Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/447
a similar state of affairs to that among the Polar Eskimos, among whom the salmon spear had gone into disuse until it was reintroduced by immigration from Baffin Land in the 1860's. Saorre has seen the Sadlermiut use salmon nets of strips of baleen; they were about 4 metres long, 1 metre broad, with 5 cm meshes; they were held up by a number of floats of seal bladders, whilst the lower edge was weighted with a number of unworked stones; these nets were spread in river mouths below the high-water mark. As to the use of salmon harpoons and fish hooks, Saorre believed he had heard that they used them, whereas Angutimarik definitely denied that they did; he said that the Sadlermiut knew nothing of salmon fishing from ice holes in the fall. Saorre describes their salmon harpoon-head as being very thin with a closed shaft socket, one spur and one barb.
The Sadlermiut were exceedingly clever at flint working; the implement used, the flint flaker of walrus rib, has already been described. It was gripped by the right hand in such a manner that the pointed end turned upwards, its concave side forward; the point of the thumb rested farthest forward, at the place near the point where the hard bone on the convex side was cut away and the inner, porous tissue appeared and formed a good support for the thumb. When working, the rear end of the flint flaker was supported against the right side, a little above the hip, whilst the piece of flint, held in the left hand — which was protected by a piece of skin — was shaped into the desired form by pressing it against the pointed end of the flaker; where the hand grips the flint flaker notches were cut in to prevent it from slipping. When a flint implement was to be made, the piece of flint was first broken by a hard blow of the flaker; from among the fragments a suitable piece was chosen and the flaking began; in a surprisingly short time the implement — for instance a flint arrow point — was finished. The point of the flint flaker had constantly to be sharpened on a whetting stone, as otherwise the direction of the pressure could not be exactly determined. The flint itself was never ground. This was, according to the unanimous statements, the manner of the Sadlermiut's flint working, in which they had attained to a degree of perfection that is hardly surpassed by any other Eskimo tribe.
The seal line, of the skin of the bearded seal, was cut out, stretched and evened with the knife before it was quite dry, taken down and hung in regular turns to dry on stretched lines; in the first stretching a tackle of bone was sometimes used.
For whetting they sometimes used a bear's tooth, which hung at the belt; otherwise whetting stones of sandstone and slate. A whale vertebra was often used as a chopping block.