Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/446

into round fenced enclosures, 2 metres high, 4 metres in diameter; diverging rows of stones led from the doorway; a flock of geese was driven into this stone enclosure, the door was closed, and every time a goose put its head out through the stones its neck was twisted. The usual hooks were used for catching gulls, the hooks being of wood with a barb, and the whole buried in a piece of blubber and thrown out on to the beach, whilst the cord was made fast to the ground, sometimes with a similar stick of wood or bone without a barb. Baleen snares were largely used for trapping birds; some of these were long cords with a number of running nooses, which were stretched about the breeding places or sunk in the water for diving birds, whilst others were single snares which were set over Image missingFig. 95.Salmon Dam of the Sadlermiut. the nests, the latter especially for eider ducks. A little blubber was often fastened to the nooses of the under-water snares. In spring they sometimes built a low, thin-roofed snow house, just large enough to permit a man to crawl inside, close the door and sit upright; a bait was laid on top of the house and, when a bird came to take it, the man inside could see it through the thin roof and quickly pushed his hand through and seized it by the legs.

Salmon trout were caught at large dams which were put up at the mouths of rivers; they were shaped as shown in fig. 95. When the trout came in at the river mouth at high tide they went into the trap, the opening of which was then closed; a number of small "pockets" of stone ran from the trap in every direction, and when the people went into the water and splashed about, the fish ran into these pockets, where they were taken by other Eskimos who stood ready with bearskin mittens on and who at once strung them on a thong with a toggle at one end and a trout needle at the other. Sometimes after the trout had gone into the trap, nets of baleen, qalun, were used in the doorway; when they were full they were drawn up and the fish strung; prior to being strung they were usually killed by piercing the spine just behind the gills with the trout needle. This fishing at the dams was often exceedingly profitable. Strangely enough, all my informants agreed that the Sadlermiut did not use or know the three-pronged salmon spear, despite the fact that side prongs and barbs for these are fairly prominent in the Kuk find; here we have probably