Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/125

stretches it with the left hand, the right hand leading the scraper forwards; the scraper must be wielded with considerable strength and be pressed hard against the skin.

When finally the caribou skin has in this manner been cleaned of fat and flesh, the fibres have been broken and softened, the next process is thin-scraping with the sharp scraper, whereby the tissue under the skin (mameq) is removed and the skin becomes soft, fine and flexible, almost like cloth to the feel. This last scraping, which is both slow and tiring, is done in this way: the worker sits on the platform, the skin passing under the right and over the left leg, the left hand stretches the skin; the scraper is held in the right hand and is used with the palm upwards, from right to left; the forward movement is rapid, almost sixty to the minute. At Repulse Bay I once saw the skin hanging from two sticks in the wall of the snow house, the scraping being done from top to bottom, the lower edge of the skin being stretched with the left hand. This thin-scraping is usually done by the men; I have often seen men sitting on the platform of the snow house, naked to the waist, scraping so that the perspiration ran down the body. If the skin is very thin, the thin-scraping process is sometimes omitted and it is simply softened with the blunt scraper and by wringing and treating with water.

This treatment differs a little from the description given of caribou skin preparation at Nuvuk, by Hall:^[1] first scraping with the "sek-koon", then drying well, again scraping with the "sek-koon" to remove all remnants of flesh; the flesh side is then wetted and folded together for half an hour, again scraped with the "sek-koon". and chewing; then scraping again in two directions. Hall says that the whole process often only lasts an hour. Only one scraper seems to have been used here.

For making the hair thinner they use the skin comb (kumutik); fig. 68 (found by Naujan Lake, Repulse Bay) is one of these, of antler; two other specimens, from Itibdjeriang and Iglulik, are of antler and about 11½ cm long, with four and six teeth respectively.^[2]

Seal skin is given different treatment according to the form the skin is to have when finished. Hairy skin (merqulik), which is used for clothing, is first scraped with the ulo to remove blubber and flesh; it is then dried, being stretched out on the ground by means of pegs (pauktotit), which are pushed through holes in the edges of the skin; a stretching peg of this kind, from Chesterfield Inlet, is of wood, 1½ cm thick at the top, 20½ cm long, pointed at the other end. When it is dry, the flesh side is dampened with salt water.