Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/95

get more food than will just keep up their strength, often have to through long periods of hunger. are thrashed and kicked at every opportunity and are often whipped in a most frightful manner; but they are an uncowable breed, who remain cheerful in spite of nearly everything.

Everything eatable is used as dog feed. The best is the solid, fat walrus meat; but seal, narwhal and white-whale meat and blubber are good too. Caribou meat, especially of lean animals, is a much poorer feed; enormous quantities of lean caribou meat are necessary to keep up the strength of the dogs in the severe cold of winter. But it is by no means always the case that the dogs can be fed on meat; more frequently they have to be content with refuse of various kinds which man despises: the entrails of seals and other animals, walrus hide, the contents of the stomachs of caribou, and the quantity divided among them is often quite insufficient. In summer, when no work is required of the dogs, they are not fed at all as a rule, but have to roam about and find food for themselves on the beach or around the settlements.

As an example of how the dogs are fed when food is scarce I will describe my experiences on Southampton Island in the winter of 1922–23. Our host, Angutimarik, had a good dog team of ten dogs and two pups: another man, Saraq, who lived with us, had six dogs and a number of pups. All the summer the dogs had roamed about the country round Duke of York Bay without being fed; when we sailed from Kûk on September 6th in boats we saw dogs running along the shore at Comers Strait. When we got back to Kûk on September 13th most of Angutimarik's and Saraq's dogs had arrived there and, for the first time since summer, they were then fed with walrus meat. On September 29th several seals were caught, and again the dogs received a good feed; during the two weeks that had passed they had showed signs of being very hungry, for instance the pups had eaten most of our tent guys (of rope!). On October 4th the dogs got the opportunity of eating the refuse remaining when the tents were moved; there was not much that was eatable, but a few bones at any rate, fat-sodden pieces of skin and a little grease to lick off the stones. While at Hansine Lake: October 8th they were fed on the leavings of our meals of salmon during the last four days. October 9th a caribou was wounded, which the dogs pursued and ate. October 12th fed again with salmon leavings and a little liquid blubber poured into a trough of ice. October 18th again fed with a little fish oil containing lumps of blubber. October 21st fed with salmon leavings and picked caribou bones; several of Saraq's pups now dead from hunger.