Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/220

eider down or sinew-thread after having been softened in water; it is quite stringy. The first mixture is packed into the chewed walrus hide and the whole is chewed until it becomes quite white and is called pujaq. Caribou fat can be used in a similar manner; the chewing mixes it with saliva and air and it is called taqoarataq.

Very little vegetable food is eaten; it has no part at all in the economy of the people. The principal vegetable food is the contents of caribou stomachs. Sometimes they eat the berries of Vaccinium uliginosum and the crowberry, often mixed with fat or blubber; not many of these berries are to be found, however. Image missingFig. 162.Pipes. The roots of Silene acaulis (tordleq), Potentilla pulchella and creeping willow^[1] and the leaves of Oxyria digyna (serneq) are eaten now and then, mostly by women and children. The roots of Pedicularis (airaq) are eaten raw and sometimes boiled in soup.

The principal meal is almost always eaten in the evening, when the men return from the hunt. Very often they go out in the morning without eating or drinking. If they catch anything, they eat a little of the animal at once, or they wait until they return home in the evening. Nevertheless they eat when they please all day, especially when there is an abundance of food and not much work to do. At meals the men eat in the manner already described, the pieces of meat and cups of soup going from mouth to mouth until there is nothing left. The women, however, each take a piece of meat and eat it alone, and the children have their own portions too. As a rule the women eat several meals during the day while the men are out hunting; on the other hand they do not consume such great quantities at each meal.

Smoking is now generally spread among the Iglulik Eskimos and has been ever since the first contact with white men; in Parry's time it was not known.