_Snow knives._--For cutting the blocks of snow used in building the
apu´ya, or snow hut, they at the present day prefer a saw or a large
steel knife (for instance, a whaleman’s boarding knife), if they can
procure it, but they still have many of the large saber-shaped ivory
knives so commonly used by the Eskimo everywhere for this purpose.
These are, however, more generally used for scraping snow off their
clothing, etc., at present. We brought home two of these knives, which
do not differ in any important respect from the many specimens
collected by other explorers in Alaska.
[Illustration: FIG. 305.--Ivory snow knife. 1/4]
No. 89478 [759], Fig. 305, is one of these--saviu´ra, “like a knife.”
It is of walrus ivory (following the natural outline of the tusk), 16½
inches long. The blade is double-edged, the haft rounded on the edges
and laced along the lower edge for 3¼ inches with a double piece of
sinew braid. The object of this is to give the hand a firmer grip on
the haft. These knives are also used for cutting the blocks of snow to
supply the house with water.
[Illustration: FIG. 306.--Snow shovels. 1/8]
_Snow shovels._--The broad, short-handled snow shovel of wood with a
sharp edge of ivory is the tool universally employed whenever snow is
to be shoveled, either to clear it away or for excavating houses or
pitfalls in the snowdrifts, or “chinking” up the crevices in the walls
of the snow house, and is an indispensable part of the traveler’s
outfit in winter. The shovels (pĭ´ksun) are all made on essentially
the same pattern, which is well shown by Fig. 306_a_, No. 56739 [30].
The blade is 14 inches broad and 11 long. The whole upper surface of
the shovel is flat. The handle is beveled off on the side to a rounded
edge below, and is quite thick where it joins the blade, tapering off
to the tip. The blade is thick and abruptly rounded off on the upper
edge below and gradually thinned down to the edge. The edge of the
wood is fitted with a tongue into a groove in the top of the ivory
edge, which is 1½ inches deep. It is fastened on by wooden tree-nails
at irregular intervals, and at one end, where the edge of the groove
has been broken, by a stitch of black whalebone. The wooden part of
the shovel is made of four unequal pieces of spruce, neatly fitted and
doweled together and held by the ivory edge and three stitches of
black whalebone close to the upper edge, and countersunk below the
flat surface. The whippings of sinew braid on the handle are to give a
firm grip for the hands.
No. 56738 [27], Fig. 306_b_, is a similar shovel of the same material
and almost exactly the same dimensions, figured to show the way it has
been pieced together and mended. The maker of this shovel was able to
procure a broad piece of wood which only had to be pieced out with a
narrow strip on the left side, which is fastened on as before. It was,
however, not long enough to make the whole of the handle, which has a
piece 8½ inches long, neatly scarfed on at the end and secured by six
stout treenails of wood; three at each end of the joint, passing
through the thin part of the scarf into the thick, but not through the
latter. Nearly the whole handle was seized with sinew braid put on as
before, but much of this seizing is broken off. At the right side of
the blade the grain takes a twist, bringing it parallel to the ivory
edge, and rendering it liable to split, as has happened from the
warping of the ivory since the shovel has been in the Museum. The
owner sought to prevent this by fastening to the edge a stout “strap”
of walrus ivory 4½ inches, which appears to be an old bird spear
point. The lower end of this fitted into the groove of the ivory edge,
and it was held on by three equidistant lashings of narrow whalebone,
each running through a hole in the edge of the wood and round the
ivory in a deep transverse groove.
This pattern of snow shovel is very like that from Iglulik, figured by
Capt. Lyon,[N416] but the handle of the latter is so much shorter in
proportion to the blade that there is an additional handle like that
of a pot lid near the head of the blade on the upper surface. The
ivory edge also appears to be fastened on wholly with stitches.
[Footnote N416: Parry’s Second Voy., pl. opposite p. 548, Fig. 5.]
Fig. 307 (No. 89775 [1250] from Utkiavwĭñ) is a peculiar implement,
the only one of the kind that we saw. It is a shovel, 17 inches long,
made of a whale’s scapula, with the anterior and posterior borders cut
off straight so as to make it 13¼ inches broad, and the superior
margin beveled off to an edge. The handle is made by flattening the
neck of the scapula and cutting through it a large horizontal
elliptical slot, below which the end of the scapula is worked into a
rounded bar 1 inch in diameter. The cutting around this slot appears
new, and red ocher has been rubbed into the crevices. On the other
hand, the beveling of the digging edge appeared to be old. Though
colored with red ocher, the edge is gapped as if from use, and there
are fragments of tundra moss sticking to it. It is probably an old
implement “touched up” for sale. We did not learn whether such tools
were now generally used. This may have been a makeshift or an
individual fancy.
[Illustration: FIG. 307.--Snow shovel made of a whale’s scapula.
1/8]
Fig. 308 (No. 89521 [1249] from Utkiavwĭñ) is another peculiar tool of
which we saw no other specimen. It appears to be really an old
implement and was said to have been used for digging or picking in the
snow. It is a stout sharp-pointed piece of bone, 3 inches long,
inserted in the end of a piece of a long bone of some animal, 4.7
inches long and about 1½ wide, which serves as a haft.
[Illustration: FIG. 308.--Snow pick. 1/2]
_Ice picks._--The ivory ice pick (tu´u) always attached to the
seal-harpoon has been already described. This differs from the _tôk_
of the Greenlanders and other eastern Eskimo in having a sharp bayonet
point, while the latter is often chisel-pointed. All the men now have
iron ice picks which they use for cutting the holes for fishing,
setting seal nets, and such purposes. These are made of some white
man’s tool which has a socket, like a harpoon iron, a whale lance,
a boarding knife or bayonet, and usually have a rather slender blade
about a foot long, mounted on a pole 6 or 8 feet long. The point is
sharp and polygonal, generally four-sided. The tool is managed with
both hands and used to split off fragments of ice by rather oblique
blows. In other words, it is used in precisely the same way as the
little single-handed pick which we use in refrigerators. For chiseling
off projecting corners of ice when making a path out through the ice
pack, they often use whale spades, of which they have obtained a great
many from wrecks.
[Illustration: FIG. 309.--Snow drill. 1/3]
[Illustration: FIG. 310.--Ice scoop. 1/12]
No. 89483 [1313] from Utkiavwĭñ, is a very old pick made of a piece of
reindeer antler, 11¼ inches long, split lengthwise, and tapered to a
sharp curved point. The butt is cut into a sort of tang with a low
shoulder. The split face is concave, the soft interior tissue having
been removed by decay and perhaps also intentionally. Another peculiar
tool is shown in Fig. 309 (No. 89479 [1064] from Utkiavwĭñ). This was
called kăkaiyaxion, and is a rounded piece of antler 10.4 inches long,
tapering from the butt where there is a low shoulder and the broken
remains of a rounded tang to be fitted to a shaft. One side is cut off
flat from the shoulder to the tip, gradually becoming concave. The
concavity is deepest near the middle. The tip is slightly expanded,
rounded, and somewhat bent toward the convex side. The specimen is
smoothly and neatly made and dark brown from age. No other specimens
were seen. We were told that this tool was mounted on a long pole and
used for drilling holes in the ice by making the pole revolve with the
hands.
_Ice scoops._--When picking a hole through the ice they use a
long-handled scoop, made of a piece of antler bent round into a hoop,
and netted across the bottom with strips of whalebone, so that the
water may drain off in dipping pieces of ice out of the water. We
brought home one specimen of this universal implement (No. 89903
[1696], Fig. 310). The handle is of oak, 5 feet 1¾ inches long and
elliptical in section. The rim of the bowl is a long thin strip of
antler, apparently from the “palm,” bent round into a pointed oval, 8½
inches long and 5¾ wide, with the ends of the strip overlapping about
3 inches at the broader end. The ends are sewed together with two
vertical stitches of whalebone. The left end has been broken across
obliquely near the joint and mended with whalebone stitches. Round the
lower edge of the rim runs a row of twenty-seven pairs of small holes
0.2 inch from the edge. The holes of each pair are connected by a deep
channel, and a narrow shallow groove, probably for ornament, joins the
pairs. On the left side are eight extra holes between the pairs, which
are not used. Through these holes, omitting the first two pairs in the
right-hand end, is laced a piece of seal thong, thus: Starting at the
point of the oval, the two ends of the thong are passed through the
pair of holes there from the outside and the bight drawn home into the
channel; the ends are crossed, the left end going to the right, and
vice versa, and passed out through the farther hole of the next pair
and in through the nearer, and so on till the ends meet at the broad
end of the oval where they are tied together, thus making twenty-five
loops on the inside of the rim into which the netting is fastened.
This is made of strips of thin whalebone, interwoven, over and under
each other, passing up through one loop and down through the next.
There are eleven longitudinal strands passing obliquely from right to
left, the same number from left to right, and eleven transverse
strands, making a network with elongated hexagonal apertures. The
strips are not one continuous piece. The bowl thus made is fastened to
the handle by three pieces of stout seal thong. The whole lashing was
put on wet, and allowed to shrink.
Nordenskiöld mentions and figures a scoop of almost identically the
same pattern, but smaller, in general use for the same purposes at
Pitlekaj.[N417] A smaller scoop or skimmer (ĕlauatĭn) is also
universally used. We inadvertently neglected to preserve a specimen of
this very common implement, though we had two or three about the
station for our own use. I shall therefore have to describe it from
memory. The handle is a flat, straight stick with rounded edges, about
18 inches or 2 feet long, 1½ inches broad, and three-fourths inch
thick. The bowl is made of two pieces of antler “palm” of such a shape
that when they are fastened together on the end of the stick they make
a shallow cup about 3½ inches long by 3 wide, with a longitudinal
crevice along the middle which allows the water to drain off. The tip
of the handle is beveled off on both sides so as to fit into the
inside of this cup, along the junction of the two pieces, each of
which is fastened to it by one or two neat stitches of whalebone. The
two pieces are fastened together in front of the handle with a stitch.
[Footnote N417: Vega, vol. 1, p. 493.]
In addition to the use of these scoops for skimming the fishing holes,
and reeling up the line, as already described, they also serve as
scrapers to remove snow and hoar frost from the clothing. In the
winter most of the men and boys, especially the latter, carry these
skimmers whenever they go out doors, partly for the sake of having
something in their hands, as we carry sticks, and partly for use. The
boys are very fond of using them to pick up and sling snowballs, bits
of ice, or frozen dirt, which they do with considerable force and
accuracy.