Tools for snow and ice working
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.
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.
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. 306a, 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. 306b, 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,416 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.417 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.
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.