Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/98

the leader has the longest trace and leads the way according to the calls of the driver. The boss is the strongest dog, who keeps the team in order and sees that every dog is in its place; in addition, it is as a rule the only dog that is permitted to copulate, none of the others being allowed to approach the bitches in the team. It sometimes happens that the boss is leader too; but as a rule the latter is a smaller, intelligent dog, often a bitch. The traces are of various lengths; in a team at Repulse Bay they varied from three to eight metres; pups, and poor dogs which require frequent use of the whip, have the shortest traces.

The teams of the Iglulik Eskimos have not that permanent, exclusive character of, for instance, those of the Polar-Eskimos. The reason is that only few Iglulik Eskimos have a complete team; almost every time they are going on a journey they have to borrow dogs from others, and of course they must lend their own dogs out on occasion. This constant mixing of the teams is not to their good and involves a certain slackness and disorder, and often violent fights between the various components of the team.

When driving the driver sils at the front of the sledge with his legs hanging over its right side and the whip hanging down so that the lash trails on the snow — or more frequently he walks alongside the sledge. He indicates the direction to the leader by calling: to the right — O-å-a, o-å-a; to the left — Harra — Harra; stop — å —a. (Lyon:^[1] to the right — wah-aye. a-ya. whooa; to the left — a-wha, a-wha, a-whut. Parry:^[2] Stop — wo. woa). To encourage the dogs they have a number of various sounds, many of which are difficult to reproduce. The usual advance signal is a peculiar gutteral sound, each of the syllables having pronounced stops: au — ja — ao, a sound which even all Eskimo women cannot utler. Other calls to increase speed are: ut-ul or utog, utoq, tukto, nanogq, inerssuit, ajukaha, the first pronounced as if almost tearing the throat, the latter like a very slender, whistling sound. If these signals do not have the desired effect, the whip comes into play and punishes the lazy ones. When strikling a blow with the whip the handle is brought forward quickly and then back suddenly, or the arm describes a circle: forward, up, back, down. If the whip is used with sufficient force it can give a terrible blow which rolls the dog over, A skilful dog driver can with certainty hit every dog in the team; if he should happen to strike the wrong one it will often throw itself upon its neighbour and a wild fight ensues which can only be brought to a stop by means of a severe use of the whip, and of course the sledge is stop-