Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos/Chapter 6

The Eskimo in his primitive state is his own craftsman; with tools which he has made himself he fashions the weapons and other implements he needs. But this in several places — and among the Iglulik Eskimos too — is now a thing of the past; the European workshop technique has made wide inroads into the life of the Eskimo. Factory-made implements and weapons to some extent supplant their own old forms of implements, and this destroys their good old technique too. The present-day Igluliks are on the whole very poor craftsmen; what they make is mostly badly and carelessly finished, without much thought of beauty of form and decoration. In this respect they are far inferior to the people who formerly inhabited their land (the carriers of the Thule culture) and also to many Eskimo tribes alive today, especially in Greenland and Alaska. Even a poor Greenlander, for example, would not be seen driving a sledge such as those of the average Iglulik, quite apart from the difference in form: cross-pieces of unequal length and breadth and at unequal intervals, lashings roughly made, some with seal thong, others with rope, some replaced by nails; the runner noses unequal in their upturn, one mounted with iron, the other not at all, and so on. The sewing, however, forms the exception from this crude workmanship; many women are quite artists with their needle and, as regards clothing. they are equal to, and in some respects superior to most other Eskimo tribes. There are, however, a few men who are called clever craftsmen, but they are exceptions.

The following description only comprises their own types of implements, including those transformed though European influence. The purely European tools such as the file, saw, plane, axe, screwdriver, awl, etc. of course call for no mention here.

As a whittling knife they use a knife with a wood or bone handle. about 20 cm long with a small, strong, triangular, single-edged, often ​Image missingFig. 59.Whittling knife. 1 : 2. slightly curved, iron blade (sánarrut), as figured by Boas,^[1] and also smaller knives with a short bone handle and small, single-edged iron blade (qingusaq). One of these is shown in fig. 59 (Ponds Inlet); the blade is quite short, but strong, single-edged; the fore part of the handle is strengthened by a metal cap; 9.7 cm long. When working with the long whittling knife it is brought with the right hand towards the body; the rear end of the handle is often supported against the right thigh or knee,^[2] and it is for this reason that the handle is so long. The qingusaq is principally used for cutting out grooves in bone, for instance when a piece of antler or ivory is to be split. The knife is then gripped with the whole hand, the blade turned downwards and it is repeatedly drawn towards the body with great force until the piece is split.

Lyon^[3] says that a young man "cut towards the left hand and never used the thumb of the right as we do, for a chuck to the knife".

Elsewhere he says that ivory "was cut by continual chopping with a knife, one end of the ivory resting on a soft stone, which served as a block. To smooth and polish the work when finished, a gritty stone is used as a file, and kept constantly wetted with saliva".^[4]

On the whole the Iglulik Eskimos are not very skilful at carving; there are, however, exceptions. One of the best craftsmen we met was Aua, a man about 55 years old, who then lived at Itibdjeriang but otherwise had spent most of his life at Iglulik. Once when Knud Rasmussen visited him Aua said that he had once seen four unusually big walruses drift past his dwelling on an ice-floe. Knud Rasmussen asked him to draw this and gave him a piece of paper and a pencil. Aua sat with the pencil in his hand for an hour without anything coming of the drawing; then he laid it down and said he would rather carve it in ivory, that would be easier. Six months later he produced the carving Fig. 60, which is intended to illustrate the scene he described: A male walrus and three females drifting on an ice-floe, whilst Aua watches them from land through a telescope; ​his wife and child sit by his side. The length of the carving is 15,6 cm. Fig. 61 shows another product of Aua's artistic propensities: A dog's head carved in soapstone, 3.7 cm long.

Aua's elder brother, Ututsiaq, at Ponds Inlet, was also rather good at carving in ivory; but among the younger men this art is in a state of rapid decline. Parry,^[5] too, writes that in spite of their many good knives, the work they did with them was "remarkably coarse and clumsy".

The bow-drill is still an important tool and will certainly always hold its own. Even where there is access to European tools the Eskimos as a rule prefer their own bow-drill for drilling holes in ivory and antler; they do not use hand-drills.

Fig. 62 a and c (Iglulik) is a bow-drill, consisting of the bow (nîortût), the drill (kaivut) with the bit (errotikuluk) and the mouth ​piece (kingmiaq); the bow is of caribou rib, 26 cm long, with a string of seal thong fastened to a hole and a notch at the ends of the bow. The other bows in the collection have lengths from 27 to 42 cm; some of them are of caribou rib, others of wood; on some the string is fastened to holes in both ends, or a hole at one end and a notch at the other, on others to a notch at both ends; the wooden bows are sometimes only slightly curved.

Fig. 62 b (Ponds Inlet) is a bow-drill of narwhal tusk, round, thickest at the lower part, with an iron bit, inserted in the shank; the bit is ground with four facets; length 19 cm. The other drills vary in length from 13 to 22 cm and are of wood, of antler, of walrus or narwhal tusk; they all have an iron bit, wedge-shaped or with four facets. The greatest thickness of the shanks is nearly always at the bottom, where the wood shanks in particular have a band of brass. Two of them are waisted at the middle for the string.

Fig. 62 d (Ponds Inlet) is the usual form of mouth-piece. It is a wooden block, 5.7 × 3.5 × 1.8 cm, turned in at the top and with a groove for the mouth, the lower end containing the circular hole for the upper end of the drill shank. The mouth-pieces in the collection vary in length from 3.6 to 6.6 cm; none of them are of caribou astragalus, only one is of antler. the others of wood; several of the latter are reinforced in the drill-hole by a piece of brass. Boas^[6] says that at Repulse Bay a vertebra was most often used as a mouthpiece, its natural hollows serving as sockets for the drill; I have never seen such mouth-pieces, however.

Drilling proceeds in the usual manner: the mouth-piece with the socket for the upper end of the drill is placed between the teeth, whilst the piece to be drilled is held in the left hand. The drill is made to rotate by the bow, the string of which is wound once round it and which is then moved rapidly from side to side. thus making the drill cut. Lyon^[7] praises their drilling, especially that they are able to drill holes in fox teeth “scarcely large enough to allow of a fine needle passing through them".

Adzes (qijuk) are used for working in bone and ivory. Fig. 63 (Iglulingmiut, Qajûvfik) has a wooden handle, 17 cm long, to which a European mortice-chisel 19 cm long, 2½ cm wide, is fastened as a blade; the lashing is of seal thong, and there is also an interlayer of seal skin; the acute angle between blade and shaft is characteris​tic, and is present on all the other adzes in the collection, in contrast to those of the Thule culture.

An adze from the Aivilingmiut has a shaft of whale bone, 29 cm long, and one from Ponds Inlet a wooden shaft 21 cm long, 7½ cm wide at the top; both have long mortice chisels as blades. An adze from Iglulik has a mortice chisel only 9 cm long, and a 19 cm handle of antler; a similar specimen from the west coast of Hudson Bay is Image missingFig. 63.Adze. 1 : 3. Image missingFig. 64.Implement for hollowing, out. figured by Boas.^[8] Parry^[9] figures an adze with an iron blade and a number of notches in the handle for the fingers; a similar handle is in the Anangiarssuk find.^[10] Now most of the Iglulik Eskimos have European axes which are used for chopping frozen dog-feed, for woodworking, etc.

For whetting knives and other edges they use stones of slate or sandstone, mostly prismatic in shape. A whetting stone of black slate from Iglulik is prismatic, 9.3 × 3.6 × 2.1 cm, smoothed on three longitudinal sides; one of red sandstone, likewise from Iglulik, is prismatic, 4.9 × 1.9 × 0.7 cm, ground on all six sides; a slender stick of slate from Qajûvfik, 13.0 cm long. 1.6 cm wide, is ground on all four longitudinal sides.

From Iglulik we have a musk-ox tooth with a pierced hole for suspension; 5.0 × 3.0 cm; these were often used in former days for whetting knives.

Many Eskimos now have whetting steels of European make.

For polishing iron blades undigested milk from the stomach of walrus cubs, found in cheese-like lumps, is often used.

Soapstone is sawn and hewn out with saw and adze and thereafter worked with knife and file. Fig. 64 (Lyon Inlet) is an implement for ​hollowing out soapstone vessels, the only one of its kind I have seen. It consists of a roughly shaped handle of antler, in the fore end of Image missingFig. 65.Woman's knife. which is an oblique groove; inserted in this is a short, fairly thick iron blade with a sharp chisel-edge; a piece of sheet brass is wedged into the groove to hold the blade firm; 14.4 cm long. I have seen soapstone powder used for rubbing into fox skins to make them whiter in appearance.

Seal thong is an important product; for its strength and flexibility is it quite indispensable for harpoon lines, lashings on sledges and kayaks and many other places. The seal thong is made in the following manner: The skin of a bearded seal is cut out in a spiral into a long thong, which is then placed in a meat cache until it smells; the blubber and hair are then removed with a sharp knife and the edges rounded and smoothed; it is then hung between Image missingFig. 66.Woman's knife from Parry's Collection. Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. stones to stretch and dry it, when it is further smoothed with a sharp knife; when it is dry, it is taken down and must then be softened by chewing before it can be used. If it is to be used as a walrus line, it must be stretched and again softened several days in succession. If a thong is split up for whip lashes, binding cords, etc, one end of it is made fast and it is split with a sharp knife, the cut being made towards the worker, the thumb following along the thong and feeling whether the strip cut off is suitable and even.

The Cape York Eskimos whom we had with us were sarcastic about the Aiviliks because they wound their implements “against the sun" which, they considered, was "mocking nature, which they did not seem to know here". And "they stirred their tea against the sun".

The woman's knife (ulo) is the indispensable implement of the women; it has a very varied use: For flensing, eating, cutting up skins, scraping the hairs off skins, chopping tobacco and lamp moss, chopping up blocks of ice and cutting sticks of wood. The ulo of the Iglulik Eskimos is composed of a handle of wood or bone, a tang and a blade; the latter two are always of iron. Fig. 65 is a typical modern ulo from Ponds Inlet; the handle is of wood; the tang is fastened to the blade by three rivets, and the blade has a sharp, curved edge; it is 16 cm long, 13 cm broad. An ulo from the Iglullingmiut, Qajûvfik, has a handle 8½ cm long, of wood, a rather short, wide tang of copper and an iron blade 14 cm long; total width 11½ cm.

Three smaller ulos have the following dimensions:

In a qarmaq at Ulukssan, Admiralty Inlet, a broken ulo was found with an iron blade, 13 cm long, and with two arms of bone.

In earlier times the tang was mostly of bone, the blade being inserted in it; one of these is figured by Parry,^[11] and another from Parry's expedition, now in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, is seen in fig. 66; 10.1 cm long. They also occur in the Anangiarssuk find and a grave find from Qaersuarsuit.^[12] As a rule every woman has several ulos, each with its own purpose. Niviatsianâq, on Southampton Island, in whose house we lived during the winter of 1922–23, had three ulos of different sizes; a large one as a meat knife, a smaller one for skin scraping and sewing, and a little one for cutting tobacco. The ulo is always held with the tang between the third and fourth fingers; when skins are to be cut up, the blade is supported with the index finger; if skins are to be scraped, it is pushed forward in a vertical manner, the second and third fingers resting on the upper edge of the blade.

The scrapers that are used for skin curing are seen fig. 67: the stone scraper (isitqût). 2 (Pingerqalik) is a heavy scraper of black slate with bent-over handle; the edge is slightly curved and rather sharp. Thickness 2.2. length 15.1 cm. A scraper from the Aivilingmiut, Daly Bay, is of reddish sandstone, 10.8 cm long, with the same bent handle.

​The blunt scraper (serdleriaun).^[13] 1 (Chesterfield Inlet) is the usual form of this implement; it is of the upper end of a musk-ox scapula, the joint-head being cut so that it forms a convenient handle; 17½ cm long. Four other scrapers of the same bone, from. the Aivilingmiut and Ponds Inlet, have lengths from 14½–18 cm; one of them is for a left-handed worker.

Three specimens, all from northern Baffin Land (Ponds Inlet, Ulukssan and Anaularealing), resemble the water scraper (kiliutaq) (see 7), of caribou scapula, but differs from it in being much shorter, 9–11 cm, so that they can hardly have been used as water scrapers; presumably they are blunt skin scrapers; all are fairly new. A similar one from Chesterfield Inlet is 13 cm long.

The sharp scraper (sakun).^[14] 3 (Iglulik) is a typical sharp scraper: it has a handle of antler, rather widened at the upper end; in a groove is a sharp, rather curved iron blade; 11.2 cm long. 4 (found at Iglulik) is a small, primitive scraper when wood and iron were ​precious; the handle is of a piece of willow, the blade a piece of sheet-iron bent round the handle; 8.7 cm long. We have other twelve of these sharp scrapers, with lengths from 7 to 17 cm, length of edge 2½ to 8 cm; all have metal blades; one has a handle of ivory, two of antler, the remainder of wood; on most the rear part of the handle is slightly widened with a unilaterial or bilateral extension. One of them, from Ponds Inlet, is figured by Knud Rasmussen 1925 I p. 298.

The scraper for unhairing skin (salikut). 6 (Ponds Inlet) has a flat wooden handle with rather thick, rounded back, in which is inserted an iron blade, not very sharp; 10.3 cm long. Three similar scrapers, from the Aivilingmiut, Iglulik and Ponds Inlet, have lengths. from 10 to 12½ cm and widths from 5 to 9½ cm.

The fat scraper (ikûtaq). 5 (Iglulingmiut, Itibdjeriang) is of the split leg-bone of a caribou with a sharp chisel edge and the joint-head covered by a pad of caribou skin; 24 cm long. Five other scrapers of the same bone, 12–14½ cm long, have no covering over the head; they are from Itibdjeriang, Qajûvfik, Iglulik and Ponds Inlet. For similar purposes, for removing the fat from caribou sinew, they sometimes use a small bone knife with a sharp edge (kiliutaq); one of these, from Iglulik, is of the same bone as the fat scrapers described above, pointed, with a fairly sharp edge: 201½ cm long, 2.3 cm wide; a similar one from Ponds Inlet measures 19 and 1.3 cm.

Curing caribou skins is an exceedingly important process, which occupies a lot of the time of both men and women in the period when caribou skin sewing is proceeding, the last part of autumn and the first part of winter. It is a lengthy and firing process. but is extremely important as the great warmth of caribou skin is dependent upon it.

Caribou skins that are not to be used for clothing but for sledge skins, platform rugs, etc., are dried, being stretched out on the ground by means of sticks, round, pointed at one end, and are then softened by rubbing with the hands or by scraping with the blunt scraper.

Skins for clothing are dried by stretching them out in the air or over the lamp: if there is much fat on the back it is removed with the fat scraper. The skin is then softened by scraping it with the blunt scraper in order to break the fibres, first in one direction, then in the other; the skin is then wrung and softened with the hands: water is sprayed on it and it is rolled up and put away for a day on the platform or another place where it will not freeze; it is then scraped again with the blunt scraper. This scraping is done in this way: the worker sits on the platform with the skin under him and ​stretches it with the left hand, the right hand leading the scraper forwards; the scraper must be wielded with considerable strength and be pressed hard against the skin.

When finally the caribou skin has in this manner been cleaned of fat and flesh, the fibres have been broken and softened, the next process is thin-scraping with the sharp scraper, whereby the tissue under the skin (mameq) is removed and the skin becomes soft, fine and flexible, almost like cloth to the feel. This last scraping, which is both slow and tiring, is done in this way: the worker sits on the platform, the skin passing under the right and over the left leg, the left hand stretches the skin; the scraper is held in the right hand and is used with the palm upwards, from right to left; the forward movement is rapid, almost sixty to the minute. At Repulse Bay I once saw the skin hanging from two sticks in the wall of the snow house, the scraping being done from top to bottom, the lower edge of the skin being stretched with the left hand. This thin-scraping is usually done by the men; I have often seen men sitting on the platform of the snow house, naked to the waist, scraping so that the perspiration ran down the body. If the skin is very thin, the thin-scraping process is sometimes omitted and it is simply softened with the blunt scraper and by wringing and treating with water.

This treatment differs a little from the description given of caribou skin preparation at Nuvuk, by Hall:^[15] first scraping with the "sek-koon", then drying well, again scraping with the "sek-koon" to remove all remnants of flesh; the flesh side is then wetted and folded together for half an hour, again scraped with the "sek-koon". and chewing; then scraping again in two directions. Hall says that the whole process often only lasts an hour. Only one scraper seems to have been used here.

For making the hair thinner they use the skin comb (kumutik); fig. 68 (found by Naujan Lake, Repulse Bay) is one of these, of antler; two other specimens, from Itibdjeriang and Iglulik, are of antler and about 11½ cm long, with four and six teeth respectively.^[16]

Seal skin is given different treatment according to the form the skin is to have when finished. Hairy skin (merqulik), which is used for clothing, is first scraped with the ulo to remove blubber and flesh; it is then dried, being stretched out on the ground by means of pegs (pauktotit), which are pushed through holes in the edges of the skin; a stretching peg of this kind, from Chesterfield Inlet, is of wood, 1½ cm thick at the top, 20½ cm long, pointed at the other end. When it is dry, the flesh side is dampened with salt water. ​rubbed with the hands, dried again and then softened by scraping with the stone scraper (or the blunt scraper).

Of unhaired sealskin there are three different kinds: the brown water-tight skin (magtaq), which is used for boots, is stretched, wetted with salt water, then scraped — partly on the flesh side with the ulo in order to remove remains of flesh and blubber, partly with the salikut on the hair side to remove the hairs, the black epidermis Image missingFig. 68.Skin comb. 1 : 2. remaining and giving it the dark colour; it is then dried and softened by folding, wringing, by stamping on it and by scraping with the stone scraper.

Yellow skin (kiaqtaq), which is also used for boots, is rolled up while wet and placed in the sun; this makes it ferment and turn sour; or it may be scalded; the scraping will then bring the dark epidermis off. Scraping and unhairing are done with the salikut.

White skin (naluaq) is treated like yellow skin; but after the final scraping it is hung out in the open air in hard frost; the white skin is only used for summer boots or for white strips for decoration.

The preparation of kayak skins has already been referred to.

When scraping sealskin the scraping board (akbin) is used; this is a wooden stool over which the skin is stretched during the scraping, which is done in a forward direction. A scraping board from Ponds Inlet consists of a wooden board, rectangular, 45 × 21 cm, about 2 cm thick, on the underside near the ends being crosspieces as long as the width of the board and 6 and 7 cm high respectively; the pieces are held on by nails. Many families, however, have no special scraping board but simply use an upturned meat tray, wooden box or something similar.

Gut-skin (inaluk), usually of the gut of the bearded seal, used for windows, etc., is first prepared by removing the muscular layer with the salikut on the scraping board; it is then washed in salt water, blown up. dried and split.

Skin for boot-soles (atungeq); of bearded-seal skin, is scraped with the ulo, scalded or allowed to ferment, after which the hair is scraped off; it is then dried and chewed. If no bearded-seal skin is at hand, sealskin with the fleshy tissue can be used as soles.

Bear skin is prepared by scraping off the fat, stretching and drying; it is not used, by the way, but is sold, as are wolf, fox and ermine skins, to the trading station. Bird skins are now only used as wipers, on which to dry the fingers after eating; they are turned, ​dried and the fat chewed off. Formerly, eider duck skins were sometimes used for underclothing and for stockings for kayak use.^[17]

Urine tanning is no longer practised, and none of the Eskimos now alive seem to have heard of it. In fact, one man expressed disgust at the idea. Parry,^[18] however, describes the preparation of water-tight skin in the following manner: ".... first cleaning the skin from as much of the fat and fleshy matter as the ooloo will take off, and then rubbing it hard for several hours with a blunt scraper, called sia-koot, so as nearly to dry it. It is then put into a vessel containing urine and left to steep a couple of days after which Image missingFig. 69.Drawing-implement. 1 : 2. a drying completes the process. Skins dressed in the hair are however not always thus steeped; the women, instead of this, chewing them for hours together till they are quite soft and clean." Lyon,^[19] too, refers to bowls of urine, in which skins were being tanned. Strangely enough, caribou skin also seems to have been treated with urine, as Lyon^[20] says: "When deer skins are prepared so as to resemble shamoy leather, the only preparation after the usual scraping and drying, is by chewing, rubbing between the hands and ultimately scrubbing with sand and urine: while damp a second scraping is given, and on drying, the skin assumes a beautiful appearance." This seems to be a process that has quite gone out of use now.

It is thus certain enough that urine tanning has previously been practised by the Iglulik Eskimos, an interesting circumstance, as it is not known to the more easterly Central Eskimo tribes, a fact already mentioned by Hatt.^[21]

Clothing skins are cut up with the ulo to eye measure. Fig. 69 (Ponds Inlet) is a little implement of ivory (uktun) with an edge, 8.8 cm long, which was said to be used for drawing on caribou skin before being cut into pieces; this however, was the only implement of the kind I saw. Cutting of smaller pieces of skin is done on the sewing board (qiorfik) a simple, square board of wood; one of these, from Qajûvfik, is 24 × 17 cm, 1.7 cm thick, worn on both sides.

Nowadays, sewing is always done with steel needles (merqut), which are bought at the station. In former days they used bone needles with an eye;^[22] these of course, were among the first to dis​appear on contact with Europeans. The thread used is, first and foremost, the back sinews of the caribou, more rarely the back sinews of the narwhal or the white whale. The process of making sinew thread is this: when the caribou is being flensed, the back sinews are pulled out and cleaned of fat and flesh with the teeth, or with the little bone knife previously referred to (kiliutaq); they are then dried; sometimes they are laid in water and scraped again before drying. Often a small lump of fat is left hanging to the dried bundle of sinews, so that the seamsstress may now and then take a mouthful of this delicacy; the whole piece is often preserved in a small skin bag and pieces are torn off and split up as required, often with the needle, for the thin threads. Whale sinew-thread is said to be particularly good for boots. Parry^[23] says that thread is made of caribou jugulars, as well as of back sinews.

Formerly, the needles were kept in needle cases (kâkbik) which were tubular in form and oftenest of ivory, sometimes cylindrical, closed or open at the bottom, sometimes more prismatic;^[24] the needles were stuck into a strip of skin which was inserted in the needle case and hung on the belt. At the end of the skinstrip hung the thimble-holder (tikivik). in the form of a cross-pin with a hole in the middle, and on this hung the thimble (tikeq), a small piece of bearded-seal skin, with a little strap which passed round the finger. These, however, have gone right out of use.

Fig. 70 is a new needle case with appendant thimble and thimbleholder, carved by Aua at Itibdjeriang on the old model, which he has seen used. It is of ivory, 8,4 cm long, trapeziform in cross section, and ornamented with the usual dot-and-circle ornamentation. The flat back has only two such ornaments, however, at the top just under the holes for the suspension straps, which are of sealskin. In the upper end of the needle case is a cylindrical hole, 5½ cm deep, for the needles, and this hole can be closed by means of a plug which has a large, flat head. On a cord of plaited sinew thread below hangs a toggle-shaped thimble holder, round, consisting of alternate discs of ivory and baleen; a copper pin running along them holds them together. The thimble is of bearded-seal skin. The specimen is undoubtedly a modern copy of the old needle-case type, adapted to steel needles.

Fig. 71 is a sewing-weight of soapstone, also carved by Aua who, besides being a skilful craftsman, was a man with many ideas; this was the only specimen of its kind that I saw. It is 25 cm long, flat ​on the bottom, arched on the upper side; the ends run out into animal heads. In the middle of the upper side is inserted a piece of cork, which serves as a needle cushion.

The method of sewing is this: the needle is held between thumb and middle finger, the thimble being on the index finger; this presses Image missingFig. 70.Needle-case. 1 : 2. Image missingFig. 71.Sewing-weight. 1 : 3. the needle through and the other two fingers draw the needle and thread towards the body. Skin clothing is sewn with ordinary running stitch (symbol characters) but boots with overcasting (symbol characters) the stitches always going only half-way through so that the water cannot get in through the holes. The stitch always passes from right. to left, so that the thumb nail of the left hand can arrange the skin before the stitch is made. Parry,^[25] on the sewing of the Igluliks, says: "They sew the deer-skins with a "round seem", and the water tight boots and shoes are "stitched". The latter is performed in a very adroit and efficacious manner, by putting the needle only half through the substance of one part of the seal-skin, so as to leave no hole for admitting the water."

I saw no example of basket work among the Iglulik Eskimos; but that this art has formerly been known is to be seen from Lyon's^[26] remarks: "Amongst other trifling purchases which I made was a small round basket, composed af grass."

Pottery making is quite unknown.

There remain a few words to be said about the decorative art of the Iglulik Eskimos. Apart from skin and bead embroidery, which will be dealt with later, only very few objects are decorated: sometimes a comb, a lamp trimmer, buttons for carrying-straps and the needle case referred to in the foregoing. The motives employed are extremely few and simple: the dot-and-circle ornament, parallel lines, rows of dots, notched edges. Two elements which are not used are the two principal motives of the Thule culture: (symbol characters) and ​(symbol characters) the former of these was, however, used as recently as in Parry's time, it being found on a pair of snow goggles which he illustrates^[27] and on a bodkin or something similar.^[28] However. I quite agree with Boas in pointing out the great difference in decorative art between the Central Eskimos and the Western Eskimos: "In the east we find hardly any attempt to decorate implements, while in Alaska there is a very strongly developed tendency to do so . . . . The few etchings that occur among the eastern Eskimo either consist simply of dots or lines, or they are clearly of very recent origin, being due to European influence".^[29] To this latter. Boas also ascribes the only attempt at etched, realistic motives that are known from the Iglulik Eskimos,^[30] a comb, on which two human figures are scratched.