Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/103

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hunt often involves a stay of several days. If the food is all eaten and hunting is bad, hard times arrive with hunger for man and beast. Hungry dogs are much more difficult to drive than satisfied ones, and they make the journey more difficult by the fact that whenever there is an opportunity, they threw themselves at the sledge and devour everything eatable on it; if there is a danger of this happening, there must always be one person at the sledge when it stops. The Eskimos, Image missingFig. 51.Pack-bag for dog. however, bear all these trials and troubles with astonishingly good humour and look upon it all as the most natural thing in the world.

Summer Journeys with Pack-Dogs.

In summer, when the country is bare of snow, the dog sledge cannot be used. The Eskimos understand how to make their dogs useful in another manner, however, as they teach them to carry burdens. On the dog's back is placed a pack-bag (nangmaut). Fig. 51 (Iglulingmiut, Adderley Bluff) is one of these pack-bags, made of caribou skin, from which most of the hair has been removed with an ulo; the hair side is turned outwards. At the edges of the large opening in the middle there are holes for the running-cords; on one side these holes are made in a strip of sealskin sewn on separately. The bag measures 87×48 cm. Another pack-bag from Southampton Island is intended for level terrain. It is of caribou skin, scraped quite thin and transparent, 78×45 cm, and in the middle of one side-piece has an opening, round, about 20 cm in diameter, in the edge of which are holes and loops for a running. cord; on this specimen, too, some of the loops are on a separately sewn-on strip of sealskin. The cords on the pack-bag are tied round the dog's neck and breast. In many cases, however, the pack is fastened directly on to the dog's back, care being taken that the burden is divided into two heavy masses which can hang down the animal's sides, fastened with a girth over the back.

Both Parry[1] and Hall[2] mention that the dogs carry burdens in

  1. ↑ 1824 p. 519.
  2. ↑ 1879 p. 67.
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