one end of the rod, as the whalebone would be too stiff to tie securely to the stick. The rod is a roughly whittled splinter of California redwood, 14½ inches long. The body of the lure is a piece of walrus ivory 1½ inches long. Through a hole in the large end of this is driven the barbless brass hook, with a broad thin plate at one end bent up, flush with the convex side. When not in use the line is reeled lengthwise on the rod, secured by a notch at each end of the latter, and the hook stuck into the wood on one side of the rod. The hook is wedged into the body of the lure with a bit of whalebone. The other specimen, No. 89547, [1733] from the same village, is almost exactly like this, but has a slightly shorter line, made of three strips of bone, of which the lower two, as before, are of light colored whalebone. The object of using this material is probably to render the part of the line which is under water less conspicuous, as we use leaders and casting lines of transparent silkworm gut. The body of the lure is made of old brown walrus ivory. These lures are 1 inch to 1½ inches long, and vary little in the shape of the body which is usually made of walrus ivory, in most cases darkened on the surface by age or charring, so that when carved into shape it is parti-colored, black and white. The body is often ornamented with small colored beads inlaid for eyes and along the back (Fig. 266a, No. 56609 [153], from Utkiavwĭñ).
Fig. 264.—Tackle for shore fishing.