Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/74

collected in vessels. In the course of 20–30 minutes a caribou is skinned and flensed and cut up for cooking and for dog-feed.

The number of caribou required by an Eskimo family for food and clothing for the whole year is very large. For the clothing of one grown man alone eight caribou skins are required, and caribou skin is also used for numerous other purposes: sleeping rugs, platform and sledge coverings, tents, sacks, etc. Two Eskimos at Repulse Bay related that in the summer of 1923 they had obtained 51 and 31 caribou respectively, and these were really small numbers. During our stay at Kirchhoffer River on Southampton Island in the period from 25th November 1922 to 5th February 1923. where we were nine adults and five children, and from December other five adults and one child, with a total of about 40 dogs. 98 caribou were killed in all, and this was insufficient to keep the dogs in good condition: several of them died of cold and hunger.

The musk ox has now practically disappeared from the territory of the Iglulik Eskimos. Several of the men now alive have hunted them, however, in behind Wager Inlet and also on North Devon and North Somerset. The method itself is exceedingly simple, as in case of attack the musk oxen place themselves in a circle round the calves and calmly allow themselves to be shot down with gun or arrow.

In former days, arrows with slate heads and two opposite barbs were used in this hunting; if the head broke off, the barbs automatically worked their way in with the movements of the animal. It is apparently an arrow of this type which Parry^[1] figures and which is now in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. It is 64 cm long. the foreshaft of antler accounting for 18 of these: the foreshaft has two opposite barbs and seems to have an obliquely cut rear end; the blade is a small, triangular, facet-ground slate: the shaft has two opposite feathers. A small sheath of unhaired caribou skin. 11 cm long, is tied to the foreshaft with sinew-thread.

As has already been mentioned, bears are not particularly numerous in the country; one can only speak of going bear-hunting in Lancaster Sound: otherwise they are only met with occasionally. They are as a rule hunted with the sledge: three or four dogs are loosed, they catch up with the bear and keep him occupied until