Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/77

Wolverines are shot now and then, partly for their skin, as this can be sold to the trading stations, and partly because the wolverine, owing to its great strength, is able to break open most meat caches and is thus looked upon as a very harmful animal.

Hares, which are not numerous, were formerly caught with baleen snares (nigat), nooses which were placed across old tracks, the hare having a propensity for retracing his steps. They are now shot occasionally with shot-guns, but play an inferior part economically. The same applies to ermines, marmots and lemmings, which are mostly caught for amusement by women and children, who kill them with stones; formerly they were sometimes caught in snares which were set over their holes.^[1]

Birds are of very little importance to the Iglulik Eskimos. There are not many of them; the most important are ptarmigan and eider ducks, and occasionally gulls, ducks, geese, fulmars and looms are shot; in northern Baffin Land there are guillemot cliffs. Eggs are collected where there are guillemot and gull cliffs. Shot-guns are the only weapons used now for birds, but only very few Eskimos have them. Ptarmigan are often killed with stones. In former days, however, a number of different implements and methods were employed for catching birds.

The bird dart (nuing) has now gone out of use; we did not succeed in procuring a single specimen; formerly, however, it was an important implement, mostly used for eider ducks. Fig. 34 shows a bird dart, collected by Parry on Melville Peninsula (Royal Scottish Museum U. C. 160), possibly the same one that Parry himself figures.^[2] It is in all 1.52 cm long. The shaft is composed of two pieces of wood lashed together with cords of baleen; about half-way up this shaft are three side-prongs of ivory, fastened on by two separate lashings, and each prong has two barbs on the inside; at the fore end of the shaft are two bone points, fastened on by two lashings of sinew-thread, the rearmost very strong, the foremost less so; one point has two, the other three barbs, all turning inwards. At the rear end of the shaft is a small ferrule with a socket, of ivory.

Lyon^[3] mentions another kind of dart which has no sideprongs, but has three prongs with barbs at the end.