Fig. 526. Ball. (Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. IV A 6822.)
The ball (Fig. 526) is most frequently used in summer. It is made of sealskin stuffed with moss and neatly trimmed with skin straps. One man throws the ball among the players, whose object it is to keep it always in motion without allowing it to touch the ground. Another game of ball I have seen played by men only. A leather ball filled with hard clay is propelled with a whip, the lash of which is tied up in a coil. Every man has his whip and is to hit the ball and so prevent his fellow players from getting at it.
A third game at ball called igdlukitaqtung is played with small balls tossed up alternately from the right to the left, one always being in the air. Songs used in the game will be found in the last pages of this paper.
An amusement of women and children is to point successively on the forehead, the cheek, and the chin and to pronounce as rapidly as possible sulubautiχu´tika, tudliχu´tika, tadliχu´tika, tudliχú´tika, i.e., the forehead, the cheek, the chin, the cheek.
Young children play with toy sledges, kayaks, boats, bows and arrows, and dolls. The last are made in the same way by all the tribes, a wooden body being clothed with scraps of deerskin cut in the same way as the clothing of men. Fig. 527 shows dolls in the dress of the Oqomiut; Fig. 528, in that of the Akudnirmiut.
Fig. 527. Dolls in dress of the Oqomiut. (Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. IV A 6702.) 1/1
