_For excavating._--At the present day they are very glad to use white
men’s picks and shovels when they want to dig in the gravel or clean
out the ice from their houses. They, however, have mattocks and
pickaxes (síkla) of their own manufacture, which are still in use.
These are always single-pointed and have a bone or ivory head, mounted
like an adz head on a rather short haft. The haft, like those of the
mauls and adzes already described, is never fitted into the head, but
always applied to the under surface of the latter and held on by a
lashing of thong.
[Illustration: FIG. 303.--Mattock of whale’s rib. 1/8]
[Illustration: FIG. 304.--Pickax heads of bone, ivory, and whale’s
ribs. 1/4]
The only complete implement of the kind which we obtained is No. 73574
[297], Fig. 303. The head is of whale’s rib, 17¾ inches long. The butt
is shouldered on the under surface to receive the haft and roughened
with crosscuts to prevent slipping, with two shallow rough transverse
notches on the upper surface for the lashings. The haft is of pine,
24½ inches long. The lashing is of stout thong of bearded seal hide,
in two pieces, one of four turns passing through the hole, round the
front edge of the haft, over the lower notch in the head, and back
across the haft to the hole again. The ends are knotted together on
top of the head by becket-hitching one end into an eye in the other,
made by slitting it close to the tip and passing a bight of the
standing part through this slit. The other part is of seven turns, put
on in the same way, but crossing back of the haft, and started by
looping one end round the head and through the eye by means of an eye
at the end made as before. It is finished off by winding the end three
or four times round these turns, so as to tighten them up, and
hitching it round two of them on one side. This method of hafting
differs in no essential respect from that used on the mauls and adzes
above described.
We have also two heads for such mattocks, which hardly differ from the
one described, except the No. 56494 [285] has the notches for the
lashings on the side of the head instead of on the upper surface. It
is 16 inches long. The other, No. 89843 [1043], Fig. 304_a_, is a very
rude head made of an almost cylindrical piece of rib. This is a very
old tool, which from its oily condition has evidently been long laid
away in some blubber room at Utkiavwĭñ. It is 15.2 inches long.
These blunt-pointed mattocks are not so much used at present as picks
with a sharp point mounted in the same way, and specially adapted for
working in ice or hard frozen soil. I have, however, never seen them
used for cutting holes in the ice for fishing, which some authors have
supposed to be what they were meant for. Their shape makes them very
inconvenient for any such a purpose, except when the ice is very thin.
The ice pick, like those carried on the butt of the spear, is under
any circumstances a more serviceable tool. These sharp pickax heads
are generally made of a walrus tusk, the natural shape of which
requires very little alteration to fit it for the purpose. We
collected three of these ivory heads, all very nearly alike, of which
No. 56539_b_ [96], Fig. 304_b_, will serve as the type. This is the
tip of a good-sized walrus tusk, 14.2 inches long, preserving very
nearly the natural outline of the tusk except at the point, where it
is rounded off rather more abruptly above. It is keeled along the
upper edge and on the lower edge at the point, so that the latter is
four-sided, and the sides of the butt are flattened. On the under side
the butt is cut off flat for about 3½ inches, leaving a low flange or
ridge, and roughened with crosscuts to fit the end of the haft, and
the butt is perforated with two large transverse eyes for the lashing.
The other two heads are almost exactly like this and very nearly the
same size.
Sharp-pointed pick heads of whale’s bone appear also to have been
used, probably at an earlier date than the neatly finished ivory ones,
as we collected three such heads, all very old and roughly made, and
having notches or grooves for the lashings instead of eyes. Fig.
304_c_ is one of these, No. 89844 [1315], from Utkiavwĭñ, very rudely
cut from a piece of whale’s rib, 12 inches long.
I do not recollect seeing any of these bone-headed picks in use, while
the ivory-headed one was one of the commonest tools. This Eskimo tool
is in use at Pitlekaj, a village supposed to be wholly inhabited by
sedentary Chukches.[N415]
[Footnote N415: Nordenskiöld’s figures, Vega, vol. 2, p. 123.]