Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/124

precious; the handle is of a piece of willow, the blade a piece of sheet-iron bent round the handle; 8.7 cm long. We have other twelve of these sharp scrapers, with lengths from 7 to 17 cm, length of edge 2½ to 8 cm; all have metal blades; one has a handle of ivory, two of antler, the remainder of wood; on most the rear part of the handle is slightly widened with a unilaterial or bilateral extension. One of them, from Ponds Inlet, is figured by Knud Rasmussen 1925 I p. 298.

The scraper for unhairing skin (salikut). 6 (Ponds Inlet) has a flat wooden handle with rather thick, rounded back, in which is inserted an iron blade, not very sharp; 10.3 cm long. Three similar scrapers, from the Aivilingmiut, Iglulik and Ponds Inlet, have lengths. from 10 to 12½ cm and widths from 5 to 9½ cm.

The fat scraper (ikûtaq). 5 (Iglulingmiut, Itibdjeriang) is of the split leg-bone of a caribou with a sharp chisel edge and the joint-head covered by a pad of caribou skin; 24 cm long. Five other scrapers of the same bone, 12–14½ cm long, have no covering over the head; they are from Itibdjeriang, Qajûvfik, Iglulik and Ponds Inlet. For similar purposes, for removing the fat from caribou sinew, they sometimes use a small bone knife with a sharp edge (kiliutaq); one of these, from Iglulik, is of the same bone as the fat scrapers described above, pointed, with a fairly sharp edge: 201½ cm long, 2.3 cm wide; a similar one from Ponds Inlet measures 19 and 1.3 cm.

Curing caribou skins is an exceedingly important process, which occupies a lot of the time of both men and women in the period when caribou skin sewing is proceeding, the last part of autumn and the first part of winter. It is a lengthy and firing process. but is extremely important as the great warmth of caribou skin is dependent upon it.

Caribou skins that are not to be used for clothing but for sledge skins, platform rugs, etc., are dried, being stretched out on the ground by means of sticks, round, pointed at one end, and are then softened by rubbing with the hands or by scraping with the blunt scraper.

Skins for clothing are dried by stretching them out in the air or over the lamp: if there is much fat on the back it is removed with the fat scraper. The skin is then softened by scraping it with the blunt scraper in order to break the fibres, first in one direction, then in the other; the skin is then wrung and softened with the hands: water is sprayed on it and it is rolled up and put away for a day on the platform or another place where it will not freeze; it is then scraped again with the blunt scraper. This scraping is done in this way: the worker sits on the platform with the skin under him and