Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/219

Phoca foetida and P. barbata. The meat is cooked or eaten raw and frozen; more rarely it is baked with blubber or dried. Bearded-seal meat, less frequently the meat of the fjord seal, is made into ikúnâq in the same manner as walrus meat. Seal liver and heart are as a rule eaten raw. The meat that is mostly cooked is from the breast and the ribs. Seal flippers are eaten cooked or rotten (for instance in the blubber bags) as a delicacy. Seal brains are chopped up with blubber and eaten. Seal skin is only eaten in emergencies; sometimes it is boiled into a gelatinous mass (ûneq). The stomachs of young seals, when quite full, are cooked whole; the milk then tastes like a rich, sharp cheese; it stiffens on being cooled.

It is particularly in the latter part of winter and in spring that seal meat is important as a food. The Eskimos everywhere, however, regarded it as the poorest kind. An old man on Southampton Island told, as being something very desirable, of a settlement where caribou hunting was so good that none of the inhabitants ever needed to eat seal meat, but could leave it to the dogs.

Narwhals and white whales. These are especially important in northern Baffin Land. Their meat is poor, soft and not in much favour, but is eaten cooked, raw, frozen and rotten. The hide (magtaq) on the other hand is relished and is also eaten in these four conditions, but preferably cooked; a little blubber is nearly always eaten with it. The meat and, particularly, the hide of big whales are also eaten when these are caught occasionally.

Of birds they eat some ptarmigan, eider ducks, gulls and occasionally geese, loons and, at Ponds Inlet, guillemots. They are nearly always cooked as they are usually caught in summer where there is plenty of fuel. Sometimes they are eaten raw, especially ptarmigan. Eggs are not of much importance; at Iglulik they are occasionally dried. Parry^[1] mentions that eggs in large numbers were collected on the islands of Nerdlonartoq and Tern Island, north of Iglulik. Ptarmigan excrement is chewed together with walrus meat into a porridgy mass, which is stirred up in blubber. Lyon^[2] mentions eider duck fat as a great delicacy.

Of fish, only the salmon trout is of any significance; it is eaten cooked and frozen, and sometimes raw; very frequently it is dried, the guts being taken out, and stretched in the air by means of two sticks. Salmon soup is drunk too; a particularly strong soup is made of heads, which as a rule are saved for the purpose. Sometimes caplins are collected and cooked.

A sort of "chewing gum" is made of stiffened oil, kneaded with