Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/116

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