Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/102

If a dog is inclined to run away, one of its fore legs is tied to its neck by means of a seal-thong, as will be seen on Lyon's^[1] picture from Winter Island. The dogs do not bark, they howl; when a sledge approaches a settlement or something else attracts the attention of the dogs, they start to howl and at once all the dogs in the settlement join in a most disharmonious concert of shrill and deep voices blended together and only dying away gradually.

At Iglulik, the dogs used for walrus hunting often have their tails cut off, leaving only a small stump big enough to put the tip of the nose under the reason seems to be that often when the dog jumps over a crack in the ice its tail trails in the water and thus becomes filled with ice and obstructs the dog's movements. Another custom which I saw at Iglulik and which was said to have come from Ponds Inlet (where I did not see it, however) was to clip the dog's hair at the back of the neck "to prevent them suffering too much from the heat in summer".

As will have been gathered from the foregoing, the winter journeys of the Iglulik Eskimos require great physical strength. One must accompany the sledge from morning till night, often walking the whole way, frequently in soft snow, wrestle with the heavy load in pack-ice or over stony or uneven terrain, clear the traces and at the same time continually keep the dogs in hand so that they do not strike out or laze. The wife must assist to the best of her ability, help to unravel the traces, help to steer through pack ice or over difficult country, often run in front to show the way; the women are often just as good drivers as the men. When darkness descends there still remains a good lot to do; camp has to be pitched. The snow house must be built, the sledge-load opened up, meat and skin clothing must be stowed away, the sledge placed on a snow heap; the dogs must be released and fed; the house must be made ready inside, the lamp lighted, ice has to be fetched for melting and, finally, food has to be cooked. Three or four hours may easily pass by from the moment when the sledge stops until the family, their stomachs full of boiled meat, can lie down naked under the sleeping rugs. In the morning, too, a couple of hours pass before a meal has been eaten (usually only frozen meat), the sledge loaded, the sledge-runners iced, the dogs caught and in-spanned. During the day several brief halts are made — rarely more than half an hour — during which men and dogs rest, munch a little frozen meat or try to obtain water by hewing a hole through the ice over a lake. But if there is game: caribou, bear or seal, a halt is usually made at once, and a successful