Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/117

Image missingFig. 59.Whittling knife. 1 : 2. slightly curved, iron blade (sánarrut), as figured by Boas,^[1] and also smaller knives with a short bone handle and small, single-edged iron blade (qingusaq). One of these is shown in fig. 59 (Ponds Inlet); the blade is quite short, but strong, single-edged; the fore part of the handle is strengthened by a metal cap; 9.7 cm long. When working with the long whittling knife it is brought with the right hand towards the body; the rear end of the handle is often supported against the right thigh or knee,^[2] and it is for this reason that the handle is so long. The qingusaq is principally used for cutting out grooves in bone, for instance when a piece of antler or ivory is to be split. The knife is then gripped with the whole hand, the blade turned downwards and it is repeatedly drawn towards the body with great force until the piece is split.

Lyon^[3] says that a young man "cut towards the left hand and never used the thumb of the right as we do, for a chuck to the knife".

Elsewhere he says that ivory "was cut by continual chopping with a knife, one end of the ivory resting on a soft stone, which served as a block. To smooth and polish the work when finished, a gritty stone is used as a file, and kept constantly wetted with saliva".^[4]

On the whole the Iglulik Eskimos are not very skilful at carving; there are, however, exceptions. One of the best craftsmen we met was Aua, a man about 55 years old, who then lived at Itibdjeriang but otherwise had spent most of his life at Iglulik. Once when Knud Rasmussen visited him Aua said that he had once seen four unusually big walruses drift past his dwelling on an ice-floe. Knud Rasmussen asked him to draw this and gave him a piece of paper and a pencil. Aua sat with the pencil in his hand for an hour without anything coming of the drawing; then he laid it down and said he would rather carve it in ivory, that would be easier. Six months later he produced the carving Fig. 60, which is intended to illustrate the scene he described: A male walrus and three females drifting on an ice-floe, whilst Aua watches them from land through a telescope;