Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/57

holds on to the other end of the line, in which there is a loop, the seal is caught and, the next time it comes up — if it does not die outright — he strikes it on the head with the roundiron of the harpoon and kills it. The breathing hole is then cut large enough to permit the passage of the body when it is drawn up; the wounds are Image missingFig. 15.Seal indicator. closed with wound plugs, the towing line is put through the lower jaw and the seal is dragged to the sledge.

This "wait-hunting" (nigpartoq) may often be a very lengthy process; but, given sufficient patience, it will always yield a return. Both small and bearded seals are caught in this manner; in the case of bearded seal, the loop of the harpoon line is taken round a leg or an arm, and it is necessary to act very rapidly; a man at Iglulik had his thumb torn off through the line twisting itself round it.

Sometimes this method of hunting is also practised by women, a feature to which Lyon^[1] refers.

Other breathing-hole hunting methods not so much used are:

Unuktortjuit: All breathing holes in a wide circle are beset by children and women, who scare the seals away when they appear; at last they go exhausted to the hole at which the hunter is waiting.

Máuleqiartut: A boy drives in a sledge in a wide circle round the hole where the hunter is waiting, but no wider than that he can shout to the hunter. Thus the seals are scared away from the other breathing holes.

The same name is used of another method: two men walk over the ice; at a breathing hole they leave a skin; they pass this again and one of them remains on the skin while the other walks on; this persuades the seal that they have both gone on and it comes up to breathe.

These three hunting methods, which were described to Freuchen by the old hunter Aua at Itibdjeriang, are however very rarely used.

Smooth-ice hunting (quisiartut) is sometimes pursued at Iglulik, more frequently at Ponds Inlet and Admiralty Inlet. It is practised