Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/214

Naturally, personal cleanliness is at a low level, as it must be among a people to whom water during eight months of the year is a precious commodity and who exclusively use skin clothing, of which they only have one suit and consequently cannot change it. In winter they do not wash themselves, except when they have become very dirty through flensing or shot-moulding, etc; in such cases the hands are rubbed in a little snow, or the mouth is filled with snow and, as it melts, it is spat out on the hands which are rubbed with it. This method comes so naturally to them that I have seen an old man wash himself in Image missingFig. 160.Louse catcher. this manner in summer by the side of a running stream. If through eating they have become very soiled, especially with fat, they wipe themselves on a piece of skin, often a bird skin, which in summer has been turned and dried for the purpose. The body and feet are never washed. Infant children are licked clean or dried with a piece of skin. Small pieces of caribou skin or lemming skin serve the purpose of toilet paper.

Lice are an inevitable torment, common to most Eskimos; they are most numerous on old people, especially the women, who spend nearly all their time indoors. The lice are difficult to get rid of. The best method of restricting their number is to turn the inner clothing and sleeping rug inside out and place them outside in the cold; when they have been out for some time they are beaten, and most of the lice, being frozen stiff, will fall off; but they are not exterminated in this manner. I have never seen them eat lice; they crack them between the finger nails. Of late years some Eskimos, mostly older women, have commenced to wear woollen vests under the frock; the lice, of course, always make their way into the warmest layer, and the effect is that the Eskimos can see the lice on the wool and pick them off; this they cannot do on the fur frocks.

The louse catcher (kumagsiun) is a stick with a